Listening to Prestige 319: Al Smith

Bob Weinstock's early experiments with blues and R&B singers were marked by two near-constants. Joe "Bebop" Carroll,They were (a) very good, and (b) commercially unsuccessful. As with jazz, Bob Weinstock had the ear. But he didn't seem to have the marketing touch that he had with jazz.


Remember The Cabineers, Ralph Willis, John Bennings,  H-Bomb Ferguson, Bobby Harris, Paula Grimes, Rudy Ferguson, The Mello-Moods, Joe "Bebop" Carroll, Bob Kent,Piney Brown, Billy Valentine,  James "Deacon" Ware? If you're a pretty serious blues collector, you might remember  H-Bomb Ferguson, Joe "Bebop" Carroll or Piney Brown. You might actually remember the wrong Piney Brown--the more famous one was the Kansas City saloonkeeper who inspired Big Joe Turner's "Piney Brown Blues."  Anyway, those three had decent recording careers, if not comparable to Big Joe Turner or Sonny Boy Williamson or Wynonie Harris or Larry Darnell or Varetta Dillard, to name a few contemporaries.

Prestige did record a couple of well-known blues singers like Brownie McGhee, but they weren't known for their work on Prestige. And if you want to count King Pleasure as a blues singer, there's one unqualified success. 

But most of the other Prestige blues singers have disappeared into almost total obscurity, for mostly no good reason. You can find a couple of cuts by Paula Grimes on YouTube, maybe, and she's wonderful, but she never quite made it.

Weinstock briefly had a blues subsidiary, Par Presentation Records, in the early 1950s, but it only put out a few unsuccessful titles and was quickly shuttered.

But this was 1959, the tenth anniversary year of what was by now a very successful independent record label, run by a guy who had learned more than a few tricks about successful marketing. Weinstock had staked his claim to the jazz nostalgia niche with Swingville, and he was about to do the same for the blues market with Bluesville.

And still, at least with his first attempt, he couldn't bring it off. Al Smith is almost totally forgotten today, his two albums for Prestige/Bluesville the only record of his ever having existed. He's easier to find and listen to, in today's streaming wonderland, than Paula Grimes, but I'd guess that very few still have a copy of the vinyl record, although you can actually buy it from collectors' sites.

And if there's ever a record that deserves to have been heard, and to become a classic, it's this one. Smith is a remarkable singer. How remarkable? Well, take his cover of a Ray Charles tune.

Ray Charles was a wonderful songwriter, and his songs have been widely covered: "I Got a Woman," "This Little Girl of Mine," "What'd I Say?" But nobody else that I've been able to find has covered "Night Time is the Right Time," and with good reason: the distinctive raw, pleading response vocals of Margie Hendrix make it virtually uncoverable.

But Smith makes it work. His gospel-tinged blues singing is sufficiently different from Charles's to make his approach unique--and while it's equally different, it has enough of Hendrix's fervor to power his singing of both parts.

He also Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's tenor sax solo adding yet another gospel-tinged declamation to the mix.

Davis stands out on "Night Time," but Shirley Scott's understated but impassioned organ work, on every cut, really pulls the album together. It makes you wish she'd done a lot more work with singers (she and Davis did back up Mildred Anderson on another Bluesville release).

Smith does two other covers, both associated with Johnny Ace: "Never Let Me Go," written by prolific tunesmith Joe Scott, and Ace's mega-hit, "Pledging My Love," credited to Ferdinand Washington and Don Robey, although the flamboyant label-owner Robey was better at putting his name on songs than actually writing them. His version of "Pledging my Love," with Scott's sensitive organ, is one of the best covers of this song.

His originals are all good songs. I'm not sure any of them has "hit" emblazoned on it the way "Pledging My Love" does, but they're good. Two of them, "Tears in My Eyes" and "Come On Pretty Baby" became the first 45 RPM single off the album. The two covers, "Night Time is the Right Time" and "Pledging My Love" were a second single."Tears in My Eyes"/"Come on Pretty Baby" was the first 45 RPM release on Bluesville, and Hear My Blues was the first Bluesville album. While it may have made only a faint dent at most, Bluesville would go on to achieve some success.

Order Listening to Prestige Vol 2

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.

Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have
lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since
fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind
reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this
music.

                                                                                                                          
--Dave Grusin

An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time
period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of
the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The
stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and
give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.

                                                                                                                --Murali Coryell