Fare thee well, Jack Dupree!

Thanks for checking out CDJ month, everybody!

Jack Dupree and King Curtis live on stage in Montreux

As CJD month winds down, here's a concert appearance from Montreux, Switzerland in 1971.  Check out Aretha in the audience in the red dress!

This was released on LP as well, but it's really the sort of thing YouTube was invented for.

Green Mosquito

Somewhere On Skid Row: Hobos, Bums & Other Urban Outdoorsmen

1 Felix Slatkin: Happy Hobo

2 Al Jolson with Guy Lombardo Orch.: Hallelujah I'm A Bum

3 The Coasters: D.W. Washburn

4 J.B. Lenoir: Slow Down Woman

5 Porter Wagoner: Sidewalks Of Chicago

6 The Cowsills: Newspaper Blanket

7 The Cowsills: The Candy Kid

8 Reparata & The Delrons: That's What Sends Men To The Bowery

9 Rags Rafferty: The Bowery

10 Gene Pitney: That's What Sends Men To The Bowery

11 Jerry Lee Lewis: Skid Row

12 Freddie Hart & The Heartbeats: Skid Row Street

13 Merle Haggard: Somewhere On Skid Row

14 Merle Haggard: Skid Row

15 Johnnie Allan: Somewhere On Skid Row

16 Pete Johnson Sextette: Skid Row Boogie

17 Bob Durham: Skid Row Boogie

18 Gene Marshall: Skid Row Bum

19 Frank Sinatra: Don't Sleep In The Subway

20 Nappy Brown: Skidy Woe

21 Earl Curry: Hobo

22 Link Wray: Hobo Man

23 Porter Wagoner: The Alley

24 Louis Armstrong & His Orch.: Hobo, You Can Ride Dis Train

25 The Four Seasons: Beggar's Parade

26 Rhubarb Red & His Rubes: The Dying Hobo

27 Art Hodes: A Selection From The Gutter

28 Danny Reeves: I'm A Hobo

29 Johnny Cash: The Hobo Song

30 The Fantastics: Millionaire Hobo

31 The Honeyman: Brother Bill (The Last Clean Shirt)

32 The Rockin' Berries: Brother Bill (The Last Clean Shirt)

33 Snakefinger: Here Comes The Bums

34 Leb Brinson: Hobo A-Go-Go

35 Porter Wagoner: Skid Row Joe

36 Lightnin' Jr. & The Empires: Raggedy And Hungry

37 Luke Gibbons: Queen Of Skid Row

SOMEWHERE ON SKID ROW

Champion Jack Dupree and T.S. McPhee: Groundhog in the Cabbage Greens

One of the most unusual recordings of Champion Jack's career was made in 1967 with T.S. McPhee from the Groundhogs. The 'hogs had backed up Champion Jack on a 1964 tour, and McPhee played on Champion Jack's first Decca recordings, alongside Eric Clapton and John Mayall.  When CDJ was signed to Decca blues spinoff writeoff Blue Horizon in '67, somebody had the bright idea to pair Champion Jack's voice with solo guitar accompaniment.

Jack doesn't play piano on these recordings at all - it's just him and McPhee's acoustic guitar.  The result is unique in the British-Blues-Personality-Plays-With-Blues-Legend genre, and it's a very pleasant listen. The songs are all short, and while some of them are readymades, they sound different than CDJ's usual readymades. Dupree's sounds warm and engaged, and McPhee is neither to staid or showoffy.

The recordings basically stayed in the vault until Ace released them on CD in 1997. A 45 of "Get Your Head Happy" came out in the late 60s in a limited white label only run.

You can hear the whole thing on Spotify.

The Snow Is on the Ground

Champion Jack Dupree - with no pants on!

Lest I give you the impression that Jack Dupree's European music was all sad sack introspection, here's an unreleased-until-the-Complete-Blue-Horizon-Sessions CD version of Fats Waller's "Sheik of Araby" wherein Jack and his mother-in-law finally settle the tension that's been building between them for something like 20 years.

SHEIK OF ARABY

Champion Jack splits the states

Dupree with pianist Curtis Jones and some unknown guide

Champion Jack Dupree left America for Europe in 1959. According to possibly sketchy internet/liner note lore, he made the decision to move to Europe when he went to the UK for his first appearances there. Apparently a customs officer called him "sir" and that token of respect was what sealed his decision.  Whether that tale is apocryphal or not, it's pretty clear from his recordings that his decision was based on the superior treatment and lack of racial segregation that he faced in the states.

