Buck Washington

Part of the famous team of Buck & Bubbles.

Born Ford Lee “Buck” Washington (10/6/03 – 1/31/55)

Buck Washington (a fine pianist and occasional singer) worked with singer-dancer John W. Sublett (Bubbles) for decades. Both Buck and Bubbles were orphans and they first started teaming up as teenagers around 1917, performing in theaters and vaudeville as a team. They toured Europe several times in the 1930′s and appeared in a few films (including Cabin In The Sky and A Song Is Born). Washington recorded on piano with Louis Armstrong (including a trumpet-piano duet version of “Dear Old Southland” in 1930), Bessie Smith in 1933 (her final session) and Coleman Hawkins (1934 in Europe). Buck & Bubbles team also recorded a few numbers as duets in 1933 and 1936 and four songs with a band in 1936. The team finally broke up in 1953, Buck Washington worked for a little while with Jonah Jones as they accompanied comedian Timmie Rogers, and he passed away a couple years later at the age of 51.

SAVE THE ROACH FOR ME

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VARSITY SHOW (1937)

(with John Bubbles)

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Floyd Cramer

Floyd Cramer (October 27, 1933 – December 31, 1997) was an American Hall of Fame pianist who was one of the architects of the “Nashville Sound.” He popularized the ‘slip note’ piano style where one note slides effortlessly into the next. This was a major departure from the percussive piano style which was popular in the late 1950s.

Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Cramer grew up in the small town of Huttig, Arkansas, teaching himself to play the piano. After finishing high school, he returned to Shreveport, where he worked as a pianist for the Louisiana Hayride radio show. After Cramer relocated permanently to Nashville, Allen “Puddler” Harris, a native of Franklin Parish in northeastern Louisiana, replaced him as the pianist for the Hayride.

In 1953, Floyd Cramer entered the recording studio and cut his first single, “Dancin’ Diane”, backed with “Little Brown Jug”, for the local Abbott label. He then toured with an emerging talent who would later figure significantly in his career, Elvis Presley.

Floyd Cramer

Cramer moved to Nashville in 1955 where the use of piano accompanists in country music was growing in popularity. By the next year he was, in his words “in day and night doing sessions.”  Before long, he was one of the busiest studio musicians in the industry, playing piano for stars such as Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, The Browns, Jim Reeves, Eddy Arnold, Roy Orbison, Don Gibson, and the Everly Brothers, among others. It was Cramer’s piano playing, for instance, on Presley’s first national hit, “Heartbreak Hotel.” However, Cramer remained strictly a session player, a virtual unknown to anyone outside the music industry.

Cramer had released records under his own name since the early 1950s, and became well known following the release of “Last Date”, a 45 rpm single in 1960.  The instrumental piece exhibited a relatively new concept for piano playing known as the “slip note” style. The record went to Number two on the Billboard Hot 100 pop music chart, and sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

In 1961 Cramer had a hit with “On the Rebound,” which went to Number three, and number one the UK chart. (“On the Rebound” was later featured during the opening credits of the 2009 Oscar-nominated film An Education, which was set in 1961 England). That same year Cramer also hit with “San Antonio Rose” (Number eight).

By the mid-1960s, Cramer had become a respected performer, making numerous record albums and touring with guitar maestro Chet Atkins and saxophonist Boots Randolph; also performing with them as a member of the Million Dollar Band.

Boots Randolph, Floyd Cramer, and Chet Atkins

Over the years, Cramer continued to balance session work with his own albums. Many of these featured standards or popular hits of the era and from 1965 to 1974 he annually recorded a disc of the year’s biggest hits prefaced “Class of . . .” Other long-players included I Remember Hank Williams (1962), Floyd Cramer Plays the Monkees (1967), Looking For Mr Goodbar (1968) and Sounds of Sunday (1971). In 1977 Floyd Cramer and the Keyboard Kick Band, was released on which he played eight different keyboard instruments.

Floyd Cramer died of lung cancer in 1997 at the age of 64 and was interred in the Spring Hill Cemetery in the Nashville suburb of Madison, Tennessee.

His grandson, Jason Coleman, is carrying on his grandfather’s legacy with a tribute power point presentation, The Legacy of Floyd Cramer, as he shares the piano arrangements and history of decades of American music while on tour throughout the country.

Floyd Cramer's final resting place at Spring Hill Cemetrey in Nashville, TN

In 2003, Floyd Cramer was inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2008, Floyd Cramer was posthumously inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee offers the “Floyd Cramer Competitive Scholarship.”

Floyd Cramer on going solo and Elvis Presley:

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Trying to launch myself on a solo career, after being Elvis Presley’s pianist for so long, placed me in an unenviable position. Some people thought I was trying to cash in. If I had wanted to cash in on my association with Elvis, I would have done it five years ago.

