I'm thrilled to have an Ichiban DJ set from Mister Lance who hosts one of my favorite radio shows - Monkey Time on Asheville FM! Heard every Wednesday night from 6-7 PM.
Champion Jack really changes his musical style for his run of singles on the King label. The intensity is significantly lessened - the rollicking groove of the Red Robin recordings becomes much more of a laid back stroll. There is far more space between instruments, and both he and his accompanists play with far more restraint and deliberation. The overall effect is a real "uptowning" of his musical sound.
In direct contrast to this musical style change for the "sophisticated" is CJD's vocal persona and songwriting. These are the first recordings where the hick persona and folksy, spoken-word storytelling style come front and center. He rarely sings on his King recordings, instead musing and making asides, jokes and observations while the music grooves. To make matters even more bizarre, on about half of his King records he affects/perfects his "harelip" voice - a slurred, diffi-oot oo unnuhsan bit of jive that was apparently quite popular with record buyers at the time.
the harelippiest
The end result of all of these changes is one of the most unique series of blues 45s I know about, most of which are collected on the strangely coherent Champion Jack Dupree Sings the Blues, his first full-length LP.
"Chew it up to the elbow, boy!"
Part of the change in sound is because of a change in the band, namely the guitar player. Jack and Brownie McGhee had already moonlit for King, unsurprisingly, as a collective persona named "Big Tom Collins" (I assume they had plenty of big Tom Collins when they came up with that name). McGhee would sing on some of the sides, Dupree on the other. While the vocal style of "Watchin' My Stuff" is a lot like the recordings he'd do under his own name at King, soundwise the band is pure Red Robin.
1951
vs.
1955
By the time he starts recording as CJD for King in 1953, Brownie McGhee has lit out for good with Sonny Terry to do his own thing. His replacement, on about half of the King sessions, was the world's greatest rock and roll session guitarist, fellow orphan and future fellow ex-pat Mr. Mickey Baker!
Mickey and Jack in the 60s
Baker's hepcat, cool New York persona infuses just about every record he ever set his strings to, and it sounds particularly great with Dupree's primitive style. In fact, Baker really reigns himself in on these recordings, laying down a far less wild style of playing than he would with, for instance, another r&b vet he recorded with in the 50s, Louis Jordan for LJ's Mercury sessions. Mickey and Jack sound particularly fantastic together on the rather hilarious "Mail Order Woman".
The King records are also significant in that it's the first time you can really hear Jack's foot on a record, particularly "Walking the Blues". I've already mentioned the similarities between CJD and that other great blues footist, John Lee Hooker. But while John Lee's foot is generally all Detroit drive, CJD's is New Orleans mellow. For a man with such pounding hands, CJD sure had a sly, subtle stomp.*
hey hey hey - keep on walkin, baby!
I love the King recordings and even though I could find something self-evident to say about just about all of them I'll spare you that. But I have to talk about one more, the King version of "Stumbling Block".
Unlike Jack's other great dance 45s, which drag the dancers onto the floor with sheer drive and force, this version of "Stumbling Block" is all slow burn, mounting tension and slyness, underlined by the fantastic Baker guitar hook that builds and builds until he finally breaks it up with a fantastic, oddly abstract solo. Result = totally sexy dance track.
Dupree and Baker obviously had a real connection, and they recorded again together in Europe in the 1960s. We'll get to that in due course.
*It has come to my attention that Mr. Bear is actually the foot on Walkin' the Blues
The rock 'n' roll era agreed with Jack Dupree. I don't think that I'll be ruffling the suitfeathers of anyone who comes to this website's frequently by asserting that Champion Jack Dupree did the majority of his best work in the 50s. His recordings for Red Robin, Groove/Vik and King are certainly the most Ichiban-appropriate material he'd ever cut, and some of the 45s he released in this era are iconic, exciting, dance floor monstrosities of undying magnificence.
Must be the backbeat!
Take, for instance his recordings for Red Robin in 1953/1954. "Stumbling Block" and "Shake Baby Shake" make their first appearances (under those names - an early version of "Stumbling Block" was issued as "New Low Down Dog" and "Shake Baby Shake" is a slightly spiffed up "Dupree Shake Dance"). While he does manage to top this Red Robin "Stumbling Block" over at King a couple years later, "Shake Baby Shake" is never better than the version released on Red Robin, with its ever escalating, distorted double-McGhee guitar attack and outstanding shuffle rhythm. The one on VIK is hot, but this is the one.
