The Late, Great, Jimmy Rogers

“You better look back at The Best Of Muddy Waters with Little Walter and Jimmy Rogers. That's where it all came from.” – Muddy Waters

From Ruleville, Mississippi, Jimmy Rogers was born in 1924 taught himself to play guitar while still a teenager. By 1941 he was living and playing in Chicago, he worked in clubs including Tom’s Tavern and the Purple Cat with Sunnyland Slim and then with Muddy Waters band in the late 1940s. He toured with Sonny Boy Williamson through the Southern States and worked with Howlin Wolf in Memphis before returning to Chicago to record with Muddy Waters in 1950. Jimmy Rogers at 25 years old had already paid his dues.

In 1950 his first record for Chess was That’s All Right which had Little Walter on harmonica and Muddy Waters on second guitar, backing bands don’t come any better! A string of fantastic records followed, some featuring Little Walter and others Muddy Waters as well as other frontline Chicago musicians including Otis Spann, Walter Horton and Willie Dixon

Roger’s biggest, and only Billboard chart hit, was Walking By Myself in early 1957. Featuring Walter Horton on harmonica it made No.14. As well as recording some quality singles of his own for Chess Jimmy’s guitar features on some of Muddy Water’s best records including Hoochie Coochie Man, Mannish Boy and Rock Me.

In the 1960s Jimmy Roger’s style went out of fashion and after quitting the business he did make a comeback in the 1970s, recording for Leon Russell’s Shelter Records and in 1977 with his old friend Muddy Waters. Jimmy Rogers, who passed away in 1997, is remembered for his great contribution to creating the quintessential ‘Chicago Sound’ – just listen to Chicago Bound to hear why.

“You didn’t go in there too often and make a number right away, you know — Leonard Chess would be turning it around there quite a while trying to get the best."– Jimmy Rogers

Chess - the Home of the Blues

“The Blues is at the heart of popular music and Chess Records are at the heart of the Blues.”

Buddy Guy

In the early 1947 two Polish-born, nightclub-owning brothers, Leonard and Philip Chess (real name Chez) bought into the established Aristocrat label and had their first major success was Muddy Waters, I Can't Be Satisfied. Nearly two years later Leonard and Phil bought out their original partner and renamed their label Chess.

Along with the new name came a new signings, including Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Boyd and his Chess Men, Willie Mabon, Memphis Slim and Howlin' Wolf. By 1952 they started a subsidiary they named Checker; among those on this new label were Elmore James, Little Walter, Memphis Minnie and Sonny Boy Williamson.

By 1955 Chess had expanded still further, as well as crossing over into the white Rock ‘n’ Roll market with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Soon Otis Rush and Buddy Guy joined Chess to give their sound a harder, younger edge. Much of Chess’s success was down to the excellent work of A&R man, composer, and general Mr Fix-it Willie Dixon. Dixon’s bass playing coupled with Fred Below’s peerless drumming are essential to the Chess sound.

Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s Chess records were the soundtrack to much of black America, they were the Motown Records of their day. Chess records were also treasured by young British guys, keen to hear the blues, who would write off to Chicago record stores to order the very latest recordings that they absorbed and copied. Soon enough British bands playing the blues were being listened to by white America, many of whom were unaware of the treasury of brilliant music that was theirs for the listening.

The Fabulous Miss D.

Ruth Lee Jones was seventeen on the December day she walked into a New York City recording studio to record four songs with the All-Star sextet that included Lionel Hampton on piano and tenor saxophonist Arnett Cobb. Born in Alabama she moved to Chicago, won a talent competition and was singing with Hampton’s band; Hampton is possibly the one who suggested Ruth change her name to Dinah Washington.

She recorded four songs that day and her first single, Evil Gal Blues only made the Harlem Hit Parade after Salty Papa Blues, her second single, was released. You can hear the influence of Billie Holiday, who Dinah had been taken to see in Chicago, in her singing.

After these two singles Dinah was affected, like every other performer, by the recording band enforced by the American Musician’s Union and she spent her time fronting Hampton’s band on live dates. She went back to recording under her own name in 1946 and soon made the R&B charts; it was the beginning of the most successful recording career of any black female singer in the 1940s and 1950s. She topped the charts twice in the early 1950s and throughout the decade just about every record she released went Top.10; n 1960 she topped the charts twice, with Brook Benton.