His famous quote about racism, repeated many times in many variations in concert, goes like this:  "When you open up a piano, you see freedom.  Nobody can play the white keys and don't play the black keys.  You got to mix all these keys together to make harmony."

The first two albums Jack recorded in Europe were his 2nd and 3rd Atlantic LPs, Champion of the Blues & The Natural and Soulful Blues.  Champion, which is a solo LP and a fascinating record, contains a number of songs expressing his sorrow over the treatment of blacks in the US.  They were recorded in Denmark, and Jack was delighted to be there.  He even says, in "Daybreak Stomp" (which bears very little relation to the Mr. Bear song of the same title from his King era) that if he could live his life over, he'd stay in Copenhagen. In the liner notes to Champion of the Blues he describes his sense of what the blues meant to the people of the South.  

"You can go in them little country towns and hear the juke box playin' all night, nothin' but the blues. That satisfies their mind. That's the only thing that'll ease their minds, 'cause they're not happy people. Nobody in the South, in the line of colored people, is happy."

Jack eventually moved to Switzerland, then Denmark, the UK (where he got married for the third time),   then Sweden, and finally Germany. He'd record dozens of records while in Europe, and many of them would have songs expressing how happy he was to be out of the states.

There are numerous examples of Jack's sorrow over the condition of race relations in the states, including his eulogy to Martin Luther King and a sorrowful live cut called "Black and White Blues" (where he actually tells his European audience that they should be psyched to be white, making him one of the ballsiest of the blues revivalists of the late 60s playing to white college kids with romantic ideas of southern poverty).

Two non-youtoobabble examples I'll leave you with are the terribly sad "Poor Poor Me" and "I'm Happy to Be Free".  "Poor Poor Me" was cut in the Mid-60s for the first of his "jam with the popular British guitarists album", From New Orleans to Chicago, which featured John Mayall, Eric Clapton, and T.S. McPhee.  "I'm Happy to Be Free" was cut for a relaxed Mickey Baker session in the late 60s and appeared on the GNP LP of the same name.

Jack would not return to the states until the late 80s, when he recorded a couple of albums for Rounder in New Orleans.  He died in Germany in 1992.

"Poor Poor Me"
"I'm Happy to Be Free"
More thoughts on Copenhagen on "Roll Me Over Roll Me Slow"

A' Peelin' Music! (mp3 mix)

The Peel - Jim Pierce & the Pistols
Curb-Service - Billy Dee & the Super-Chargers
Bulldozer - Les De Merle & his Band
Goofin' - Robbie Robinson Orch.
Gibraltar Rock - The Rockets
Rat Trap - Ralph Grasso

Take it off!

Champion Jack Dupree: Babs Gonzales and the Mother in Law Blues

Before we move to Europe with Champion Jack Dupree, I want to do a quick clean-up on a few stray tracks lying around that I haven't had a chance to note yet.  Specifically I want to talk about Babs Gonzales.

Babs Gonzales was a jazz and jive singer who lived in New York City and did the bulk of his recordings in the 40s and 50s.  His style of jive was less knocked out and random than, say, Slim Gaillard (he even wrote his own dictionary of jive much like Gaillard's published-on-Ichiban-somewhere Dictionary of Vout), and he eventually ended up in the weird world of vocalese, managing James Moody and no doubt sharing ideas with Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure, occasionally subbing for Mel Tormé at gigs. Champion Jack seemed impressed enough with his rap to incoprorate some of his nonsensery into his own introductions.

The two collaborated on the first side of the only Gonzales KING 45, "House Rent Party". Apparently Babs crashed a Dupree session to lay down this tale of crashing/mooching his way through a house party. Which, believe it or not, gets busted. Dupree lays down the piano on this cut.

In an interesting bit of expoobident coincident, the flip of this 45, "She's Just Right for Me", was apparently cut at a session led by last February's Ichiban front-figure, Joe Tex!

Since it's not on youtube, here's "She's Just Right for Me".

Back in Dupree land, here's him laying down his own rap, on one of his favorite topics.  From the Atlantic 45 and/or the "Natural and Soulful Blues" LP, here's "Mother-In-Law Blues".  She calls him son.  Too bad he can't say the rest of it on the record.

