This may have been the best known of Lonnie Johnsons albums for Prestige. It featured a second guitarist who was also a second Chris Albertson career revival: Elmer Snowden, an important bandleader in the 1920s and 30s who had recorded little, and had completely fallen off the radar. Like Johnson, he was working a menial job in Philadelphia when Albetrson found him.
Elmer Snowden has one particularly unusual credential, He was the leader of a Washington, DC-based group called the Washingtonians. He brought the band to New York, but was having trouble getting bookings, so he sent to DC for an up-and-coming piano player, fella named Duke Ellington. You know the rest of the story
.In addition to Washingtonians like Bubber Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton, Snowden over a long career as bandleader had Count Basie. Jimmie Lunceford. Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge and Chick Webb, so he must have been no slouch at developing and mentoring future bandleaders. He had started out as a banjo player, but as the call for the banjo in jazz faded away, he switched to guitar (though he would make a jazz banjo album for Riverside in the 1960s).
Accompanied by Wendell Marshall on base, the two guitar players had a day of it, recording 22 songs, of which ten were chosen for the original vinyl album release, although almost all of them would eventually come out on CD. There were some vocals, more instrumentals, as Johnson got his wish to be seen as more than just a blues singer. Just a couple of old guys who know everything and can play all night.
The ten selections that made the album are pretty representative of the whole session. "Haunted House" is an original 12-bar blues by Johnson. He also sings the Eubie Blake-Andy Razaf chestnut "Memories of You" with a lighter, breezier voice: Lonnie Johnson the jazz singer.
"Blues for Chris" is their first instrumental, a tribute to their rediscoverer and producer Chris Albertson. Composer credit is given to Albertson and Elmer Snowden, and it's a fun piece, with some nice blues licks by both guitarists and some solid work by Wendell Marshall.
"I Found a Dream" is another Johnson composition, but this one a dreamy ballad. The two guitars manage some bluesy licks with a Charles Brown feel, but the vocal channels pop balladeers of a different era. Johnson doesn't seem to have listened much to contemporary balladeers like Sam Cooke or Clyde McPhatter. He draws more on the style of Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots, or the Irish tenors of his generation like Morton Downey or Dennis Day. But he ramps up into full vaudeville mode with "St. Louis Blues," not paying too much attention to W. C. Handy's careful construction, just having fun. And it is fun. Then he sort of marries all these styles, including his blues style, in an old pop song, "I'll Get Along Somehow," written by Arthur Marks and Buddy Fields. Listening to this one, my first thought was, "this could be the hit single," and it appears that Bob Weinstock thought the same thing, as it became a 45 RPM release.
Johnson and Snowden put their guitars together for a jam session on a traditional jazz tune, Kid Ory's "Savoy Blues," and the results are delightful. It's only one like it on the album, but "C-Jam Blues" and "Lester Leaps In" did eventually get released.
Johnson had recorded Bessie Smith's "Backwater Blues" back in the 1920s, and with Snowden's help on guitar, he gives it the full blues treatment here.
Snowden's "Elmer's Blues" has a decidedly modern rhythm and blues feel. Well, maybe not modern for 1960, but certainly modern for 1950; not bad for a couple of old guys from the 1930s. Pretty damn good, in fact. And they finish up with Johnson's "He's a Jelly Roll Baker," which also made it onto a later Bluesville anthology called Bawdy Blues.
The album was called Blues & Ballads, and was a Bluesville release. "I'll Get Along Somehow" was the first 45, with "Jelly Roll Baker" on the flip side, and it was also the second 45, this time with "Memories of You."
2 comments:
I love this music and will love it more, and more knowingly - after reading what you've written. Thank you, Susan
Keep doing what you're doing. It's great.
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