Conference demon::after_hours

557.0. "King" by OSOV03::KAGEYAMA (Jump your blues away) Thu Jun 05 1997 09:16

Has anyone tried 4 CD "The King R&B Box Set" released last year?  How 
good is it?  I presume it's equal to "The Specialty Story" box set. 
Here's some information from http://www.bluesaccess.com/No_26/again.html

- Kazunori
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The King R&B Box Set is cause for jubilation for anyone who   
loves rhythm & blues or cares about the history and variety of
black popular music in the mid-twentieth century. Like so many owners of
independent labels, Syd Nathan saw a market that the major labels were
ignoring in the late 1940s. He was a businessman, pure and simple, and once
said he ran King just as others ran a coffin business or a machinery
business. Nathan prided himself on being based in Cincinnati, instinctively
understanding that his Midwest location meant his music and artists were
"not contaminated by New York, Los Angeles or Chicago," as he put it.

King Records began with "hillbillies" but soon branched into R&B for a
practical reason: to give Nathan's salesmen a different market to service
since they were already traveling the country. Just as his hillbilly records
favored the hard-core sound of Grandpa Jones or Cowboy Copas, neither were
his blues records aimed at crossover. Indeed, the first R&B hit was Bull
Moose Jackson's "I Know Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well," a jumping 1945
concoction of strong singing, horns and clapping hands.

Nathan's producers and songwriters -- pros like Henry Glover and band leader
Lucky Millinder -- usually went for a more sophisticated sound than the
country blues that was then evolving toward the electric Chicago style. Some
of the early King products pioneered rock'n'roll -- in-your-face hits like
"Good Rockin' Tonight" by Wynonie Harris or "Sixty Minute Man" and "Have
Mercy Baby" by the Dominoes or, in a more mellow mood, Lonnie Johnson's
version of "Tomorrow Night," which is where Elvis learned the pop tune. When
the late-'50s became the first Rock Era, King Records was there with Little
Willie "Fever" John, Hank "Sexy Ways" Ballard, vocal groups like the 5
Royales and the Charms, and that new blues guitar phenom, Freddie "Hideaway"
King.

A staple of the label was always the R&B-inflected "near jazz" of saxman
Earl Bostic and jazz figures like Hot Lips Page and Millinder. It was King
Records that released the most unforgettable rocking instrumental of those
times -- "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett. Nor did Nathan's crew lose sight of
the interrelatedness of "hillbilly" music and "race" music, a link that both
blacks and whites sometimes forget.

For instance, Moose Jackson's "Why Don't You Haul Off and Love Me" (1949)
and Wynonie Harris' "Bloodshot Eyes" (1951) began life as King country
songs. Ivory Joe Hunter, the piano man with white country influences, also
recorded for Nathan for a time, and in the early '60s James Brown did a
couple Cowboy Copas tunes as a tribute after Copas' death in a plane crash.
The two had reputedly struck up a friendship in King's Cincinnati studio.

Though the four-disc The King R&B Box Set includes only one James Brown tune
due to licensing intricacies, there's plenty of fine music commemorating one
of the truly great enterprises of the Rhythm & Blues Golden Age.

> Has anyone tried 4 CD "The King R&B Box Set" released last year?  How 
> good is it?  I presume it's equal to "The Specialty Story" box set. 

  For R&B content alone, King's catalog should make for a richer and more
  brilliant box set than the Specialty...
  
  (Until you factor in gospel, at which Specialty excelled...)
  
  Even without James Brown, there's Hank Ballard, Little Willie John,
  Freddie King, and may more...  However, I seem to recall being less than
  thrilled with some of the selections when I browsed it in the store.
  
  It's on my list for when I get back on an R&B kick.   - Jay

>  It's on my list for when I get back on an R&B kick.   - Jay

I'm afraid I still have to wait THREE years more. ;-)