Sonny Green - Rare 45s

Well, I finally managed to upload this collection as promised.  Thank you for your patience, Chitlin' lovers.   Here are 17 tracks that duplicate and extend the previous post on Sonny Green by KC.  The last track is actually an instrumental without Sonny Green, but it was released under Sonny's name as the B-side of a 45.

One night in the 90s, I somehow ended up in an L.A. club at a Sonny Green concert.   He was still in full voice at the time.  I hadn't heard of Sonny Green until then, and he hit me as something like a cross between Little Johnny Taylor and Syl Johnson, with a little Al Green thrown in for good measure.  In other words, POTENT!   I was happy that Sonny was marketing his own CDR at the time of his classic 45s.  So that is what I am posting here. 

I wonder if Sonny Green is still around and singing?   

Enjoy!   

Ray Agee - Vol 2, Somebody Messed Up

Yup, the same cover with a different title - this set too is 18 tracks and a bit different from the actual pictured LP but it does include the title track and most of that record, the rest is on part one.

The truth is, I've kind of jumped the gun here with these 2 sets since I've already discovered more tracks and Cliff has discovered that three of the tracks identified in the Blues Discography as being from 1965 are in fact from the 70's. That has resulted in my relabeling and reshuffling here at home and Cliff has ordered even more on disc so we will likely revisit Mr. Agee in a month or two, but these uploads were already done and the two sets still represent the most Agee ever offered on the web.

The more I am immersed in this stuff the more impressed I am with this guy. He really SHOULD be in that first sentence about the West Coast blues scene with Percy Mayfield, Charles Brown, Lowell Fulson, and T-Bone Walker. The songs and music are first rate and he is a really cool singer who mixed rock and then soul into his music really effortlessly. The dizzying array of labels and his near total obscurity speak to the idea that he never developed much of a following, but it also seems clear that the record men heard what I do because he kept getting recorded. I'm also thinking that he must have been at least somewhat successful on the jukeboxes of the black clubs to have managed so many singles (more than 120 songs) and a twenty five year career.

Ray Agee - Vol 1, Love Is A Gamble

The fun stuff in this blogging are the 'discoveries' that you manage to pull on yourself and your readers. Over the months here Unkie Cliff and I have both offered up some of these - Billy Wright, Eldridge Holmes, Charles Brimmer, and Shine Robinson are a few examples. The other day Cliff mentioned Ray Agee as someone he had read about and sought for years and he put a 12 track album on one of the flash drives that we pass back and forth. As it turned out, I already had that album and some 25 more tracks that I'd never listened to. Once I got started listening, it became clear this guy was special and I'd soon found even more tracks and so had Cliff. Our current count is 59 tracks but that doesn't mean they are all killer. I've distilled them to a two part compilation of 36 tracks, the two volumes are my own selections from those 59. I've used these covers and album titles because they suited my purpose and the title track was included on each, not because the groupings correspond to any published album. This first volume contains 18 tracks recorded between 1956 and 1965.

In the realm of California blues, Ray Agee isn't mentioned in the same sentence with Charles Brown, Percy Mayfield and T-Bone Walker, but he probably should be. Agee was a fine, and distinctive singer as well as a prolific songwriter nearly the caliber of Mayfield! Between 1952 and 1975 Agee managed more than 100 singles on more than 15 different labels! One might expect him to be at least a little bit better known, but it just never happened.

Born Raymond Clinton Agee - April 10, 1930 in Dixons Mills, AL, Agee was crippled by polio at age 4 and spent his life using a pair of canes (thus the album cover). The Agee family was something of an anomaly in that they migrated to Los Angeles from Alabama: most black families from Alabama would have migrated north rather than west following the shortest railroad lines, the majority of the black war time migration to California came from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana.

A family gospel quartet was young Agee's first music, but he was recording blues by '52 so it is likely he had begun singing secular music at least a couple years prior. Agee first recorded at Aladdin in 1952, but he rarely managed more than a couple singles at any label over the first decade of his career. In the 60's he had a couple larger blocks of recordings at Celeste Records and later Krafton Records. It does not appear that he recorded beyond 1975: he is reported to have died around 1992, but according to our resident genealogist Cliff, there is no death record filed and he could easily still be alive.

