|
Roosevelt Sykes / Victoria Spivey: Grind It! (1973) |
E-mail |
|
Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals
|
|
Friday, 13 January 2006 19:17 |
Grind It!
Roosevelt Sykes / Victoria Spivey
Recorded 'Live' at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1973
Schholkids Records / Total Energy Records
By John Sinclair
The 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival opened at 6:00 o'clock on a sunny Friday afternoon in early September with a merry little man sitting behind a big white grand piano cracking incomprehensible jokes for the quickly-swelling crowd of college students, urban hipsters, rock & roll hippies, extended families, blues fans, jazz buffs, and music lovers of every persuasion.
His impromptu sound check completed, the rotund pianist tore into his opening number, "Driving Wheel," a blues classic he had first recorded for Decca Records back in 1936:
My baby don't have to work,
She don't have to rob and steal--
I give her everything she need:
I am her driving wheel.
The song has been a hit several times over--Junior Parker's 1960 version (Duke 335) is this writer's personal favorite--but here was the originator, the Honey Dripper himself, Mr. Roosevelt Sykes of West Helena Arkansas, St. Louis, Memphis, Chicago, New Orleans and the world at large, to bring his timeless song to a new generation of listeners who stood and sat rapt under the spell of this 67-year-old show-business wizard through his sparkling set of solo piano topped by lusty, insinuating vocals and ribald witticisms.
Mr. Sykes' inspirational offering would be followed by a wildly various procession of musical idioms performed by the Revolutionary Ensemble (Leroy Jenkins, Sirone, and Jerome Cooper), Count Basie & his mighty Orchestra (featuring vocalist Jimmy Ricks), Ann Arbor's Mojo Boogie Band (filling in for the missing-in-action J.B. Hutto & the Hawks), visionary jazz vocalist Leon Thomas & his band Full Circle, and the great Texas guitarist, Freddie King and his smoking blues outfit.
Two days later, on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, the gathering crowd of 15,000 would be treated to another challenging set of musical Russian roulette, starting at noon with the imaginative jazz duo Infinite Sound (Roland Young & Glenn Howell), continuing with the legendary King Biscuit Boys (Houston Stackhouse, Joe Willie Wilkins & crew), reigning Blues Queen Victoria Spivey with the Brooklyn Blues Busters, post-modern jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman and his sextet (with Texas blues crooner Webster Armstrong), and capped by rhythm & blues giant Johnny Otis, his Orchestra and Show, spotlighting Louis Jordan, Pee Wee Crayton, Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans, and the Three Tons of Fun.
The spritely Ms. Spivey, a best-selling recording artist for OKeh, Victor, Decca, and Vocalion Records between 1926 and 1937, emerged from general obscurity to shine as the star of the afternoon's show with her audacious snake dress, her saucy humor, riveting compositions and powerful vocal and piano delivery. Backed by her crack band of Italian and Jewish homeboys from Brooklyn, the Blues Busters, the Queen proceeded to tear up the house with a program of tunes she had originally written and recorded way back in the game, kicked off by the song she'd made for her first recording date--May 5, 1926--the eternally chilling "Black Snake Blues":
There is a mean old black snake
Suckin' my rider's tongue
You can tell by that
I ain't gonna be here long....
Then, her keening voice emerging out of the unholy wail rising up from Gary Churchill's clarinet and John Nuzzo's harmonica, Ms. Spivey drives straight into the awesome "Detroit Moan," composed during the Great Depression and recorded in 1936, with a verse that rings even more true today:
Detroit's a cold, cold place
When you ain't got a dime to your name.
I would go to the poorhouse,
But Lord, you know I'm ashamed.
Pausing between songs to introduce herself to her newly adulatory audience, the Queen says: "This old lady's sixty-seven years old....and I may be old, but I may be--uh, uh--but I'm not cold!"
No, these are a couple of hot numbers here: Roosevelt Sykes and Victoria Spivey, two giants of the blues, a pair of crafty survivors of all the perilous vicissitudes of show business who left home in their early teens to pound the piano and sing in all manner of rough establishments--barrelhouses, back rooms, country juke joints, house parties, rustic theatres and medicine shows--until they could land recording contracts during the blues boom of the 1920s and make a name for themselves with the record-buying public.
