Key to the Highway Fifth Wednesday
3-30-2016
Son Seals 1991,
1994
Slim Gaillard 1937-1946
*************************
So this is one of those fun shows for me, a fifth
Wednesday of the month, which happens four times a year and it gives my
alternating host and me the opportunity to get together and shoot the breeze as
we alternate sets instead of weeks. I
don’t usually try to comment on Paul’s playlist but this show a lot of things
caught my eye.
I had considered putting in a set of Billy Boy Arnold,
but since Paul included him in his set it seems I made a good decision in not
doing so. Let Me Love You Baby is likely
my favorite Buddy Guy tune,, but what really put the smile on my face are the
numbers from L.C. “Good Rockin’” Robinson and Lafayette “Thing” Thomas because
they are from an album I used to have called Oakland Blues. My recollection tells me that they were both
guitarists who backed up each other’s vocal tracks. Piano player on these selections was Dave
Alexander, who changed his name to Omar Sharriff and actually held a Blues slot
at KKUP before I got here. I’m sure I
still have the vinyl version but it got warped or for some similar reason is no
longer playable.
As
far as my two artists of the day, it is fortunate that I had one write-up already
available and, since Ihave neither the time nor the inclination to put together
my own essay, I will include the All Music post for the second. Gaillard would fit in a timeline consistent with
the Razzberry’s show The Swing Shift, which follows my normal show the second
and fourth Wednesdays, while Seals is one of those Chicago singing guitar-slingers
that I familiarized myself with when I first started at KKUP around 1990. I got to see him perform at one of the San
Jose State Fountain Blues Festivals.
Sons set combines selections taken from two of his early 90s albums, Living
in the Danger Zone and Nothing But the Truth, while Gaillard’s sets come from
the Proper Records 4CD set, Laughing in Rhythm.
*************************
I’ve gotten into a lot of musicians I was
totally unaware of in my twenty-five-plus years here at KKUP, and we are going
to hear a good portion from one of my favorites today. Slim
Gaillard (1916-1991) was a guitar-playing small band leader who infused his
music with a sense of humor not unlike his contemporary, Louis Jordan. His recording career began in 1937 as
vocalist for the Frankie Newton band, but shortly thereafter teamed up on
guitar with bassist Slam Stewart, putting out their first record the next year
as Slim and Slam. The first sessions had
the two musician\vocalists backed only by drums and piano, but within about six
months they began adding horns, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Slim was born in January of 1916, either on
the first or the fifth, and that is where the dubiousness of his stories just
begins. Detroit, Michigan is the most
common listing as his birthplace, but some sources put it as Santa Clara,
Cuba. His father was a ship's steward,
and one of Slim's tales is that, when he was twelve, his father's ship sailed
off and left him on the Greek island of Crete, and that he survived on his own
for six months without being able to speak the language before he made his way
back home to Detroit. He went on to
become a boxer, light heavyweight champion of Michigan was the claim, and later
the driver of a van that supposedly was used to smuggle liquor across the
Canadian border. Moving to New York in
1937, Gaillard made many appearances on the Major Bowes radio program, undergoing
numerous name changes to allow more opportunities in these amateur contests. Eventually, Slim acquired his own show
singing and playing guitar.
Born Leroy Elliot Stewart in 1916, by the
time Slam met Gaillard in 1937 he had a developed technique of humming an
octave higher than the notes he was bowing on his bass. In Slam's words, "He invited me to do a
show with him. It was the first time we
had played together, but we fell into it with each other. He played lead and I played rhythm bass and
then one or two solos with my new singing and bowing style. It was just the two of us going at it playing
by ear, but disc jockey Martin Block was impressed and signed us up. We decided then and there to team up and
began looking for a name. Seein' that I
was slammin' around on the bass fiddle, and that word went nicely with Slim,
Slam was produced. ... I never did hear
of another Slam."
Their first session was in January of 1938
and it produced what would become their signature song, The Flat Foot Floozie
with the One Floy Joy, but the term Floozie was considered too controversial
for Vocalion, so another session was done in February with the song's words and
title changed to The Flat Foot Floogie.