This volume begins with with Agee in a relatively traditional blues groove typical of much of his earliest material, these were the songs where he seems to have found his personal vocal groove after sounding fairly unremarkable on most of those earlier sides. He quickly takes on more depth and variety as he moves into the 60's with a variety of original songs; the duet 'The Monkey On My Back' is particularly brilliant. While he has little actual similarity to Percy Mayfield, I am still somehow reminded of him in that Agee's sound and songs are so personal and unique. There is very little information in the Blues Discography as to who the sidemen are on any given track aside from Johnny Heartsman being definitely identified as the guitarist on Tin Pan Alley and Maxwell Davis' sax being evident on a few of the others. I really wish we had more information on those sessions; Agee seems to have had an affinity for strong guitarists and Agee himself is likely the piano player present on many of these tracks.

Both Cliff and I will be particularly interested to hear if this is as unique and impressive to you all as both of us find it... i.e. Please Report Back after putting ears on it! I'll hold Vol 2 for a day or two while you listen.

Ike Turner Studio Productions: New Orleans And Los Angeles 1963 - 1965

Although this CD is credited to Ike Turner, it might be more appropriately classified as a various-artists compilation, since Turner is the credited artist on just one of the 27 tracks. As the title indicates, it's devoted to recordings he produced between 1963 and 1965, an era in which his industriousness was something to behold given he was also recording many discs with his then-wife Tina, as well as extensively touring. Tina herself is the singer on a couple of these tracks, and the Ikettes are heard as a backup band on a few others. But for the most part, this material is performed by artists who never made a name for themselves, like Jimmy Thomas, Stacy Johnson, Bobby John, and Vernon Guy, though ex-R&B star Jackie Brenston (of "Rocket 88" fame) does a couple numbers. Only five of the cuts were released at the time, some others only showing up on archival compilations decades later, and over half the stuff making its first appearance ever on this disc. Though Ike Turner was undoubtedly a major figure in rock and soul music, this is ephemera when stacked against his primary accomplishments, and of most interest to rabid Ike collectors/enthusiasts. The sound is consistently gutsy and sometimes rawer than almost anything else in the bluesy R&B/rock groove at the time, and the singers usually perform with the kind of passion heard in artists hungry for a break. True to the location of some of the recordings, some of the selections have a more pronounced New Orleans feel than others. But the songs are for the most part just OK, and sometimes not too worked out, as you might expect from takes that often didn't even make it into the marketplace. There's some good playing from the Kings of Rhythm, but unless this is one of your favorite all-time kinds of music, the songs do start to roll by without making much in the way of separate impact. And the two Tina Turner tracks might have been throwaway outtakes, but she sings everyone else under the table on covers of Maxine Brown's hit "All in My Mind" and Eddie Boyd's blues classic "Five Long Years." It's more a listenable document to fill in the some of the background of Turner's resumé than a testament to his finer achievements, with some of the moodier Turner compositions that came out on 1963 singles (Vernon Guy's "You've Got Me [Just Where You Want Me]" and Stacy Johnson's "Remove My Doubts") also standing out in this crowd. - Richie Unterberger / AMG

1 Jimmy Thomas – The Darkest Hour 2:29
2 Stacy Johnson – Remove My Doubts 2:15
3 Vernon Guy With Jessie Smith – They Ain't Lovin' Ya 1:46
4 Bobby John – Too Late 2:29
5 Bobby John & Ikettes, The – Like I Do 2:37
6 Jackie Brenston & Ikettes, The – In Love 2:32
7 Jackie Brenston – I'm Tore Up 2:31
8 Venetta Fields – Through With You 3:18
9 Vernon Guy – That's All Right 1:53
10 Vernon Guy – You're So Fine 2:25
11 Jimmy Thomas – I Smell Trouble 3:40
12 Jimmy Thomas – Feel So Good 2:21
13 Tina Turner – All In My Mind 3:13
14 Ernest Lane & Ikettes, The With Tina Turner – What Kind Of Love 2:18
15 Bobby John With Jimmy Thomas, Stacy Johnson & Vernon Guy – I'm Comin' Home 2:29
16 Bobby John – Dust My Broom 2:33
17 Vernon Guy & Ikettes, The – For Your Precious Love 2:18
18 Vernon Guy – Just To Hold My Hand 2:16
19 Jimmy Thomas – Tin Pan Alley 2:51
20 Jimmy Thomas – Mother-In-Law Blues 2:09
21 Ike Turner & Ikettes, The – Walking Down The Aisle 2:13
22 Bobby John & Ikettes, The – Think 2:12
23 Tina Turner – Five Long Years 2:07
24 Stacy Johnson – Consider Yourself 3:44
25 Stacy Johnson – Don't Believe Him 2:04
26 Vernon Guy With Ike* & Dee Dee* – You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It Too 2:23
27 Vernon Guy – You've Got Me (Just Where You Want Me) 2:36

