Hit 7119 – Cootie Williams and his Orchestra – 1944

Posted on October 10, 2016 by R. Connor Montgomery

October 10 marks ninety-nine years since the birth of Thelonious Monk, and what better way to commemorate that event than with the first recording of his famous “‘Round Midnight”, performed by Cootie Williams and his Orchestra. (Please do not confuse that photograph of Cootie Williams on the left of the page with Monk, it is not.) I will admit that while I usually tend to prefer earlier music, this is one of my favorite records.

Cootie Williams, 1940s. From Esquire’s 1944 Jazz Book.

Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on October 10, 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. From 1922, the Monks lived in New York City, where Thelonious was exposed to jazz music. He taught himself to play piano when he was six years old, and accompanied a touring evangelist in his teenage years. In the 1940s, Monk played at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem, and was with Lucky Millinder’s orchestra for a period in 1942, and Cootie Williams’ in 1944. He made his first recordings as bandleader in 1947 for Blue Note. With a unique approach to music, and life, Monk’s work lacked public appeal initially, and his recordings sold poorly for some years, though he was regarded highly by fellow musicians and jazz aficionados. In 1951, police confiscated his cabaret card, and he was unable to play in nightclubs until he regained it in 1957. Eventually, Monk became regarded as one of the greats of jazz music, having composed such standards as “‘Round Midnight”, “Straight, No Chaser”, and “Blue Monk”. Monk left the music scene in the 1970s, and died in 1982.

Hit 7119 was recorded October 22, 1944 in New York by Cootie Williams and his Orchestra. The band features Williams, Ermit V. Perry, George Treadwell, Lammar Wright, and Tommy Stevenson on trumpet, Ed Burke, Ed Glover, and Robert Horton on trombone, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Frank Powell on alto sax, Sam “The Man” Taylor and Lee Pope on tenor sax, Eddie de Verteuil on baritone sax, Bud Powell on piano, Leroy Kirkland on guitar, Carl Pruitt on bass, and Sylvester “Vess” Payne on drums.

First, Cootie and the band play the first ever recording made of Thelonious Monk’s famous “‘Round Midnight”, claimed to be the most recorded standard composed by a jazz musician.

‘Round Midnight, recorded October 22, 1944 by Cootie Williams and his Orchestra.

Next up, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson shouts the blues on “Somebody’s Gotta Go”, a number he surely learned from his mentor Big Bill Broonzy. While this recording credits Bob Haggart as the composer, the song appears to have actually been written by Casey Bill Weldon.

Somebody’s Gotta Go, recorded October 22, 1944 by Cootie Williams and his Orchestra.

MacGregor & Sollie 875/6 – The Texas Drifter – 1938

Posted on October 9, 2016 by R. Connor Montgomery

On this day, the anniversary of his birth, we remember the Texas Drifter, Goebel Reeves, renowned singing hobo of the Great Depression days. To commemorate the occasion, here is one of the last recordings Reeves made, and perhaps one of the most exceptional.

Goebel Leon Reeves was born on October 9, 1899 in Sherman, Texas to a middle class family. His father sold shoes and his mother was a music teacher. After his father’s election to the Texas state legislature, the Reeves moved to Austin, where Goebel worked as a pageboy. Reportedly, his first experience with hobos was in Austin; an encounter with a railroad bum left him enthralled with the lifestyle. Reeves served as a bugler in the First World War, and was wounded on the front lines. After the war, he turned to the life of a hobo, bumming across the nation and singing for a living. Sometime in the 1920s, Reeves sailed to Europe as a merchant seaman. Reeves claimed to have met and befriended Jimmie Rodgers, who at the time would have been working on the railroad as a brakeman. He was also known to have made a variety of colorful claims that were verifiably false. In the 1920s, Reeves performed on WFAA in Dallas, and made his first records for Okeh in 1929, spurred to do so after hearing Jimmie Rodgers on record. Throughout the decade that followed, Reeves recorded for Gennett, Brunswick, and the American Record Corporation, under such names as “The Texas Drifter” and “George Riley.” Throughout the 1930s, he made radio appearances on Rudy Vallée’s program, the WLS National Barn Dance, and the WSM Grand Ole Opry. In 1933, he appeared at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. He made his final recordings in 1938, a series of non-commercial records for MacGregor & Sollie in Hollywood, California. Reeves worked as a sailor again in the 1930s, and he entertained United States troops during World War II, before returning to the States to work for the government in internment camps in California, owing to the fact that he spoke Japanese. Goebel Reeves later joined the Wobblies and retired to Bell Gardens, California, where he remained until a fatal heart attack on January 26, 1959, having lived quite a life.

