Nashville Jumps (R&B From Bullet 1946-1953) Re-Upped

Side One:

01. Nashville Jumps - Cecil Gant

02. Loose As A Goose - Cecil Gant

03. Lightning Struck The Poorhouse - Wynonie Harris

04. Dig This Boogie - Wynonie Harris

05. Anna Mae - Cecil Gant

06. No Good Woman Blues - Rudy Greene

07. Going Down Slow - St. Louis Jimmy

08. Buzzard Pie - Rudy Greene

Side Two:

01. I Got The Blues - B.B. King

02. Miss Martha King - B.B. King

03. Take A Swing With Me - B.B. King

04. When Your Baby Packs Up And Goes - B.B. King

05. Nobility Boogie - Red Miller Trio

06. Candy Man Blues - Roosevelt Sykes

07. My Baby Left Me - Little Eddie

08. Certainly All - Guitar Slim

Nashville Jumps (Mega)

Nashville Jumps (Zippy)

In answer to a re-up request, here's "Nashville Jumps" with two new download links. The original post from March 2013 with information, recommended further reading and interesting comments below the line can be found here:

http://bebopwinorip.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/various-artists-nashville-jumps.html

This collection contains B.B. King's first recordings.

Juke Joint Jukebox

Side 1

1 Sonny Boy Williamson - Don't Start Me To Talkin'

2 John Lee Hooker - This Is Hip

3 Jimmy Reed - You Got Me Dizzy

4 Otis Rush - All Your Love

5 Elmore James - Sho Nuff I Do

6 Guitar Slim - The Things That I Used To Do

7 Little Junior Parker - Sweet Home Chicago

8 John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom

Side 2

1 Jimmy Reed - Big Boss Man

2 Little Junior Parker - 5 Long Years

3 Johnny "Guitar" Watson - Hot Little Mama

4 Muddy Waters - I'm Ready

5 Pee Wee Crayton - Crayton's Blues

6 Doctor Ross - The Boogie Disease

7 Elmore James - Elmo's Shuffle

8 Jimmy Rogers - Walkin' By Myself

All tracks ripped from vinyl at 320 mbps.

Download from here:

https://mega.co.nz/#!EQkixb6Y!54sT2RImw1eNpd1zwHQWMkotxdk27tDOENJYXaep0f4

or here:

http://www7.zippyshare.com/v/56729788/file.html

Now back before I discovered the joys of jump blues, I used to listen to the "real" blues, mainly electric guitar and harmonica driven blues from Chicago. Growing up in the UK in the 1960s, you couldn't help but hear the blues "second hand" via groups like The Stones, The Pretty Things, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and my favourite British blues group, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac.

It was thanks to a school pal, one Shuggy Cameron, that I first heard some of the original blues artists when round about 1970 he lent me 2 LPs - "Muddy Waters at Newport" and "Blues is King" by B.B. King. The awful results of that exchange of records (I lent him the debut albums of Steppenwolf  and Fleetwood Mac) are all too visible on this blog 44 years later. Shuggy probably went on to become a brain surgeon or airline pilot or some such while here I am half buried in a great heap of vinyl.

So here's a home made compilation of the kind of blues we don't have often enough on Be Bop Wino. All 1950s or even early 60s sides from Chess, VeeJay, RPM, Specialty and Duke, and mostly well known tracks. No extensive notes this time. Just download and groove to these stompers and swayers. I've decided to try the new Mega site as my slow broadband connection makes uploading to Zippyshare just about impossible. Hope the link works OK!

Various Artists - Nashville Jumps

Side One
1 Cecil Gant - Nashville Jumps
2 Cecil Gant - Loose As A Goose
3 Wynonie Harris - Lightning Struck The Poorhouse
4 Wynonie Harris - Dig This Boogie
5 Cecil Gant - Anna Mae
6 Rudy Greene - No Good Woman Blues
7 St. Louis Jimmy - Going Down Slow
8 Rudy Greene - Buzzard Pie

Side Two
1 B.B. King - I Got The Blues
2 B.B. King - Miss Martha King
3 B.B. King - Take A Swing With Me
4 B.B. King - When Your Baby Packs Up And Goes
5 Red Miller Trio - Nobility Boogie
6 Roosevelt Sykes - Candy Man Blues
7 Little Eddie - My Baby Left Me
8 Guitar Slim - Certainly All

The Bullet record label of Nashville, Tennessee was founded in early 1946 by Jim Bulleit, Wally Fowler and C.V. Hitchcock. There is an interesting article about the fascinatingly restless Jim Bulleit, on the website of the Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine. Bullet Records recorded blues, hillbilly, gospel and pop, achieving its biggest hit in August 1947 with "Near You" a big band swinger by Nashville bandleader Francis Craig which reached number one in the Billboard pop charts. However, the label overextended itself by investing too much capital in the search for a similar hit and by 1949 was mired in financial trouble. Jim Bulleit sold out his share to Hitchcock but maintained involvement in the music industry via other enterprises such as his J-B label. He encouraged Sam Phillips to set up Sun Records in Memphis and was an investor in that label.

