Percy France

[fasstrack]

I got the joke. Sorry to bust your balls...

[JSngry]

No worries, no damage done.

[fasstrack]

To tell the truth, I felt bad for both those guys. Joe seemed close to senile. He remembered his tunes---blues in C, shuffle and slow. Every. Tune. Every. Set. Every. Night.Talked a bit at the one rehearsal, even told a joke or two, then never said squat to us. Except once, when the band didn't pick up his tempo and he turned around to say 'what we waitin' on?'

 I wish I could have worked with him in his prime. I saw a video later of a TV performance from, perhaps, the '50s. He was vibrant, and communicated so much naughtiness just with his eyes...

[Dan Gould]

 

nice story cued up about Percy France ... the whole 13 minutes are worth hearing though.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Dan Gould

[Dan Gould]

So I've spent the last nine months or so working up a Percy France sessionagraphy and its really striking to notice that from 1959 to 1962 he recorded three times - Sir Charles Thompson on Columbia, and Home Cookin' and Down to Earth on BN - and then ... nothing until 1979-80.  In particular I'm left to wonder how he got the BN opportunities and what Alfred thought of him.

Fred Jackson got one BN sideman gig and Alfred gave him a chance to record an LP. Percy was sideman on two BNs and got no such opportunity. And I'm left to wonder if Percy would have that much more of a "name" among fans, just if he had done a leader date or two, back in the day, on a label like BN.

Similarly, with his background with Doggett, he could have done some tenor/organ 45 sessions a la Ike. (The ballads he recorded with Doggett are a somewhat mixed bag for me, syrupy organ but absolutely fantastic tenor, however much space he was given on a particular track. I think Percy could have found a great audience as the feature soloist with organ backing on those types of numbers, rather than second, shorter soloist as he was with Doggett.)

And last but not least, no opportunities for a soul jazz outing on Prestige. 

Allen said in one of these threads that Percy avoided opportunities.  I wonder how many more people would be hip to his talents if Alfred Lion or Bob Weinstock gave him one or two.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Dan Gould

[Dan Gould]

On 7/29/2006 at 7:21 PM, Stereojack said:

Also enjoyed your additional comments, fasstrack. FYI, Percy did work and record with Bill Doggett, but the famous tenor solo on "Honky Tonk" is Clifford Scott.

 

On 7/30/2006 at 4:36 AM, fasstrack said:

Are you sure about that? He used to play that solo and even milk the fact that he was on it---unless senility is setting in here---a distinct possibility.

 

On 7/30/2006 at 8:24 AM, Stereojack said:

I am sure - every discography confirms it, and Scott's name is even in the songwriting credits. I'm not surprised that Percy knew the solo. Every tenor player who ever worked with Doggett had to play that solo note for note every night! I once saw Doggett in the mid 1960's, and the tenor player (whoever he was) played the original solo verbatim. As for Percy's claim to have been on the original record, this wouldn't be the first time an older musician engaged in a little hyperbole.

 

On 7/30/2006 at 8:28 AM, Harold_Z said:

I think Percy played on a later Bill Doggett recording of Honky Tonk and I think I have the record. Doggett recorded it at least 5 or 6 times over the years.

There are no "official" recordings of "Honky Tonk" with Percy but in my work on his sessionagraphy I discovered two things of interest:

#1, For a period in the early 80s he had bookings as "Honky Tonk Part 3" - so he definitely used that connection to Doggett's to reference his most successful tune which we really kinda know Percy didn't have anything to do with ... Here's Doggett describing how the tune came to be (if it isn't cued right it starts at 17:35)

and really interestingly,

#2, I just heard a recording of Percy with the Oliver Jackson Trio and Percy's own intro to Honky Tonk states that he collaborated with Doggett on the composition (along with Billy Butler). 

I guess we'll never really know all of the principals are gone now ...

 

[Dan Gould]

Until now it has been a mystery as to when Percy France died.  Any page you find on the internet only says January 1992.

I can now report that Percy France died at the age of 63 on January 4, 1992 after being struck by a car.

I know that because I have acquired most, though not the entirety, of Phil Schaap's WKCR Percy France Memorial broadcast, which aired January 11 1992.

Other than that info, I've verified that Schaap didn't have a clue about what recordings Percy really played on with Doggett, or for how long he was in the band. And this was six years after the Ruppli discography came out.

[JSngry]

16 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I can now report that Percy France died at the age of 63 on January 4, 1992 after being struck by a car.

As a passenger or as a pedestrian?

Serious question.

[Dan Gould]

Pedestrian.

I also learned from schaap's broadcast that Percy's frontline partner in Sammy Price's two tenor boogie, Eddie barefield, died a year before to the day.

[JSngry]

Yikes! That sucks.

Lambert, Bean, & Percy.

[Dan Gould]

On 7/30/2006 at 8:24 AM, Stereojack said:

 

 

I am sure - every discography confirms it, and Scott's name is even in the songwriting credits. I'm not surprised that Percy knew the solo. Every tenor player who ever worked with Doggett had to play that solo note for note every night! I once saw Doggett in the mid 1960's, and the tenor player (whoever he was) played the original solo verbatim. As for Percy's claim to have been on the original record, this wouldn't be the first time an older musician engaged in a little hyperbole.

I've learned that the story Percy told was that "Honky Tonk" first took shape while he was still in the band ... he convinced Phil Schaap who credits his story as true though it directly contradicts the story told by Doggett about how it came to be. 

Who really knows, but Percy definitely called one of his bands "Honky Tonk Part 3" and on tour with the Oliver Jackson Trio, he sometimes gave credit to himself as a composer of the tune.  It's odd if he left Doggett because he didn't think they were having the success they should have had, if Honky Tonk was percolating among the band members at the same time.

 

[Dan Gould]

So as I've mentioned, the Leonard Gaskin archive at the Smithsonian is a huge source of Percy France material and the latest news is quite exciting. From the guide the Smithsonian published it seemed likely that there would be a ton of photos involving Percy, including one folder described as Percy's birthday party in 1987 ... problem was that I was quoted a price of $1 per page of "xeroxes" of photos, so I could see and judge them, and then $35 per photo for high quality scan. 

However it turns out that $1 charge gets you color scans of three photos per page, front and back.  And the quality of scans means absolutely no reason to pay $35 a piece for higher density scan.

So I had to share the first one, just received as a sample - that's Bob Neloms, Rudy Lawless, Percy and Leonard, at the Flamingo Lounge in Brooklyn, March 30 1986. Leonard took his walkman and I have a transfer of about 90 minutes of the music played that night. And now I've got about 190 photos coming my way early next week at a cost of only $65 or so. Can't wait! (and to be sure to be able to snip and not exceed the max upload, I had to keep it to just the musicians - original is much larger).

Photo credit: Leonard Gaskin Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Edited January 30, 2021 by Dan Gould