LAST DATE

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ALL KEYED UP

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ON THE REBOUND/SAN ANTONIO ROSE/COUNTRY GENTLEMEN/COTTON FIELDS/FREIGHT TRAIN

(With Chet Atkins)

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(I’M NOT YOUR) STEPPIN’ STONE

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Mississippi Fred McDowell

Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 – July 3, 1972) known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was a blues singer and guitar player in the North Mississippi style.

McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee, near Memphis. His parents, who were farmers, died when McDowell was a youth. He started playing guitar at the age of 14 and played at dances around Rossville. Wanting a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926 where he worked in a number of jobs and played music for tips. He settled in Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1940 or 1941, and worked steadily as a farmer, continuing to perform music at dances and picnics. Initially he played slide guitar using a pocket knife and then a slide made from a beef rib bone, later switching to a glass slide for its clearer sound. He played with the slide on his ring finger.

Mississippi Fred McDowell

While commonly lumped together with Delta Blues singers, McDowell actually may be considered the first of the bluesmen from the ‘North Mississippi’ region – parallel to, but somewhat east of the Delta region – to achieve widespread recognition for his work. A version of the state’s signature musical form somewhat closer in structure to its African roots (often eschewing the chord change for the hypnotic effect of the droning, single chord vamp), the North Mississippi style (or at least its aesthetic) may be heard to have been carried on in the music of such figures as Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside, while serving as the original impetus behind creation of the Fat Possum record label out of Oxford, Mississippi.

The 1950s brought a rising interest in blues music and folk music in the United States and McDowell was brought to wider public attention, beginning when he was discovered and recorded in 1959 by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. McDowell’s records were popular, and he performed often at festivals and clubs. McDowell continued to perform blues in the North Mississippi blues style much as he had for decades, but he sometimes performed on electric guitar rather than acoustic guitar.

Dick Waterman and Bonnie Raitt on hand for the unveiling of a historic marker for Fred McDowell along the Mississippi Blues Trail in Como, Mississippi.

While he famously declared “I do not play no rock and roll,” McDowell was not averse to associating with many younger rock musicians: He coached Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar technique, and was reportedly flattered by The Rolling Stones’ rather straightforward, authentic version of his “You Gotta Move” on their 1971 Sticky Fingers album.

McDowell’s 1969 album I Do Not Play No Rock ‘N’ Roll was his first featuring electric guitar. It features parts of an interview in which he discusses the origins of the blues and the nature of love. (This interview was sampled and mixed into a song, also titled “I Do Not Play No Rock ‘N’ Roll” by Dangerman in 1999.) McDowell’s final album, Live in New York (Oblivion Records), was a concert performance from November 1971 at the Village Gaslight (aka The Gaslight Cafe), Greenwich Village, New York.

McDowell died of cancer in 1972, aged 68, and was buried at Hammond Hill Baptist Church, between Como and Senatobia, Mississippi. On August 6, 1993 a memorial was placed on his grave site by the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. The ceremony was presided over by Dick Waterman, and the memorial with McDowell’s portrait upon it was paid for by Bonnie Raitt. The memorial stone was a replacement for an inaccurate and damaged marker (McDowell’s name was misspelled) and the original stone was subsequently donated by McDowell’s family to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

YOU GOTTA MOVE

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SHAKE ‘EM ON DOWN

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BABY PLEASE DON’T GO

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GOIN’ DOWN TO THE RIVER

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Eddie Lang

Eddie Lang (October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American jazz guitarist, regarded as Father of Jazz Guitar. He played a Gibson L-4 and L-5 guitar, providing great influence for many guitarists, including Django Reinhardt.

Lang was born Salvatore Massaro, the son of an Italian-American instrument maker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At first, he took violin lessons for 11 years. In school he became friends with Joe Venuti, with whom he would work for much of his career. He was playing professionally by about 1918, playing violin, banjo, and guitar. He worked with various bands in the USA’s north-east, worked in London (late 1924 to early 1925), then settled in New York City.

Eddie Lang

Eddie Lang was the first important jazz guitarist. He was effectively able to integrate the guitar into 1920s jazz recordings. He played with the bands of Joe Venuti, Adrian Rollini, Roger Wolfe Kahn and Jean Goldkette in addition to doing a large amount of freelance radio and recording work.

On February 4, 1927 Eddie Lang featured in the recording of “Singin’ the Blues” by Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke on cornet. Lang trades guitar licks while Beiderbecke solos on cornet in a memorable landmark jazz recording of the 1920s.

