Booker T and the M.G.’s: Green Onions

Booker T and the M.G.’s was the house band for Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, and as such they appeared on virtually every single that Stax released during its heyday in the Sixties and early Seventies. The band can be heard backing Stax’s star vocalists on recordings by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas and others.

The band consisted of Booker T. Jones on organ/piano, Steve Cropper on guitar, Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass, and Al Jackson on drums. This versatile and talented ensemble was equally comfortable providing accompaniment for blues or ballads, rock, or R&B. In addition to providing Stax singers with a backing band, they released instrumental singles under their own name, including “Groovin,” Hip Hug Her,” “Time is Tight,” and their biggest hit, “Green Onions.”

With the addition of the Memphis horns, the band also recorded instrumental tracks as the “Mar-Keys.”

In the early eighties, the surviving members of the band, Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn, were members of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi’s Blues Brothers band and were featured in the movie “The Blues Brothers.” They returned with Ackroyd in “Blues Brothers 2000.”

The band recorded several fine studio albums in the Sixties, including "Green Onions" (1962), "Soul Dressing" (1965), and "Hip Hug Her" (1967), but "The Best of Booker T and the M.G.'s" (1968) may be all you require.

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W.C. Handy The Father of the Blues

William Christopher Handy will forever be remembered as “The Father of the Blues.” It was Handy who was most responsible for taking this regional folk music of the American South and turning it into another form of popular American music.

Handy was working as a popular minstrel bandleader when he heard blues music for the first time while stopping over in the Mississippi Delta. Handy would eventually write the first popular blues songs, “Memphis Blues,” ”St. Louis Blues,” Yellow Dog Blues,” and “Hesitating Blues.”

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1873. His father was pastor of a church in a nearby town. Handy’s upbringing was strict and his pious father viewed secular music and anything associated with it as instruments of the devil. It was with much secrecy then, that young W.C. Handy purchased his first instrument, a guitar. When his father found the guitar, Handy was instructed to return it. Handy moved on to organ and eventually acquired a cornet, the instrument with which he would be forever associated.

Handy joined a local band as a cornetist during his teens-a fact that he kept hidden from his parents. During the 1890s Handy traveled around Alabama in various bands playing the minstrel music that was popular at the time and working odd jobs to make ends meet. He eventually became the leader of the Mahara’s Colored Minstrels and toured The South with that band for three years.

From 1900-1902, Handy was recruited as a music teacher at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. Handy’s frustration with the college’s emphasis on European classical music and apparent lack of appreciation for American styles led to his resignation from his post.

Handy quickly rejoined his old band and set off on the road again. It was while on tour with the band in the Mississippi Delta that Handy heard the blues, a music that he described at the time as “the weirdest music I had ever heard.” Handy studied the blues as played by locals during subsequent visits to the Mississippi Delta, and by the time Handy and his band had relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1909, the blues was part of his repertoire. Handy wrote what is often coined as the first blues song, “Memphis Blues,” as a theme song for a Memphis mayoral candidate, Edward Crump. The song was originally titled, “Mr. Crump.”

Handy wrote subsequent songs with “blues” in the title such as “Beale Street Blues” and “St. Louis Blues” and became one of the first African-Americans to become wealthy by publishing songs. Handy moved his publishing business to New York City, in 1917, and set up offices in Times Square.

In early 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band had made the first jazz recording with a side titled, “Livery Stable Blues.” Handy organized a band called Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis to make his own recordings for Columbia. The resulting sides contained music that was closer to blues than that which was recorded by jazz bands. Handy was not enamored with this new music, jazz, and tried to stick to tradition.

Handy recorded for various labels from 1917 to 1924 and recorded versions of his own songs, “Memphis Blues,” “Yellow Dog Blues,” and “St. Louis Blues,” among others. Handy’s renditions of these classic tunes are not considered as classics of the era, but they are of tremendous historical rather than aesthetic interest.

Among the limited compilation albums that may be found on Handy’s recordings are “Father of the Blues” (1980) and "Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues" (2003).

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Scott Joplin: Maple Leaf Rag

Scott Joplin, born in Linden, Texas, in 1867, was a pianist and the most popular artist of ragtime music, the forerunner of jazz. Only Joseph Lamb, among ragtime performers, could rival Joplin’s omnipotence. At the height of ragtime’s popularity, print was the only medium for mass distribution of music, and ragtime compositions proved very popular among amateur musicians. “Maple Leaf Rag,” first published in 1899, sold over seven million copies and remains Joplin’s most popular work.

