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Chess New Orleans |
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Monday, 06 February 2006 11:13 |
Chess New Orleans
Featuring Clifton Chenier, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Sugar Boy Crawford, Bobby Charles, Eddie Bo, Paul Gayten & More
MCA Chess CHD2-9355
By John Sinclair
New Orleans music fanatics have been waiting for this package of Crescent City rhythm & blues hits, obscurities and previously unissued Chess, Checker and Argo cuts circa 1953-1965 for a long time.
While everyone will have their little beefs about song selection and what have you, all must agree that Chess-master Andy McKaie has done a fine job of collecting and presenting 44 essential slices of New Orleans musical life in this well-programmed, nicely packaged 2-CD set.
Phil and Leonard Chess came relatively late to New Orleans, following the lead of DeLuxe, Coleman, Regal, Star Talent, Atlantic, Mercury, Imperial, Federal, Aladdin, Specialty, Savoy and other small labels based in New Jersey, Houston, New York City, Chicago, Cincinnati and Los Angeles.
The carefully tuned ears of these early rhythm & blues specialists led them inexorably to the J&M recording service operated by Cosimo Matassa at the corner of Rampart and Dumaine, where crafty indigenous producers like Dave Bartholomew, Al Young and Paul Gayten had assembled a core group of skilled players and arrangers who could put their musical magic behind any sort of singer and make instant records that would last as long as people have ears.
Popular New Orleans bandleader Paul Gayten was one of the brightest stars in the Crescent City firmament between 1947-1962. He found an early outlet for his recording expertise with DeLuxe Records and hit big with singles by Annie Laurie and himself, joining label-mate Roy Brown in the first wave of New Orleans talent to wash over America after World War II.
After DeLuxe was gobbled up by King Records, Gayten went over to the Regal label and blasted through to national success again with Larry Darnell, Ms. Laurie, and his own featured discs. He assembled a first-class small orchestra of players from the Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody bands and toured the country backing R&B shows and his own singing stars.
Gayten's New Orleans band, long featured at the legendary Brass Rail on Canal Street, settled in at Cosimo's studio and cut countless sessions for Dave Bartholomew and other producers, backing hits by Professor Longhair, Lloyd Price, Little Richard, Shirley & Lee and dozens of others.
The Cosimo Studio Orchestra--fondly known to its members as the Funk Club--included saxophonists Lee Allen and Alvin "Red" Tyler, bassist Frank "Dude" Fields, drummer Earl Palmer, guitarists Justin Adams and Ernest McLean, and pianists Huey Smith, Salvador Doucette and Edward Frank.
Master musicians all, these men were loath to leave the comforts of home for the rigors of the road, and they were still there cooking away at Cosimo's when Paul Gayten returned to the city to make records for the Chess brothers following a two-year stay with OKeh Records in New York City.
Under Gayten's brilliant direction Chess Records developed a small but extremely potent roster of Crescent City artists that included Bobby Charles, Clarence "Frogman" Henry, Eddie Bo, T.V. Slim and Charles "Hungry" Williams. They joined Chess's earlier discovery, James "Sugar Boy" Crawford, who had begun to record a series of magnificent recordings the year before, including his timeless single, "Jock-A-Mo," issued in time for Mardi Gras 1954 as Checker 787.
Chess New Orleans starts with the initial Sugar Boy sessions from the fall of 1953 and presents in rough chronological order a fine selection of Crescent City classics, many available on CD for the first time.
Sugar Boy & the Cane Cutters are well represented by their Checker singles "Overboard" (783), "Jock-A-Mo" and "No More Heartaches" (795), plus two unreleased masterpieces, "Oo Wee Sugar" and "What's Wrong" (recently covered by Marva Wright on her Sky Ranch album). Of course, Sugar Boy partisans--like this writer--continue to clamor for the CD release of all 24 of his Chess recordings, last heard on a double-LP package issued some 20 years ago but still unavailable in the digital era.
Blues singer Slim Saunders was brought in to front the Cane Cutters--previously known as the Chapaka Shaweez--for a hip jump blues in the popular Guitar Slim mode called "Let's Have Some Fun (Honey)," issued as Chess 1563. Gayten joined the Chess roster in the late summer of 1954; his "Down Boy" wasn't released at the time but has been out for some time on his compilation Chess King of New Orleans.
Disc jockey Ken "Jack the Cat" Elliott brought in the next Chess single out of New Orleans, the all-time classic "Mardi Gras Mambo" (Chess 1591) by Art Neville and the Hawketts, issued at Carnival Time in 1955. Also included here is the B side, a menacing blues ballad titled "Your Time's Up" which sort of presages the twisted Allen Toussaint/Aaron Neville offering called "Over You." This obscure cut was previously re-issued on the Rhino collection of Neville Brothers material, Treacherous Too.