As they searched for a publisher for the song, Slim tells us that Bud
Green of Green Brothers and Knight told them, "'Ok, we'll publish it. We'll give you two-fifty advance against
royalties.' I thought he was talking two
dollars and fifty cents. He wrote out a
check for two hundred and fifty dollars.
I was running into walls looking at it all the way out." The song charted for 17 weeks, reaching a
high of second place, and was covered often n 1938, including by Benny Goodman,
Wingy Manone, and the Mills Brothers, all of whom also charted with it. The song became so popular that Gaillard said
they "had to play Floogie a hundred times a night".
A few months later in August, they charted
again with Tutti Frutti, the first of many food-based songs Slim would write,
and it got as high as number three. That
same month, they were back in the studio with an alto sax added to the original
band, and they came up with the nonsensical Laughin' in Rhythm as well as Vol
Vist du Gaily Star, an early example of Slim creating his own language. November saw their last session of 1938
produce Buck Dance Rhythm featuring the feet of a tap dancer (possibly Slim)
used as a solo instrument. By the time
of Gaillard's next session, Slam was spending more time playing with the
Spirits of Rhythm than with Slim, so a whole new band was formed under the name
Slim Gaillard and his Flat Foot Floogie Boys for the next few sessions. Slam rejoined him for an April recording, but
the release was still made with the newer band name. He was back in the studio with Slim in
August, 1940, and again in March of 1941, with the releases from that session
listed with the even longer moniker having "Featuring Slam Stewart"
added to the end. In the summer, Slim relocated
to California, and Slam joined him in Hollywood to record in July of 1941 and
April of 1942, but that was to be the last session together as well as their
last for the Okeh label, a Vocalion subsidiary.
1942 also marked Gaillard's film debut in the movie Helzapoppin', and
later in the year he signed up for the United States Army Air Corps to serve as
a bomber pilot while Slam returned to New York, where he became a highly-sought
bass player, eventually forming his own trio.
1944 saw him back home in Hollywood, where he
joined with bassist Bam Brown as the foundation of his Boogiereeneers, as well
as smaller groups. Slim became popular
in Hollywood and earned a regular spot on Frank Sinatra's weekly radio show,
and continued to appear in films like Star Spangled Rhythm, Almost Married, and
Two Joes from Brooklyn, while acquiring the nickname "Dark Gable". Although Gaillard had played vibraphone
occasionally on earlier recordings, guitar was his main instrument, but in his
early postwar recordings he was just as likely to be heard playing piano, and
on Slim's Cement Boogie he might even be providing a harpsichord sound by
slipping paper between the piano's strings.
Slim's first recordings after his Army
service were for Queen, the sister to Syd Nathan's King label, but he received
many other independent offers as well.
In 1945, he did a session for Bee-Bee that included Boogin' at Berg's in
tribute to Billy Berg's racially mixed L.A. nightclub, which Slim remembers
thusly, "About then I was asked to do a record date for a small
independent and out came Cement Mixer.
Then it all took off -- Billy's was bulging every night when film stars
including Ronald Reagan and all the top columnists like Hedda Hopper -- they
had all come to see the nutty guy with the Putti Putti. The place got plusher and my money went from
65 dollars to 1200 dollars a week. Yeah
that mixer really vacuumed them in. I
was doing three gigs a day at the Orpheum, a network radio station, and several
sets at Berg's and to cover these three locations Billy made an arrangement with
LAPD to have a squad car with red lights flashing and siren wailing to get us
around on time. We had to sneak aboard
in the alleys and get the bass down low on the floor and then zoomed up and
down Hollywood Boulevard. Billy Berg's
was more than just fun -- it was a great pleasure." And about the song that made them such a
draw, "After we did three sides, the A&R man sent us out for some
air. I was glad to get it because I
didn't have a fourth song -- figured we'd improvise something like
Floogie. Just outside the studio, they
were repairing the street, and one of those cement machines was going
put-put-put. When we were back in the
studio and the A&R man asks for the title, I says, 'Cement Mixer, put-ti put-ti'. Everybody in the place broke up. I started to sing Cement Mixer..... That's why the lyric goes put-ti-put-ti,
putti hootie, putti vouti, macaroonie.