As player pianos became widely available in the early 1900s, piano rolls became another way of distributing ragtime music. Piano rolls, which were fed into the player piano, triggered the motion of the piano keys and allowed a performance to be accurately reproduced on any player piano at any time. Joplin made a number of piano rolls in 1916 with the selections “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Magnetic Rag,” “Pleasant Moments,” “Something Doing,” and “Weeping Willow Rag.” Through these piano rolls, it is possible to hear the music just as Joplin played it at the time they were produced.

Joplin considered himself a classical composer and sought to elevate ragtime to the status of a respectable art form. Fortunately, pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson would pull it back by improvising variations that defied Joplin’s limitations for the music. This improvisation ultimately led to the creation of jazz.

Joplin died in 1917, just as jazz was first being recorded and beginning its infiltration of the American mainland.

Joplin’s music can be heard on several compilations of piano roll recordings, such as "Entertainer."

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Captain Beefheart: Mirror Man

Captain Beefheart, also know as Don Van Vliet, was one of the strangest artists in the history of rock music. His music might be off-putting for those whose tastes are limited to the mainstream, but for the initiated, his quirky and often downright bizarre music is a source of infinite amusement. Beefheart has been critically praised for decades for his highly original music, which incorporates rock, blues, and avant-garde jazz. Beefheart was always supported on recordings by various versions of his “Magic Band.”

Born Don Glen Vliet, Beefheart started out with childhood friend Frank Zappa in local groups such as The Omens and The Blackouts. Around this time, he added “Van” to his name and was thus named Don Van Vliet. His colourful moniker, “Captain Beefheart,” came from Zappa, who observed that he sang as if he had a “beef in his heart.”

In 1965, the first Magic Band was formed. They played blues and R&B, both covers & original material, and scored a contract with A&M Records, with whom they released two singles. The first, “Diddy Wah Diddy,” became a minor hit, but the label discarded it anyway.

In 1967, Beefheart and the Magic Band landed a contract with Buddah Records and recorded their brilliant debut, "Safe as Milk" (1967). The album was rooted in blues and R&B, and while containing moments of slight weirdness like the track “Electricity,” the sound of the band was still palatable to mainstream listeners.

This changed with the release of the great and sometimes controversial "Trout Mask Replica" (1969), Beefheart’s masterpiece. It is one of the strangest recordings in the history of popular music. The music is a synthesis of pure avant-garde jazz and rock, almost devoid of melody and harmony, featuring songs not so much sung as croaked by Beefheart, whose voice, at the best of times, could be described as grating. As such, the album is unlistenable for mainstream music fans, but it is overflowing with creativity and humour.

Beefheart would continue to release albums for the next 15 years, which followed in a similar vein. The best of Beefheart’s post-Sixties work is “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” (1970), “Mirror Man” (1971), “Clear Spot” (1972), “Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)” (1978), and “Doc at the Radar Station” (1980).

Beefheart, one of the true originals of rock music, died in 2010.

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Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

Drummer Art Blakey and his band, The Jazz Messengers, are the pioneers of a jazz subgenre called “hard bop.” Hard bop takes the fundamentals of bebop and adds elements of rhythm and blues. The idea behind hard bop was to make bebop music more danceable and, perhaps, more palatable to mainstream music fans.

Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1919, and by the fifties, his virtuosic and incessant drumming would put him at the forefront of the bebop genre along with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others.

In 1954, he formed the band, The Jazz Messengers, which became a training ground for up-and-coming young jazz musicians. New Orleans trumpet prodigy Wynton Marsalis would get his professional start as a member of the band. Among the best of the Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers albums are “A Night at Birdland” (Volumes 1-3) (1954), “The Jazz Messengers” (1956), “A Night in Tunisia” (1957), “Drum Suite” (1957), “Ritual” (1959), “Moanin’” (1959), “The Big Beat” (1960), “Mosaic” (1961), “Free For All,”  and “Indestructible” (1965).

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Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Singer

Ella Fitzgerald is among the finest female singers in the history of jazz music. She was the first female singer to make use of scat singing, a wordless form of vocalization that Louis Armstrong had introduced with his Hot Five recordings in the twenties.

Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1918. She got her first big break when a friend recommended her to New York bandleader Chick Webb. Webb was reluctant to hire Fitzgerald due to her appearance, which he considered homely. However, he relented and hired her, and Fitzgerald became a big hit in the role of vocalist. She recorded her first single, “Love and Kisses,” with Webb in 1935. Several more singles followed until she scored a massive hit with the song “A Tisket, A Tasket” in 1938 with the Webb Orchestra. That song would turn her into a star.