Gayten's piano and vocal are featured on another unreleased single, "If You Love Me, Tell Me So" from June 1955, but this has also been issued recently as part of the Chess Rhythm & Roll boxed set. And Gayten protege Charles "Hungry" Williams, who would replace Earl Palmer in the Cosimo house band within the next year, is showcased on two smoking sides from late 1955, the hard-driving "So Glad She's Mine" (Checker 831) and the unreleased "What Can I Do," both once available on vinyl (on an LP titled New Orleans Rhythm & Blues) and now on CD for the first time.
A string of great Bobby Charles singles follows, starting with the monumental "See You Later Alligator" (Chess 1609) from late 1955 and continuing with "Time Will Tell" b/w "Take It Easy Greasy" (1628), "No Use Knocking" (1638) and "You Can Suit Yourself" b/w "I Ain't Gonna Do It No More" (1658), all but the first featuring the relentlessly rocking backing of the first-string studio band with Hungry on drums.
Chess picked up several masters cut in Los Angeles by the great Louisiana bluesman Clifton Chenier in the fall of 1956 and issued the first, a fiercely rolling side called "The Big Wheel," on their new Argo subsidiary (#5262). "Baby Please" remained unissued until the New Orleans Rhythm & Blues album, but both these sides and the other Clifton Chenier coupling, "My Soul" b/w "Bayou Drive" (Checker 939) have been re-issued on CD in Rhino's two-disc Clifton Chenier set titled Zodico Dynamite.
Disc One closes with a pair of well-known Paul Gayten sides, "Drivin' Home," Pt. 2 (Argo 5263) and the Larry Darnell hit, "For You My Love," long available on CD on Wrinkles and Chess King of New Orleans, respectively. The capper is a fantastic Eddie Bo recording, "Walk That Walk," unissued in 1957 and previously available only on the New Orleans Rhythm & Blues LP.
CD Two introduces Chess's brightest Crescent City star, the inimitable Clarence "Frogman" Henry, who crashed the national charts with "Ain't Got No Home" (Argo 5259) in late 1956 and laid down a trail of hot singles with "It Won't Be Long" (Argo 5273), "But I Do" (5278), "I'm In Love" (5305) and "Little Suzy" (5388), all but the latter issued on the recent Frogman Chess anthology, Ain't Got No Home. New here is a previously unreleased Frogman recording of the Five Keys' "Glory of Love," which would not have gone too far had it been issued in 1964.
Disc Two also includes a pair of Paul Gayten instrumentals, "Nervous Boogie" (Argo 5277) and "Tickle Toe" (5300)--not the Count Basie/Lester Young masterwork but a fairly trivial bit of pop fluff--and both on CD for some time already. Eddie Bo gets another shot with the never-before-released pairing of "Hip Hip Hooray" and "Where's My Baby" from 1957 plus his delightful Chess single "Oh Oh" (1698), all three sides providing further proof of Eddie's utter mastery of every nuance of the rhythm & blues idiom. Why wasn't this man president?
Also present is the T.V. Slim masterpiece, "Flatfoot Sam" (Argo 5277), re-cut by Paul Gayten from the original master recorded in Shreveport in 1957; Edgar Blanchard's unissued single, the broiling "Lawdy Mama"; (Warren) Myles & (August "Dimes") Dupont's take-off on Larry Williams' "Short Fat Fanny" called "Loud Mouth Annie" (Argo 5326); and the soulful Rod Bernard coupling of Guitar Gable's "This Should Go On Forever" with his own "Pardon Mr. Gordon." All but the latter were on the New Orleans Rhythm & Blues LP.
What's left are three wonderful cuts from the Chess vaults: both sides of Reggie Hall's Chess single, "The Joke" b/w "You Can Think What You Want," picked up from Rip Records and issued as Chess 1816; and a truly obscure Earl King side, "Feeling My Way Around," unobtainable since its 45 rpm release as Checker 1167 in 1965. "The Joke" is simply one of the most hilarious novelty singles ever released, and the album closer, "Feeling My Way Around," is another extremely welcome addition to the available body of work by the prolific musical genius of modern-day New Orleans, Mr. Earl King.
Chess New Orleans makes for a great listen from beginning to end, and contemporary audiences who have only stumbled across the occasional Chess single from the Crescent City will benefit greatly from hearing all these fine sides gathered together and placed in historical context under the Chess/Checker/Argo aegis.
But collectors will have a real problem balancing the cost of this 2-disc set against the number of previously unavailable sides issued on Chess New Orleans. And we want more obscurities and unreleased masters, like the remaining cuts on the New Orleans Rhythm & Blues LP: "Country Boy" by the Frogman; "Rhythmatic Rhythm," "What Can I Do" and "I Cried All The Way Home" by Hungry Williams; "Ding Dong Darling" and "Foolish Woman" by Allen Brooks; and Bobby Blanquet's "Needing Your Love."
We always want more, until every single side recorded by New Orleans rhythm & blues artists is available in the CD format for our education and delight. But we take what we can get, and this is definitely one to take.
--New Orleans
1995
(c) 1995, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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