Listening to Prestige 590: Jimmy Witherspoon

LISTEN TO ONE: Lonely Boy Blues

 Ah, what says the blues like a song by Mack David ("Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo") and Jerry Livingston ("Mr. Ed"), written for Teresa Brewer to sing in Those Redheads from Seattle? And in fact, when Jimmy Witherspoon gets through with David and Livingston's "Baby, Baby, Baby," it would be scarcely recognizable by any redhead from Seattle, or, most likely, by the composers. Witherspoon was the real thing as a blues singer, but he was also eclectic. Even in the rhythm and blues decade of the mid-1940s to mid-1950s, he performed largely with jazz musicians, and for jazz audiences. How many other blues singers started their careers in Calcutta, India?

Witherspoon had left his home in Arkansas as a teenager, for Los Angeles and the music scene on Central Avenue, where he became a protege of Big Joe Turner, and hung out with jazzmen like Buddy Colette, who remembers that whenever Witherspoon sat in with his group, the audiences loved him. Then Pearl Harbor happened, and in 1941 he joined the U.S. Merchant Marine. As a cook--this was still the pre-Harry Truman segregated armed forces. The sea led him to south Asia, where he would meet up with Teddy Weatherford.

Like many African American musicians of his era, Weatherford went the expatriate to Europe, settling first in Amsterdam. Like very few others, he didn't stop there, but continued on to Asia, where joined the band of another peripatetic expatriate, Crickett Smith, then Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India, where he led his own bands (Smith was now playing for him), and developed a sufficient reputation that he was tapped to make wartime broadcasts for Armed Forces Radio. It was on these broadcasts that young Witherspoon got his first exposure. Weatherford, a wonderful piano player and bandleader, never got a chance to develop the reputation he deserved, dying in Calcutta in 1945 at the age of 41.

Witherspoon did return to the USA, and the West Coast, after the war, where he became a regular feature of Cavalcade of Jazz, an annual all-star jazz festival held in Los Angeles. He performed as part of the Cavalcade in 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1952. 

This outing for Prestige was Witherspoon's first foray into East Coast jazz. His most recent recordings had been for Frank Sinatra's Reprise label,  where he made a record of mostly jazz standards Teddy Edwards and Gerald Wiggins, then a record of blues standards with Ben Webster; and before that with the Bihari brothers' Crown, one of the West Coast's premiere rhythm and blues labels. 

Bob Weinstock and Ozzie Cadena gave him a first-rate lineup of jazz musicians. Leo Wright had distinguished himself on two previous outings for the label, with Dave Pike and Jack McDuff. Gildo Mahones was fast becoming one of Prestige's go-to session musicians, and would record a couple of albums as leader on the label; so was Jimmie Smith. George Tucker had already established himself. And it's hard to heap more praise on Kenny Burrell.

And an eclectic lineup of tunes, tilting toward rhythm and blues. Duke Ellington wrote "Rocks in My Bed," but it's most closely associated with blues shouter Big Joe Turner, who made the original recording with boogie woogie piano player Freddie Slack. 'Bad Bad Whiskey" and "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" were both hits for Amos Milburn, the former penned by Milburn, the latter by Rudy Toombs, one of the key songwriters for Atlantic Records as the label rose to rhythm and blues supremacy. "Mean Old Frisco" came from another rhythm and blues great, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. All of them find the Prestige jazzmen playing that fine R&B behind 'Spoon's hard driving vocals.

Two other blues traditions come front and center with "Sail on, Little Girl, Sail On" and "Lonely Boy Blues." The former comes from traditional Piedmont blues singer Amos (Bumble Bee Slim) Easton, and Witherspoon gives it a heartfelt traditional treatment, with Gildo Mahones providing the appropriate backing. The latter comes from Kansas City swingmaster Jay McShann and his vocalist Walter Brown. It's a twelve bar blues, and Leo Wright's alto winds in and out and around Witherspoon's vocal. The traditional twelve bar form is also heard on 'Spoon's own "Blues and Trouble," with everyone in the band getting a piece of the action.

Prestige filled out the LP with four cuts from a later session back in Witherspoon's old West Coast stomping grounds, under the guiding hand of David Axelrod, who had just begun producing records for Capitol, where he nudged the label in the direction of more black artists, scoring hits for Lou Rawls and Cannonball Adderley (he produced "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy") among others. With some excellent West Coast jazz musicians, they did two Witherspoon originals, a traditional blues, and one outlier, the rockabilly hit "Endless Sleep," a tune which Witherspoon had apparently liked enough to record a few years earlier for a smaller rhythm and blues label.

Most of the West Coasters are off Prestige's normal radar. Bobby Bryant did appear on a 1960 Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis release. Ernie Freeman was the best-known of the group. He boasted a master's degree in music composition from the University of Southern California, and a trunkful of credits as pianist, arranger and bandleader, mostly in the rhythm and blues field. Jimmy Bond was another conservatory trained musician (Juilliard), with extensive jazz credits on the East Coast, who moved to California in 1959 and built a second career there, both as a jazz musician and as a member of the Wrecking Crew, the session musicians who crafted the West Coast rock sound of the 1960s. Arthur Wright was one of the leading West Coast session musicians for blues and R&B, mostly as a guitarist. It's not clear whether Jimmy Miller is the same drummer/arranger who contributed a great deal to the Rolling Stones sound in the late 1960s.

Ozzie Cadena produced the East Coast session. The redheads from Seattle got the album's title, Baby, Baby, Baby, and that was also one of the 45 RPM singles, with "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer" on the flip side. "Mean Old Frisco" / "Sail on Little Girl" also got a single release.