That's all it is, ad lib."
The song, for Chess' Cadet subsidiary, peaked at #21 in May of 1946.
Berg booked the Charlie Parker\Dizzy Gillespie
Sextet for a two month stay at the club along with Slim's band and Harry 'The
Hipster" Gibson starting December of 1945, and on the 29th of that month Slim
supplemented his quartet of Brown on bass, drummer Zutty Singleton and pianist
Dodo Marmarosa while he played guitar (and piano on Dizzy Boogie) with
trumpeter Gillespie, Parker on alto sax and Jack McVea on tenor for a session
released on the Beltone label, represented here on my final set. From Dizzy's biography, To be or not to bop,
"Somebody asked me in the club one night, 'How do you like
California?' 'I'll be glad when this
eight weeks is over with', I said. 'I
don't like this place.' 'What about it?' 'Man, it's a whole lotta 'Toms' and musical
nothings and all that.' Slim Gaillard's
wife heard me say that. She heard me use the word 'Tom' and went and told her
husband that I called him a 'Tom", and he accosted me in the men's room. 'Man, I ain't even mentioned your name since
I been out here. What are you talking
about?' 'Don't tell me you didn't,' he
said, and he wanted to get back about it.
I was just oozing over to the place in the bathroom where they sell all
the bottles of cologne, and he was oozing up on me. Finally, he hit at me, and I ducked, and he
missed. I hit him and he went down, and
I was getting ready to walk through him.
The fight spilled outside, and his wife must have seen the scuffle; she
went in the kitchen and got a butcher knife and was getting ready to stab me in
the back with it. 'Look out!', somebody
said. So I grabbed a chair, an iron chair,
because she had this knife in her hand, but before I could hit her somebody
grabbed both of us and that was the end of it. ... But since that time, we were great
friends."
On April 22nd of 1946, Gaillard and Brown
appeared at one of Norman Granz's renowned Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts,
sharing billing with Buck Clayton, Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Coleman
Hawkins where they performed the four-part Opera in Vout, a masterpiece of
Gaillard's original nonsensical language.
This was also about when he opened his own record store, Voutville.
1947 saw a slowdown in Slim's career as
reports of drugs and a messy divorce affected his popularity. With the second Petrillo recording ban about
to take effect, Slim recorded his last session on the west coast in December
before heading to New York in an attempt to revitalize his career. This would also be the conclusion to his
pairing with Bam Brown, whose career would take an extreme turn. "You gotta know your own limits. Unfortunately, Bam wasn't that cool. Pot couldn't satisfy him, so he tried
everything else that was going, but even that didn't seem to be of any
use." Gaillard continued, "It
was when we were in a bar in a big St. Louis hotel (with Lena Horne) that Bam suddenly
dashed off the stage into the kitchen only to return with a big long knife. Then, he told the audience, 'I'm going to cut
everyone of you up in little pieces.'
He'd completely flipped out.
Eventually, they got him in a straightjacket and took him to a hospital
where he remained for the next eight years.
They let him out once but he almost killed his mother, so they put him
back again, where he remained until he died."
With
no recent popular success, Slim's recording career was essentially over after a
1953 session for Granz except for a 1958 album made for the DOT label, but he
did make an appearance in the TV miniseries Roots: the Next Generation. In 1982, he made a successful tour of the UK
and wound up settling in London in 1983.
The British label HEP released some of his live 40s material as well as
a new studio album, and he also starred in The World of Slim Gaillard, a 1989
four-part BBC production. Slim continued to perform at festivals, etc. until he
died in London on February 22, 1991.
*************************
It
all started with a phone call from Wesley Race,
who was at the Flamingo Club on Chicago's South Side, to Alligator Records
owner Bruce Iglauer.
Race
was raving about a new find, a young guitarist named Son Seals.
