Tag Archives: March Music et al

Music et al, Today in history

Sam Phillips Sun Records

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Sam Phillips Sun Records

First record pressed on  March 27, 1952

Sam Phillips Sun Records

A slice of the first Sun Record:
Johnny London, “Drivin’ Slowly.”  The B-side was “Flat Tire.”

Peter Guralnick published Sam Phillips The Man Who Invented Rock and Roll in 2014. With 661 pages of text it is, to say the least, very thorough.  If you have an interest in the birth of rock and roll and  a person’s struggle to achieve a dream, then I highly recommend this deeply researched book.

Sam Phillips Sun Records

There were many times during Sam Phillips’s 18-hour work days that he could simply have walked away from his dream and earned a profitable living as a radio engineer.

From an early age, Phillips believed that “music will take you anywhere you want to go.” His father was a farmer and Sam grew up listening to the sharecroppers’ stories and songs while they worked. The feeling their sound’s emoted was his holy grail: the “purity of emotional communication, not perfection.”

Sam Phillips’s CV might both impress and worry a potential employer. Certainly diligent, meticulous, and capable, but he was those things at many places since he didn’t stay anyplace too long.

His dream of having a recording studio was always primary. Having a record label for those recording was secondary, so at first he’d search for “that” performer or band that had “that” sound. Then he’d record take after take waiting for “that” to happen.

Most of the people he recorded had not been recorded before or had had limited exposure. Neither mattered to Phillips. Did he get the gut bucket feeling he sought?

Phillips had opened Memphis Recording Service on January 3, 1950  in Memphis, Tennessee.  His early recordings included such future stars as BB King, Junior Parker, and Howlin’ Wolf. In fact, Phillips recorded “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats. The real band leader and person who wrote the song was Ike Turner. To many rock and roll critics, “Rocket 88” represents the first rock and roll record.

Sam Phillips Sun Records

Sun Records

By 1952, after recording hits for other labels, Phillips decided he needed his own label. Unfortunately, the Sun Record label quickly failed, but not for lack of effort. Phillips’s drive to showcase the music left him little time to understand the intricacies of distribution, pressing, and publishing.

Phillips’s doggedness led to Sun Records resurrection in January 1953. It continued to struggle until Phillips thought the voice of young white kid who recorded a song on his own might be someone worth working with. At first nothing happened, but soon local successes followed and Elvis Presley put Sun Records on the map.

But that’s another story for another time.

Sam Phillips Sun Records
Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Rhythm and Blues, Roots of rock

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog

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Willie May Thornton Hound Dog

Released  March 1953

“Big Mama Thornton”

December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984
…and Sam Phillips’ answer to it
Willie May Thornton Hound Dog
the label of the 78 rpm “Hound Dog”

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton was 26 when Peacock Records released Hound Dog in March (or February) 1953.  Written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, it spent seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B charts and sold almost two million copies. Big Mama saw very little of that money.

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog
78 rpm of Rufus Thomas’s Bear Cat

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Sam Phillips, the young record maker and founder of Sun Records in Memphis, flattered Hound Dog by writing “Bear Cat.” He knew Rufus Thomas and decided he’d be the ideal person to sing the song.

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog
Rufus Thomas as a DJ at WDIA in Memphis

Click below to hear “Bear Cat”:

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog

Bear Cat

Though Rufus Thomas wasn’t familiar with the term, where Phillips grew up in Alabama, a bear cat was “the meanest goddamn woman in the world.“

Thomas and Phillips knew they had not come close to the superior “Hound Dog” but were satisfied with the results and released it on March 22,  just a few weeks after the release of “Hound Dog.” Even the full title told you what you could obviously hear: “‘Bear Cat’ (The Answer to Hound Dog)”

“Bear Cat” was an immediate hit. The first in Sun Records young but turbulent history.

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog

Answer songs

“Answer songs” were very popular and Sam Phillips innocently didn’t realize he had struck a hornet nest of problems by releasing the song without permission from Lion Musical Publishing Company which held the rights to “Hound Dog.”

Sam Phillips ended up writing a check to Lion and gave up all claims to the publishing.

 “Bear Cat” eventually reached #3 on the R & B charts and did not leave the charts until June.

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog

Hound Dog

Of course, three years later a young white singer named Elvis and his cover of “Hound Dog” would forever displace Thornton’s version.

Ironically, Big Mama would write (in 1961) and release (in 1968) a song (“Ball and Chain”) that would be taken by another young singer.

I highly recommended book about early rock and roll and Sam Phillips: Sam Phillips, the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick.  

The subtitle of the song is “How One Man Discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Elvis Presley, and How His Tiny Label, Sun Records of Memphis, Revolutionized the World.”

Willie May Thornton Hound Dog
Music et al, Music of the 60s

Ruby Romantics Day Will Come

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Ruby Romantics Day Will Come

Our Day Will Come
by
Ruby & the Romantics
Ruby Romantics Day Will Come
Ruby & the Romantics, 1965. Clockwise from bottom left: George Lee, Ronald Mosely, Ruby Nash, Leroy Fann, Ed Roberts
Ruby Romantics Day Will Come

Ruby Romantics Day Will Come

March 23, 1963

Our Day Will Come became #1 on Billboard on March 23, 1963, just one day after the release of the Beatles’ first album, Please Please Me, in England. The Beatles had released the single “Please Please Me” in America on February 25, but it failed to make an impact.

Ruby Romantics Day Will Come

American pop music meandered along

The week before, Walk Like a Man by the Four Seasons was number one.  The following week the Chiffons’ He’s So Fine would take over.

“Our Day Will Come” was also number one on the R & B chart. Lead vocalist Ruby Nash Curtis, Ed Roberts, George Lee, and Leroy Fann were the original members when they began in Akron, Ohio in 1961.

The personnel on the original recording include Leroy Glover on organ, Vinnie Bell, Al Gorgoni and Kenny Burrell on guitar, Russ Savakus on bass, Gary Chester on drums and George Devens on percussion.

The song was nominated for Song of the Year in 1963, but “The Days of Wine and Roses” won.

They never had another #1 hit, but did have success with such songs as  “When You’re Young and in Love,” “Our Everlasting Love,” and “Baby Come Home.”

By 1966, they completely changed their personnel, with Curtis the only holdover. She then joined Richard Pryor, Vincent McLeod, Robert Lewis, Ronald Jackson, and Bill Evans.

Ruby & the Romantics became an all-female group in 1968, with Denise Lewis and Cheryl Thomas backing Ruby.

Ruby Romantics Day Will Come

Disbanded in 1971

They were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame [Sharon, PA] in 2007. In August 2013, Ruby & The Romantics were inducted into the very first class of the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

Only Ruby survives today. Here she is singing the hit from a 2002 show in front of a mainly white audience a few of whom are enthusiastically nodding and smiling along to the song.

Ruby and the Romantics influenced other groups. For one, they influenced The Temptations early harmonies.  And many covered the hit song, such as  Frankie Valli, Cher, Donny and Marie Osmond, Bobby Darin, Patti Page, Dee Dee Sharp, Pat Boone, Nancy Wilson, Trini Lopez, The Supremes, Cliff Richard, and James Brown.

The most famous cover is likely Amy Winehouse’s from 2011.

Ruby Romantics Day Will Come