Okeh 8554 – “Mooch” Richardson – 1928

Like old Seth Richard, “Mooch” Richardson is one of the countless blues musicians whose life and times are shrouded in obscurity.  He showed up for two sessions while the Okeh company was in Memphis, producing a series of outstanding country blues recordings, then disappeared back into obscurity once they were complete.

Perhaps the only really concrete fact known about “Mooch” is that he was really James Richardson.  It has been supposed based upon his “Helena Blues”, that he hailed from Helena, Arkansas.  Historian Paul Oliver, in his Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues, suggested that Richardson was a pianist, based apparently upon his two-part recording of “‘Mooch’ Richardson’s Low Down Barrel House Blues”, and implying that Richardson played piano on those recordings (though he in fact did not).  In February of 1928, Richardson appeared at two consecutive sessions in Memphis for Okeh, resulting in a total of nine recordings, six of which were released.  He was backed by Lonnie Johnson either on the latter session or both, accounts differ.  Whether or not Richardson was a resident of Memphis is another unknown.  Those two record dates serve as the only hard evidence of “Mooch” Richardson, whatever became of him afterward is anyone’s guess (unless they’ve got access to better information than me).

Okeh 8554 was recorded on February 13, 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee.  There is question as to whether the guitar accompaniment is played by Richardson himself or by Lonnie Johnson; some sources state that Richardson accompanied himself on his first record date (which produced these two), and Johnson on his second, while others indicate that all of his recordings feature Johnson.  To my ear, while the guitar playing sounds a bit more “standard country blues” than Johnson’s usual style of playing—which tended to be heavy on bent notes and elaborate melodic single-string runs—it at the same time could indeed quite plausibly be him; certainly Johnson was a skilled enough musician to play in such a style.  The DAHR lists Lonnie Johnson on the first side and Richardson on the second, but both sound to be the same player, and if anything the “B” side sounds more like Johnson than the first.  The more I listen to it, the more I think it is Johnson.  It’s beautiful playing one way or the other.  Contributors to the 78 Quarterly suggested “twenty-five or more” extant copies, with this copy being one of the ones reported (at which time it was in the collection of George Paulus).

First up is the excellent “T and T Blues”, a mostly, if not entirely floating verse song drawing its name from the line “well it’s ‘T’ for Texas, lawd, I got a ‘T’ for Tennessee,” also heard in “Jim Jackson’s Kansas City Blues”, and famously in Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel”, as well as others, including Willie Brown’s “Future Blues”.

T and T Blues, recorded February 13, 1928 by “Mooch” Richardson.

Another floating verse song, Richardson next sings “‘Mooch’ Richardson’s Low Down Barrel House Blues Part 1”.  You gotta buy another record if you want to hear part two.

“Mooch” Richardson’s Low Down Barrel House Blues Part 1, recorded February 13, 1928 by “Mooch” Richardson.

Okeh 41283 – Sunny Clapp and his Band O’Sunshine – 1929

Sunny Clapp's band, during their tenure with Victor. From 1930 Victor catalog.

The Band O’Sunshine, during their tenure with Victor. From 1930 Victor catalog.

One of the top names in the territory band game was Sunny Clapp, who led bands all across the southeastern United States in the 1920s and 1930s.  However, Clapp’s greatest claim to fame was his 1927 composition of “Girl of My Dreams”, a waltz song introduced by Blue Steele’s orchestra, that made a huge hit in that year, and continues to be sung to this day.  In spite of Clapp’s success in his day, surprisingly few details about his life are known today.

Charles Franklin “Sunny” Clapp (not “Sonny”, though frequently called such) was born on February 5, 1899 in either Battle Creek, Michigan or Galesburg, Illinois.  A trombonist like his contemporary Blue Steele, he was also skilled on saxophone and clarinet.  Clapp played with Ross Gorman’s band in 1926, with Blue Steele in 1927, Jimmy McHugh’s Bostonians and Slim Lamar’s Southerners in 1928 and ’29, and possibly Roy Wilson’s Georgia Crackers in 1931, alongside an impressive array of important jazzmen including Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, and Benny Goodman.  Brian Rust also suggested that he may have played tenor saxophone with the Six Brown Brothers in 1916, at the age of seventeen, though that seems rather dubious to say the least.  His composition “Girl of My Dreams” became a major hit in 1927. Around the end of 1928, Clapp organized a territory dance band of his own, dubbed his “Band o’ Sunshine”, which featured the talents of Texas cornetist Tom Howell and New Orleans clarinettist Sidney Arodin, and for one session, Hoagy Carmichael.  They recorded in San Antonio, Texas, Camden, New Jersey, and in New York, first for Okeh in 1929, then for Victor until July of 1931, with some of his later records appearing on the short-lived Timely Tunes label, and presumably also toured across the Texas region.  During the years of the Great Depression, Sunny Clapp disappeared from the recording industry, and whatever became of him thereafter is now lost to time.  All that is known of Sunny Clapp’s later life is that he died on December 9, 1962 in San Fernando, California.

