Nashville Jumps:
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"Nashville Jumps" is described in the schedule on the WRVU website as a "jump blues" show. This is a pretty insufficient description, but I do like to think of jump blues as the core of the show, with related genres surrounding it. What exactly is jump blues? First, let me say that when you are describing a popular music genre that isn't rigidly circumscribed by formal requirements (and I don't know that any really are), the best you can shoot for is not to simplify the facts too much. With that in mind, let's say that jump blues developed out of the African American swing music of the 30s and early 40s. I play recordings by circa-1940 big bands like Lucky Millinder's, Erskine Hawkins's, Jay McShann's, Lionel Hampton's and Count Basie's. Blues, particularly the more uptempo sorts like that of pre-Muddy Waters Chicago or Texas, obviously is also in the lineage, as are the rhythmic exuberance of boogie woogie and the shouting power of gospel music. Jump blues lyrics, and sometimes the vocal delivery, drew a lot from the playful jive songs of acts like the Cats and the Fiddle and Slim Gaillard. (The Nat King Cole Trio made some wonderful jivey little records in their early days.) Cab Calloway and Fats Waller, both immensely influential in black music, are among other artists I play who go back before jump blues days but are important in the lineage.
Of course, all these genres had already influenced each other--it's impossible to sort everything out neatly and decide what songs were early jump blues and which were merely predecessors. There is at least one key factor we can identify in the passage from swing to jump blues, though. Economic concerns in the late 30s and early 40s began to make larger bands for the most part unprofitable (this might seem counterintuitive, considering the Depression was ending, but I've seen convincing explanations), and many broke up in favor of smaller combos with just a couple of horns or so. To make up for the loss of sonic quantity, these bands relied more heavily on rough saxophone honking and shouted vocals to make themselves heard and appreciated at dances. The slimmed-down, more aggressive sound began to set a new tone for African American popular music. The version of "Flying Home" that Lionel Hampton recorded with Illinois Jacquet featured on tenor sax is sometimes cited as a beginning for jump blues or, in a broader view, for R&B; Hampton's group was a big band but the flamboyance of Jacquet's soloing did serve as an example for the smaller bands.
There are three artists whom I play every week on my show--Louis Jordan, who has more right than anyone else to be called the father of jump blues; Wynonie Harris, the greatest of all blues shouters (he beats even Joe Turner for me, though Turner was a lot more lovable and had more staying power); and Roy Brown, who wrote the classic "Good Rockin' Tonight" and turned his versatile voice both to smoldering slow blues and incredibly kinetic uptempo numbers. Both Harris and Brown were on King Records (or the subsidiary Deluxe), and some of their records in the early 50s just knock your socks off with their sharp, clear recording quality and virtuosic instrumentation. Roy Milton, Joe Liggins, Jimmy Liggins, Johnny Otis and Tiny Bradshaw had some of the greatest jump bands. Buddy Johnson kept his big band through the 40s and into the 50s but fits all right into the jump blues bag; his sister Ella Johnson sang many of his best songs in a sweet, unassuming voice. Big Joe Turner, whose career stretched from the 30s to the 70s and who sang pretty much the same way the whole time no matter what the genre was called, was a dominating presence. Amos Milburn was responsible for what seems to me a classic jump blues moment when he covered a song by the Will Bradley Trio called "Down the Road Apiece," pushing boogie woogie piano forward. Bull Moose Jackson recorded both ballads and rocking double entendre numbers--he made the first version of "Big Ten Inch Record," covered much later by Aerosmith. Big Mama Thornton, who recorded the original version of "Hound Dog," and Big Maybelle were two of the greatest female vocalists. Helen Humes, whose jump records are neglected by many people who admire her more "legit" jazz singing, nevertheless could lay a jump tune down as well as anyone--despite, or because of, the natural sweetness of her voice.
Many of the greatest female artists of the time were piano players. Camille Howard and Hadda Brooks recorded both vocals and instrumental boogies, and Brooks had what I consider one of the sexiest voices ever. Julia Lee, older than many of her contemporaries and something of a throwback to the pre-swing era, played regularly at a Kansas City bar and her records convey some of that atmosphere, with fairly simple instrumentation and lots of double-entendre lyrics. The unique Nellie Lutcher, who was perhaps as much pop as either jump or R&B, sang and played piano like an excited little girl playing a favorite game and made records that always make me smile. Big Jay McNeely was one of the greatest of the many saxophonists who honked and squalled wildly, sometimes to the point of amusicality--it's been said that this aggressive style appealed originally to black youth who felt dissatisfied with their prospects in postwar America. Jesse Stone, whose main significance to history is his staff work at Atlantic Records, made some great, funny records in the jump era. This list of artists barely scratches the surface of the jump blues era, and many superb records were made by extremely obscure people.
Now, if you can identify at what point jump blues turned into rhythm and blues, you are doing far better than I. The shortest description I like to use for "Nashville Jumps" is "jump blues and classic R&B." By this I mean R&B of the 40s and 50s, with occasional dips into the early 60s. The phrase "rhythm and blues" became significant when Jerry Wexler, a Billboard writer who later was one of the principals of Atlantic Records, renamed the magazine's "race music" chart with that phrase. It was intended as a broad umbrella term for African American popular music, though I don't think it was commonly used for pop singers such as Lena Horne or Billy Eckstine, who were popular with all audiences.
