Listening to Prestige 415: St. Louis Jimmy

Jimmy Oden wasn't St. Louis's most famous blues export to Chicago--that would be Chuck Berry--but he was the one whose name identified him with the city, although he had actually been born in Nashville. Moving to the Gateway City in the 1920s, he entered a musical partnership with Roosevelt Sykes, and they dominated the St, Louis blues scene for a decade, sufficiently that when the two of them moved to Chicago, he brought the city's name with him, and kept it for the rest of his career. He had begun as a piano player, but perhaps because of his association with the piano virtuoso Sykes, he came to concentrate on vocal performance and songwriting. He

wrote a couple for Muddy Waters, and Waters and Sunnyland Slim backed him up on some of his early recordings.

Like another songwriter/vocalist, Percy Mayfield, he is mostly remembered for his songs, especially "Goin' Down Slow," a hit for him on the race records charts in 1941 which went on to become one of the most widely recorded of blues standards. It has been recorded by Chicago blues royalty--Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton, and by acoustic folk blues singers like Mance Lipscomb , Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee, and Memphis Slim. Ray Charles recorded it twice, once in his early West Coast days and once in the 1960s on a blues album for ABC-Paramount. Jazz versions included Jimmy Witherspoon with Ben Webster. Rhythm and blues stars like Little Junior Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland and B. B. King recorded. Across the Atlantic, it was picked up by Alexis Korner, the Animals,  ex-Animal Alan Price, Procol Harum and others. Movie stars have recorded it (Danny Glover). And new versions are still being recorded, most recently by Dee Dee Bridgewater (jazz) and Peter Frampton (rock).

Also like Percy Mayfield, his career had been spiked by a serious auto accident, in 1957. So this, his first album session, was also his first since recuperating from the accident.

Oden's voice had the rawness we associate with Chicago blues, but it also had a bit of a silken quality--again like Percy Mayfield, but still more Chicago raw than West Coast smooth. And he was used to working with the aggressive, take no prisoners style of the best Chicago bluesmen.

He had one of them on this session--Jimmie Lee Robinson, who had worked the Shakey Jake Harris date for Ozzie Cadena and Prestige just two days earlier. Pianist Robert Banks also comes over from the Shakey Jake session, and plays a much more featured role than he did with Harris. That had been full steam ahead electric guitar and mouth harp blues, this features a more sophisticated
 arrangement, built mostly around Banks's piano--similar to the original 1941 version on Bluebird, although Oden's voice has also developed in sophistication over the years.

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

And Listening to Prestige Vol. 4 is not far off!  

Listening to Prestige 414: Shakey Jake

Shakey Jake Harris's first Prestige outing put him together with two of the label's soul jazz all stars, Jack McDuff and Bill Jennings. This time he's given Robert Banks, who has played keyboards on a wide variety of blues recordings for Prestige, and Leonard Gaskin, one of the label's most reliable bassists. But the real sound here is pure Chicago, with Harris's harmonica and vocals, Jimmie Lee Robinson's guitar, and John "Junior" Blackmon's drums.

Prestige had used Robinson once before, on Al Smith's first album, where he also worked with Robert Banks, but this is his real wheelhouse. He was a Chicago bluesman, playing with Freddie King, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf and Harris's nephew Magic Sam, before retiring to a certainly blues-traditioned career: running a Chicago neighborhood candy store. Blackmon was also from Chicago, and considered a reliable session man for blues recordings. Between the three of them, they bring pure Chicago to Englewood Cliffs, in the style of Magic Sam or Jimmy Reed, but very much his own man.

The songs are mostly by Harris. There's one by Armand "Jump" Jackson ("Angry Lover"), another Chicagoan, and one by producer Ozzie Cadena ("Things Are Different Baby"). There's an unusual instrumental ("Jake's Cha Cha"), a slower and soulful instrumental

("Mouth Harp Blues," which is Robinson's even more than Harris's, and has some nice piano by Banks), and a lot of solid Chicago blues, the sound that had fired up the rhythm and blues charts in the 1950s, and would rule the world as it began to be discovered by a younger generation in far-off England. Shakey Jake would never cash in on the popularity of Chicago blues the way some of his contemporaries did, but he would have a solid career, as musician, nightclub owner and crapshooter.

