Charles Brown - Driftin' Blues (1945-56) vols 1 & 2

Charles Brown is another situation like Amos Milburn where I have too much material with the 5 disc Mosaic box (Amos was 7!). I discovered this nice 20-side compilation and extracted it but there was still too much good material left behind so I constructed a volume two with 22 more sides. Even allowing for the fact that the original compilation cherry picked all the hits for what is here volume one, I think my volume two stands up quite well to it. Your other great benefit here is that while I used that Collectibles format for volume one, I used the Mosaic remasters as the source.

"Charles Brown (September 13, 1922 – January 21, 1999), born in Texas City, Texas was an American blues singer and pianist whose soft-toned, slow-paced blues-club style influenced the development of blues performance during the 1940s and 1950s.

As a child, Brown demonstrated his love of music and took classical piano lessons. Early on, Brown moved out to Los Angeles, where the great influx of blacks created an integrated nightclub scene in which black performers tended to minimize the rougher blues elements of their style. The blues club style of a light rhythm bass and right-hand tinkling of the piano and smooth vocals became popular, epitomized by the jazz piano of Nat King Cole. When Cole left Los Angeles, California to perform nationally, his place was taken by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, featuring Charles Brown's gentle piano and vocals.

Brown signed with Aladdin Records and his 1945 recording of, "Driftin' Blues", with a small combo on that record label went on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart for six months, putting Brown at the forefront of a musical evolution that changed American musical performance. His style dominated the influential Southern California club scene on Central Avenue during that period and he influenced such performers as Floyd Dixon, Cecil Gant, Ivory Joe Hunter, Percy Mayfield, Johnny Ace and Ray Charles.

"Driftin' Blues" was the first of several hits. Brown subsequently released "Get Yourself Another Fool", "Black Night", "Hard Times" and "Trouble Blues", all major hits in the early 1950s on such labels as Modern Records as well as Aladdin. Though he was unable to compete with the burgeoning rock and roll sound that was increasing in popularity, he managed to maintain a small, devoted audience. Additionally, his songs were covered by the likes of John Lee Hooker and Lowell Fulson.

Brown's approach was too mellow to survive the transition to rock's harsher rhythms, and he faded from the national limelight. His "Please Come Home for Christmas", a hit in 1960 on the King Records remained seasonally popular. "Please Come Home for Christmas" sold over one million copies by 1968, and was awarded a gold disc in that year. During the 1960s Brown recorded a couple of albums for Mainstream Records.

In the 1980s he made a series of appearances at New York's club, Tramps. As a result of these appearances he signed a new recording contract with Blue Side Records and recorded One More for the Road in three days. Blue Side Records closed soon after but distribution was picked up by Alligator Records. Soon after the success of One More for the Road, Bonnie Raitt helped usher in a Charles Brown comeback tour.

He began a recording and performing career again, under the musical direction of guitarist Danny Caron, to greater success than he had achieved since the 1950s. Several records received Grammy Award nominations.

He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and received both the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship and the W. C. Handy Award.

Brown died of congestive heart failure in 1999 in Oakland, California, and was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California.

Amos Milburn

Amos Milburn is one of those cases were I have been provided the whole complete Mosaic box (Thank You Again Clifford!) so some thought as to a way to make something a bit less imposing was in order. The good part of that is it makes me focus on and listen to the material in order to form a strategy.  I looked around for what looked like a good compilation to begin with and then assembled it from the complete Aladdin box and that is what you get here. This material was all made as singles but sometimes it helps to have a package reference.

Certainly a guy whom gets a founding father tag, Amos Milburn is right there and selling lots of records early on. His collaborations with Maxwell Davis (another FF) kind of introduces a ‘sound’ that becomes associated with Los Angeles based Aladdin Records and is the forerunner of the Dave Bartholomew/Fats Domino connection in New Orleans. Amos comes out of the Texas Barrellhouse / Jump Blues background but he has this Nat King Cole vernier over it that is shared by label mate Charles Brown. (who also collaborates with Davis) Bad, Bad Whiskey could almost be Nat and Pres at first listen.

