Jumping at the barrelhouse

Archive: Listening

Tenor saxophonist Ben Webster a rhythm?n?blues artist? Jimmy Rushing a r&b singer?

I?m listening to Midnight at the Barrelhouse a bargain five CD JSP box that bills itself as ?Rockin? California Rhythm & Blues 1947 -1951.?

Well, Jerry Wexler didn?t coin rhythm and blues until 1947. I don?t know if there were purist objections to this addition to pop music nomenclature. Undoubtedly it was a better header for Billboard?s section devoted to which records were selling well at the record stores in African-American neighborhoods than Harlem Hit Parade which it replaced.

I doubt the musicians worried about which words were used to denote the music. If you?ve read old liner notes or musical autobiography you?ll see ?soul? and ?blues? often used interchangeably and applied to divers kinds of music.

In the 1940s economic pressures pushed many big bands to become smaller, to become group bands. Some black bands moved to a punchier sound, often with hilarious lyrics. Louis Jordan is the prototype. The Ravens were the equivalent for vocal groups. The Ravens would prove the first prototype of doo-wop.

The music of folks like Louis Jordan and Buddy Johnson is usually called Jump Blues. Some call it an early form of rock?n?roll. Surely it was an early stage of R&B as most people would come to think of it. By a circuitous evolution we wind up with the early music of James Brown.

Jump Blues, a happy halfway land between big band swing and outright R&B became one of my favorite species of music. There?s still much of the text of swing, more humor, never suffering the fault of sloppy sentimentality that much of the surviving big band music would favor.

Midnight at the Barrelhouse is full of jump blues, rhythmic blues, party music: Lover?s Lane Boogie, Double Crossing Blues - how could anything mixing blues and boogie fail to please?

Giving the set?s geographical limitation it may not be the best introduction to the period. But a more generic set would be too scanty. For someone like myself who already knows they enjoy the genre there are plenty of cuts I haven?t heard before: lots of Little Esther and Mel Walker.

A hundred cuts with notes and JSP?s excellent remastering for less than 30 iTunes.