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Original King Masters |
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Reviews
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Thursday, 09 February 2006 08:01 |
The Original King Masters
Rhino Records
By John Sinclair
Sixty Minute Men: The Best of Billy Ward & His Dominos (Rhino R2 71509)
Hide Away: The Best of Freddy King (Rhino R2 71510)
Fever: The Best of Little Willie John (Rhino R2 71511)
Sexy Ways: The Best of Hank Ballard & the Midnighters (Rhino R2 71512)
Bloodshoot Eyes: The Best of Wynonie Harris (Rhino R2 71544)
Good Rocking Tonight: The Best of Roy Brown (Rhino R2 71545)
Monkey Hips & Rice: The "5" Royales Anthology (Rhino R2 71546)
From its headquarters at 1540 Brewster Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio, King Records and its rhythm & blues subsidiaries Federal and DeLuxe churned out hundreds of great blues and R&B singles by such artists as Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bull Moose Jackson, Lula Reed, Tiny Bradshaw, Dave Bartholomew and Earl Bostic.
This list is by no means exhaustive. King Records, under the direction of proprietor Sid Nathan and A&R directors like Ralph Bass, Henry Glover, Carl LeBow and Sonny Thompson, committed thousands of fantastic sides to wax and recording tape, creating an immense body of recorded music during the 20 years between 1945-65.
Most of this music has remained frozen in the lost world of 78 and 45 rpm singles; the relative handful of LPs issued by King and its successor, Gusto Records, was merely the tip of a vast musical iceberg submerged alongside the Ohio River.
The flood of R&B reissues that burst forth in the CD era restored to public access the brilliant musical products of labels like Chess, Checker, Duke, Peacock, Imperial, Specialty, Aladdin, Atlantic and Savoy. Yet the immense treasure trove of King, DeLuxe and Federal singles remained well beyond popular reach.
For a while a careful search would produce the occasional King CD reissue of an obscure compilation of singles by Bill Doggett, Champion Jack Dupree, Otis Williams & the Charms or Ivory Joe Hunter once issued on LP, original tacky color cover art and all. They seemed to come out of Dearborn, Michigan, or some other equally unlikely locale, and they would be gone almost as quickly as they were spotted.
Now the people at Rhino Records have finally cracked open the door to the King vaults with the first seven releases in their King Masters Series, a collection of essential recordings by Roy Brown, Wynonie Harris, Billy Ward & His Dominos, Hank Ballard & the Midnighters, the "5" Royales, Little Willlie John and Freddy King which begins to delineate for modern listeners the artistic and historic importance of the big little record company from the Queen City.
Covering the period from Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight" (recorded in New Orleans in July 1947) to Freddy King's "Remington Ride" (1964), this series of CDs at last provides us with definitive collections of some of the greatest R&B artists of the Golden Age of American Music--and throws in long-unavailable discographical, personnel and biographical information to the bargain.
The music of Roy Brown, one of the greatest and most influential of all R&B performers, has long been relegated to European releases available here only as expensive imports. Good Rocking Tonight, Rhino's 18-song selection of Roy's greatest hits, begins to correct this deficiency by making available such masterpieces as the title track, "Rockin' at Midnight," "Boogie at Midnight," "Cadillac Baby," "Bar Room Blues," "Beautician Blues," "Big Town" and "Black Diamond."
Wynonie Harris, some 10 years Brown's senior, billed himself as "Mr. Blues" and blazed a jump-blues trail through the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 50s with a string of spectacular 78 rpm singles for King. Bloodshoot Eyes gives us his best-selling cover of Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight" and the series of hard-rocking novelty numbers which followed: "Grandma Plays the Numbers," "All She Wants to Do is Rock," "I Like My Baby's Pudding," "Good Morning Judge," "Bloodshot Eyes," "Keep On Churnin " and 11 others.
Billy Ward & The Dominoes, who hit the R&B map like an atomic bomb with "Sixty Minute Man" in 1951, were the first act signed by Ralph Bass for the new Federal Records imprint granted him by Sid Nathan as part of his ground-breaking production deal the year before. Bass would cut such acts as Roy Byrd (Professor Longhair), the Midnighters, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Little Esther, and James Brown & His Famous Flames, but his success with Federal was built on the pioneering recordings of Billy Ward & The Dominoes, their incredible lead singer, Clyde McPhatter, and his replacement, Jackie Wilson--two men deeply influenced by the vocal stylings of Roy Brown.