Mouth Harp Blues is the title of the album.


Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1955-56, and Vol. 3, 1957-58 now include, in the Kindle editions, links to all the "Listen to One" selections. All three volumes available from Amazon.

The most interesting book of its kind that I have ever seen. If any of you real jazz lovers want to know about some of the classic records made by some of the legends of jazz, get this book. LOVED IT.
– Terry Gibbs

And Listening to Prestige Vol. 4 is not far off!  

Listening to Prestige 383: Al Smith

Al Smith never managed to make a name for himself, perhaps in part because "Al Smith" was a hard name to make. Too much competition. Smith was never likely to be confused with New York governor Al Smith, the "Happy Warrior" who ran for president in 1928, or Al Smith the cartoonist who drew Mutt and Jeff for 50 years, or any of the professional athletes named Al Smith, but there were also two other Al Smiths playing and singing the blues. The best known was the Midwestern blues and jazz bandleader and bass player who may have inspired the old joke about the bass player sitting on the edge of the bandstand, crying his heart out. "What's the matter?" the bandleader asks solicitously. "The guitar player untuned one of my strings!" "Well, that's very childish of him, but I don't see why it's something to cry about." "He won't tell me which one!"

That Al Smith was a successful bandleader because he could always hustle up gigs and he paid his musicians on time, but he didn't know how to tune his own bass, and always had someone in the group tune it for him.

Another Al Smith sang with Jack ("Open the Door, Richard") McVea on the West Coast.

Prestige's Al Smith was a terrific singer who never emerged from the pack. He doesn't get an entry in Wikipedia, and AllMusic has a listing for him but no bio. The listing is a bit of a mess. His genre is described as Blues, Comedy/Spoken Word, and I'm not sure who they're confusing him with. His discography is correct--the two Prestige/Bluesville albums--but his list of song credits seems to encompass songs by all three Al Smiths, and maybe even a couple by the governor. His birth stats are given as Bolivar City, MS in 1923, which is the correct information for the untuned bass player (this Al Smith was born in 1936 in Columbus, Ohio).

Anyway, what you need to know about Al Smith is that he was a terrific blues singer. He could shout the blues, old style. He could croon the blues in a manner that suggested something of both of the premiere rhythm and blues stylists of the day, Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson.

He is given a different set of musicians this time around, headed by King Curtis, who had recently begun recording for Prestige. Maybe Bob Weinstock was looking to capture some of the rhythm and blues success of Atlantic Records, for which label Curtis contributed some memorable solos. But maybe not. Curtis is not really the dominant instrumental voice here. He has some terrific solos, particularly on "Don't Worry 'Bout Me" and "Ride On Midnight Special," as does guitarist Jimmie Lee Robinson, but the main instrumental voice is that of organist Robert Banks. Which makes a certain amount of sense. The rhythm and blues style of King Curtis is associated with 1950s hits like those of the Coasters, and the organ sound was very much in vogue in 1960.

Banks and Robinson are both new to Prestige. Banks would do a few more sessions for Prestige/Bluesville, and go on to have his greatest success as keyboardist for Solomon Burke. He has a discography note I've never seen before: a couple of songs that were released only on 8-track cartridge.

Robinson was a well-regarded session man around Chicago in the 1950s-60s, so actually he could have played with the other Al Smith, though there's no record of it. He did play with Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, and mentored Freddie King, who called Robinson his most important influence. He had a career renaissance in the 1980s.

The musicianship and arrangements on the session are first rate, as is the singing. In addition to the album, which was titled Midnight Special, Bluesville released two singles, "You're A Sweetheart" / "Ride On Midnight Special" and "Don't Worry 'Bout Me" / "Goin' To Alabama." None of it made a dent, and Smith would not record again.

Maybe he should have changed his name to something distinctive, like Brenton Wood. It worked for Brenton Wood, who had a couple of big soul hits in the 1960s, and who had in fact changed his name. From Al Smith.