Champion Jack Dupree: Blues from the Gutter

In 1958 CJD went into the studio with producer Jerry Wexler, three musicians from his Vik tenure -Larry Dale (now playing under his real name, Ennis Lowery), drummer Willie Jones and sax player Pete Brown, and bassist Wendell Marshall, to record Blues from the Gutter, an album so filled with weed, smack, goofer dust, sex, booze, violence, disease, betrayal and evil that it makes Sticky Fingers seem sweet and innocent.

In internetese:

makes

sound like

This is not merely blogger hyperbole - it is also a ham-handed segue to the fact that Blues from the Gutter was one of the recordings that inspired Brian Jones to move from his home in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire to London to learn how to play the blues.

That Blues from the Gutter was one of the first blues LPs Jones heard and was a huge influence on his playing is documented in several sources. But a description of his first time hearing the record is documented in the book Foundation Stone, by Graham Ride, a friend of Jones' in Cheltenham, and apparently the guy who introduced him to the record.

A description of that event, along with a good breakdown of Blues from the Gutter track-for-track, can be found in an excerpt from the book from the author's website.  The upshot of Ride's thesis is that before Ride played Jones BFTG* he was something of a trad/jazz snob, but after hearing the record he is a blues convert, saying more than once, "I just have to play this stuff . . . what a sound."

He got the habit

So whether or not the detailed description of Brian's first encounter with the blues in Foundation Stone is 100% accurate, the record certainly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Rockin at the Hops and The Best of Muddy Waters as one of them LPs what helped create the Rolling Stones.

Not only that, but it's great from beginning to end, and while a lot of the material is recylcled from earlier Dupree recordings, the decision to gather together all of his material with grittier subject matter in once place was brilliant - I don't know that there was a blues LP before this one that had any kind of thematic unity.

 In fact, I don't know of any better "after hours" styled blues record than this one.  The recording is excellent, Dupree is in top-notch vocal form (I particularly love his Big Joe Turneresque turn on "Evil Woman") and the band is not only killer, they are extremely sympathetic and supportive of one another - the shouts of encouragement and pleasure that accompany the music are infectious. 

The album starts with "Strollin'", and once again, Dupree starts a record by saying "I want all you teenagers and bobbysoxers to gather around this jukebox", although the notion that any bobbysoxer in the late 50s would be attracted to this steaming pile of skid-row squalor (or that their parents would allow such a thing in their home) is pretty hilarious.  The CD reissue blew it initially and used the wrong take, and the 45 is edited, so the LP is the way to go.  Here's the whole track.

But the 45 sure is purty

I'm not going to go through every track, because you probably either already have this record, or you should just go find a copy to have for your own three in the morning nasty boogie woogies.  But here's a couple more - the excellent version of "Bad Blood", for me a distillation of what this whole record is about, and the version of "Stack-O-Lee" that closes the record with a classic album ending verse if there ever was one:  "Said I want Louis Armstrong and his band to play the blues as they lay my body down/I want 10,000 women to be at my burying ground."

*No, not Back from the Grave, but, hey - anagramology certainly rears its head on that coincidence. Blues from the Gutter begats the Rolling Stones who beget Back from the Grave which means somehow in the twisted world of Dr. Filth rock and roll logic (for this month anyway) Jack Dupree is the father of the Keggs.  Or at least "Orphan Boy".

The House Where Jerry Byrd Lived

On a recent trip to Nashville, I headed for the library to dig around some old city directories in an effort to find out if the houses where Homer & Jethro used to live might still be around, but I came up empty. I couldn't find a listing for either of those guys for some reason.  I did, however, discover that Jerry Byrd lived here, at 4849 Aster Drive, in 1962.

Byrd (1920 - 2005) made a name for himself as one of the nation's top (non-pedal) steel guitar talents in the 1940s and '50s.  He spent time playing in Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours before departing to join up with Red Foley and play steel in his band for several years.  In the early '60s, he began exploring Hawaiian music and recorded several LPs in that vein.  Byrd eventually relocated to  Hawaii in the late '60s and remained there until his death.

Here's a track from his 1964 Monument LP, Admirable Byrd.

Jerry Byrd  -  Theme For A DJ   (2:06)

Champion Jack Dupree: I want all you folks to gather around this jukebox . . .

