sweartotellthetruth

November 25, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 107 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 6:45 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, November 26th, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

When we were considering how this week’s program might take shape, we had several albums in mind to start from. One of these was a recent Arhoolie CD called Jumps Boogies & Wobbles on Arhoolie by HowellDevine. It turns out that this is the first new “blues” CD Arhoolie has issued in twenty five years. We’d never have guessed that was the case but it appears that it’s true. Arhoolie has repackaged much of its blues catalogue on CD and added to the original LP playlists material from the sessions that didn’t make it to LP, but Chris Strachwitz’ label hasn’t been recording new blues for years. This revelation inspired us to devote most of this program to the Arhoolie label. The occasion of the HowellDevine album seemed like a good time to take a look at one of the great traditional and roots music labels.

Arhoolie Records has been active in its 50-plus years documenting blues, old time and bluegrass music, cajun and zydeco, Mexican and norteno, and, in recent years, indigenous music from various countries in the world. We can’t go too far into the Arhoolie catalogue in a single program and we’ll be looking mostly at the blues Arhoolie recorded and most of that from the label’s first decade. From the documentation of earlier blues styles, Chris Strachwitz moved to urban electric music from Chicago, Texas, and the West Coast. Arhoolie captured a good deal of essential blues music in the early years (as well as reissuing older recordings from 78s and 45s on  Blues Classics and Arhoolie compilations) but Strachwitz may have judged that it was safe to leave the blues field to others and concentrate his label’s resources on other forms of traditional music. In the mean time, Arhoolie’s blues catalogue remains essential listening, and much, if not most, of it is available on CD, while Arhoolie has also held on to and kept available diminishing stocks of many of its LPs.

On the Show:

HowellDevine – Blind James Campbell – Big Joe Williams – Sam Chatmon  – Elizabeth Cotten – Johnny Young – Bee Houston – Sonny Treadway – and others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until December 24th.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (December 3rd)

Undetermined as of today. We might devote the program to our long-threatened survey of Nashville blues, R&B and soul. We’ll update in this space.

Errors and Omissions

We mixed up a couple of CDs when we were preparing last week’s program (BRS 106). We intended to play a jubilee style piece, the Deep River Boys’ “Im Tramping”, from 1945, off disc A of one 4 CD set but the CD in the case was disc A from another 4 CD set and the track we played was the obscure Silvertone Quintet’s “Stand By Me”, from 1958. We couldn’t identify the track properly on the air.

cmc

November 18, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 106 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 5:34 pm

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, November 19th, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

We had several plans for this show, which is why this posting is late. We wanted to present a feature devoted to gospel quartets. We settled on a feature devoted mostly to quartet recordings of the 1940s and early fifties–a period we haven’t yet featured in detail, although we’ve certainly played records from that era. When people talk about the “golden era” of gospel they generally appear to mean the 1950s, when Speciaity, Peacock, Nashboro, and other labels were issuing quartet recordings that have come to define the genre. Many of the groups that dominated the fifties were already active in the 1940s, if not earlier. The Dixie Hummingbirds, Swan Silvertones, both groups of Blind Boys toured and made records in the 1940s and we know less about these recordings in the same way that we know less about blues & R&B of the forties. Our feature will include early recordings by some of the biggest name quartets in gospel.

Also on the program, some Nashville artists and a couple of blues harmonica players from the West Coast. 

On the Show:

Al Garner – George “Harmonica” Smith – Downchild – Harmonizing Four  – Swan Silvertones – Blind Boys of Alabama (Happyland Singers) – Blind Boys of Mississippi – Jackson Gospel Singers – Candi Staton – Roscoe Shelton

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until December 17th.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (November 26th)

Undetermined as of today. we’ll update.

cmc

 

November 11, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 105 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 3:05 pm

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, November 12th, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

No special focus this week. Bit of string band music, piano blues, soul and R&B. LIve Etta James and O.V.Wright. Music from a couple of recent CDs from Southern Ontario. 

Downchild – Wynonie Harris – Christine Kittrell – Arthur McClain & Joe Evans  – Big Maceo – Willie Williams with the Howlin’ Wolf Band – O.V. Wright – Harrison Kennedy – and many others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until December 10th.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (November 19th)

Not sure what we’re doing but possibly some gospel quartet.

cmc

 

November 4, 2013

Blues and Rhythm Show 104 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 7:09 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, November 5th, 2013 (1:00-2:30 pm)

This week we devote the full 90 minutes to the early years of Modern Records (Modern Music as it was originally named). We’re restricting our attention on this program to the R&B output of the label beginning in 1945 as far as the year 1952. We’ll come back with a second feature special examining the latter years of the label and including the down-home varieties of blues that appeared on the Modern and RPM labels.

Early recordings (1945-1947) on Modern Records represented a wide array of African American styles, jazz pop, blues and early R&B. There was less in the way of hard blues sounds and R&B than there would be in the years 1949-1952.

The shortage of new records during the war years was a factor influencing juke box operator Jules Bihari to think about establishing Modern Records in late 1944. The label was successful with its first recording and continued to do better than many other LA-based end-of-the-war startups and Bihari’s brothers joined him in the business. Like King Records, based in Cincinnati, Modern Records seemed to consolidate its market position after the musicians strike that curtailed recording activity for the better part of 1948.

It’s a given that record companies in this era short-changed their recording artists. Even if they paid well for the sides by the standards of the day, they either did not pay or limited the amounts of payment for composer royalties by setting up their own publishing arms and siphoning off those royalties by one means or another.

At Modern, the label added the names like Taub, Josea or Ling to the composer credits and diverted monies to the label principals for songs the Bihari brothers did not have a hand in writing. Blues and R&B artists made recordings for the relatively small amounts paid, often by the song,  for recording sessions. Additional motivation was the boost that  having records gave them for obtaining live engagements. It was mostly from their live engagements that they earned a living.

On the Show

Modern Records – Pearl Traylor – Bardu Ali & His Orchestra – Hadda Brooks  – Three Bits of Rhythm – Jimmy Witherspoon – Pee Wee Crayton – Little Willie Littlefield – Lil Greenwood – Jimmy Nelson – Holmes Brothers – and others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until December 3rd.

Contact Us

To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com.

You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.

Next week (November 12th)

Undetermined as of today. We’ll update.

Errors and Omissions

Last week (BRS 103), we played something  by Bukka White and we mentioned that he called himself “Booker” in the song. We should have explained that Booker T. Washington White hated being referred to as Bukka. His first recordings for Victor were made as Washington White.  It was the famous Vocalion recordings that identified him as Bukka White.

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