Bullet Records continued to issue material until around 1952 when it finally succumbed to its financial woes. The biggest R&B hit on the label was "Bewildered" by The Red Miller Trio and the biggest country hit was probably "Rag Mop" by Johnny Lee Wills. This 1983 LP on the UK Krazy Kat label gathers together some of the R&B / Blues output of Bullet, and it proves to be an eclectic and at times surprising mix. The earliest blues sides on Bullet featured two artists who were already established stars.

Nashville native Cecil Gant had a huge hit on the West Coast in 1945 with the sentimental wartime ballad "I Wonder." Recorded in 1944 in Los Angeles for the Gilt-Edge label, "I Wonder" is often credited with initiating the California boom in what would one day be called Rhythm and Blues music. Gant recorded for Bullet from 1946 to 1949, with titles like "Nashville Jumps", "Boogie Woogie Baby", "Ninth Street Jive" and "Boozie Boogie" indicating where his true talent lay. In 1950 he recorded a pounding version of Wild Bill Moore's "We're Gonna Rock" for Decca. And then, less than a year later, he was dead.

Wynonie Harris had been doing a fair bit of label hopping since leaving the Lucky Millinder Orchestra following his big hit with the band, "Who Threw The Whiskey In the Well." In 1945 he recorded for Philo ("Around The Clock") and then Apollo (including "Young Man's Blues", "Playful Baby" and "Everybody's Boogie."). As 1945 turned to 1946 he recorded four sides for the Hamp-Tone label, including a two part version of "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop." Composer credits on that version went to Lionel Hampton and Curley Hamner but we all know the song originated with Big Jim Wynn, don't we, fellow winos?

In the spring of 1946 Harris was in residency at the Club Zanzibar in Nashville. His manager, Harold Oxley, made an agreement with Jim Bulleit for Harris to cut four sides for the new Bullet label, backing to be provided by the same musicians with whom he was appearing at the club, the Jimmie Jackson band out of Chicago. In the band was pianist, arranger and former Alabama territory band leader Sonny Blount, later to be known as Sun Ra. Blount left Alabama following a torrid time with the draft board as he had declared himself a conscientious objector. As the consequences had included a short prison term and a spell in a work camp followed by illness, a fresh start was in order. Now some years beforehand Blount had been transported to the planet Jupiter (in a dream, perhaps) but what with transport to the gas giant being rather unreliable he opted instead for the equally exotic destination of Chicago.

There in the Windy City the future Sun Ra hooked up with alto saxophonist Jimmie Jackson and some months later we find him making his recording debut with Wynonie "Mr Blues" Harris in Nashville and featuring prominently on "Dig This Boogie." The full story of the R&B background of Sun Ra can be found on The Red Saunders Research Foundation website.

And there's another notable recording debut on this collection - the first ever sides cut by B.B. King. At the time of these recordings, made in mid-1949, King was a performer and deejay on the Memphis based "Mother Station of the Negroes" WDIA where he hustled Pep-Ti-Kon, a patent medicine with an alcohol content of 12% and rival to the better known Hadacol. By the time King recorded for Bullet, Jim Bulleit had left the company. One year after the release of "Miss Martha King", B.B. made his first recordings for the Bihari owned RPM label and his big breakthrough followed at the end of 1951 with the release of "3 O'clock Blues" on RPM 339.

"Nashville Jumps" is one of those LPs which lay unplayed on my record shelves for many years. The sound quality is rough (being mastered from rare 78s) and the performances are rather less sophisticated than the output of bigger labels such as King or Atlantic but as I've worked on this disc to produce a blog post, I've come to really like it.