Given the shear volume of material that Aladdin recorded over an 11 year period he was there he obviously sold a whole hell of a lot of records but an examination of his life shows he quickly faded into obscurity and was barely remembered until the reissue age. There is an almost schizophrenic aspect to all the compilations and the Mosaic box as you jump back and forth between the two distinct styles that he used. It might be interesting to explore a couple of extractions from the set focusing on each style separately.

“Amos Milburn (April 1, 1927 – January 3, 1980) was an African American rhythm and blues singer and pianist, popular during the 1940s and 1950s. He was born and died in Houston, Texas. One commentator noted, "Milburn excelled at good-natured, upbeat romps about booze and partying, imbued with a vibrant sense of humour and double entendre, as well as vivid, down-home imagery in his lyrics

 Born in Houston, one of thirteen children, by the age of five years Milburn was playing tunes by piano. He enlisted in the United States Navy when he was fifteen and earned thirteen battle stars in the Philippines, before returning to Houston and organizing a sixteen-piece band playing in Houston clubs, and participating with the Houston jazz and blues musicians. He was a polished pianist and performer and during 1946 attracted the attention of a woman who arranged a recording session with Aladdin Records in Los Angeles, California. Milburn's relationship with Aladdin lasted eight years during which he produced more than seventy-five sides. His cover version of "Down the Road a Piece" (1946) was a blues song with a Texas boogie beat that was similar in many respects to rock music. However, none became popular until 1949 when seven of his singles got the attention of the R&B audience. "Hold Me Baby" and "Chicken Shack Boogie" landed numbers eight and nine on Billboard's survey of 1949's R&B Bestsellers. He became one of the main performers associated with Central Avenue of Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood. He was also a popular touring artist, and won awards from both Down Beat magazine (Best Blues and Jazz Star) and Billboard magazine (Top R&B Artist).  Among his best known songs was "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer". During 1950 Milburn's "Bad, Bad, Whiskey" scored the top of the R&B record chart and began a series of drinking songs (none written by Milburn, but several composed by Rudy Toombs). However, there is not any evidence that Milburn had an alcohol problem.

Milburn continued his successful drinking songs through 1952 {"Thinking and Drinking", "Trouble in Mind"} and was by now touring the country playing clubs. While touring the Midwest that summer, he announced that he would disband his combo team and continue as a solo act and that autumn he joined Charles Brown for a Southern concert tour. For the next few years each of his tours was composed of a series of one-nighters. After three years of solo performing he returned to Houston during 1956 to reform his band. During 1957 Milburn's releases with Aladdin Records did not sell well, and the record label, having its own problems, terminated. He tried to regain commercial success with a few more releases with Ace Records but his time had passed. Radio airplay was emphasizing on the teenage market.

Milburn contributed to the R&B Yuletide canon during 1960 with his swinging "Christmas (Comes but Once a Year)" for King. The song appeared as the b-side of Brown's holiday classic "Please Come Home for Christmas". Berry Gordy gave him a comeback forum during 1962, issuing an album on Motown predominated by remakes of his old successes that is difficult to find today (Little Stevie Wonder played harmonica for the sessions).

Milburn's final recording was for an album by Johnny Otis. This was during 1972 after he had been incapacitated by a stroke, so much so that Otis had to play the left-hand piano parts for his enfeebled old friend.  His second stroke resulted in amputation of a leg because of circulatory problems. He died soon after at the age of 52 years from a third stroke.

The Texan boogie-woogie pianist and singer was an important performer of blues music during the years immediately after World War II. Milburn was one of the first performers to switch from sophisticated jazz arrangements to a louder "jump" blues. He began to emphasize rhythm and technical qualities of voice and instrumentation second. His energetic songs, about getting 'high', were admired by fellow musicians, such as Little Willie Littlefield, Floyd Dixon and his prime disciple, Fats Domino.