Victoria Spivey hit first, in 1926, when her "Black Snake Blues" (OKeh 8338) established the 19-year-old blueswoman as one of the label's most popular contract artists. Born in Houston, Texas, on October 15, 1906, Ms. Spivey was exposed early on to the music of her father's family string band. Three of her sisters were singers--Addie "Sweet Peas" Spivey, Elton "Za-Zu" Spivey, and Leona Spivey--and the pre-teen Victoria started working as a pianist in 1918 at the Lincoln Theatre in Dallas. She joined Lazy Daddy's Fillmore Blues Band in the Big D and appeared around Texas with Blind Lemon Jefferson and other rural blues players in the early 1920s before signing with OKeh and hitting with her first release.
Twenty more 78-rpm singles followed for OKeh Records between 1926-1929, including classics of the idiom like "Hoodoo Man Blues," "Steady Grind," "T.B. Blues," "Dope Head Blues," and "My Handy Man." Louis Armstrong, Clarence Williams and King Oliver were among her accompanists, and her series of double-sided duets with Lonnie Johnson in 1928-29 doubtless enhanced the popularity of both artists.
Ms. Spivey had a starring role in King Vidor's Hallelujah (1929), the first all-Black musical talking picture, and moved over to Victor Records for seven singles in 1929-30, including "Moaning the Blues," "Blood Hound Blues" and "Haunted by the Blues," backed by jazz greats Henry "Red" Allen, J.C. Higginbotham, Luis Russell, Porter Grainger and others. She cut four singles for Vocalion records in 1930-31 in the company of people like Georgia Tom Dorsey and Tampa Red, and then suffered the fate of most blues artists during the Depression years as the record market shriveled to almost nothing and even the biggest stars went unrecorded.
Unlike most of her contemporaries in the first generation of blues recording artists, however, Victoria Spivey came back to re-establish her career in 1936-37 with a pair of singles for Decca and six 78s for Vocalion. She appeared on Broadway and in the touring comapny of the musical Hellzapoppin in 1938-39, and she managed to keep working clubs and theatres through the 1940s and into the early 50s, when she retired from public life for several years.
The Queen was back on the scene in 1960 to enjoy the birth of the blues revival then just underway, working with stride pianist Donald "The Lamb" Lambert in New Jersey and making quite a splash in Greenwich Village during a two-week stand at Gerdes Folk City with her old OKeh Records co-star, Lonnie Johnson. The pair recorded a splendid comeback album, Woman Blues!, for Prestige/Bluesville in 1961 (now available on CD), and then Ms. Spivey started her own label, Queen Vee Records (expanded to the Spivey Record Company in 1962), where she made many fine informal recordings of great blues artists like Otis Spann, the Muddy Waters Band, Big Joe Williams (accompanied by "Blind Boy Grunt," who appeared simultaneously on Columbia Records as "Bob Dylan"), Roosevelt Sykes and other old friends.
Once "rediscovered," Victoria Spivey remained in sporadic demand through the 1960s and early 70s, putting out LPs on her Spivey Records imprint and recording with contemporaries Alberta Hunter and Lucille Hegamin a fine album for Bluesville titled Songs We Taught Your Mother, backed by Sidney DeParis, J.C. Higginbotham, Willie "The Lion" Smith and other blues and jazz veterans.
When we learned from the members of the Blues Busters, who were in the process of relocating from Brooklyn to Ann Arbor, that Ms. Spivey might be available to perform at the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, we snapped at the chance to engage her. She was a bona fide hit there and with everyone who had the good fortune to see and hear her before her death in New York City on October 3, 1976, just twelve days before her 70th birthday.
Roosevelt Sykes, born January 31, 1906 in Elmar, Arkansas (near Helena), lived even longer and made even more of an impact on the music world than his colleague Victoria Spivey. Cited by Delmark Records' Bob Koester (in the liner notes to the CD release of Sykes' Hard Drivin' Blues) as "one of the most important bluesmen of all time," the legendary pianist issued almost sixty 78 rpm singles between 1929 and the onset of World War II, recording under his own name for OKeh, BlueBird and Decca or under various disguises for several other labels.
Sykes' first single, "'44' Blues" (OKeh 8702), was a tribute to his early mentor, pianist Lee Green, from whom he'd learned the tune, although Little Brother Montgomery always claimed that the song was his (he called it the "Vicksburg Blues"). Sykes' father was also a musician, and young Roosevelt had started playing the organ in church in West Helena by the time he was ten. He taught himself piano around 1918, then ran away from home in 1921--at age 15--to work in the rough joints around Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana with Lee Green, Red-Eye Jesse Bell and other barrelhouse blues pianists of the period.