A pretty well-written article that I've read on jump blues suggests that it became R&B when it "dropped much of the jazz and boogie woogie so prominent in jump blues."* I guess this is true. By 1953 or so, there was less of an improvisational feel in saxophone solos, and a boogie woogie beat risked sounding slightly old hat. Some of the music sounded grittier and some sounded smoother, but either way it diverged from jump blues. However, I think you are splitting hairs--perhaps illusory hairs--if you try to label, say, an early 50s recording by Ruth Brown as either "jump blues" or "R&B." I can list some artists whom I play frequently that "feel" more R&B than jump blues to me, though: Brown, Wynona Carr, Big Joe Houston (another honking saxophonist, though much less nimble and more repetitive than McNeely), the Five Royales, Ike Turner and his various musical associates, the early Ray Charles, Pee Wee Crayton, Rosco Gordon, Guitar Slim, Etta James, Little Willie John, the Larks, Smiley Lewis, Little Esther, Percy Mayfield, Jimmy McCracklin, Charles Brown (who goes way back into the jump era but rarely really "jumped"; he was the foremost master of low-key cocktail piano blues), Junior Parker, Lula Reed, Sonny Thompson, Hal Singer, Earl Bostic, King Curtis, and the Treniers (whose brassiness and showmanship served them well in the rock and roll era, though their rock and roll was a Vegas-style version drenched with lampoon, not unlike Louis Prima's).
More evident, though, is the shift to rock and roll that began in the mid-50s. The term "rock and roll" had been around for many years, signifying uninhibited dancing, exciting, driving music, or sex. Many records by black artists in the 40s feature the phrase almost as a mantra. Alan Freed, the great, although corrupt, white DJ who introduced many white teenagers to black music, played a big part in the beginnings of "rock and roll" as a genre term for hot, exciting blues-based music. I believe it is fair to say that rock and roll was originally almost entirely black in conception and performance--the occasional white artist playing it in the early days was an anomaly. This is only one view, though. A record collector I know maintains that rock and roll per se was a result of the conscious attempt by western swing bandleader Bill Haley and his producer to adapt R&B to Haleys' band's own strengths and produce a new sound. The combination of R&B with western swing and hillbilly boogie certainly did lead to new currents in rock and roll, with Elvis Presley soon leading the way. But at first, rock and roll was black.
Black rock and roll did develop differences from R&B, however. The most significant is the target audience. R&B had always been for anybody who liked to have a good time--lyrics described an adult world with all its complications, other than an occasional brat in a novelty song or a Lolita who would get the singer tossed in jail. As R&B became more popular with white AND black teenagers, though, and its market reflected that change, the lyrics started to be either overtly or implicitly about the younger set, about rather bland yearnings or heartbreak, and about innocent good times and the (purported) supremacy and invincibility of rock and roll itself. The later songs of Roy Brown, one of the greatest jump blues shouters ever, are a good example. He went from the menace of "Black Diamond" ("I was swingin' my razor/His throat got in the way!") to the banality of "Rinky Dinky Doo", and sounds woefully out of place in many of the teen-oriented records he made. In general, also, the music is simplified further; the rhythms swing less and push more. I don't mean to say that the slide into rock and roll was a disaster, however. Vocal groups, in particular, really hit new heights during this time. The Coasters made wonderful, funny records with unusually sharp lyrics, thanks to Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. The Midnighters, with Hank Ballard singing lead, made incredibly exciting records. A little earlier on, the Dominoes made what I like to say is the greatest record of the 20th century, "Sixty Minute Man"; despite its wry mature lyrics it sounds like a rock and roll record to me. (Its sequel, "Can't Do Sixty No More," is almost as good!) New Orleans artists made many wonderful little rock and roll records with strange, impenetrable lyrics and an infectious beat. And Little Richard, in the company of extremely talented session men, made wonderful records out of songs that are almost absurdly minimalist.
In the late 50s and early 60s, what we now know as soul music was taking shape. I play some records that definitely can be called soul music--songs by the Five Royales and Ray Charles, for example. These songs combine R&B with the fervor and vocal style of gospel. Also, songs like Andre Williams's "Bacon Fat" have a funkiness that looks toward the future. However, I think they retain a strong family relationship to earlier R&B, the jocular, good-time music made for dancing and good times. I draw the line at more full-blown soul records like those of Sam Cooke (of course, he was as much pop as soul in many ways) and Solomon Burke. These are wonderful records but they sound to me very different from those of the first R&B era, and I leave them for other DJs to play. I've set myself a rather arbitrary cutoff date for what gets on the show: the end of 1963. This comes just before the arrival of the Beatles in America and the beginning of their influence on all kinds of music, though really the drawing of the line at soul music is more significant. I don't refuse any request for a post-1963 song out of hand, though!