She was just 39 when she died in 1963, following an overdose of prescription drugs. Despite being so young she had been married eight times, the first time when she was just sixteen. Today, Dinah Washington is somewhat overlooked but should not be; she sang the blues, jazz, torch songs and just about every other kind of ballad with style and panache. Seek out Teach Me Tonight to hear why she really was the Fabulous Miss D.

Canned Heat & Woodstock

The fact that Canned Heat appeared at Woodstock was a matter of luck, and the gentle art of persuasion. Henry Vestine, the former Mothers Of Invention guitarist, quit just two days before the festival gig following a fight with bass player, Larry Taylor at the Fillmore West. Harvey Mandel was drafted into the band only to find that drummer Adolpho ‘Fito’ de la Parra felt they didn’t have sufficient time to rehearse for Woodstock, so he also left the band. The band's manager got into the reluctant drummer’s room, in which he had locked himself, and talked him into changing his mind; they flew to Woodstock by helicopter arriving in the nick of time. It was Harvey Mandel's third gig with the band; as they played day turned to night and they had secured a prime slot on the already late running second day.

Originally formed in 1965 as a jug band they took their name from Tommy Johnson's Canned Heat Blues. Their first incarnation was would‑be Disc Jockey Bob 'The Bear' Hite who hailed from Torrance, California; Bostonian, AI 'Blind Owl' Wilson, Frank Cook and Henry Vestine from Washington. Their original bass player was Stuart Brotman who later emerged in the US band Kaleidoscope, alongside David Lindley, he was soon replaced by Mark Andes (who later co-founded Spirit), before New Yorker, Samuel Larry Taylor came in as permanent bassist; he had served his apprenticeship with the likes of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, as well as playing on several of the Monkees hits. In 1967 the group signed to Liberty Records after appearing at the Monterey Pop Festival. In July 1967 they released a self-titled album that made No.76 on the album chart, following it with Boogie With Canned Heat in 1968, which spent three months on the Billboard chart.  Living the Blues a double album came out in 1968 after which came Hallelujah in 1969, just before their Woodstock appearance

“Technically, Vestine and Wilson are quite possibly the best two-guitar team in the world and Wilson has certainly become our finest white blues harmonica man. Together with powerhouse vocalist Bob Hite, they performed the country and Chicago blues idiom of the 1950s so skillfully and naturally that the question of which race the music belongs to becomes totally irrelevant.” – Downbeat Magazine following their Monterey appearance

In 1968 Cook had been replaced by De La Parra who hailed from Mexico City and it was soon after the band began to have hits with their unique blues sound. On The Road Again went to No.16 in the USA in the late summer of 1968, while AI Wilson's Going Up The Country peaked at No.11 in the US early in 1969. In the spring of ‘69 Time Was went to No.67 on the Billboard charts.  The band were also very popular in Britain where On The Road Again went top 10 and Going Up The Country Top 20.

The Woodstock Effect

In September 1970 AI Wilson was found dead from a barbiturates overdose in Bob Hite’s Topanga Canyon garden. He had suffered from depression and his death robbed the world of “the most gifted harmonica player I’ve ever heard,” as John Lee Hooker described him. The band had been working with the blues legend on an album that became Hooker ‘N’ Heat. The following month Let’s work Together from Hallelujah reached No.26 on the Billboard chart become their last single of any note; it reached No.2 in the UK.

By the mid 70's only Vestine, who had returned to the fold, and Hite remained of the original line up. The 21 stone Bob Hite died on 6 April 1981, which ended that chapter in the band's history. The band somehow carried on with Taylor and De La Parra, guitarist Junior Watson (late of the Mighty Flyers) and Walter Trout. By the time the band featured on John Lee Hooker’s album, ‘The Healer’ in 1989, Vestine had rejoined the group yet again. Vestine died in October 1997 in a hotel outside Paris from heart and respiratory failure. He wanted his ashes to be scattered in a crater on the dark side of the moon named after his father, a noted astrophysicist. Some of Canned Heat’s longevity can be put down to their material regularly being featured in advertising campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic, which have included General Motors, Miller Beer, Levi’s, Pepsi and 7-Up.