After Webb died in 1939, his band was renamed “Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra,” with Ella taking the role of bandleader until the band finally broke up in 1942.

In the Fifties, Fitzgerald started to record her own full-length solo albums, among them several classics that are highly recommended, such as “Ella Sings Gershwin” (1950), “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook" (1956), “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rogers and Hart Songbook” (1956), “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook” (1958), and "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook” (1959).

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Dorsey Brothers Orchestra

Both Dorsey brothers were major figures in the development of jazz music and especially, swing. Tommy Dorsey is the man who gave a young Frank Sinatra’s burgeoning career a major boost.

Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, in 1905. He was the younger brother of Jimmy Dorsey, who was born in Shenandoah the previous year. Both brothers would become huge big band music stars. Both boys studied music as children, with Jimmy playing saxophone, trumpet, and clarinet, while Tommy concentrated on trombone. At Jimmy's recommendation, 15-year-old Tommy replaced Russ Morgan in the Scranton Sirens.

The brothers worked with many bands during the Twenties, including a stint with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, before recording their first side, “Coquette,” on the Okeh label in 1928. They were signed to Decca Records in 1934 and enjoyed a major hit with “I Believe in Miracles.”

Conflict between the brothers, which at times escalated to fistfights, resulted in Tommy dissolving the partnership and forming his own orchestra in 1935. Teaming up with former members of the Joe Haymes Orchestra, he signed with RCA/Victor in 1935 and released the first in a string of major hits, “On Treasure Island.”

In 1940, Tommy Dorsey acquired Frank Sinatra from The Harry James Orchestra, resulting in more hits and the establishment of Sinatra as a star.

During the forties, Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra featured some of the best musicians in swing, such as Bunny Berigan and Gene Krupa. Jimmy Dorsey dissolved his own band in 1953 and joined Tommy’s band, with the two becoming “The Dorsey Brothers” once more.

In 1956, Tommy Dorsey died of choking. His former orchestra has continued into the 21st century, with Jimmy Dorsey taking charge until he died in 1957.

Compilations of the recordings and those of the bands of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey are easily found and include, 

The Fabulous Dorsey Brothers & Their Orchestra (1928-1935)

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the Allman Brothers: Ramblin' Man

Southern rock and blues rock legends the Allman Brothers were formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969. The band was named after brothers Greg and Duane Allman, the band’s lead singer and lead guitarist, respectively. The Allman Brothers are perhaps the quintessential example of “Southern rock." Southern rock bands such as the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and The Marshall Tucker Band all hailed from below the Mason-Dixon Line and infused their hard rock with elements of the blues and country music and often expressed the conservative or “redneck” outlooks.

The Allman Brothers were perhaps the most blues-influenced of the southern rock bands. Their first two albums, “The Allman Brothers Band” (1968) and “Idlewild South” (1970), contained several blues cover tunes each. The ragged, soulful voice of Gregg Allman and the bluesy slide guitar of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts enabled the band to produce some of the best blues rock of the era.

The Allman Brothers Band was a tremendous live act, and live performances allowed the band’s instrumental highlight, Duane Allman, to display his prodigious slide guitar technique. 

Two of the band’s finest albums, "Live at the Fillmore East" (1971) and "Eat a Peach" (1972), are live albums that feature long tracks that serve as vehicles for Duane Allman and Dickey Betts’ impressive chops. 

Duane Allman died tragically in a motorcycle accident in 1971, at the age of 23, when the motorcycle he was riding collided with a peach truck. Following the death of Duane Allman, Dickie Betts became the instrumental centrepiece of the band, and the Allman Brothers Band continued to record and tour. 

The band reached the height of their commercial success with the classic album “Brothers and Sisters” (1973), which featured two of their best-known tunes, “Ramblin’ Man” and the instrumental “Jessica.”

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Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five Album Guide

Louis Jordan is another of the key figures in the development of rock and roll and R&B. He was a talented and colourful figure who was a saxophonist, songwriter, and bandleader. He has been credited with creating a style of music called “jump blues," which is the direct forerunner of R&B, the music that would later morph into rock and roll.

Jordan was born in Brinkley, Arkansas, in 1908. He studied clarinet and saxophone while still in his teens, and in his thirties, he was invited to join Chick Webb’s orchestra at New York’s Savoy ballroom. As Webb was physically disabled, Jordan took over the leader’s usual role of MC at shows. In 1938, Webb fired Jordan after he suspected Jordan of trying to take over control of the orchestra.

