01 - Rhythm For Sale (Swing Shop Swing) (Moore)
02 - Two Old Maids in a Folding Bed (Moore)
03 - I Got a Feeling For You (Mayberry)
04 - Someday Someday (Mayberry)
05 - Oh That Nasty Man (Mayberry)
06 - Mailman Blues (Mayberry)
07 - Mayberry Blues (Mayberry)
08 - Evil Hearted Woman (Mayberry)
09 - Cheatin' on Me (Proctor)
10 - Let's Call It a Day (Proctor)
11 - Take Me Along With You (Proctor)
12 - Blues at Midnight (Proctor)
13 - St. Louis Blues (Handy)
14 - Loveless Love (Handy)
15 - Beale Street Blues (Handy)
16 - Way Down South Where the Blues Begin (Handy)
17 - My Little Girl (Brown, Washboard Band)
18 - Lucille Blues (Brown, Washboard Band)
19 - Mississippi Water Blues (Brown, Washboard Band)
20 - Big Leg Woman (Brown, Washboard Band)
21 - My Little Girl Blues (Brown)
22 - Bobbie Town Woogie (Brown)
23 - Bobbie Town Woogie (Brown)
24 - New Little Girl, Little Girl (Brown)
25 - Brown's Boogie (Brown)
4sharedMediafireReview by Scott Yanow, All Music
A variety of formerly rare blues-oriented performances are reissued on this CD put out by the Austrian label RST. Best are two spirited selections from singer Monette Moore in 1936, her only recordings after 1927. The performances by Tiny Mayberry and the not-so-hot Helen Proctor are most notable for the solo work of trumpeters Charlie Shavers and Red Allen, and clarinetist Buster Bailey, while Lee Brown does a good job on nine numbers from 1940 and 1946. Of greatest interest from a historical standpoint (but rather disappointing) are four songs featuring composer W.C. Handy in 1939 playing trumpet with a fine all-star group that includes trombonist J.C. Higginbotham and clarinetist Edmond Hall. Unfortunately, Handy not only could not improvise or swing, but plays a very straight lead and takes two bad vocals. So this CD is very much a mixed bag.Monette Moore
Born: May 19, 1902 in Gainesville, TX
Died: Oct 21, 1962 in Garden Grove, CA
Biography by Scott Yanow
Monette Moore was always a bit obscure, even when recording prolifically in the 1920s, but she was a surprisingly versatile blues and swing singer with a pleasing delivery of her own. Moore grew up in Kansas City and moved to New York in the early 1920s. During that decade she worked in many cities (including Chicago, Dallas and Oklahoma City) and spent a period singing regularly with Charlie Johnson's Paradise Ten at Small's Paradise. In addition to her own recordings, Moore recorded a few titles with Johnson from 1927-28 (including "You Ain't the One" and "Don't You Leave Me Here").
Although the blues became less popular during the Depression, Moore worked fairly steadily in the 1930s and '40s, including three years as Ethel Waters' understudy. Moore performed primarily in New York, Chicago (including with Zinky Cohn in 1937) and eventually Hollywood. After a return to New York during which time she worked with Sidney Bechet and Sammy Price, she permanently settled in Los Angeles in November 1942. Moore appeared regularly at L.A. area nightclubs, was featured in James P. Johnson's Sugar Hill show and also appeared in a few Hollywood films in small roles. She spent most of the 1950s outside of music except on a part-time basis. During 1923-27, Moore recorded 44 songs as a leader (plus three alternate takes and some under the pseudonym of Susie Smith); among her sidemen were Tommy Ladnier, Jimmy O'Bryant, Jimmy Blythe, Rex Stewart, Bubber Miley and Elmer Snowden. In addition Moore, cut two selections apiece in 1932 (duets with Fats Waller) and 1936 plus six from 1945-47. Moore's last regular job was working with the Young Men of New Orleans in Disneyland from 1961-62 before dying from a heart attack.-------------
Tiny Mayberry bio [???]------------
Helen Proctor bio [???]-------------
W.C. Handy
Born: William Christopher Handy on Nov 16, 1873 in Florence, AL
Died: Mar 28, 1958 in New York, NY
Biography by John Bush, All Music
W.C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues," brought the music of rural Southern blacks into the mainstream by copyrighting old songs and writing new songs, spurring the blues into the mainstream of popular music during the 1910s and '20s. He was also a highly trained veteran of the music world who led all manner of groups: string quartets, brass bands, and a touring minstrel-show group.