The back cover has very informative notes by Colin Escott, Martin Hawkins and Hank Davis. The history of the Nashville independent recording scene can be read in Martin Hawkins' book "A Shot In The Dark: Making Records In Nashville, 1945 - 1955." (Vanderbilt University Press, 2006)

Download "Nashville Jumps" from here:

Nashville Jumps (Mega)

or from here:

Nashville Jumps (Zippy)

Tracks with approximate date of issue:

Cecil Gant - Nashville Jumps (Bullet 250 issued April 1946)
Cecil Gant - Loose As A Goose (Bullet 250 issued April 1946)
Wynonie Harris - Lightning Struck The Poorhouse (Bullet 251 issued April 1946)
Wynonie Harris - Dig This Boogie (Bullet 251 issued April 1946)
Cecil Gant - Anna Mae (Bullet 257 issued October 1946)
Rudy Greene - No Good Woman Blues (Bullet 261 issued November 1946)
St. Louis Jimmy - Going Down Slow (Bullet 270 issued April 1947)
Rudy Greene - Buzzard Pie (Bullet 266 issued March 1947)

B.B. King - I Got The Blues (Bullet 315 issued November 1949)
B.B. King - Miss Martha King (Bullet 309 issued July 1949)
B.B. King - Take A Swing With Me (Bullet 315 issued November 1949)
B.B. King - When Your Baby Packs Up And Goes (Bullet 309 issued July 1949)
Red Miller Trio - Nobility Boogie (Bullet 295 issued November 1948)
Roosevelt Sykes - Candy Man Blues (Bullet 319 issued November 1949)
Little Eddie - My Baby Left Me (Bullet 348 issued July 1951)
Guitar Slim - Certainly All (J-B 603 issued 1953)

See You Later, Alligator



US 78 rpm issue courtesy El Enmascarado

Listen to "Later For You Baby" by Guitar Slim, "Later Alligator" by Bobby Charles, and "See You Later, Alligator" by Bill Haley And His Comets:








“See You Later, Alligator” was a catch phrase which I remember my parents using back in the 1960s. No doubt they first heard it on the big selling Bill Haley record of that title.

The Haley opus was a cover of “Later, Alligator” a record released on Chess by a Cajun R&B singer, Bobby Charles (real name Robert Charles Guidry). He had recorded it in New Orleans in October 1955. In his turn Bobby Charles had no doubt been inspired by an earlier recording by Guitar Slim (real name Eddie Jones), entitled “Later For You Baby” which had been recorded in Chicago in April 1954 and released on Specialty.

Bill Haley (real name Bill Haley) And His Comets recorded “See You Later, Alligator” in New York on the 12th of December 1955. One other track was recorded at the session – “The Paper Boy (On Main Street, USA)” which became the B-side of “See You Later, Alligator.”

By now it was the second version of The Comets who were recording, Dick Richards, Joey D’Ambrosio and Marshall Lytle having left in September 1955 to form the Jodimars. The personnel on the record were: Bill Haley (vocal and rhythm guitar); Franny Beecher (lead guitar); Billy Williamson (steel guitar); Rudy Pompilli (tenor sax); Johnny Grande (piano); Al Rex (bass) and Ralph Jones (drums).

This was the second recording session for The Comets Mark II, their first session having been on the 22nd September 1955, when they recorded “R-O-C-K”, “Rock-a-Beatin’ Boogie”, “The Saints Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Burn That Candle.”

US 45 rpm issue courtesy Joan K

“See You Later, Alligator” entered the US pop charts on the 14th January, 1956, where it spent a total of 15 weeks, peaking at number 6. This was Bill Haley’s last top ten hit in the USA, with only “R-O-C-K” / “The Saints Rock ‘n’ Roll” subsequently getting in to the US top twenty in July 1956.

In the UK “See You Later, Alligator” charted twice, reaching number 7 in March 1956, and number 12 in September 1956. Bill Haley records continued to sell strongly in the UK through 1956 and into 1957. “The Saints Rock ‘n’ Roll”, “Rockin’ Through The Rye”, a reissue of “Rock Around The Clock” and “Rip It Up” all made it into the UK top ten in 1956, and “Razzle Dazzle” made it to number 13. “Don’t Knock The Rock” reached number 7 in February 1957, but this was Bill Haley’s last UK hit of the 1950s. “Rock Around The Clock” made it to the top twenty when it was re-issued in 1968 and again in 1974.

With thanks to Joan and El Enmascarado for their scans.

The tracks featured in this post are available on this homemade comp which covers the influences on "(We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock" as well as "See You Later, Alligator":

Tracklist:

01. Around The Clock Part 1 - Wynonie Harris

02. Around The Clock Part 1 - Big Vernon

03. Rock Around The Clock - Sonny Dae & His Knights

04. Move It On Over - Hank Williams

05. (We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley And His Comets

06. Thirteen Women And One Man - Dickie Thompson

07. Thirteen Women - Bill Haley And His Comets

08. Shake, Rattle And Roll - Joe Turner and his Blues Kings

09. Shake, Rattle And Roll - Bill Haley And His Comets

10. Later For You Baby - Guitar Slim

11. Later Alligator - Bobby Charles

12. See You Later, Alligator - Bill Haley And His Comets

Download from here:

http://www19.zippyshare.com/v/BIPlCjtA/file.html