Jordan soon had a new band and a recording deal with Decca Records. The first recording session for his new band, which would later be dubbed “The Tympany Five,” was in late 1938. His band contained an ever-changing lineup of sidemen that would accompany Jordan’s singing and saxophone on his Forties hits, “Five Guys Named Moe,” “Knock Me A Kiss,” “Caledonia,” and a song that some claim to be the first rock and roll recording, “Saturday Night Fish Fry.” Jordan’s recordings were raucous and often humorous, with a solid narrative structure. His songs celebrated good times, food, drinking, parties, and women.

Jordan became the most successful African-American bandleader in the country, save Duke Ellington and Count Basie. He was one of the first African-American “crossover” artists as well. Unlike other African-American artists who were known only to African-American audiences, Jordan was very popular with white audiences, too.

Jordan’s best recordings can be found on the following collections: “The Best of Louis Jordan" (1975), “Louis Jordan's Greatest Hits” (1980), and “Rock and Roll" (1989).

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Art Tatum: Tea for Two

Art Tatum is considered by many to be the greatest pianist in the history of jazz music, whose technical skills were unrivalled. Tatum’s unmistakable sound was the result of his prodigious speed, harmonic inventiveness, and swinging style, which featured the frequent use of thrilling cadenzas. His playing was drawn from the stride style of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller and the more modern approach of Earl Hines. When a young Oscar Peterson first heard a recording of Tatum and was told that the recording was the work of a single pianist, Peterson refused to touch a piano for a week.

Tatum was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1909. His parents were both musicians at a local Toledo church. As a child, Tatum developed cataracts and eventually lost sight in one eye completely, while being left with only partial sight in the other. Tatum was a child prodigy at the piano and learned to play by ear while listening to church hymns and music on the radio. In 1925, he began learning music and Braille at a school for the blind.

By 1933, Tatum was in New York City, and he began to make a name for himself at piano-playing competitions known as “cutting contests.” It was at one of these contests that Tatum famously out-duelled stride legends James P. Johnson, Willie “The Lion” Smith, and Fats Waller with spectacular versions of “Tea for Two” and “Tiger Rag.” While Tatum was working at the Onyx Club in March of 1933, he recorded his first four sides for the Brunswick label. For the remainder of the thirties, he toured around the Midwest and had stints in Chicago and trips out to Los Angeles before returning to New York.

In the forties, Tatum recorded with singer Big Joe Turner for Decca Records and formed a trio with guitarist Tiny Grimes and bassist Slam Stewart. By the end of the Forties, Tatum had returned to solo performing and continued solo until he died in 1956.

Any compilation of Tatum’s incredible recordings is a must-have. The best of these include “Piano Starts Here” (1968), "The Complete Capitol Recordings (Volumes 1-2)” (1989), “Classic Early Solos” (1991), “The Chronological Classics: ArtTatum 1932-1934” (1991), and “The Complete Capitol Recordings of Art Tatum" (1997).

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James P. Johnson: The Charleston

James Price Johnson was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1894. He was a ragtime-turned-stride pianist whose composition, “The Charleston,” became one of the anthems of the “Jazz Age” of the Twenties. Johnson and Jelly Roll Morton were probably the two pianists most responsible for taking ragtime music and turning it into jazz via the piano.

Although he started out playing ragtime music in the tradition of Scott Joplin, Johnson became the innovator of a jazz sub-genre of piano playing that was dubbed “stride.” This piano style got its name from the walking or “striding” sound produced by the pianist’s left hand. Stride piano incorporated elements of the blues, and it allowed for on-the-spot improvisation, which is an essential characteristic of jazz music. Ragtime was a rigidly composed form of music that stifled improvisation.

A future jazz star, Fats Waller, would become Johnson’s protégé, adopt his stride style, and later expose it to the masses.

Johnson was a prolific composer, and he wrote some of the most familiar compositions of the Roaring Twenties. Aside from the Charleston, he penned “You’ve Got to Be Modernistic,” “If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight,” “Carolina Shout,” “Keep Off The Grass,” and “Old Fashioned Love,” among others. In addition to jazz and pop tunes, Johnson wrote waltzes, ballets, and symphonic pieces.

Johnson’s finest recordings can be found on a number of compilation albums, including the multi-volume "Chronological Classics: James P. Johnson" (1996) series and "Snowy Morning Blues" (1991), "Harlem Stride Piano" (1992), and "Father of Stride Piano" (2001).

