sweartotellthetruth

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, December 15th, (1:00 to 2:30pm)

This week’s program a year-end grab-bag of a few new releases, things we’ve had around with a mind to play for a while and a few seasonal tracks.      

Also on the program, a few tracks from the era just before 1920. This was still the era of vaudeville song and ragtime’s influence could be felt but blues had been popular in the south for a few years and the influence of blues was beginning to appear in popular records. Of course, the record industry did not, or preferred not to, believe in the existence of an African-American market with customers possessing the means to buy records so what records were made by African Americans were made with a general audience in mind and not a specifically African-American audience. In fact, while opportunities were limited, African-American performers had been recorded since the 1890s, just not making records directed at their own people. All would change once Perry Bradford secured a recording date for Mamie Smith at OKeh Records. Still, what records were made in the years prior to 1920 couldn’t but influence black recording artists who did make records from 1920 onward. We have  a few records from the 1917 to 1919 period to play this week, by both black and white performers. 

 On the Show:

Drink Small – Marion Harris –  Wilbur Sweatman – McGee Brothers & Todd – Hollywood Fats – Vance Kelly – Cicero Blake – Gospel Starlets – and others

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msumcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until January 11th

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.

Errors and Omissions

On last week’s show, we stated that Sonny Boy Williamson (II) was 53 years old when he joined Chess-Checker and not 63 when he died. He seemed that old but we were wrong. He was 43 when he joined the label and only 53 when he died. We might have overlooked this mistake but we had an unrelated conversation with CFMU’s program director in which the question of age and musical creativity was a subject. We also played Lowell Fulson on the program and we could have explained that Lowell began playing blues, sometimes solo or with with his brother accompanying him on second guitar. We consider the records he made at Swing Time to fit under the category of rhythm & blues and his Checker recordings and those that followed put him back in the realm of blues, in our judgement. Finally, we seem to have confused a Chicago drummer with a Nashville singer.

Next week (December 15th)

Our 2015 Christmas special

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