Okeh 41283 was recorded June 20, 1929 in San Antonio, Texas by Sunny Clapp and his Band O’Sunshine.  The Band O’Sunshine consists of Bob Hutchingson on trumpet, Sunny Clapp on trombone and alto sax, Sidney Arodin on clarinet and alto sax, Mac McCracken on tenor sax, Dick Dickerson on baritone sax, Cliff Brewton on piano, Lew Bray on banjo, guitar, and violin, Francis Palmer on tuba, and Joe Hudson on drums.  Trumpet player Bob Huchingson provides the vocal on both sides.

On the first side, “they made her sweeter than sweetest of sweet things”, and made “A Bundle of Southern Sunshine”, played in a style quite reminiscent of Blue Steele’s, and capped off with Clapp himself exclaiming at the end, “let the sun shine.”  If this wasn’t their theme song, it should have been.

A Bundle of Southern Sunshine

A Bundle of Southern Sunshine, recorded June 20, 1929 by Sunny Clapp and his Band O’Sunshine.

The flip side, “I Found the Girl of My Dreams”, is not Clapp’s famous composition, but rather another of his compositions in the same vein.  In fact, if these two sides are anything to go by, he really loved to write songs about girls of one’s dreams.

I Found the Girl of My Dreams

I Found the Girl of My Dreams, recorded June 20, 1929 by Sunny Clapp and his Band O’Sunshine.

Okeh 4918 – King Oliver’s Jazz Band – 1923

Though unquestionably a truly legendary figure in the history of jazz, the legacy of Joe Oliver has been overshadowed that of his foremost disciple: Louis Armstrong.  But to some of us moldy figs, Joe Oliver is still king.

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band

King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band around 1923.  From left to right: Johnny Dodds, Baby Dodds, Honoré Dutrey, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Lil Hardin, and Bud Scott.  Pictured in Jazzmen, 1939.

Joseph Nathan Oliver was born in Aben, Louisiana and moved to New Orleans in his youth.  The date of his birth is uncertain, but December 19, 1881 is the most probable candidate; the same date in 1885, and May 11, 1885 have also been posited.  At first taking up the trombone, Oliver soon switched to cornet.  As a youth, Joe Oliver lost sight in his left eye in a fight, and often played with a derby hat tipped down over it.  He won the title “King” of New Orleans cornettists, which had earlier belonged to Buddy Bolden, from Freddie Keppard one night in 1916.  Oliver took up in Chicago in 1919 and founded his famous Creole Jazz Band, soon becoming a fixture in the Windy City.  In 1922, he sent for his young protégé Louis Armstrong, who was back home in New Orleans, to join him in the city.  King Oliver’s Creole Jazz band waxed their first phonograph record sides for the Starr Piano Company, makers of Gennett records, in their famous “shack by the track” in Richmond, Indiana on April 5, 1923.  They made a total of thirteen sides for Gennett before moving on to record fifteen more for Okeh, four for Columbia, and three for Paramount, before breaking up in 1924.  Thereafter, he recorded some landmark duets with Jelly Roll Morton for Marsh Labs in Chicago in 1925, and soon started a new band, the Dixie Syncopators, which began recording for Brunswick/Vocalion in 1926.  The Dixie Syncopators, which at various times included Luis Russell, Kid Ory, Barney Bigard, and other luminaries, stuck together until the end of 1928, after which Russell took over the reins.  In 1927, at the height of his success, Oliver was offered the position of house bandleader at Harlem’s Cotton Club, but he declined, hoping to hold out for more money.  Instead, the gig went to Duke Ellington and his Orchestra.  On the side, Oliver also recorded occasionally as a sidemen with jazz bands such as Clarence Williams’ various orchestras and Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang‘s Gin Bottle Five, and with blues singers like “Texas” Alexander, Victoria Spivey, and Lizzie Miles.  Thanks in no small part to his penchant for sugar sandwiches washed down with a bucket of sugar water, Oliver by this time had developed gum disease, which limited his ability to play cornet.  Nonetheless, he signed with Victor in 1929 to record with a new orchestra, which often featured his nephew Dave Nelson, though his own involvement was frequently relegated to directing.  In 1931, Oliver went back to Brunswick for three final sessions, from which the last three titles were released on Vocalion under the pseudonym “Chocolate Dandies”, and he never recorded again.  He continued to tour with a band until money ran out, leaving him broke and stranded, in a Savannah, Georgia, where he found work as a janitor in a pool hall.  Joe Oliver died penniless of arteriosclerosis on April 10, 1938