In 1929 he joined Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, and can be seen and heard in the movie The King of Jazz.

Eddie Lang and Bing Crosby

In 1930, Eddie Lang played guitar on the original recording of the jazz and pop standard “Georgia On My Mind”, recorded with Hoagy Carmichael and His Orchestra. Joe Venuti and Bix Beiderbecke also played on this recording.

When Bing Crosby left Whiteman, Lang went with Bing as his accompanist and can be seen with him in the 1932 movie Big Broadcast. Lang also played under the pseudonym Blind Willie Dunn on a number of blues records with Lonnie Johnson.

Lang died from a sudden hemorrhage following a tonsillectomy in New York City in 1933 at the age of thirty.

Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti

Eddie Lang’s compositions, based on the Red Hot Jazz database, included

• “Wild Cat” with Joe Venuti
• “Perfect” with Frank Signorelli
• “April Kisses” (1927),
• “Sunshine”
• “Melody Man’s Dream”
• “Goin’ Places”
• “Black and Blue Bottom”
• “Bull Frog Moan”
• “Rainbow Dreams”
• “Feelin’ My Way”
• “Eddie’s Twister”
• “Really Blue”
• “Penn Beach Blues”
• “Wild Dog”, “Pretty Trix”
• “A Mug of Ale”
• “Apple Blossoms”
• “Beating the Dog”
• “To To Blues”
• “Running Ragged”
• “Kicking the Cat”
• “Cheese and Crackers”
• “Doin’ Things”
• “Blue Guitars”
• “Guitar Blues” with Lonnie Johnson
• “Hot Fingers”
• “Have to Change Keys to Play These Blues”
• “A Handful of Riffs”
• “Blue Room”
• “Deep Minor Rhythm Stomp”
• “Two-Tone Stomp”
• “Midnight Call Blues”
• “Four String Joe”
• “Goin’ Home”
• “Pickin’ My Way” (1932) with Carl Kress

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Frankie Trumbauer, Eddie Lang, Bix Beiderbecke

Jazz guitarist George Van Eps assessed the legacy of Eddie Lang: “It’s very fair to call Eddie Lang the father of jazz guitar”. Barney Kessel noted that “Eddie Lang first elevated the guitar and made it artistic in jazz.” Les Paul acknowledged that “Eddie Lang was the first and had a very modern technique.”

In 1977, Lang’s recording of “Singin’ the Blues” with Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra featuring Bix Beiderbecke on cornet was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

In 1986, Lang was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

PICKIN’ MY WAY

(With Carl Kress)

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A MUG OF ALE

(With Joe Venuti)

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BLUE BLOOD BLUES

(Featuring Eddie Lang as Blind Willie Dunn with Lonnie Johnson)

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EDDIE’S TWISTER

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Curtis Gordon

Curtis Gordon (Jul. 27, 1928 – May 2, 2004) was an American rockabilly singer.

Gordon was heavily influenced by Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills, and Jimmie Rodgers as a child. He won a radio talent show as a teen and left high school to be the lead singer of his own band, which included fiddle player Jimmy Bryant. His parents demanded that he return to school and give up the band; he did so, though he moonlighted with a band called Pee Wee Mills & the Twilight Cowboys, who operated out of Gulfport, Mississippi. He formed a new Western swing band of his own at age 21 and began touring the Southeast United States.

Gordon served in the Army briefly during the Korean War; while there he met Roger Miller, whom he later helped get signed.

Curtis Gordon and the Circle A Wranglers

In June 1952, an employee of RCA Victor heard Gordon playing in a contest in Atlanta and told executive Steve Sholes about him. Gordon signed with RCA soon after and began recording for the label in the fall. He appeared on the Grand Ole Opry and supported Ernest Tubb, Elvis Presley, and Hank Snow on tour. His records sold modestly, though they never charted; he remained on RCA for two years, and when his contract expired he was snapped up by Mercury Records. Gordon’s style changed while on Mercury, for a number of possible reasons. The label let him record much of his own material, he worked extensively with producer Pappy Daily, and the nascent rock & roll movement had changed tastes. His recordings of 1956-57 are a mix of Western swing, rock and roll, and straight country music.

He played regularly in Mobile, Alabama and toured the South sporadically. He recorded with Dollie Records at the end of the 1950s, his last major contract; he continued performing locally for some time after that. He ran a dance club in Georgia in the 1970s, and returned to rockabilly performing in the 1980s as the Europeans revived it.