Jimmy Liggins - Specialty Records

Part two of this important pair from Guitar Gus.

wiki "Jimmy Liggins (October 14, 1922 – July 18, 1983) was an American R&B guitarist and bandleader. Liggins was born in Newby, Oklahoma, United States. He started out as a professional boxer at age 18 under the name of Kid Zulu, then he quit boxing and took up driving his brother Joe's outfit around on tour. Following the success of his brother, Jimmy Liggins started his own recording career as a singer, guitarist, and leader of the 'Drops of Joy', on Art Rupe's Specialty label in 1947. One of his early releases, "Cadillac Boogie" was a direct forerunner of "Rocket 88", itself often called the first rock and roll record.

Recordings such as "Tear Drop Blues" (1948) and, later, "I Ain't Drunk" (1953), featuring leading saxophone players such as Maxwell Davis, made him one of the most successful bandleaders in the jump blues period of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Liggins left Specialty in 1954, recording "I Ain't Drunk" (1954), later covered by Albert Collins, at Aladdin, before fading from the scene. His wild stage presence and manic delivery also had a direct and lasting impact on Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and Elvis Presley.

Liggins died in July 1983, at the age of 60, in Durham, North Carolina."

Joe Liggins - Specialty Records

The first of a pair from Guitar Gus, let's go back to the early days of R&B with a look at the Liggins brothers; first up is older brother Joe.


wiki "Joe Liggins (July 9, 1915 – July 26, 1987) was an American R&B, jazz and blues pianist, who was the frontman in the 1940s and 1950s with the band, Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers.

His band was often a staple on the US Billboard R&B chart in those years, with their biggest hit being "The Honeydripper", released in 1945. That single topped the R&B chart, then called the race chart, for 18 weeks. More than 60 years later, "The Honeydripper" remains tied with Louis Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" for the longest-ever stay at the top of that chart. It logged a reported two million sales.

Liggins was born in Guthrie, Oklahoma, United States, and moved to San Diego, California in 1932. By the time he moved again, to Los Angeles in 1939, he began playing with various groups, including Sammy Franklin's California Rhythm Rascals. When Liggins asked him to record his song "The Honeydripper", Franklin declined, prompting Liggins to start his own band, which created many more hits in the next years, including "Got a Right to Cry" and the widely covered songs, "Tanya" and "Roll 'Em". Earl Hooker is noted for his cover of "Tanya". The original Joe Liggins and His Honeydrippers recordings were issued on the Exclusive Records imprint of brothers Leon and Otis Rene. Joe Liggins' Honeydrippers was formed in the basement of the Los Angeles home of the saxophonist Little Willie Jackson, who co-founded the group and who, at the time of his death in 2000, was the last original surviving member of the Honeydrippers.

In March 1954, the band took part in a benefit show held at the Club 5-4 in Los Angeles for the wife of Stan Getz.

Joe joined his brother Jimmy at Specialty Records in 1950, where he gained more hits including: "Rag Mop", "Boom-Chick-A-Boogie", "Pink Champagne", and "Little Joe's Boogie". His songs were mostly a blend of jump blues and basic R&B. With Roy Milton, he was an architect of the small-band jump blues of the first post-war decade. Liggins often toured with such acts as Jimmy Witherspoon, Amos Milburn and the jump blues shouter H-Bomb Ferguson. His 1950 releases, "Pink Champagne" and "I Gotta Right to Cry," both sold over one million copies and were awarded gold discs.

Although Liggins' success stopped in the late 1950s, he led a big band until his death following a stroke, in Lynwood, California, at the age of 72."

