This week on Jay Bruder’s Home Town Special

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Jay Bruder’s  big Washington music retrospective set, “R&B in D.C. 1940-1960” has been released by Bear Family Records and is available from their website.  It’s been reviewed in the Washington Post and Washingtonian magazine.  .

Sunday September 25

Tonight on the Hometown Special we jump around from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, and Chicago. Starting out, “It Feels Good” by The Crawford Brothers leads to a little known recording by Patsy Cline called “Don’t Ever Leave Me.” Patsy’s husband Charlie Dick used to comment that Patsy was very loyal to people she knew early in her career and here we have an example of Patsy doing a favor for Mrs. Lilliam Claiborne who had been a supporter when Patsy came to Washington in 1954. Patsy cut the song which was originally credited to James Crawford for Bill McCall of 4 Star Records. While it wasn’t a hit, it did prove that Patsy never forgot a friend. Speaking of friends in Washington, fiddler Buck Ryan and country star Jimmy Dean were much on the scene when Patsy came down from Winchester to get her start in D.C. As were The Howington Brothers who recorded “I Got Mine” for Decca in 1954. While I can’t put my hands on the Frank Stokes’ recording from 1928, I can play some other fine blues from John Lee Williamson, aka Sonny Boy Williamson, and a series of great piano players. I follow with tracks by the other Sonny Boy, Alec Miller, aka Sonny Boy Williamson II who didn’t get to record until after John Lee had died. More boogie woogie piano from Forrest Sykes opens the second hour. He recorded for Aristocrat Records of Chicago and I follow with some cocktail blues in the style of the King Cole Trio done by the little-known Prince Cooper Trio, also from Aristocrat Records. Tenor-man Maxwell Davis and pianist Amos Milburn show how the Texas blues tradition morphed into national hits in the hands of West Coast arrangers. Jerry Lee Lewis answers Amos’ “Empty Arms Blues” with “Crazy Arms.” Louis and Frosty, yet another Los Angeles-based recording duo deliver a fine instrumental called “Train Time,” which tastefully combines a bunch of well-known guitar licks. But the master of the blues guitar around Los Angeles was Lowell Fulson (sometimes spelled Fulsom). We’ll hear tracks from early and late in his career. Around Washington in the early 1950s vocal groups were the things, and D.C vocal groups like to do ballads. The Four Dots, The Bachelors, and The Clovers demonstrate. The Clovers and Ruth Brown helped to keep Atlantic Records afloat during the labels’ early years so we’ll continue with one of Ruth Brown’s solid sellers “Teardrops From My Eyes” and contrast it with Chris Connor’s “I Miss You So,” another Atlantic recording. I hope you hear something you enjoy!

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Jay Bruder

Sunday September 18

Tonight on the Hometown Special we are going back to an interview I did with Otis Ducker in October 2013. Otis spent his teenage years in New Orleans and came back from college to work as a full-time musician in New Orleans around 1947.  He lead the house band at the Dew Drop Inn and toured with such notables as Clarence Samuels which and Lil Green. He knew many of the iconic figures who emerged from New Orleans in the early 1950s such as Dave Bartholomew, Larry Darnell, Annie Laurie, Paul Gayten, Plas Johnson, Erline Harris, Guitar Slim, and Smiley Lewis. In 1950 he landed a recording contract with Decca Records which resulted in two releases. But in January 1951 he was drafted and detailed to an engineer battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He used his musical talents to earn an assignment to a newly established band on the Army post. He stayed in Washington after his Army stint and continued performing, sometimes in the house band at the Howard Theatre, and later with the Harry Curtis band. He became an official of the local musician’s union and that kept him in close contact with the performance scene for decades. You will get to hear Otis narrate bits of his life and career, with first-hand accounts of the people he worked with over the years. It is a fascinating story. I hope you hear something you enjoy!

Thank you for your donations to bluegrasscountry.org

Jay Bruder