He held the phone in the direction of the bandstand, so Iglauer
could get an on-site report. It didn't take long for Iglauer
to scramble into action. Alligator issued Seals'
eponymous debut album in 1973, which was followed by six more.
Son Seals
was born Frank Seals
on August 13, 1942 in Osceola, Arkansas. His dad operated a juke joint called
the Dipsy Doodle Club in Osceola where Sonny Boy
Williamson, Robert Nighthawk,
and Albert King
cavorted upfront while little Frank
listened intently in back. Drums were the youth's first instrument; he played
them behind Nighthawk
at age 13. But by the time he was 18, Son Seals
turned his talents to guitar, fronting his own band in Little Rock.
While visiting
his sister in Chicago, he hooked up with Earl Hooker's
Roadmasters in 1963 for a few months, and there was a 1966 stint
with Albert King
that sent him behind the drumkit once more. But with the death of his father in
1971, Seals
returned to Chicago, this time for good. When Alligator signed him up, his days
fronting a band at the Flamingo Club and the Expressway Lounge were numbered.
Seals'
jagged, uncompromising guitar riffs and gruff vocals were showcased very
effectively on that 1973 debut set, which contained his "Your Love Is like
a Cancer" and a raging instrumental called "Hot Sauce." Midnight Son,
his 1976 encore, was by comparison a much slicker affair, with tight horns,
funkier grooves, and a set list that included "Telephone Angel" and
"On My Knees." Seals
cut a live LP in 1978 at Wise Fools Pub; another studio concoction, Chicago Fire,
in 1980, and a solid set in 1984, Bad Axe,
before having a disagreement with Iglauer
that that was patched up in 1991 with the release of his sixth Alligator set, Living in the
Danger Zone. Nothing But the
Truth followed in 1994, sporting some of the worst cover art in
CD history, but a stinging lineup of songs inside. Another live disc, Spontaneous
Combustion, was recorded at Buddy Guy's
Legends club and released in June of 1996. Over the years, Seals
had his share of hardship, bad deals, unemployment, and rip-offs that go on in
the music business. However, his personal life took two devastating blows in
the late '90s. On January 5, 1997, during a domestic dispute, Seals
was shot in the jaw by his former spouse. He miraculously recovered and
continued touring. Two years later he had his left leg amputated as a result of
diabetes. What would have surely forced most performers into retirement only
made Seals
more dedicated to his music and audience. He came back in 2000, signing with
Telarc Blues, and recorded Lettin' Go.
Seals
preferred to remain close to his Chicago home, holding his touring itinerary to
an absolute minimum. Virtually every weekend he could be found somewhere on the
Northside blues circuit, dishing up his raw-edged brand of bad blues axe to
local followers. The blues ended for Son Seals
on December 20, 2004; he passed away due to diabetes related complications.
*************************
Since it is still relatively new, I thought I’d
mention that KKUP is now streaming on the internet and, while it is still in a
developing stage, we have been putting out the word. I’m not all of that good with high-tech
stuff, but it seems pretty easy to access.
If you go to our website at KKUP.org you will see on the home page a
strip of options immediately above the pictures of the musicians the next to
the last option being LISTEN ONLINE. By
clicking this, it brings up a choice of desktop or mobile. I can only speak for the desktop but after
maybe a minute I was receiving a crystal clear feed. As already mentioned, this is still a work in
progress and we are currently limited to a finite number of listeners at any
one time. I mention this so you will be
aware to turn off the application when you are not actually listening. (I put the player in my favorites bar for the
easiest of access.) Now we can reach our
listeners in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, even my family in Canada. Let your friends elsewhere know they can now
listen to your favorite station, and while they have the home page open they can
check out our schedule.
