The Magnificent Goldberg

Welcome Jeff! And thanks for those memories. MG

Duke was set up by two Memphis DJs - Bill Fitzgerald & James Mattis - in 1952. They recorded Johnny Ace, Rosco Gordon, Bobby Bland and Earl Forrest. But they ran into cashflow problems within ten months when their distributors sat on the invoices for Ace's "Our song". Bill Fitzgerald took a runout powder and Don Robey bought the firm from Mattis in 1953. But in that short a time, they made some terrific records with future giants. MG

I LOVE that! It's as if the owner didn't EXPECT to sell anything! MG

Oh, I like that one! MG

See also this 2 CD set, issued by the Country Music Hall of Fame - "Night Train To Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945-1970" http://store.countrymusichalloffame.com/st...4&cat_id=73 Here's a pdf of the sleeve notes - can't find the site where I downloaded them a few months ago. Music_City_R_B_1945_1970_notes.pdf Only nineteen record companies started up in Tennessee in the period from 1934-1954. But eight of them were really quite significant players in the business - a very high proportion of significant firms among the hundreds of indies starting and failing in this period. 1946 Bullet (C&W, R&B, pop, gos) 1948 Tennessee (C&W, R&B, gos, pop) 1950 Dot (mainly R&B, gos, pop, jazz, C&W) 1950 Sun (R&B, pop, C&W, gos) 1951 Nashboro (Gos, R&B, C&W) 1952 Duke (R&B) 1952 Meteor (C&W, R&B, gos) 1954 Hickory (C&W, pop, R&B, sacred) Because blues, R&B, C&W and Gospel were all important locally - and because of WLAC. MG MG

Yes - He ran Randy's Record shop, out of Galatin, TN and started Dot Records in 1950. Initially Dot was an R&B/C&W/Gospel label. He sponsored a programme on WLAC Nashville and did very big business with mail orders. His big rival was Ernie Young, of Ernie's Record Mart, Nashville, which also sponsored mail order programmes over WLAC. Young started Nashboro Records in 1951 - Gospel/Blues/C&W. The DJ team on WLAC was Bill "Hoss" Allen, Gene Nobles and John Richbourg. Randy Wood started to sponsor Nobles' programme in 1947. He was the guy with the Tarzan yell - though it wasn't him, actually. Nobles was handicapped by polio as a child and had a guy, who was called "cohort" who actually played the records and he was the one who let out the Tarzan yell. Other than that, he never said a word. Ernie Young always thought that Nobles worked harder for Randy than he did for him. So he eventually focussed on John Richbourg. Randy must have thought so too, because he gave him a ten percent stake in Dot Records. In 1957, Wood sold Dot to Paramount Pictures, but continued to run the firm. Eventually he quit and went back to Galatin, starting a new label, Randy's Spiritual Records. There's some explanation about WLAC's coverage from an interview with Hoss Allen, in John Broven's book "Record makers and breakers". I've also heard (years ago) that either Randy's or Ernie's even got orders from West Africa! MG

Johnnie Taylor Little Johnny Taylor Birima

I suppose the one I worked for wasn't bad - Fine Records - nicely understated bombast, quite in keeping with the character of my boss. And who could ever forget CHEAPO CHEAPO RECORDS (mentioned in another thread about old record shops) MG

My Missus wanted to buy a bbq in the late spring of this year, hearing weather forecasters saying it was going to be a sensational summer. I just stayed quiet and she never managed to make up her mind which one to get or where we were going to keep it. And the summer was a washout. Actually a pity, because we've got a nice little herb garden with all sorts of stuff that can be shoved on things meaty. MG

I've started a new thread for these record shop names. http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...mp;#entry968387 MG

Here's the posts from that thread

Bill started this off on the Atlanta shop thread. I thought it was good enough to have its own thread. MG

Sound Advice (Cardiff - deceased) - very good jazz section upstairs, but run by the head sherang of the Welsh Jazz Society, so he was always contemptuous of the records I bought. MG

Vinyl Demand (Brighton) MG

Harry Akst Kenneth Edmonds Lester Joseph Gillis

Actually, now I come to think of it, the jazz/blues/folk shop in Brighton in the sixties - at which I was a regular, of course - was next door to a coffee bar and the proprietor occasionally used to send the young lady who worked for him out to get tea for us all - including my mate and me. MG

Quite. MG

Yes, yes, for another dose of Cab Calloway - Volume 1: 1930-1934 - JSP MG

Dakota Staton’s albums were the first Soul Jazz LPs I ever bought; I’ve liked her for a long time, without really appreciating her. So until a year or so ago, I only had a couple of her albums on CD. I’ve bought four this year, about three the year before, so I’ve been listening to her a lot recently. Similarly, Cab Calloway. He’s always been someone I’ve known about – hard to miss, really. But a couple of years ago, I got his 4 CD Quadromania set and began to get Cab. Last month, I bought the two JSP 4 CD boxes covering the period 1930 to mid 1940 – a period not greatly explored by the 29 tracks in the Quadromania set. This set is amazing! Cab is really unappreciated, I think. And so is Dakota – and for the same reason, I believe. The first thing that hits you, listening to all the early recordings, is what an incredible voice Cab had. Few singers had his range and power and breath control. And none made the use of these assets that Cab did. Because the second thing that hits you is how very little Cab was influenced by Louis Armstrong – and EVERYONE was influenced by Armstrong, whether they were jazz singers or not. But Cab was completely different – so different as to seem eccentric. But, though he was certainly eccentric, he wasn’t merely eccentric. Everything he sang is wholly jazz – he was an improviser well beyond most jazz singers – and yet much more than jazz. Few jazz singers mangle the American language in the way Cab did. Most seek to interpret a song so as to bring out the meaning of the words. But with Cab, it’s as if the words – I think mainly written by others, though there are no composer credits on the JSP package – were no more than a convenient way for Cab to improvise sounds that, combined with the soaring and dipping of his extraordinary voice, formed a music that was indubitably his and was also terribly, terribly, hip – so hip that he could sing some of the most awful songs, such as “Black rhythm”, with lyrics that nowadays seem patronisingly racist – and dispense (almost) completely with the meanings the songwriters had thought they were conveying. His image was important, too, and Cab was one of the few singers who controlled his own image – flamboyantly over the top. And it seems to me, listening to the two of them in fairly close proximity, that Dakota was a singer – the singer – of the same stamp as Cab. She used weird effects – little girl voices; an English accent; whoops; operatic power flights; yells; whoops; sobs; screams – and she, too, had an over the top image with big hair, fur stoles, magnificently sequined dresses into which she appeared to have been sewn; truly an anti-jazz image. Like Cab, Dakota made listening to her as much fun as looking at her. But unlike him, Dakota didn’t seem to subvert the songs she so cavalierly mangled. Indeed, some of them, like “It could happen to you”, are really enhanced by the pace and exuberance of her delivery. So I have a definite feeling that Dakota was carrying the same flag as Cab. Oh, and they both had the wonderful Benny Carter doing arrangements for them! MG

What was Sun Ra's real name? MG

Thanks Ubu - what about Access? I've been told it won't work with Vista. MG

Dude, this hasn't changed since...I don't know when. 3.x? Right click the folder you want to make the shortcut to and take it from there. If you can do it in XP, you can do it in Vista. That's what I WAS doing!!!! MG

Sun Ra Pharoah Sanders Amenhotep IV MG

Most of that was a hilarious show, but I never liked those sketches. First time you see it, it's a hoot, but there was one every week and it just got boring. MG

Benny Cummings Singers - Lord, make me over - New Birth MG