ROCK AND ROLL, JUMP AND JIVE

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MEMPHIS TO NEW ORLEANS

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ROMPIN’ AND STOMPIN’

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ROCKY ROAD OF LOVE

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MOBILE ALABAMA

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CAFFEINE AND NICOTINE

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BABY BABY ME

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PLAY THE MUSIC LOUDER

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SITTIN’ ON TOP OF THE WORLD

See larger image Play the Music Louder (Audio CD) List Price: $22.98 USD New From: $16.61 In Stock Used from: $22.02 In Stock Release date May 20, 1998.

Wilbur Sweatman

Wilbur C. Sweatman (Brunswick, Missouri, February 7, 1882 – New York City, March 9, 1961) was an African-American ragtime and dixieland jazz composer, bandleader, and clarinetist.

Sweatman started out playing violin, then took up clarinet instead. He toured with circus bands in the late 1890s, and briefly played with the bands of W.C. Handy and Mahara’s Minstrels before organizing his own dance band in Minneapolis, Minnesota by late 1902. It was there that Sweatman made his first recordings on phonograph cylinders in 1903 for a local music store. These included what is reputed to have been the first recorded version of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”; no copies of these are known to exist today. In 1908, Sweatman moved to Chicago. He became the bandleader at the Grand Theater, and began to attract notice; a 1910 article referred to his nickname, “Sensational Swet.”

Indianapolis, Indiana in 1911

By 1911, he had moved to the vaudeville circuit full-time, developing a successful act of playing three clarinets at once. An Indianapolis account described his performance there:

“Though somewhat diminutive in stature, Wilbur C. Sweatman has a style and grace of manner in all of his executions that is at once convincing, and the soulfulness of expression that he blends into his tones is something wonderful. His first number was a medley of popular airs and “rags” and had everybody shuffling their pedal extremities before it was half over.”

Sheet music for Wilbur Sweatman's "Down Home Rag"

He wrote a number of rags, 1911′s Down Home Rag being the most commercially successful. The song was recorded by multiple bands in America and Europe. Sweatman moved to New York in 1913, touring widely. He was one of the few black solo acts to appear regularly on the major white vaudeville circuits. Around this time he became close friends with Scott Joplin; Joplin’s will would name Sweatman as executor of his estate. Joplin’s musical papers, including unpublished manuscripts, were willed to Sweatman, who took care of them while generously sharing access to those who inquired. However, as Joplin’s music came to be considered passé, such requests were few. After Sweatman’s death in 1961, the papers were last known to have gone into storage during a legal battle among Sweatman’s heirs; their current location is unknown, nor even whether they still exist.

In December 1916, Sweatman recorded for minor label Emerson Records, including his own “Down Home Rag”. Some historians consider these recordings among the earliest examples of jazz on record. Taking note of the commercial success of the Original Dixieland Jass Band and the Original Creole Orchestra, Sweatman abruptly changed his sextet’s sound and instrumentation in early 1917. Sweatman’s band consisted of five saxophonists and himself on clarinet, a combo which soon signed with Pathé. They recorded rags, as well as some of the hit songs of the day.

Wilbur Sweatman and his Acme Syncopators

Sweatman was the first African American to make recordings labeled as “Jass” and “Jazz”. Since Sweatman can be heard making melodic variations even in his 1916 recordings, it might be argued that Sweatman recorded an archaic type of jazz earlier than the Original Dixieland band. In 1917, he became one of the first blacks to join ASCAP.

In 1918, Sweatman landed with major label Columbia Records, where he would enjoy a meteroic success with a wide variety of songs under his own name. His band also delivered several shorter anonymous performances for the label’s “Little Wonder” line of 90-second-long budget releases.

Wilbur Sweatman

The Sweatman band’s first release, “Regretful Blues”/”Everybody’s Crazy” would ship 140,000 copies, in a time when a third as many sales was considered a hit. Sweatman singles shipped over a million copies in 1919 alone. Several more successful releases followed in 1918-19, Sweatman’s peak of popularity. His best-selling song was 1919′s “Kansas City Blues”, which shipped 180,000 copies. However, by 1920, sales were on the wane, perhaps reflecting the ephemeral interest in his novelty style of jazz, and the growing popularity of syncopated big bands such as Columbia’s own Ted Lewis.

Sweatman continued to ply his somewhat dated style in live appearances throughout the Northeast. Several notable musicians passed through his band, including Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and Cozy Cole. Sweatman also continued to record for such labels as Gennett, Edison, Grey Gull, and Victor.

Sweatman frequently played at the well known Harlem club Connie’s Inn. He continued playing in New York through the early 1940s, then concentrated his efforts on the music publishing business and talent booking. His earlier compositions provided him a steady income.

LUCILLE

(1919)

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GET IT NOW

(The Dixie Trio featuring Wilbur Sweatman on Clarinet solos)

BLUIN’ THE BLUES

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