*************************
Flat Foot Floogie
Tutti Frutti
Laughin’ in Rhythm
Buck Dance Rhythm
Queen’s Boogie
Bassology
African Jive
Rhythm Mad
Groove Juice Special
Slim
Gaillard 24min
Woman in Black
Little Sally Walker
I Can’t Lose the Blues
Frank and Johnnie
Arkansas Woman
The Danger Zone
Ain’t That Some Shame
Sadie
Son
Seals 36min
Dizzy Boogie
Slim’s Jam
Mean Mama Blues
Early Morning Bounce
Riff City
Santa Monica Jump
Slim
Gaillard 18min
1
|
I GET
EVIL - ALBERT KING BOBBIN 135 1962 Ngle(45)
|
2
|
EVERY
DAY, EVERY NIGHT - BILLY BOY ARNOLD
rec.1957 Charly CRB 1016 (LP) 1981 Nran(33)
|
3
|
LONESOME
- ROBERT DUDLOW TAYLOR Kent KST-9007
LP 1969 rec.1952 Nran (33) NOT
|
4
|
AIN'T
GONNA PICK NO COTTON - MCKINLEY JAMES
MACON 101 1966 Nran(45)
|
5
|
WHAT
KIND OF MAN IS THIS - KO KO TAYLOR - CHECKER 1092 1964 Nste 1979 LP Blues Ball 2003
|
6
|
THE
THINGS I'D DO FOR YOU - JUNIOR WELLS
CHIEF 7030 1961 Nyou(45)
|
7
|
TIGHT
DRESS - GEORGE ALLEN (George 'Harmonica' Smith) SOTOPLAY 0010 1960 Nkev(45)
|
8
|
TIN PAN
ALLEY - HARMONICA SLIM FLYING
DUTCHMAN-BLUESTIME BT-29005) (LP) 1969 Nran(33)
|
9
|
(LET
YOUR LOVE) WATCH OVER ME - LULU (LULA) REED AND FREDDY KING FEDERAL 12471 1962
|
10
|
I HAD A
DREAM - LAFAYETTE 'THING' THOMAS WORLD
PACIFIC WLP WPS-21893 (LP) 1968
Nran(33)
|
11
|
TRAIN
TIME BLUES - L.C. 'GOOD ROCKIN' ROBINSON
World Pacific WPS-21893 (LP)
1968 Nran(33)ST
|
12
|
DON'T
CUT OUT ON ME - TENDER SLIM HERALD 571
1962 Ngle(45)
|
13
|
EVERYTHING
I DO IS WRONG - WOODROW ADAMS rec.1961 Nste
rel. 1978, 1987 LP
|
14
|
GIVE HER
PLENTY OF MONEY TO SPEND - J.T. BROWN
rec. c.1960 Nran DELMARK 624 1972 (LP)ST
|
15
|
SALT IN
YOUR COFFEE - BETTY JAMES CHESS
1970 1966 Nhea945)
|
16
|
THAT'S
NOT RIGHT - CLARENCE JOHNSON and his Tom Cats
JEROME 7363 1963 Nsto(45)
|
17
|
I'M
LOOKING FOR A LOVE ONE - HARRY BROOKS
JOB 601 c.1963 Nblu(45)
|
18
|
JUST
DON'T CARE - SCREAMIN' JAY HAWKINS
ENRICA 1010 1962 Ngoy(45)
|
19
|
KOKOMO
ME BABY - DANNY BOY and His Blue Guitar
TIFCO 824 1961 Ngle(45)
|
20
|
LITTLE
BOY BLUE - CHICAGO BLUES ALL STARS MPG
LP 15.244 1969 Nran(33)
|
21
|
LAST
TIME - HAZE HART w.GUS JENKINS ORCHESTRA
SWINGIN' 638 1962 Nran(45)
|
22
|
POP IT
TO ME - Howlin' Wolf CHESS 2009 1967 Njoe(45)
|
23
|
RON-DE-VIEW
36 - LITTLE BOYD LAMGA 0002 1970 Nran(45)ST
|
24
|
STONES
IN MY PASSWAY - HOMESICK JAMES
PRESTIGE 7388 (LP) 1964 Nran(33)
|
25
|
LET ME
LOVE YOU BABY - BUDDY GUY CHESS
1784 1961 Ncad(45)
|
26
|
FRISCO
BLUES - JOHN LEE HOOKER VEE-JAY
493 1963 Nksd(45)
|
