Chance Records was a Chicago-based label founded in 1950 by Art Sheridan. It specialized in blues, jazz, doo-wop, and gospel. Among the acts who recorded for Chance were The Flamingos, The Moonglows, Homesick James, J. B. Hutto, Brother John Sellers, and Schoolboy Porter. In addition, Chance released three singles by John Lee Hooker and made a coordinated issue of the first singles by Jimmy Reed and The Spaniels with the brand-new and still tiny Vee-Jay Records.
The company closed down at the end of 1954. Sheridan became one of the financial backers of Vee-Jay.
"The opening two or three cuts on this 50-song, 140-minute compilation sound ominously rough and ragged, and I'm not talking about the music, but the sources. But then the quality rights itself, and the rest is above-average quality early Chicago blues. Chance Records was never as big as Chess, though they shared a few artists like John Lee Hooker (as John L. Booker) and Sunnyland Slim (as "Delta Joe") in common, but it managed to get its share of worthwhile blues and R&B records out during its four years of active life. John Lee Hooker opens disc one with a pair of wildly chaotic, raw blues tracks, "Miss Lorraine" and "I Love to Boogie," that were probably recorded in the back of a local record store. A single side by Little Walter dating from 1947, originally cut for Ora Nelle Records and issued by Chance as "Ora Nelle Blues," is another primordial treasure contained on this CD, and the surface noise of these early sides can be forgiven under the circumstances. Arthur "Big Boy Spires" stood to be Chance's answer to Muddy Waters, based on "Some Day Little Darling" and "My Baby Left Me," but the big surprise on these sides is Lazy Bill Lucas, an Arkansas-born bluesman,
who attacks his songs (especially "I Had a Dream") with bristling aggressiveness at the piano and the microphone, ably backed by Louis Myers in a searing set of guitar workouts. J.B. Hutto only cut six commercial sides for Chance before vanishing into the relative obscurity of club performances in Chicago, and then re-emerging on the folk-blues revival scene courtesy of Vanguard Records a decade later. The six sides here are worth their weight in gold -- loud, defiant blues that manage to be both raw in sound and smooth in execution, with a crunchy yet dexterous guitar sound and wonderfully expressive vocals -- check out "Lovin' You," maybe the best piece of blues ever cut in Chicago that didn't come from Chess. The 14 cuts by Homesick James (John Williamson Henderson) here represent more of this man's music than almost anyone has heard in 45 years -- he also appears to have been the first artist to actually record for Chance. And lo and behold, Tampa Red also shows up -- sans guitar, alas -- as Jimmy Eager, doing a trio of cuts that outclass much of the rest of his late career output; cut in 1953, they mark the tail end of Red's commercial career as a full-time bluesman, and one only wishes that he, and not Vee Jay Records alumnus L.C. McKinley, were playing the guitar on those cuts, but he was signed to Victor, and they were even less amused than companies like Chess about label-hopping by their artists." AMG
13 comments:
Many thanks, KC. You've contributed so much with this and other blogs. Hope you don't drop out completely as I've learnt so much from your posts.
Thanks for these 2 KC
I can totally sympathize with your thinking -
It's time consuming and bears little fruit at times
I think your blogs should be a pleasure and not a burden - Take a break = listen more - And make fewer posts - But don't give up - We need you & your Uncky of course !
Cheers
Thanks for the Chance Label retrospective. Some fine blues here. I will enjoy it.
enoch
Much appreciated, as always. And thanks in advance for whatever you bring us here in future. Cheers!
Your semi-retirement will finally allow me a chance to listen to everything several times as is appropriate for the quality of music posted here. I am relieved that you are not stopping altogether because all of your blogs are true goldmines of information and great sounds, and I appreciate more than you know the recommendations for reading that you made that have added greatly to my enjoyment of the postings and music in general. I also greatly appreciate the contributions of the other contributors: Poppachubby, Guitar Gus, Grumpy, Chris, and the others whom I have overlooked because of lack of memory, rather than lack of appreciation for their contribution. Over the past few years many fine blogs have gone the way of the dinosaurs under duress from the increasingly repressive environment facilitated by the servers at the music industry's bidding, so, to try to be succinct for once, there are simply no other collective blogs like this one, the Crypt Redux, and Buddy Bolden's! Sure, there are fine individual blogs but I have enjoyed the aforementioned as a group so much that I feel as if I should be paying tuition for the education and royalties for all of the great music.
I was once a silent participant until your appropriate fit of pique unleashed my torrents of verbosity and emotional reactions to the music that substitute poorly for the expert knowledge of the other commentators. Use your time wisely, restoke the fires of passion that made you begin these endeavors in the first place, enjoy the uniqueness of your great city, and when the spirit moves you and time permits contribute something from time to time so those of us who don't know and write to you personally will know that there are still great minds at work contemplating music in the Crescent City. Most of all, thanks, my new hard drive is almost full and I'll be buying a back-up when the refund comes this way to ensure that what I have is not lost. My family and I have spend many hours listening to what I have downloaded. Thanks,too, to Poppachubby, Guitar Gus, Laz, and all the others whose remarks have made me think clearer and know more about what I am hearing while viscerally enjoying the music. Of course, I don't know if the secular young'uns will ever forgive you for introducing gospel music on Sunday mornings into this home but they'll adjust with time and one of them has even admitted in hushed words so her hip-hop addicted younger sister can't overhear that she truly enjoys most of it. To inculcate the minds of the young with an appreciation of fine music, that's not too shabby an accomplishment to reflect upon when you have your occasional doubts about whether the time expended was worth it. Above all, be well.