William Christopher Handy was born in Florence, AL, in 1873. His early years were spent living in a log cabin built by his grandfather, a local minister (as was his father). Handy was musical from an early age, and took lessons on the cornet from a local barbershop. After graduating from school near the top of his class, he began working as a teacher in Birmingham in 1893, but quit soon after (due to low wages) and began working at a factory job.
He also founded a string quartet, named the Lauzetta Quartet, and traveled with the band to perform at the World's Fair in Chicago. Though he also toured with the group, Handy was soon teaching again in his home state, this time at the Huntsville Normal School (later to become Alabama A&M). By 1896, he'd hit the road yet again, a three-year hitch playing cornet with the minstrel show Mahara's Minstrels that saw him appearing as far west as Oklahoma and as far south as Cuba. Around the turn of the century, Handy returned to Huntsville Normal and served as its band director from 1900 to 1902. After another short tour with Mahara's Minstrels (this time playing the Northwest), W.C. Handy moved to Clarksdale and became the director of a black band, the Colored Knights of Pythias, which played before both black and white audiences. Handy spent six years based in Clarksdale, where his previous brushes with blues music were intensified by time spent in the nominal home of the blues. Once, in 1903, while waiting for a train in the town of Tutwiler, he heard a musician playing his guitar with a knife and singing about a local spot where two railroads crossed; he later called it "the weirdest music I'd ever heard," but the song stuck in his head and he later copyrighted a song along the same theme, the famous "Yellow Dog Blues."
By 1909, Handy had moved to Memphis, where he published his first song, "Mr. Crump," that same year. Local political heavyweight Edward H. "Boss" Crump was running for mayor that year, and though the candidate was by no means a music fan, an orchestra led by Handy was hired for entertainment, and the song -- actually including some serious criticisms of Crump himself -- became famous around the city. Three years later, with different lyrics provided by George Norton, it became "The Memphis Blues," though Handy unwisely sold the copyright for 100 dollars. He soon set up his own publishing company (Pace & Handy Music Co., with Harry Pace) in the heart of Memphis' burgeoning entertainment district on Beale Street. In 1914, he published his most famous piece (and one of the most-recorded songs of all time), "The St. Louis Blues," as well as "Yellow Dog Blues." Two years later came "Beale Street Blues," and in September of 1917 Handy's Orchestra of Memphis (a 12-piece band) recorded several sides for Columbia in New York.
In 1918, Handy moved the entire operation to New York, where Handy Brothers Music Company, Inc. set up on another famous entertainment avenue, Broadway. Though he never produced another hit to rank with his compositions of the mid-'10s, the timing was fortuitous; in August of 1920, Mamie Smith recorded Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues," not just an unlikely hit but a commercial explosion that made the blues as big a phenomenon as ragtime had been during the early '10s. Handy eventually copyrighted over 150 songs of secular and religious material, and Handy's Orchestra continued to record material, for Paramount and OKeh. In 1926, he wrote Blues: An Anthology, which not only compiled sheet music for the most famous blues songs but also attempted to explain their origins. Handy began to lose his vision during the late '20s, but worked steadily during the '30s, publishing Negro Authors and Composers of the United States in 1935, W.C. Handy's Collection of Negro Spirituals in 1938, and Unsung Americans Sung in 1944. He also authored an autobiography, Father of the Blues, in 1941. By 1943, however, his vision had completely failed after a serious fall. In 1954, he married for the second time (his first wife, Elizabeth, had died in 1937) and in 1958, Nat King Cole starred in the biopic St. Louis Blues. W.C. Handy had already died, of pneumonia, in March of that year. His legacy is not just a function of his copyrights; Memphis named a park on Beale Street after him, and the W.C. Handy Blues Awards is the premier awards ceremony for blues music.-------------
Lee Brown
Born: 1880 in United States
Died: ?
Biography by Steve Leggett, All Music
Lee Brown was an Arkansas blues piano player who recorded 29 tracks for Decca Records between 1937 and 1940, followed by a single session that yielded two additional sides in 1946. It is believed that he made Chicago his home base, but little exact information is available on Brown. His best known recording is a song called "Little Girl Little Girl," originally cut in 1937 in New York City. Brown returned to the "Little Girl" template several times, essentially recording the same song (with slight variations) under different titles, and at his last known recording date in 1946 he cut yet another version, calling it "My Little Girl Blue."
