In March 1947, pianist and singer Cecil Grant heard Roy Brown sing Good Rockin' Tonight during a break at a small club in New Orleans. He was so taken with the song, he called the owners of De Luxe Records and had Brown sing the song over the phone. Brown was quickly signed with the label and recorded the song at J&M Studio with producer Cosimo Matassa.
When it was released, Good Rockin' Tonight became an overnight sensation and a year later, a national hit. It became Brown's career-defining song and is often cited as one of the first of the R&B genre. Brown also brought elements from gospel to his music (Ray Charles was not the only musician to do this), especially his "crying" style of singing. He enjoyed a run of success with further hits like Rockin' At Midnight and Miss Fanny Brown.
You can hear the song and the B side, Lollipop Mama, recorded at the same session (the B side track is so, so lewd, it would make your grannie blush) and 106 other great New Orleans-style tracks on the ambitious 4-CD box set Getting' Funky: The Birth Of New Orleans R&B (Proper Records, UK), which was released in 2006. The package includes an illustrated 50-page booklet with background on the genre's rise and information on each of the featured artists and bands. I did not catch this set when it came out and am grateful to Mr Don of Dasa Book Café for a copy of this compilation.
If you're expecting a parade of greatest post-WWII hits from New Orleans like Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill, you are going to be disappointed. You can find those tracks easily enough elsewhere. The tracks cover the period 1941 to 1950.
Instead, the tracks on the four CDs feature key players in the development of New Orleans' R&B. CD 1: Piano Power features innovative piano players like Champion Jack Dupree, Professor Longhair (Roy Byrd) and the unknown Archibald. The piano has always been an important instrument in New Orleans music, and pianists were often categorised as either "Professor" (could play a wide repertoire, read music and often performed in the boudoirs of Storyville, the infamous red-light district) or "Barrelhouse" (played in speakeasies and juke joints in a rough and ready boogie-woogie style). On this CD, we have the core boogie-woogie of Champion Jack Dupree (but sadly only three tracks) and the mambo-boogie of the incomparable Professor Longhair (all of his early recordings). But the real find here is the seven tracks by Archibald, one of the last of the barrelhouse pianists, who had just one hit, Stack-A-Lee, and then faded into relative obscurity.
CD2: The Pioneers features the early stars of the nascent R&B scene: trumpeter and bandleader Dave Bartholomew, bandleader Paul Gayten and Smiley Lewis. I like this CD because it shows the wide range of styles being played during the 40s. There is no jump jive or jump blues (such as Louis Jordan). Instead, you get musicians breaking out of swing music to embrace all kinds of influences. You can hear Basie's swing, second-line rhythms (from New Orleans' funerals and the root of New Orlean's rhythms) and blues in the songs of Paul Gayten.
CD3: The Hitmakers features the early work of cross-over artists Fats Domino, Larry Darnell and Roy Brown. Like CD2, this set shows some elements that would coalesce into rock'n'roll, doo-wop and soul in the 1950s. Look out for Fats Domino's weirdly wonderful Hey La Bas Boogie, sung in French, and Careless Love, as well as Darnell's I'll Get Along Somehow, which links the 1930s swing era with R&B.
Finally, CD4: Hip Shakin' Mamas, Crooners And Shouters. Many of the artists and tracks on this mix-up of styles and singers will be unknown to most music fans but there are some fine singers and bands here. Johnson Brothers Combo, Chubby Newsome, George Miller, Joe August, Tommy Ridgely and Jewel King are just some of the forgotten names of the R&B scene in the city listed here. Chubby Newsome and Jewel King are real finds with standout tracks like the quirky 3x7+21 and fast-paced boogie-woogie I'll Get By. Swing, Caribbean and Latin, boogie-woogie, blues and jump blues all get thrown into a typical New Orlean's sonic gumbo. Great stuff.
One man, not a musician, casts his shadow over all the tracks on display here: Cosimo Matassa, producer and owner of J&M Studios. He developed a trademark "New Orleans sound" that featured, according to the compilation liner notes, "strong drums, heavy bass, light piano, heavy guitar and light horn sound and a strong vocal lead". The Matassa sound further developed with heavier basslines (using saxes and guitars), giving many of the R&B hits from the period a distinctive sound (different from the R&B styles of Chicago and the West Coast).
Cosimo Matassa's influence continues to the present day. One of my old schoolmates, the pianist and accordion player Al Dunn, who performs with The Boomtown Rats, has a side project with a London-based band called Cosimo Matassa. The band plays classic New Orleans R&B -- well worth checking out on YouTube.
This is a fascinating collection of New Orleans' R&B hits and is highly recommended for fans of music from The Big Easy. If you want to know where one of the key elements of rock'n'roll comes from, this is a box set for you. Although released in 2006, you can find used copies on the internet.
John Clewley can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com.
