[78-L] Rock & Roll rising (was: Escott, was Arnold Covey)

Joe Scott joenscott at mail.com
Tue Mar 18 09:06:34 PDT 2014


----- Original Message -----
From: eugene hayhoe
Sent: 03/17/14 05:53 PM
To: 78-L Mail List
Subject: Re: [78-L] Rock & Roll rising (was: Escott, was Arnold Covey)

Country's here, so is Wynonie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR_A4Su-TrI Hank Penny's Bloodshot EyesFrom a few years after their formation on, King assigned songs they controlled to artists without worrying about the origins of the songs (for financial reasons), which is something Louis Jordan had not been worrying about for years too. But there was rarely much "hillbilly" about the performances by the black artists in those situations during that period (as an aside, imo even Otis Blackwell's conscious attempts to sound somewhat hillbilly about '52 didn't sound all that hillbilly).Paralleling Cary's point that if a hillbilly band added a saxophonist, that's a clue they were interested in R&B, when a black band added hillbilly-associated instrumentation that was a clue they were interested in hillbilly music, e.g. steel guitar on Buddy Lucas's "Undecided" in about '51 -- but that approach was very rare in black music during '45-'49. E.g. there were tons of blacks who remembered how to play the fiddle as of the late '40s and the opportunity to do so on R&B records was almost zero, in contrast to greater use of fiddle back when Big Joe Williams began recording and earlier. Roy Milton recorded a nice "Along The Navajo Trail" in actual hillbillyish style (unlike e.g. Wynonie imo) in about '47, Specialty didn't bother to put it out at the time.Joseph Scott


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