Going Up The Country became something of an unofficial theme song from the festival after it was featured in the movie. Coupled with On The Road Again, which the band played as an encore it helped catapult the band to even greater recognition. Woodstock Boogie was very much a jam lasting close to 15 minutes, including the obligatory drum solo; it was a reworking of Fried Hockey Boogie from Boogie With Canned Heat 

 “The Woodstock performance which although there were a couple of tunes which weren't too good, ‘Going Up The Country’ was one of them, there were some which were killers, stone killers.”– Bob Hite

Good Morning Little Schoolgirl

Good Morning School Girl was recorded at Sonny Boy Williamson’s first session for Bluebird on May 5^th 1937 at the Leland Hotel in Aurora and on the record he’s accompanied by Big Joe Williams and Robert Lee McCoy on guitars. Confusion surrounding the title of this song, which usually inserts ‘Little’ after ‘Good Morning’, has been compounded by later recorded versions that have credited Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) as its composer.

It has become a staple for both Chicago Bluesmen and British Blues bands in the 1950s and 1960s; it has even been called “the first rock and roll record”, but then again so have many others. Whatever the case it was another that was around during the gestation period.

John Lee Williamson was from Tennessee and Sonny Boy, was what his grandmother nicknamed him. He hoboed with Sleepy John Estes and Hank Rachel during the late 1920s and as the depression deepened he travelled with Robert Lee McCoy and Big Joe Williams, developing his skills to the point where he was the pre-eminent pre war harp player. Sonny Boy recorded around 90 sides between 1937 and 1942, making him one of the busiest and most successful Bluesmen of the period. In 1948, while still working and recording Sonny Boy was mugged and murdered on his way home from Chicago’s Plantation Club.

A song with the same name actually made the British charts, recorded by the Yardbirds in October 1964. Their version has lyrical similarities to the original but it is in fact melodically different and credited to H.G. Demarias. This was the original line-up of the Yardbirds, featuring Eric Clapton on lead guitar. Rod Stewart recorded the song as the A-side of his first ever Decca single; Rod’s version is a cover of Sonny Boy. 

The Memphis Jug Band – the first artists to record commercially in Tennessee

In early 1927 Victor Records were in Memphis looking for artists to record. They recorded four songs by the Memphis Jug Band; it was the start of long, on and off, recording career for the band, led by guitarist and harmonica player Will ‘Son’ Shade. They had formed in the mid 1920’s and have the honour of being the first artists ever to record commercially in the state of Tennessee; a notable achievement considering what followed in both Memphis and Nashville.

More sessions followed in 1927, including one in June when 10 year old Walter Horton played harmonica – he would go onto become a consummate post war harmonica player, helping to define the Chicago harp sound. At other sessions the band worked with women singers, including both Hattie Hart and Memphis Minnie.

Their sound was indefinable as it included a little of everything from blues, to jazz, novelty songs, ragtime and folk tunes. During their 7-year recording career they recorded in excess of 75 sides and their music is arguably the first footings of rock ‘n’ roll – genuine ensemble playing that was made to dance to, listen to and engender a good time feeling. The songs they sang were 35 years or more ahead of the sex and drugs revolution of the 60’s and besides Cocaine Habit Blues there were frequent references to sex.

The band’s shifting line-up helped them to remain in fashion when other artists had become outmoded. After they stopped recording in 1934 they continued to perform in Memphis well into the 1940s, even recording again in 1956.

The Long Player

On June 21st, 1948 Columbia Records, gave a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City to launch the 33 1/3 long playing record. While there was great secrecy surrounding the event, Columbia still had over 100 titles ready to release by July 1.  At their Dealer Conference in Atlantic City on June 21 a company executive gave a speech while an LP of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite was playing, which everyone could see via a large mirror suspended above the turntable.  At the end of the 18-minute side, (more than 4 times longer than an existing 78 rpm record) the crowd gave a standing ovation! Within a year one million American homes would have the equipment to play LPs, the revolutions revolution had begun.

LPs were being sold at $4.95 each and to encourage sales of the necessary turntables to play them a Philco player was sold for $29.25 with three free LPs - a neat piece of marketing. One of those to benefit from all this was Sinatra, in that his LP, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, that became the first Pop LP, Columbia CL6001. The first classical LP was The Beethoven Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein, Bruno Walter and the Philharmonic Symphony of New York.