Blues From Dolphin's of Hollywood

"The legendary John Dolphin, also known as Lovin’ John, was one of the first and most well respected, black business man who made his way in the music business of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s. An independent record label owner and R&B producer, his contributions to the formative years of Rock & Roll are often overlooked. A minimogul who had almost every facet of the record business covered, was taking storm of this segregated town and bringing people of all colors together through music.

Dolphin first entered the music business as a retailer where in 1948, when he opened Dolphin’s of Hollywood, a record store on Vernon Avenue that would stay open 24 hours a day to cater to the

late-shift workforce. The store featured deejays broadcasting on the local station of KRKD, in front of the huge, glass window Mr. Dolphin had installed on the face of the store so that people on the outside could see in. Some of the most popular deejays found a home for their art in front of this window, playing for late night crowds of Blacks, Whites, and Latinos alike, who would dance and party together well after dark, until the cops came in and shut the parties down.

Party time began with DJ Ray Robinson, followed by DJ Hunter Hancock, and Dick “Huggy Boy” Hugg. John would have the deejays play records from his own label, but more than that, he would introduce brilliant recordings also from other record labels and artists whom had not previously received proper publicity. By this technique, John made Billboard hits of many recordings that had been nearly shelved by everyone else. A few of these hits include “Earth Angel” by The Penguins and “Dream Girl” by Jessie Belvin.

Dolphin’s of Hollywood, located in the South Central/Watts area of Los Angeles, on East Vernon Ave, near the corner of Central Ave., was given this name because Mr. John Dolphin initially wanted to open his store in Hollywood. However, Blacks were not allowed to own and operate businesses in Hollywood in the 1940s. So, John Dolphin thought up the next best thing, he would call his South Central store Dolphin’s of Hollywood. This was how he brought Hollywood to the hood and this record shop would soon become the most famous record shop in America, but also, its radio show on KRKD became the most popular black radio show in America. In fact, recording artists from all over would

appear at the store and perform live-on-air interviews, while greeting and signing autographs for the customers. These well-known artists included Billie Holiday, Lionel Hampton, Sarah Vaughan, Little Richard, James Brown “the Godfather of Soul”, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Quincy Jones, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Ike and Tina Turner, Fifth Dimension, Solomon Burke just to name a few. Open 24 hours a day, even on Sundays, customers could come at all hours of the day and capitalize on the “Buy One Get One Free” special, while hundreds would dance the Saturday nights away in front of the store, to the deejay’s tunes.

John Dolphin not only brought Hollywood to the hood, but he also brought fame to many underserved, talented, black artists whom had been hidden behind the facade of Crossover music. This Crossover Music concept was essentially taking music originally recorded by African Americans and having white artists re-record it, as during this time, most black music was considered taboo and hard to sell to the masses. So John, hiring one of the most famous white deejay of the time, DJ Dick “Huggy Boy” Hugg, drew white teenagers and young adults to Dolphin’s of Hollywood in ever increasing numbers. And these crowds would buy black music, learning the lyrics and tunes, and share them with their friends; bringing fame to musicians whose music had previously been stolen from them without regard.

In 1950, John Dolphin mounted his own label, Recorded In Hollywood, with the motto: “We’ll record you today and have you a hit tonight,” inaugurated by jazz pianist Erroll Garner’s “Lotus Blue.” The imprint scored its first major hit with its sophomore release by R&B singer Percy Mayfield. The song was called “Two Years of Torture” and was followed by the “Dream Girl” record of Jesse Belvin and the “Jacquet Blows the Blues” record of tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. In mid-1951, Dolphin cut a licensing deal with King Records. This resulted in nearly two-dozen Recorded in Hollywood recordings earning national release on King’s Federal imprint. In 1953, John Dolphin introduced Little Caesar’s “The River”, a record later banned for fear its emotional intensity might have led listeners to contemplate suicide. So in 1954, Lovin’ John sold Recorded in Hollywood and its catalog to Decca, soon after founding a new label: Lucky Records. This new venture proved short-lived, releasing only nine singles, including efforts from the Hollywood Flames, Joe Houston, and Jimmy Wright.

Later on, a pair of additional labels, Money and Cash, soon took Lucky’s place. Money was the more successful of the two, notching local smashes including Ernie Freeman’s “Jivin’ Around,” Johnny Fuller’s “Mean Old World,” and Don Julian & the Meadowlarks’ “The Jerk”, which sold about 2 million records and topped the billboard Pop and R&B charts at #1 in the U.S. and also went on to become a #1 hit in Great Britain.