Okeh 4918 was recorded June 23, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois.  King Oliver’s (Creole) Jazz Band consists of Joseph “King” Oliver and Louis Armstrong on cornets, Honoré Dutrey on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin on piano, Bud Scott on banjo, and Baby Dodds on drums.

A re-doing of the same tune King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band originally recorded for Gennett in April of 1923, “Dipper Mouth Blues”, composed by Oliver and Armstrong is certainly the group’s most famous efforts.  Oliver famous cornet solo beginning one minute and seventeen seconds into the recording was hugely influential to the genre, and frequently imitated in subsequent years.  After Louis Armstrong left the band, he took “Dipper Mouth” with him to Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra, and the piece was re-arranged by Don Redman and recorded as “Sugar Foot Stomp”.  Henderson kept the piece in his repertoire after Armstrong’s departure and recorded it at least thrice more.

Dipper Mouth Blues

Dipper Mouth Blues, recorded June 23, 1923 by King Oliver’s Jazz Band.

On the reverse of this disc is Lil Hardin and Louis Armstrong’s composition: “Where Did You Stay Last Night?”.  Armstrong kept the tune in his repertoire and in later years performed it with his All-Stars.

Where Did You Stay Last Night?

Where Did You Stay Last Night?, recorded June 23, 1923 by King Oliver’s Jazz Band.

Okeh 8794 – Little Hat Jones – 1929

Decades before the latter day country music hero, the state of Texas produced another music maker called George Jones: an outstanding early blues guitarist and singer who went by the name “Little Hat”.

George Jones (misidentified by many outdated sources as “Dennis”) was born on his formerly enslaved grandfather’s farm in Bowie County, Texas—in the farthest northeastern corner of the state bordering Arkansas—on October 5, 1899, the only child of George Sr. and Lela Jones.  He dropped out of school after the sixth grade to help his ailing father on the farm after a loss of the season’s crop of cotton.  Jones claimed to have started out playing piano at church, but switched instruments after his mother “done gone and found an old guitar for [him] to pick.”  Influenced by Blind Lemon Jefferson, he learned to play in a peculiar fast, melodic, and uniquely rural style rather reminiscent of Mississippi John Hurt, albeit rougher, more driving and more formulaic, marked by occasional injections of a boogie-woogie beat.  His habit of starting out a song at a breakneck tempo and slowing down before beginning to sing, intentional or not, added a certain sense of tension to his recordings.  Probably around the age of seventeen, after his father and the farm recovered, Jones started making money with his music, but continued to make his living by means of various employment as a laborer throughout all of his life.  While working a construction job in Garland, Texas, Jones was nicknamed “Little Hat” by his boss (who reportedly even made out Jones’ paychecks to that name) because of the cut-down brim on his work hat.  When the Okeh record company made a field trip to San Antonio in 1929, Little Hat Jones cut his first recordings as an accompanist to fellow Texas blues man Alger “Texas” Alexander, who had been recording with Okeh since ’27.  On the fifteenth of June of that year, Jones recorded eight sides backing Alexander and a further two solo.  He was behind the microphone again six days later to cut four more solo sides, and again four more when Okeh returned to San Antonio the following year, netting a total of five records issued under his own name.  Though he never again recorded commercially after 1930, Little Hat Jones continued to play at juke joints and booger roogers in and out of the state of Texas alongside the likes of J.T. “Funny Paper” Smith and, reputedly, Jimmie Rodgers and T. Texas Tyler.  Jones claimed that Okeh invited him to record further in New York, but that evidently fell through.  He settled down with his wife in Naples, Texas in 1937, where he remained for the rest of his life, eventually finding steady employment at the nearby Red River Army Depot.  In 1964, Jones was interviewed by local newspaper man Morris G. Craig of the Naples Monitor and recorded—still in fine form though a little rusty on the guitar—playing several more songs, including a re-recording of his 1929 “New Two Sixteen Blues” and a rendition of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Waiting for a Train”.  Little Hat Jones died on March 7, 1981 in the Municipal Hospital in Linden, Texas, and is buried in the Morning Star Cemetery in Naples.