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The Original Dixieland Jazz Band: Livery Stable Blues

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band was originally an offshoot of Stein’s Dixie Jass Band and started out under the leadership of cornetist Nick LaRocca. By 1917, the band had moved from Chicago to New York, where, in February of that year, they would make the first-ever jazz recording, “Livery Stable Blues/Dixie Jass Band One Step,” for Victor.

The recording was a huge commercial success, and it introduced jazz to a nationwide audience. The huge sales of that first recording motivated other record labels to record jazz and thus sparked the spread of the music.

The initial incarnation of the band recorded several other excellent sides, including “Darktown Strutters’ Ball,” “Ostrich Walk,” and “Tiger Rag.” Their music was typical early Dixieland jazz, but the ODJB had some of the finest musicians in jazz music at the time, including LaRocca on cornet, “Daddy” Edwards on trombone, Henry Ragas on piano, and Larry Shields on clarinet.

The ODJB was a white band, and Larocca was a proud member of the white race who always maintained that it was not African Americans who had created jazz, but white musicians. Larocca’s overt racism has probably hurt the reputation of the ODJB and encouraged many observers to write them off as simply a bunch of second-rate white musicians who only had the opportunity to make the first jazz recording due to the institutionalized racism of the time. However, this is clearly not the case. Freddie Keppard, an African-American cornetist, turned down the opportunity to make the first jazz recording in 1916.

The ODJB reunited several times in the thirties and toured Europe. Drummer Tony Sbarbaro was the only original member to appear on all the band’s recordings between 1917 and 1938.

Several compilations of the band’s early sides can be found, including "The Complete Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1917-1938)" (1995). The band also appears on several compilations of early recorded jazz.

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Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France

Guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli were probably the two greatest European jazz musicians of the 20th century. Both men were founders and members of an outfit known as the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, a jazz ensemble that recorded during the forties.

Reinhardt, born in Liberchies, Pont-a-Celles, Belgium, was a gypsy guitar prodigy. When he was eighteen, his hand was so badly burned by a fire in his caravan that two fingers on his left hand were rendered useless. His family and friends thought that any future career plans as a musician had been prematurely snuffed out, but Reinhardt adapted and learned to play with just the index and middle finger on his fret hand. Despite his handicap, Reinhardt still earned a reputation as one of the greatest guitarists in the history of popular music.

 In 1934, Reinhardt; jazz violin virtuoso Stephane Grappelli; brother and fellow guitarist Joseph Reinhardt; guitarist Roger Chaput; and bassist Louis Vola formed the “Quintette du Hot Club de France” and recorded some of the best jazz of the thirties and forties.

 During his tenure with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, Reinhardt recorded the classic selections “Minor Swing,” “Djangology,” “Runnin’ Wild,” “Paramount Stomp,” “Belleville,” and “Night and Day.” The Hot Club recorded in the swing style that was the vogue of the mid and late thirties. The band would disband in 1939, only to reform in the 1940s with a different lineup of sidemen supporting Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli.

Reinhardt died in 1953 at the age of 43, while Grappelli would continue playing and recording until he died in 1997, a month shy of his 90th birthday. Django Reinhardt would leave behind a legacy of musical brilliance and serve as an inspiration and major influence on countless guitarists from rock, country, jazz, and even classical music. 

Rock guitarists Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath both suffered serious injuries to their hands early in their careers and credit Reinhardt as a huge inspiration in overcoming their respective injuries. Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France appear on numerous fine compilation albums, including "Djangology" and "Gypsy Jazz."

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Tommy Johnson: Canned Heat Blues

Tommy Johnson was a country blues singer and guitarist from Terry, Mississippi. Johnson was born in 1896, and by the twenties, he was an established figure in Mississippi blues. The sixties blues rock band, Canned Heat, took their name from the Johnson song, “Canned Heat Blues.”

Johnson was a dissolute figure who actively cultivated a sinister image through excessive drinking and stories that he had sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his musical mastery. A similar mythology would later be attached to Robert Johnson.

Johnson made his first recordings for the Victor label in 1928 with the sides “Canned Heat Blues” and “Big Road Blues.” Johnson also recorded for Paramount Records in two sessions, one in 1928 and another in the following year. These recordings proved Johnson to be a vocalist of great depth and a fine guitarist. Unfortunately, his recordings for Paramount are of low fidelity.

Johnson’s classic sides can be found on the compilation "Complete Recorded Work in Chronological Order" (1994).

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