The lightning pace of what happens in the digital age is bringing with it a new ethic, one with no time to slow down and be human. Yeah, I'm guilty of not giving you much feedback for your enormous efforts. Sorry KC. The cyber onslaught is changing humanity and, as much as we'd like to hold on to the human in us, we're morphing into Homo Cyber. That's more than a bit sad, especially for us old-timers caught in the transition. I dread to speculate as to what folks will be like in a hundred years. Guess I got the Neanderthal Blues.
That Chance collection is dynamite, great early Chicago blues served up raw and rough.
I haven't been posting much here because my Internet connection in Nigeria hasn't been allowing it. When I try to upload something to any site other than Rapidshare, it gets "timed out' after a couple of hours. I should be traveling to the land of high speed internet in the Spring, and will be sure to post some things then.
Thanks KC for all you do. Through these blogs you and the collective team have created a wondrous cyber-musical archive of great, and nearly great music, literally on the verge of disappearing for good. And your "liner notes" are a delight to read.
What an incredible accomplishment in terms of cultural & musical preservation!
You gotta do what you must, and you know the saying: all good things in all good time.
Peace, -john
I echo what Anonymous has expressed far more succinctly and better than I could. The blogs are an incredible accomplishment and I know belated thanks is never sufficient but the music and information have provided hours of enjoyment for me and my family and enabled us to discuss what music really means to us and, equally important, how does one define the music of this country, its origins and its influences, and not acknowledge the disproportionate influence and genius of the African diaspora. For so many reasons, the Chicago collection really is a great way to leave things for now.
For the two and a half years, I have not only downloaded the music from each blog but I have also saved the wonderful write-ups in Word so I can re-read them to learn more. As I have written before, prior to discovering your blogs, I had read about but not had heard the music of James Booker and so many other performers from New Orleans and elsewhere in the South. We all have a finite amount of money and time and when one's taste is eclectic and covers many genres, one can overlook great talent and music. Depending on where we have lived and live, many artists featured here did not receive airplay in our localities before the arrival of the Internet made so much so easily accessible. For me, this blog truly served as introduction to, witness, and archive of such talent and, for that matter, of an era. It has been a living museum.
I will still access the blogs daily because I also learn much from the comments of others, such as Preselves, Guitar Gus, Poppachubby, and the various Anonymouses (Anonymice?)but I will now have time to really listen to all that I have hastily accumulated in anticipation of that time when it comes to an end through your mental and physical exhaustion and time constraints, difficulties with servers, or the impact of more repressive legislation which looms ominously on the horizon. I told my wife last night that checking the blogs daily was akin to going to a record store (I suppose I reveal my age with that term) daily and having an unlimited budget to buy whatever interested me. "Joy" describes it best.
Continued: I have always optimistically figured that others like Guitar Gus, Preselves, Anonymous, and many others who might not have written with as much frequency lately owing to a variety of reasons, work and family obligations, computer issues, etc. were like me, still reading and listening with keen interest and great gratitude for the time and effort expended in doing what you and all of the other contributors have done so well. I have also greatly appreciated and learned from the comments of contributors like Guitar Gus and Poppachubby because they appreciate and love the music from a different vantage point, that is, living in other countries, and what they like and why they like it has been fascinating and insightful to me. Music really is a language that transcends all borders and cultures. Some of my friends have remarked after seeing much of my record collection that they don't like to listen to music in languages other than English. It's their loss and I hope its doesn't sound elitist when I write that I still love listening to the music of Clifton Chenier, Queen Ida, and others in French and Creole because of the emotions and nuances that aren't always conveyed in English. I'd also like to think that Fats Domino's first language had an impact on how he presented his music or, at a minimum, the cadence he used when singing and playing it. To quote Bob Marley, "who feels it, knows it."
I need to belatedly thank Unky Cliff for the source of information and inspiration that you have written that he has been for you and, consequently for all of us readers. Arthur Alexander, Percy Mayfield, Esquerita, Big Mabel, Marva Wright, and so many others are artists I met through his influence and your and others' words and then explored on my own. Your writing about New Orleans music and culture has been especially wonderful and I hope when times are better that I will finally be able to visit that city and experience everything first-hand if only for a small time. It's this simple, no one has written about the influences on Little Richard as insightfully and knowledgeably as you have, and that's only one example of many.
In Irish, we say "Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís" (We shall not see his or it's like again) and I can not think of a more apt way to describe the three blogs when they have finally ended and I will recall them with bittersweet nostalgia and appreciation of the landmarks that are gone. So many words and they all stumble at ways of just saying meaningfully, "Thanks so very much for it all."
There was a rumour, once, about Era Immobilier: They could have this record and share it. That was wrong: Only YOU have this
!
Serge
I finally explored this blog and WOW!! Its great. COuld you please reup these wonderful sets as well as the C.J. records as well?
https://mega.co.nz/#!7BQX2AaL!XvRH4GCqLErGEGmkvWJGbXvITZdtzlnc1ws2CK1oW8o
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