You may notice what seem like significant omissions in this essay so far. I haven't mentioned many blues greats like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson or LIttle Walter. While I love these artists, I very rarely play them. For one thing, it is fairly easy to hear them on other radio shows, and most people who enjoy blues know about them already. For another thing, they seem to me not to fit very well into the show. While they made blues in an urban setting, their style is extremely close to its rural antecedents, and relies more on guitar and harmonica than on horns. I tend to play more urban sounds, saxophone-heavy and swinging. There are artists recognized as part of what we might call the "blues mainstream" whom I do play--Memphis Slim is a good example. He's recorded with many, many different kinds of instrumentation, and I love quite a few of the records he made with full bands including horns. I play Howlin' Wolf once in a blue moon, generally picking a song from his early days at Sun Records, when Willie Johnson's smoking guitar provided a jazzy edge that isn't quite there in his later records (which are still great). But there are many blues musicians I adore whom I don't play at all. That I don't play an artist doesn't mean I don't like him or her.
Conversely, I've also omitted so far the jazz that I do play. Early jump blues is sometimes almost indistinguishable from small group jazz, and jazz continued to influence jump and R&B throughout the 40s and 50s (and vice versa). Even cerebrally-based jazz like bebop was played by many of the same musicians who played R&B. John Coltrane is only one of many, many jazz icons who spent years playing as sidemen on R&B records. I also just happen to enjoy a lot of "real" jazz from the 40s and 50s, and I think it adds a little variety to the show. I play late swing, bebop, hard bop, soul jazz, mainstream; the only sub-genre I definitely leave out is the revived Dixieland jazz that arose, I think, in the late 40s. Some of the instrumentalists I play most often are Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Art Pepper (probably the white man I play most often, after Johnny Otis, who unilaterally declared himself black--I do play Louis Prima sometimes as well), Sonny Rollins, Clifford Brown, Wardell Gray, Bud Powell and Frank Morgan (who recorded very little in the era I draw from, but did do a version of Gillespie's "The Champ" that for reasons I can't explain is my favorite jazz recording). I also love to play great vocalists like Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington (who straddles just about all genres--her filthy "Long John Blues" always seems to get a response when I play it), Ella Fitzgerald, King Pleasure and Betty Roche. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross appear on the show particularly often.
By now you've learned a lot about what kinds of music I play on "Nashville Jumps," and I hope it's made you want to listen to the show. But be ready for occasional surprises. I like playing requests that don't seem too far out of left field, though I usually don't have them available and have to wait till the next show, or later, to get them on the air. For example, one listener loves the instrumental "Bumble Boogie" by B. Bumble and the Stingers. It's pretty marginal as R&B and was recorded rather late, in 1961, but it's fun, and Los Angeles session aces Ernie Freeman and Earl Palmer played on it. It would be silly to exclude it from the show because of either snobbery or taxonomic rigidity. A couple of weeks ago, a listener called me and suggested I play the Rolling Stones' "2120 South Michigan Avenue," an instrumental that I believe is named for the address of the Chess Records offices in Chicago. The listener realized I might think the request a bit strange at first, but said he thought it would fit in great--and I listened to it, and it does, so I'm playing it on my next show.
I also like to throw in smoother sounds now and then--I play Nat King Cole's beautiful "'Tis Autumn" on the first show of every fall--or something unusually old, like the bizarre "New Call of the Freaks" by Luis Russell, with its chorus of "Stick out your can, here comes the garbage man." (That chorus reappears, slightly modified, over 40 years later in "Garbageman" by the punk band the Cramps.) Finally, let me mention that I play some artists who don't really seem, stylistically, to fit anywhere on the timeline laid out above. One of them is Cecil Gant, a Nashville native who got famous when he recorded a plaintive ballad called "I Wonder" in the mid-40s, which became a hit and was covered endlessly. He played piano and sang drily witty lyrics in a uniquely amiable voice; he recorded both solo and with a band, and many of his recordings were improvised at the studio piano between drinks. I guess he had predecessors, but to me he doesn't really sound like anyone but himself. He died quite young from all that drinking, but before that he wrote a little song called "Nashville Jumps" from which I borrowed my show's name even before I found it on CD and was able to hear it. My favorite line in it is "Used to be young and handsome/Ain't no money there/Search me all over, you'll find a nickel or dime somewhere."
I think you'll have a great time and learn about some music you've never heard before if you listen to "Nashville Jumps." I don't chatter much about the songs--I play five at a time, identify them, toss in a pinch of biography or trivia, then go on to the next five--but the musicians themselves will acquaint you with some of the most exciting American music ever made!
If you want to ask me any questions, or make a comment, or suggest a song to play on the next show, please feel free to write me email at:
nashvillejumps@aol.com
I'd love to hear from you. Sometime in the near future I want to put a list of recommended CD's on this website, and also make some links to other interesting sites. Many thanks to Pirate Jenny for maintaining the site for me--I wouldn't have a clue, myself.
*Richie Unterberger and Cub Koda, "Jump Blues," in AMG All Music Guide to the Blues (2nd ed., 1999), p. 591.