Mr. Sykes relocated to St. Louis in the late 1920s and signed with OKeh Records in 1929, cutting sides in New York City and Chicago like "Boot That Thing," "Henry Ford Blues" and "Poor Boy Blues." While enjoying success with his OKeh releases, Mr. Sykes capitalized on the growing audience for his musical offerings by recording psuedononymously for rival labels under tags like "Willie Kelly" (nine singles on Victor), "Dobby Bragg" (four 78s on Paramount), "Easy Papa Johnson" (a pair of singles on Mellotone), "Mosby and Sykes" (with violinist Curtis Mosby), "Sykes and Johnson" (with Mary Johnson) and "St. Louis Johnny" (all on Champion). His output during this period (1929-32) included such classics as "32-20 Blues," "Conjur Man Blues," "Sail On, Little Girl," "Steady Grinding," and "Highway 61 Blues."
Mr. Sykes moved to Memphis in the early 1930s and worked between there and Chicago during the Depression, making the most of his phenomenal success as a recording artist whose stature remained undiminished despite the virtual disappearance of the recording industry itself. He made a pair of singles for BlueBird in 1933 and then signed exclusively with the new Decca label in 1934.
Between 1934 and 1941 he released some 32 singles on Decca, beginning with "D.B.A. Blues" in 1934 and hitting with the riotous "Dirty Mother For You" in 1936. His third Decca single, "The Honey Dripper" (Decca 7164), was a huge smash in the race market and gave him the marquee name he was to enjoy for the rest of his career.
Subsequent recordings for Decca--most of them issued under the sobriquet "The Honeydripper"--included such masterworks of the blues as "Driving Wheel Blues," "Night Time Is the Right Time" and "Hard Lead Pencil." In the spring of 1941 Mr. Sykes settled in Chicago--where he would flourish in the city's raucous blues community for more than a decade--and switched back to OKeh Records, which issued five more 78s by the pianist during the war, including "Pay Day Blues," "Keep Your Hands Off Her" and the insistent "Let the Black Have His Way." He cut four singles for BlueBird (including his first remake of "The Honeydripper") and one each for the Black & White and Cincinnati labels in 1944-45.
By this time The Honeydripper had survived the commercial demise of both the original blues explosion of the 1920s and the post-Depression blues wave which surged between 1936 and the American mobilization for World War II in 1942. The war and the American Federation of Musicians' strike against the record industry during 1942-43 combined to cut the record business back to almost nothing once again, and when full-scale recording resumed after the the war very few popular blues artists of the 1930s were able to re-establish themselves with the post-war audience.
The music of Roosevelt Sykes, so timelessly bouyant, so fresh and personal at all times, transcended every vagarie of the marketplace and lived a vibrant life of its own, no matter what current fads or stylistic alterations held sway, all through the 20 turbulent years between 1929 and 1949. Neither Depression nor World War could slow his career pace during this period, and he entered a third stage of popular success with a series of thirteen 78-rpm singles for RCA Victor between 1946-49.
Still based in Chicago, Sykes made four discs for Regent in 1949 and cut five singles for Chicago's United Records between 1951-54. He moved to New Orleans in 1954 and recorded a pair of singles for Imperial Records under the direction of Dave Bartholomew, working around town and along the Gulf Coast. But by this time the rhythm & blues boom was over for all but the hardiest of the earlier blues stars, and by the end of the 1950s the popular recording careers of even such R&B giants as Louis Jordan, T-Bone Walker, Wynonie Harris, Big Joe Turner, Amos Milburn, Smiley Lewis and, yes, Roosevelt Sykes were all but dead.
Another generation had taken over the affections of the record-buying public, and the veteran artists who were able to sustain a career in the performing arts were relegated to working the lower rungs of the Black show-business ladder, playing to increasingly older audiences.
Mr. Sykes sustained himself with work in Black nightspots and bars, returning to St. Louis in 1958 and then back to Chicago by 1960, when-- like Victoria Spivey and numerous others--he was "rediscovered" during the folk music boom of the early 1960s. This revived his nearly dormant recording career, leading to LPs for Bluesville, Folkways, Crown, Delmark, Spivey, Fontana, Storyville, ABC/Bluesway and other labels.
Sykes toured Europe in 1961 and again in 1965-66, then returned south to settle in Gulfport, MS and eventually back in New Orleans, basing himself at places like the Court of Two Sisters in the French Quarters and accepting engagements at clubs, colleges and festivals all over the country.
