Be Bop Wino Pages

Joan Selects - the complete Joan Selects Collection

Big Ten Inchers - 78rpm rips by El Enmascarado


Attention Mac Users!

Mac users have been experiencing problems in unpacking the WinRAR archives used on this blog. Two solutions have been suggested.

1. Use The Unarchiver - www.theunarchiver.com - see comments on Little Esther Bad Baad Girl post for details.

2. Use Keka - http://www.kekaosx.com/en/ - see comments on Johnny Otis Presents post.

Sunday 4 August 2019

Hen Gates, Man Of Mystery or Exploitation A Go Go


In response to a request from BabyHugz we proudly re-present the 3 "Hen Gates" LPs which were donated to the blog 9 years ago. These LPs were released on budget labels to cash in on the rock and roll craze of the 1950s.  Beneath the pseudonym "Hen Gates" lurk recycled R&B / Jazz tracks from the late 1940s and early 1950s, chiefly tracks originally released by Freddie Mitchell on the Derby label. Also in there are some sides recorded by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davies for Lenox around 1947. I suspect there may be other stuff by other artists too (Frank Culley? Morris Lane?) but life is too short to dwell on such esoterica.

The whole saga unfolded across a series of posts back in the spring of 2010 when an anonymous donor sent in "Let's All Dance To Rock And Roll" and followed up with "Rock and Roll". A different anonymous contributor sent in "Rock And Roll No. 2" and much below the line comment contributed towards the attempted identification of the origin of these tracks. The original relevant posts are here:

http://bebopwinorip.blogspot.com/2010/03/hen-gates-and-his-gaters-lets-all-dance.html

http://bebopwinorip.blogspot.com/2010/03/hen-gates-and-his-gaters-rock-and-roll.html

http://bebopwinorip.blogspot.com/2010/04/eddie-lockjaw-davis-hen-gates-shock.html

http://bebopwinorip.blogspot.com/2010/04/hen-gates-and-his-gaters-rock-and-roll.html

Click on the links to follow the whole tawdry and at times hilarious tale. However it should be remembered that behind the exploitation there are a lot of very good tenor sax tracks, and, yes, a few tracks spoiled by the plinky-plonk piano which was an unfortunate feature of some of Freddie Mitchell's Derby discs.

Here's yer link to the world of "Hen Gates" -


Warning - 201 MB download!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello BW !
Thank You very much for the re-up of this triple-shot.
Appreciated indeed !
Been quite hot weather some time ago, and then a bit cooler.
Anyway, wishing everything good for You,
and the people who also like this blog.
- Jay from the North.

boogiewoody said...

Thank you Jay. Same here - very hot weather but cooling after a few thunderstorms. The weather has been too nice for blogging! All the best

BW

Bob Mac said...

Thank BW, I think I d/l one of two of these previously, but I just grabbed them again just in case. Yes, I hear you guys have been having some hot weather...good weather for knocking down icy-cold lager beer while listening to Roy Brown and Elmore James records.

T-Bone27 said...

These are great. I'm sure with all the re-titling I already have most of them, but better safe than sorry.

Rockandre said...

Hello there! Thanks very much for this, BBW! I have a feeling I am going to enjoy these three LPs very much!Andre