In spite of his relative obscurity, the music of Little Hat Jones was remarkably influential. Echoes of Jones’ “Two String Blues”—in particular the lyric “I’m goin’ to Lou’siana, get me a hoodoo hand…  I’m gonna stop my woman and fix it so she can’t have another man”—were heard later in Lightnin’ Hopkins’ famous song “Mojo Hand”.  Jones’ music gained later fame outside of record collecting and blues circles for the inclusion of his “Bye Bye Baby Blues” in Terry Zwigoff’s 2001 motion picture Ghost World.

Little Hat Jones recorded Okeh 8794 on June 21, 1929 in San Antonio, Texas, his second record date, a week after his first recordings accompanying Texas Alexander.  It was released in 1930.

First up, Jones plays and sings the outstanding “Rolled From Side to Side Blues”, borrowing its name from a stanza within his debut recording “New Two Sixteen Blues”, which he reused in this song.  It’s a wonder that guitar didn’t catch fire—just listen to those descending runs!

Rolled From Side to Side Blues, recorded June 21, 1929 by Little Hat Jones.

On the reverse, he combines the classic railroad song with the blues for lost love on his eponymous “Little Hat Blues”, most certainly my favorite of Jones’ recordings, and in my opinion one of the great masterworks of country blues (though that “Bye Bye Baby” is a dilly, no doubt).

Little Hat Blues, recorded June 21, 1929 by Little Hat Jones.

Okeh 05668 – Ted Daffan’s Texans – 1940

In Old Time Blues’ continuing cavalcade of Texas’ native music, western swing, we turn our spotlight to the accomplished steel guitarist and composer of such standard songs as “Born to Lose”: Ted Daffan.

Ted Daffan and his Texans, pictured in the Hillbilly Hit Parade of 1941.  From left-to-right standing: Buddy Buller, Chuck Keeshan, probably Elmer Christian; seated: Ralph Smith, Ted Daffan, and probably Harry Sorensen.

Theron Eugene Daffan was born in the Beauregard Parish of Louisiana on September 21, 1912, but he got across the border to Texas as fast as he could.  He graduated from high school in Houston and later found work there in a musical instrument shop.  Inspired by Milton Brown’s music, Daffan became a pioneering user of the electrified steel guitar, following in the footsteps of the Musical Brownies’ Bob Dunn.  During the days of the Great Depression, he played steel guitar in Hawaiian radio bands before moving on to Texas swing bands like Shelly Lee Alley’s Alley Cats and the Bar-X Cowboys.  In 1939, Daffan composed “Truck Driver’s Blues”, one of the earliest examples of what was to become a common theme in country music—supposedly Daffan would see truck drivers come into restaurants while he was dining and go straight for the jukebox, and he wanted a part of that racket—which became a hit for Cliff Bruner’s Boys and the Light Crust Doughboys.  As a result of that success, Daffan was signed by CBS in 1940 to record with his own band, the Texans, for their Okeh label.  With his Texans, Daffan had hits with “Worried Mind”, “I’m a Fool to Care”, and “Born to Lose”, all compositions of his own, and all of which became standards in their own right.  Like Bob Wills, Daffan relocated to California in the 1940s and led a band there, but only stayed for a couple of years before returning to Texas.  After World War II, he began shifting his career focus away from playing and recording music and more toward songwriting and publishing, and he founded and owned both record and music publishing companies.  Ted Daffan died in Houston on October 6, 1996.

Okeh 05668 was recorded on April 25, 1940 at the Burrus Mill Studio in Saginaw, Texas.  It is Ted Daffan and his Texans’ first record.  Daffan’s Texans are made up of Ted Daffan on lap steel guitar, Sidney “Buddy” Buller on electric tenor guitar, Chuck Keeshan on second guitar, Harry Sorensen on accordion, Ralph Smith on piano, and Elmer Christian on string bass.

The first side the Texans recorded, Chuck Keeshan sings the Tommy Duncan-style vocal on Daffan’s own composition, the classic “Worried Mind”.

Worried Mind, recorded April 25, 1940 by Ted Daffan’s Texans.

On the flip-side, Daffan showcases his steel-guitar playing abilities on the instrumental “Blue Steel Blues”.

Blue Steel Blues, recorded April 25, 1940 by Ted Daffan’s Texans.