But of course the crown jewel in the Red Robin trilogy, and I'm sure for some of you the greatest Champion Jack Dupree record of all times is the wild "Shim Sham Shimmy"/"Drunk Again" double shot. I first heard "Shim Sham Shimmy" on the classic Lookey Dookey comp, released by some anonymous genius (he must want to remain anonymous because he's always wearin' shades). If there is ever a party that this song can't take up to another level, I don't want to go to it. "Take off your your tie, hang onto your skirt, get down real low and reach right down in the dirt!"
The flip, "Drunk Again", shows Jack developing his oddball "hairlip" voice that he'd use on so many of his King releases. "Your breath smells like you've been chewing chinches or drinking bed bug juice!"
While Champion Jack Dupree was growing up in New Orleans, he was Spyboy for the Yellow Pocahontas tribe of Mardi Gras Indians. This was in the 20s and early 30s, prior to his exodous from Nola to start his boxing career.
He talks about his experiences in the song "Yellow Pocahontas", originally from the pretty great When You Get the Feeling You Was Feeling LP.
According to the Elsewhere interview I've been quoting throughout the month, his time with the Yellow Pocahontas tribe affected him deeply.
"That's my mother's tribe. [Remember, Jack's parents were killed in a fire when he was one.] She was an American Indian and father was from Africa and I can't forget that.
"In New Orleans there's Creole, Cherokee, Mohawk and the Yellow Pocahontas, which is the darkest race of Indians. Each tribe has its own traditions and some of those Indians play good jazz or blues.
"Most of the musicians you get from New Orleans are the Black Indians."
Here's a later version of "Yellow Pocahontas", recorded after Jack returned to New Orleans, featuring famed Mardi Gras Indian/Wild Magnolia Bo Dallis.
I can't get the embed to work on that version, but you can check it out on youtube here.
Happy Mardi Gras, everyone! Stay pretty and don't bow down.
Check out this fantastic solo piano footage from CJD, recorded in France in the 60s. Dupree's set starts at 13:41. The pianist who plays the first set is Joe Turner (not the Big one), a stride pianist whose sophisticated style makes for great contrast to the Champ's enthusiastic finger stomp.
Jack's set is about 20 minutes long and covers the basic gamut of his techniques. Drinking with his left hand while playing with his right? Check. Foot tap solo? Nice one, at 21:00. Shakespeare mangling? Yup. Story about a "chicken" house where they sold whiskey called "Sonny kick your Mammy" and reefer called "Brother Jones"? Yes.
He also explains his wild left handed style (at 28:20) by saying, "They keys I hit, I don't know - you'll have to ask Joe Turner. I just hit anywhere. Like Shakespeare say, black and white will do."
Of the many different names the Champ and Brownie McGhee recorded under in the late 40s, it's difficult to beat Meat Head Johnson and the Blues Hounds (although I will also give it up for Duke Bayou and the Mystic Six). It's pretty difficult to beat Meat Head's recordings, too, mainly because not only does Brownie McGhee play guitar on them, he's joined by spo-dee-o-dee loving brother Stick.
Barrel House Mama
The song "Old Old Woman" was recorded under the name "Old Woman Blues" for Apollo, but the Meat Head version is better - better lyrical delivery and wilder guitar. Get your morning exercise!
As the rhythm and blues era continued throughout the 40s, Champion Jack continued to ply his trade and in 1949 made half a dozen records for the famous New York based Apollo label. Some of the most interesting of these were made with "Big Chief Ellis and his Blues All Stars".
Here's a couple of hot ones.
Deacon's Party
Just Plain Tired
This weekend I'll be posting some tracks Jack recorded under other names in the 50s and then we'll be back to the long-windedness on Monday, as Jack enters the 45 era with three stellar runs on Robin, King and Groove.
November, 1941 was Jack Dupree's last recording session until 1944. He spent two of the intervening years in a Japanese POW camp.
According to Graham Reid, who published an interview with Dupree on his Elsewhere blog, his time as a prisoner of war was possibly more hospitable than being in the actual army.
"Black people lived good because they weren't put with the whites. We cooked for ourselves and played ball. The Japanese people were funny. They thought Americans were getting black slaves from Africa to fight for them so they didn't see they were fighting us."
And, according to John Orr: "I cooked for the [Japanese] officers, so I had to eat what they ate, so it wouldn't be poisoned. I had help and everything, a nice room, a bottle of cognac a month, cigars, cigarettes -- it was just like working in a hotel, but with no place to go."