In 1956 Jack packed up his piano and moved over to RCA subsidiary Groove/Vik, where he continued to rack up the classic 7" platters.  His only 45 on Groove was a sequel to "Walkin' the Blues".  This time Jack is joined on his walk - and his retreat from mother-in-laws* - with Teddy "Mr. Bear" McRae, I guess figuring with Mr. Bear's radar they'll remain undetected as they clip and clop.

Dupree's guitarists for his Groove/Vik recordings are Mickey Baker and Larry Dale (who, under his real name, Ennis Lowrey, would play a key role in Dupree's next LP (post coming Monday!)).  Only the recordings with Dale got issued on 45, although there is very strong material from some sessions with Baker as well.  Dupree and Baker also backed Dale up on some great Groove records - that label kept it in the family.

Everything that CJD cut for Vik and Groove is available, for those of us who like it flat and round, on the excellent Charly LP Shake Baby Shake, which has a whopping 16 previously unreleased tunes from various Dupree sessions and is a solid winner of a purchase even if you don't normally sweat such stuff as (shudder) LPs or (shriek) reissues.

Lotsa killer, some filler

The Vik/Groove recordings basically build on the King formula, with slightly better production values (they were now working for a major label that cared about fidelity, as opposed to, oh, King) and a slight nod in to the teen market. There are some weird ones in the unreleased tunes, including the wild, echoey "Wrong Woman" and a vocal duet with Baker, "Women Trouble Again". Both have killer breaks. Beware, though, the fade on "Women Trouble" makes for a real tease.

Thanks, 9th Ward Jukebox!

There's even some unusual material on the real 45s - "Lollipop Baby", for instance, with its Mule Train cries, yakety sax and the clickety-clack square dancey beat is almost country. Dupree acknowledges this on an alternate vocal version of this song, which is not about lollipops but does advise the listener to change partners. I think the lollipop thing was one of those teen concessions I was talking about earlier.

if youtube ever takes you out I'ma have to entirely redo this month!

But the best cut that CJD laid down for Vik/Groove, and my choice for either tie or winner-by-a-nose in the #1 CJD dance floor killer 45 is a song so wild and profound that Bob Seger should wake up every morning and apologize to it for forever desecrating its name, "Old Time Rock and Roll".  

Let's get with it!

The song itself is a variation on "Pinetop's Boogie". He first cut it as "Johnson Street Boogie Woogie" for Joe Davis in 1945, and would return to it several times throughout his career. But nothing quite compares to this.The very notion that there was such a thing as "old time rock and roll" in 1957 must have seemed odd, but as Jack explains at the outset, "We've been doing this since 1929. But the disc jockeys and the teenagers just heard it!"

This hard, real truth is quickly abandoned for one of the most surreal, confusing instructional dance record (a la the Madison) I've ever heard.*  CJD tells you he's going to give you the instruction, and what to do when you get it, but he never actually gives the command!  We're supposed to say stop when he says hold it, rock and roll when he says rock and roll, but he never bothers to say either. I guess he figured if the girl in the white socks couldn't handle it she didn't deserve to either rock and roll OR to hold it.*  

Whereas "Shim Sham Shimmy" gains most of its power from its guitars, "Old Time" is all about the drums, the piano and the crazy stuff Jack is saying. And Gene Moore's drums. The drummers on all of Jack's Vik recordings is either Willie Jones or Gene Moore, and even more than the guitar players they are the secondary stars of the sessions.

And just because I can't quit, here's a couple of Larry Dale solo cuts, backed by Dupree and Mickey Baker.  Both were unissued by Groove in the 50s.  Enjoy.

*

*A few words about Dupree and mother-in-laws.  Nobody this side of Ernie K-Doe made more musical hay about the notion of the bossy, fear-inducing mother-in-law than Jack Dupree. I was going to, at one point, post a compendium of every Dupree track that mentioned his mother-in-law troubles, but I gave it up.  As they say in bad e-Bay/Craig's List record lot auctions, "too many to list." Anyway, considering that Jack was on mother-in-law rants since way back in the 40s and K-Doe didn't have his hit 'til '61, I think it's safe to say that's yet another way he had a profound influence on New Orleans music. 

* Then again, I can't do the "Clapping Song" so maybe I am just instructionally challenged. 

*To continue with the theme of Jack's left hand, the break he throws down right after he says "Last time now" is one of his most thrillingly chaotic.

*word to the wise - even though these cuts were not issued originally (they do appear on the Charly LP Still Groove Jumping), Jazzman released the above cuts as a 45 as a part of their Jukebox Jam series.