MacGregor & Sollie 875 and 876 (or matrices MS 2635 and MS 2636 depending on which number you choose to use) was recorded in 1938 at 729 S. Western Avenue in Hollywood, California. I haven’t been able to locate the actual date of recording. It is pressed in Columbia style Royal Blue colored laminated shellac.

First, Reeves sings the old familiar “Pictures from Life’s Other Side”.

Pictures From Life’s Other Side, recorded 1938 by The Texas Drifter.

On the reverse, the Texas Drifter recites his account of “The Hobo’s Convention”, recounting an actual convention held in Portland, Oregon on June 3, 1921, closing out with some wild and exuberant yodeling like only he could do.

The Hobo’s Convention, recorded 1938 by The Texas Drifter.

Updated with improved audio on June 30, 2017.

Victor 21710 – Slim Lamar’s Southerners – 1928

Posted on October 2, 2016 by R. Connor Montgomery

Slim Lamar, from 1930 Victor catalog.

Details regarding the life of territory band leader Slim Lamar are scarce, and there doesn’t appear to be any biography of him available on the web. As such, I’ve rewritten and republished this article in an effort to shed some light on the obscure musician’s life. A special thanks goes out to Messrs. Joseph Scott and Paul Lindemeyer for their research on Lamar, without which this article would not have been possible.

Slim was in fact Henry Elbert Lamar, born in Galveston, Texas on October 27, 1905, the son of John and Lucille Lamar. By the 1920s, the Lamars had taken up residence in the cradle of jazz, New Orleans. Slim played reeds, and apparently moonlighted selling musical instruments. At least as early as 1927, Lamar was leading the Southerners, an exceptional territory jazz band which included the talents of Tony Almerico and Sunny Clapp among its ranks. He would seem to have been associated with the cabal of influential territory band leaders that included Clapp and Blue Steele. In September of 1927, the Southerners played the Edgewater Gulf Hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi, and made their first recordings a year later, during a Victor field trip in Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, Lamar also recorded with Mart Britt’s orchestra, and may have accompanied Irene Beasley on one session that yielded no issued recordings. Following those sessions, Lamar’s Southerners ventured to Indianapolis for a two week engagement at the Indiana Roof Ballroom, reported in the Indianapolis Star as the band’s first trip north of the Mason-Dixon Line. After Indianapolis, they played at the Egyptian Room of the Kosair Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. Lamar’s band recorded several more sides in February of 1929 in Camden, New Jersey, after which Slim Lamar is not known to have made any further recordings. In 1938, he relocated to Florence, Alabama, where he married Edna Reams and started the Lamar Furniture Company. Henry “Slim” Lamar remained in Florence until his death on June 3, 1989.

In the 1930s, Henry Lamar’s younger brother Ewell Ayars Lamar (1911-1992), a pianist known as the “Greyhound of the Ivories,” took up the moniker of “Slim” and led a dance band called the Music Gentlemen in Indianapolis, which reportedly included some former members of Joe Sanders’ orchestra, and featured a vocalist named Helen Folk. Ewell had composed “My Castle of Love”, recorded by the Southerners in 1928, but not issued, and played piano in his older brother’s band in its first year.

Victor 21710 was recorded on September 6 and 4, 1928, respectively, at the Memphis Auditorium in Memphis, Tennessee, the Southerners’ first and third sessions. In the band are Tony Almerico and Irwin Kunz on cornets, Sunny Clapp on trombone, Slim Lamar and Jim Rush on clarinet and alto sax, Bedford Brown on clarinet and tenor sax, Dick Wilson on violin, Adrian J. Larroque on piano, Jack Cohen on banjo and guitar, Bonnie Pottle on string bass, and Bobby Turley on drums. The band is directed by Bob Nolan, composer of “Goofus”, and the band’s usual vocalist (though he doesn’t sing on these sides). It was issued in January of 1929.

“Goofus” was immortalized in a comic by R. Crumb, in which he describes his saga of finding the record, only to have it snatched away, leaving him hunting for years before winning a copy in an auction. He aptly descries it as “crazy, eccentric jazz.” The scat quartet is made up of Tony Almerico, Jim Rush, Dick Wilson, and Jack Cohen.

Goofus, recorded September 6, 1928 by Slim Lamar’s Southerners.

On the other side, though “Happy” may not be as well known as the previous, it doesn’t disappoint, offering an encore performance of more of this band’s unique hot style, with hot solos by Wilson and one of the cornetists, not to mention more wild bass work by that Bonnie Pottle.

Happy, recorded September 4, 1928 by Slim Lamar’s Southerners.

This record was originally posted on August 16, 2016 in honor of cornetist Tony Almerico’s birthday. The article has been rewritten and republished with content relevant to bandleader Slim Lamar. Updated with improved audio on April 30, 2018, and June 13, 2025..