His travels had brought him to the tiny Ann Arbor bistro, the Blind Pig, where he captivated local blues lovers and recorded an album for the bar's fledgling record label operated by the young clubowners Jerry DelGuidice and Tom Isaiah. Roosevelt Sykes seemed the perfect choice to open up the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, and we were fortunate enough to secure his services to kick off our second weekend-long adventure into the many-splendored world of African-American music in the early 70s.
* * * * *
The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals of 1972, 1973 and 1974 were very special events, bridging the early years of the 1970s when the canons of popular music were being stringently narrowed and the pop music community itself was becoming increasingly re-segregated.
The rhythm & blues explosion of the mid-1950s--first marketed as rock & roll, then seriously whitened, then almost wiped out by the British Invasion, then reborn as Motown and soul music in the mid- 60s and played side-by-side with rock on pop radio stations--was in the process of being imploded completely back into the Black marketplace, that relatively tiny bastion of racial segregation which flourished only in areas well beyond the notice of mainstream America.
By 1972 rock radio, itself just up from the underground of the late 60s, had begun the strenuous process of training white suburban ears to hear only music made by other white persons of their own age and social status. The music of Black people, like their very persons, was deemed unfit for proximity to white Americans, and major sub-cultural icons like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sam Cooke and Ray Charles were virtually erased from the consciousness of an entire generation.
Soul music, blues and classic R&B, which had been staples of both pop AM and "underground" FM radio programming during the 50s and 60s, were being eliminated from the playlists--and even from the record libraries--of the new rock FM stations. At the same time rock music was becoming increasingly big business, and the rock festival was a leading indicator of emerging social and economic trends.
The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals followed on the great artistic success of the Ann Arbor Blues Festivals produced by University of Michigan students in 1969 and 1970 which showcased virtually every living blues master available, and were dedicated to expanding upon the spirit of the earlier events by showcasing important artists in other African-American idioms as well--especially jazz and rhythm & blues.
The producers--Peter Andrews and myself for the non-profit Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation, with the immense assistance of people like Darlene Pond, David Sinclair, Cy and Curt Andrews, Suzanne and Karen Young--were also concerned with finding a way to overcome the crippling cash losses suffered by the two earlier events which had prevented the staging of a 1971 Blues Festival in Ann Arbor.
Our first Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, staged the weekend of September 8-9-10, 1972, at Otis Spann Memorial Field (next to Huron High School) had been a great success, drawing some 12,000 music lovers and coming very close to breaking even financially. The small loss at the gate was covered by the advance against producers' royalties paid us by Atlantic Records for the right to release a two-LP set of music from the event and a second, single LP by the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
Our idea had been to assemble an array of musical talent from across the spectrum of contemporary Black music ("a rainbow of sound"), to present these artists in a series of challenging programs which juxtaposed performances by the masters of several styles and idioms of the music, to produce a festive setting wherein everyone could have "a real good time," and to promote the event, not only to established blues and jazz audience, but to the general rock & roll public as something just like a rock festival only with different music.
Our mission was to insert Black music in all its various splendor back into the consciousness of young white Americans, to draw the connection between the music they heard on the radio and the root forms which had given birth to it, and to present them with the opportunity to see and hear for themselves the people who had made the music what it was and who would take it where it was going--from Victoria Spivey and Roosevelt Sykes to Count Basie, Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Big Walter Horton, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Yusef Lateef, the Contemporary Jazz Quintet (CJQ), Hound Dog Taylor, Luther Allison, Otis Rush, Homesick James, and Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Discipline Arkestra, along with an array of blues performers from the local community (now to be heard on Volume 1 of this series, Please Mr. Foreman: Motor City Blues).
It was our hope that this powerful medicine, offered in a format pop music lovers could understand and accept, might provide an antidote to the soul-crushing blandness and boredom of contemporary American life, as it had for so many of us who had been blessed with the presence of African-American music in our lives. And, of cours--all such noble aims aside--it was our intention to have a ball with a few thousand people out in a field, listening and dancing to the music of some of the greatest artists of our time. And if all else were to fail, we would sure enough have a realgood time!
* * * * *
I'd like to close these notes with a poem, "Doctor Blues," which was inspired by a statement by Roosevelt Sykes I had read in a book called Sounds So Good To Me by Barry Pearson. What he'd said sounded so good that I was moved to cast it into verse:
"Doctor Blues"
for Jerry Brock
Roosevelt Sykes,
better known as The Honey Dripper,
played the piano & sang
like f cew men who have ever lived
all the way from his home in Helena, Arkansas,
& down in New Orleans with the piano professors,
in the logging & turpentine camps
& jute joints throughout the Deep South,
with the slick characters & big shooters
in Memphis & St. Louis & Chicago,
from the early days before 1920
until his death on July 17, 1983. Roosevelt says:....
