Sound Beat

Who better to explain the blues then the woman who claimed to have named them?

Gertrude “Ma Rainey” was known as the mother of the blues. She started recording for Paramount in 1923, but was old hand at it by then. She’d already been singing the blues for two decades. In fact, she claimed to have named the genre around the turn of the century. Here she is with “Explaining the Blues” from 1925. With her husband, Pa Rainey, she worked on a series of traveling shows, revues, and the famed Rabbit Foot minstrels. And they would perform under perhaps the very-coolest band name in music history: Rainey and Rainey Assassinators of the Blues.

You’re listening to Edna Brown, also known as Elsie Baker, with a Blue Amberol cylinder from 1913, and you’re on the Sound Beat.

Brown, or…Baker, lived an entertainer’s life. Her career started onstage at 10 months old, and would last nearly ninety years. So, from 1880’s to the late 1960s…meaning vaudeville, cylinders, records, silent films, “the talkies”, radio and tv.

Life insurance quotes for the Apollo 11 crew were, sorry in advance, astronomically high. With great risk ahead, the men wanted to provide for their families. They knew there would be a demand for their autographs, especially on “covers”: envelopes post-marked on important dates. During pre-flight quarantine and downtime, they signed. And signed. The autographs were postmarked and distributed among the astronaut’s families, enabling the men to keep their proverbial eyes on them, even while “sitting” on the moon.

You’re listening to Frank Luther with a 1936 Decca record. De Brunhoff’s book had hit the market 5 years earlier, but his own children got a preview the summer before that. From their mother, in the form of a bedtime story. The tale was so popular with the children that they implored Jean to develop a story around it.

In short, Babar moves to the big city after a hunter shoots his mother, gets some culture and heads back to rule the elephants after the death of their leader. This record, Babar the King, details the building of Celesteville, named for…Babar’s wife.

Jean’s son Laurent would carry on Babar’s tales after his father’s untimely death at age 37. Watch an interview with him right here.

Image Credit: “Marriage and coronation of King Babar and Queen Celeste.” Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (The Story of Babar), 1931. Final watercolor. 14 1/8 x 10 3/8 in. (36 x 26.5 cm). The Morgan Library & Museum. The image is in the public domain.

The pioneers of Country music just sound Country, even by their first names. (Roy, Hank, Gene). Which is why Clarence Albert Pointdexter simply had to go.

So how do you get from Clarence to country?

Some call Dexter the father of honky tonk music, which can be a bit confusing without musical accompaniment. You see, there’s blues piano honky-tonk, a rollicking bridge between ragtime and boogie-woogie. But as you can hear, this is the other honky-tonk…another bridge, from Western Swing to what we now call “Country”.

(Pencil scribble effects courtesy of mckinneysounds via http://www.freesfx.co.uk/sfx/scribbles)

In 1936 Natalya Sats commissioned Sergei Prokofiev to compose a piece for Moscow’s Central Children’s Theatre. The goal: to introduce children to the principals of the symphony. Somewhat ironically, the Orchestra went unnamed in this 1938, 3-disc RCA Victor recording.

And while the initial reaction was lukewarm, Peter and the Wolf has introduced generations of youngsters, and probably some oldsters, to the various instruments of the symphony. More than one critic has viewed the piece as allegory for Soviet and world politics of the time. After all, it can’t be a mistake that the greatest Russian folk hero is…Peter the Great. For a reading of the Wolf as the Nazi threat, click through!

It’s funny to think it, but even Ol’ Blue Eyes had to have a first hit.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

Sinatra recorded All or Nothing At All with the Harry James Orchestra in 1939. At the time he was a relative unknown in the biz, and wasn’t even credited on the tune.  The record sold poorly but Sinatra took a shine to the tune, making it a regular audition piece. Over the next few years, he would become one of the hottest performers in music.

The early forties saw a musicians union strike, and professional musicians were prohibited from recording. There was no such restriction on previously recorded songs though.  Columbia Records signed the red-hot Sinatra in ’43 and re-released the song that year. And you better believe they put his name on it.

This time around, the single stayed at the top of the charts for almost a year.

Jay McShann gave birth to the “Kansas City Sound”, but this song has gone down in history as a beginning of another sort.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

“Swingmatism” was sax master Charlie Parker’s first recording, made on April 30 1941.

No one’s quite sure how Parker earned the nickname. Most stories seem to center around the shortening of “yardbird”, slang for chicken. One such has him traveling to a gig with McShann’s band, when their car strikes a bird. Parker hops out, brings the unfortunate fowl with him and asks their boarder to cook it for him. No word on whether this was a usual request for the time. 

Parker would go on to revolutionize the instrument and the genre, earning praise from critics, the “Beat poets” and fellow jazz greats. Indeed Miles Davis once quipped that you could sum up jazz history in four words: “Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker”.

We’ll spare you the “Bird”/Twitter pun, but if you’re in the Tweetisphere, follow us @onthesoundbeat.

One of the most revered and renowned recordings in music history.

You’re listening to Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson. Music historians cite the song as a retelling of Christ’s crucifixion. Hard to be completely sure, though, with Johnson’s characteristic humming, and moaning in place of lyrics.

There’s a parallel to be drawn between the song and Johnson’s life. He was blinded as a boy, during a domestic dispute, and though a huge influence in both Gospel and the Blues, he’d remain penniless much of his life. So much so that when his house burned to the ground in 1945, he stayed put.  Sleeping on a wet bed in dry heat will get you malaria, and that’s what killed Blind Willie Johnson at the age of 48.  

Try to stump our crack musicologists…request an episode right now at sound beat dot org.

Jimmie Davis is regularly credited as creator of the classic “You Are My Sunshine”, heard here from 1941. But…if that’s true, then how did the Rice Brothers record it in 1939?

The answer reveals an old trick among songwriters of that time. The song was officially copyrighted 1940 by Davis and frequent collaborator Charles Mitchell. But Davis actually bought the song from Paul Rice, made a few lyrical changes here, a tempo shift there, and presto-chango …it was a Jimmie Davis original.

Davis would go on to become governor of Louisiana, serving two nonconsecutive terms. And whaddya know, this became Louisiana’s state song in 1977.

Hear the Rice Brothers version right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqjF-txkZ8