Sixty Minute Men demonstrates the pace-setting approach of the Dominoes, who brought the searing heat and the soulful group harmonies of gospel music into the R&B idiom at the turn of the half-century. Jumping rockers like the risque title track, the jubilant "That's What You're Doing to Me" and the magnificent "Have Mercy Baby" were coupled with pleading ballads like "Do Something for Me," "These Foolish Things" and "The Bells" to define the sound of the R&B vocal group for the next decade.
Two of the finest groups to emerge in the wake of the Dominoes, the "5" Royales and the Midnighters, also ended up under the King umbrella. Monkey Hips & Rice, a 2-CD set, presents not only the masterful King singles recorded by this influential group between 1954-59 but reaches back to their tenure at Apollo Records (1952-54) to present 11 extremely rare sides, including "Baby Don't Do It," "Crazy, Crazy, Crazy" and "Laundromat Blues."
The "5" Royales, graced by the splendid compositions of guitarist Lowman Pauling, really hit their stride at King, recording timeless sides like the title track, "Right Around the Corner," "Think," "Dedicated to the One I Love" and "Tell the Truth." Never as big in the crossover market as many groups inspired by them, the "5" Royales were huge throughout the South for years and had a musical impact far beyond their sales figures.
Originally known as the Royals, Hank Ballard & company were discovered by Federal Records artist/talent scout Johnny Otis singing on an amateur talent show with Little Willie John and Jackie Wilson at Detroit's Paradise Theatre around 1952. The Royals zoomed to #1 on the R&B charts in 1954 with the insistently raunchy "Work with Me Annie" and had their name changed to The Midnighters when King signed the "5" Royales.
Sexy Ways presents the series of rhythm & blues classics that followed in rapid succession: "Sexy Ways," "Annie Had a Baby," "Annie's Aunt Fannie," "Henry's Got Flat Feet," "Open Up the Back Door," and the original recording of "The Twist," a Ballard composition from 1958 that went all the way over the top when Chubby Checker recorded it two years later. Hank followed with several more smashes for King, including "Look at Little Sister," "Finger Poppin' Time" and "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go," all included here.
Ballard's homeboy, the pioneering soul singer Little Willie John, exploded out of the Motor City in 1955 with his King recording of Titus Turner's "All Around the World." His greatest masterpiece, "Fever," one of the finest R&B 45s of all time, topped the Black music charts the next year and crossed over to Top 40 pop in a big way. Fever: The Best of Little Willie John also includes "Need Your Love So Bad," "Suffering with the Blues," "Person to Person," "Talk to Me, Talk to Me" and 14 additional sides by the man James Brown idolized as "one of the most important soulful voices....a soul singer before anyone thought to call it that!"
King Records--along with most of the independent R&B labels that dominated the 1950s--began to fade in the early 60s as pop music took its inevitable turn to the white...er, right. But at the same time the company spawned a pair of important blues artists, Albert and Freddy King, whose singles for King and Federal would have a terrific impact on the music of the next decade.
Hide Away: The Best of Freddy King presents the Texas-cum-Chicago guitarist at his very best: instrumental work-outs like "Hide Away," "The Stumble," "San-Ho-Zay" and "Sen-Sa-Shun" that shaped the consciousness of Eric Clapton and other rock gods, along with soulful vocal cuts like "Have You Ever Loved a Woman," "You've Got to Love Her with a Feeling," "I'm Tore Down" and the thrilling lament "It's Too Bad Things Are Going So Tough."
The King Masters Series is off to an auspicious start. In every case the music is presented with pristine purity, well-sequenced in chronological order, often spiced with rarities from other labels, tersely but eloquently annotated, and accompanied by exact recording data and original single numbers.
Let us pray that this opening salvo will be followed by scores of additional King masters over the next few years.
In a just and equitable world, these recordings would be provided to every American household as exemplars of that period when our civilization reached its highest point and music like this issued forth week after week for almost 20 years.
But in the world we know, records such as these remain a distinct blessing for those fortunate enough to know them, and maybe that's all we can ask for. Thanks again to the people at Rhino Records for keeping this music alive for us today.
--New Orleans
1994
(c) 1994, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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