Upon returning from the war, Dupree did a couple of solo dates for the Joe Davis label. To my ears the most interesting of these is "F.D.R. Blues", the first of Jack's tributes to historical figures he admired. He'd eventually toast people like Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, and Big Bill Broonzy in memorial songs. I don't know that much has been made about CJD's dignity in the face of racial adversity in his songs. I love how he says in this one, "He was a good man - he was a credit to our race."
Dupree's recordings for Joe Davis milk a lot of the same territory as his OKeh sides, but things get, to my own tastes, considerably more exciting when he moved to the Continental label later in '45. For one thing, he gets the first of his significant guitarist collaborators, Brownie McGhee. McGhee and Dupree would work together, with and without McGhee's other collaborator, Sonny Terry, for the next ten years.
As we have noted in the past, Dupree was not perhaps the most technically skilled pianist ever to lay his elbows down on 12 bars. He also has a limited number of song structures which get repurposed to great effect. His best records, especially his fast ones, tend to have a sympathetic string-man to help with the arrangements and to add color to his sounds. Near as I can tell, Dupree's most sympathetic guitar accompanists were McGhee, Mickey Baker (King, GNP, Decca), Larry Dale (Groove, Atlantic), and, believe it or not, Groundhog T.S. McPhee, all of whom we'll hear more from later in the month. All of these guys are on recordings that stand out from the rest of the CJD pack, not only in terms of sonic excitement, but also in the energy and focus of CJD's performance. I think the man liked him some electric guitar. Check out the way he, McGhee and bassist Count Edmonson make mincemeat out of the "Dupree Shake Dance" template on "Let's Have a Ball".
PLAY ME SOME!
In addition to adding some guitar flash, Dupree really turns up the raunch on his double entendré. His first record for Continental features "I Think You Need a Shot" on the b-side. This is the first version of "Bad Blood" on Blues from the Gutter, but it is lyrically even more lascivious than that better known (and already pretty filthy) version.
Throw your legs up on the wall!
Special shout-out to 9th Ward Jukebox, an amazingly valuable internet resource with unflaggingly great taste. Saved me a lot of uploading time.
In the interest of further illustration of Champion Jack's awesomely inaccurate left hand as a piano player, check out this cover of Louis Jordan's "Early in the Morning", here called "Too Early in the Morning", from one of his mid-60's albums, New Orleans to Chicago. While the album cover bills a ton of British Blues guitarists, this performance is solo, except maybe for the drum break, which may or may not be a washboard or CJD beating on his piano. I suspect that the fumbling nature of this recording may have to do with Jack being fairly well lubricated at the time it was recorded, but it swings like a dazed boxer in a ring who doesn't know any better than to fall down.
It was sixty-four years ago today, Red Foley and company headed into a Nashville studio and cut the timeless Tennessee Border, written by George Morgan. Teenaged steel guitarist Billy Robinson is not only still kicking, he still gigs occasionally in Nashville, as he did a few weeks ago, playing with Chris Scruggs & His Air Castle All Stars, a truly world class outfit, at a west Nashville establishment called the Stone Fox.
The information below appears courtesy of Bear Family records:
February 6, 1949; Castle Studio at the Tulane Hotel, 206 8th Avenue, Nashville, TN. Producer: Paul Cohen
If I were in NYC, I would most certainly plan on dropping by the Yossi Milo gallery in Chelsea to check out the display of architectural and industrial photographs taken by Ezra Stoller. More information about Stoller and his wonderful work can be found in this New York Times article.
Who would thunk it? This wacky thing about ethno-geographic phenotypes? The whole school has been given new life with the discovery that two immortal Italo-Americans of conspicuously similar facial features sprang forth from the same good earth: L.A., in the late Twenties-early Thirties. Namely Nino Tempo [ne Lo Tempio], famed Spector cohort and star sibling of April Stevens (Hoots mon! Here they are, killin’ in kilts on TV’s Shivaree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luPRSXyaItU ), and Don Gordon (ne Guadagno), perennial sidekick/heavy. He was the former in McQueen’s Bullitt, the latter in Den Hopper’s “punk” flick Out of the Blue. Don’s cheekbones beat Nino’s, but both work that semi-perpendicular hairline riff on a receding Caesar frame. Here’s Gordon, from a 1965 Kraft Mystery Theater, wrestling a rival to the mat. He shows up at around 6 minutes into the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgIs2kWGips .