Now, the commercial impact of most of the records released under Mr. Dolphin’s labels had been nearly impossible to gauge, as he would bypass distributors, delivering boxes of records directly to the front doors of rival retailers. The philosophy he established with his artist was that they should never sell their publishing rights, for the one who owns an artist’s publishing rights owns the artist. When an artist gives up their publishing rights in exchange for a cash advance, the result is that the music publisher then has the ability to exploit an artist’s music however they chose, in exchange for money, which the artist will see little or none of. So this is why John was so adamant about his artists retaining their rights. He felt that black artists had been exploited long enough, so this was his attempt to stop the cycle in its tracks.

After an influential ten years in the music business, on February 2, 1958, Percy Ivy, a disgruntled songwriter whom had recorded with John, went to John Dolphin’s Hollywood office to demand money for his un-noteworthy recordings. John made these recordings as a favor to Ivy but had no intention of ever using any of them. His generosity should have been enough for Percy and no money should have been owed. However, Ivy thought otherwise. With a gun in his pocket and demands on his mind, Percy shot John Dolphin dead behind the desk of his office. Two young people, future session drummer Sandy Nelson and later-day Beach Boy, Bruce Johnston; both of whom traveled to South Central in the hopes of enticing John with their songs, witnessed the murder. This was a devastating day for all those who would come to know and later remember Lovin’ John. After the untimely death of Mr. Dolphin, Dolphin’s of Hollywood was run by Dolphin’s assistant, Rudy Ray Moore, also known as Dolemite, along with John’s widow, Ruth Dolphin. Ruth would later reactivate Money Records, which served as a springboard for the great soul chanteuse Bettye Swann and her 1967 smash hit single, “Make Me Yours” which became a #1 Billboard hit for Money Record."

Roy Hawkins - Bad Luck And Forgotten Thrills

 "If ever an artist had a right to claim the blues, it was Roy Hawkins. Born in Texas, he migrated to California in the late '30s, and by the mid-'40s the piano playing Hawkins was a fixture on the West Coast jazz and R&B scene. A car accident left him with a paralyzed arm, however, ending his piano career, but he was a subtle songwriter and singer, and his autobiographical "Why Do Everything Happen to Me" was a high-charting R&B hit in 1950.

The following year another Hawkins original, "The Thrill Is Gone," attracted some attention, but not as much as B.B. King's cover version would get some 20 years later in 1970. Even then Hawkins continued to be snake bit, since royalties from King's hit version of "The Thrill Is Gone" were mistakenly assigned to a pair of writers who had written a completely different song with the same title.

By the mid-'50s, Hawkins was essentially a forgotten man as far as the music business was concerned, and although he recorded sporadically through 1961, he never managed anything beyond regional success. Even the year of his death is up for debate, but is believed to have been in 1973.

His complete obscurity is baffling, really, since his recorded work was always consistent, even compelling and poetic. Bad Luck Is Falling: The Modern, RPM and Kent Recordings, Vol. 2 follows Ace Records' first volume of Hawkins' collected work, 2000s The Thrill Is Gone, and collects what's left of his tracks for the various Bihari Brothers imprints (Modern, RPM and Kent) between 1949 and 1961, as well as four tracks from his 1948 session for Down Town Records, the masters of which were in turn leased to Modern. An alternate take of "The Thrill Is Gone" from 1951 is here (the released single version is on The Thrill Is Gone), and Hawkins gives the song a much more ominous and less-resigned feel than King's big-band version.

 Other highlights include a fine cover of Percy Mayfield's "What a Fool I Was," a lovely version of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson's "September Song," a rendition of Richard M. Jones' oft-covered "Trouble in Mind," and a pair of solid originals, the ragged, New Orleans-styled "Welcome Home" and the eerie, creeping urban blues sound of Hawkins' 1948 version of "Strange Land" (a 1961 remake of the song is also included here). All good stuff, although listeners may want to check out the first volume, The Thrill Is Gone, first.

That Hawkins continues to be so little-known is inexcusable, and that there is only one known photograph of him seems impossible to believe. He is well due for rediscovery, but if Hawkins' personal history is any guide, something is bound to go wrong, so pick up these two volumes from Ace before they inexplicably go up in smoke.