"So blues is a sort of thing
on people
like the doctor.
I'll put it this way:
There's a doctor,
he has medicine,
he's never sick,
he ain't sick, but he make the stuff
for the sick people. See,
you wouldn't say:
'Call the doctor.'
'I'm the doctor.' 'Oh,
you're a sick man?' 'No,
I just work
on the sick people.' So
the blues player,
he ain't worried & bothered,
but he got something
for the worried people. Doctor,
you can see his medicine.
he can see his patient. Blues,
you can't see the music,
you can't see the patient
'cause it's soul. So I works
on the soul
& the doctor works on the body.
Both are important, they all mixed
to one. Two makes one."
--New Orleans
November 1995
(c) 1986, 1995, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Big Chief Presents
From the John Sinclair Audio Archives
ANN ARBOR BLUES & JAZZ FESTIVAL, VOL. III
GRIND IT!
ROOSEVELT SYKES & VICTORIA SPIVEY
Recorded 'Live' at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1973
Roosevelt Sykes, grand piano & vocals. Friday, September 7, 1973
1 Introduction by Roland Young (0:34)
2 Roosevelt Sykes Comments (0:45)
3 "Driving Wheel" (Roosevelt Sykes) (2:52)
4 "Night Time Is The Right Time" (Roosevelt Sykes) (4:16)
5 "Run This Boogie" (Roosevelt Sykes) (3:36)
6 "St. James Infirmary" (J. Primrose) (5:04)
7 "Dirty Mother For You" (Roosevelt Sykes) (5:05)
8 "Looka Here! (C'mon Let's Shake)" (Roosevelt Sykes) (1:49)
Victoria Spivey & the Brooklyn Blues Busters: Victoria Spivey, vocals & grand piano; Gary Churchill, tenor saxophone & clarinet; John Nuzzo, harmonica; Howard T. Levine, electric guitar; John Acerno, electric bass; Eric Nuyhaus, drums. Sunday, September 9, 1973
9 Intro by Chinner Mitchell & "Black Snake Blues" (4:39)
10 "Detroit Moan" (5:12)
11 Victoria Spivey Comments (0:49)
12 "You're A Rank Stud" (3:39)
13 "Organ Grinder Blues" (3:54)
14 "I'm Tired" (3:09)
15 "Brooklyn Bridge Blues" (4:10)
Produced By John Sinclair For Big Chief Productions
(P)(C) 1995 John Sinclair
The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1973 was produced by Peter Andrews, Darlene Pond & John Sinclair for the Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation and was presented on stage at Otis Spann Memorial Field, Ann Arbor, Michigan, September 7-8-9, 1973.
These "live" recordings were produced by John Ryan for the Rainbow Multi-Media Corporation and recorded by the Butterfly Mobile Recording Service. Director of Recording and Chief Engineer: Jeff Jones. Recording Engineers: Karl Shojdahl, Robert Fries, Al Jacquez, and Dave "Ball" Bartlebaugh.
Special thanks to Steve Gebhardt & Robert Fries
Digitally transferred from the original 7" stereo master tapes, edited and mastered by Keith Keller at Chez Flames, New Orleans, March 3, 1995.
The producer would like to extend special thanks to David Sinclair, Peter Andrews, Darlene Pond, Gary Grimshaw, Frank & Peggy Bach, Roland Young, John "Chinner" Mitchell, Bob DeDeckere, Rick Cioffi & Greg Reilly of Gregory Paul Productions, Keith Keller, Anthony Dunbar Esq., Bill Lynn, Celia Sinclair, Elsie Sinclair, and to my wife Penny for her understanding and support.
The producer would also like to express his appreciation and gratitude to Jerry Brock & Barry Smith at the Louisiana Music Factory, 225 North Peters, New Orleans, LA 70130 for their extraordinary assistance and support during the course of this project.
Old School Records
Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival Series
Volume I: "Please Mr. Foreman": Motor City Blues
Volume II: Little Sonny: "Blues with a Feeling"
Volume III: "Grind It!" Roosevelt Sykes/Victoria Spivey
Volume IV: "Well All Right!" King Biscuit Boys/Big Walter Horton
Volume V: "Do You Wanna Jump" (1973 Anthology)
Volume VI: Freddy King: "The Texas Cannonball"
Vol. VII/VIII: Sun Ra & His Arkestra: "Outer Space Employment Agency
3.1.690 |
|
Share Link: 
