HALL OF FAME

The Ink Spots

By Dan J\[ooger

O n e OF THE YEAR’S most heralded events in record-coUecting fandom swing, and jive styles. W hile none o f the six recordings the group was the discovery o f the legendary first acetate recordings, made in made for R C A sold w ell, they did manage to get the group its first tour 1953, by the very first inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall o f Fame, o f England and Europe. . The songs, “M y Happiness” and “That’s W hen Your In 1936 signed w ith , and Jerry Daniels Heartaches Begin,” were both popularized earlier by the Ink Spots. was replaced by Bill Kenny. The swinging styles o f their early days The Presley sides offer proof o f the Ink Spots’ profound influence on continued, w ith Deek W atson singing lead, but as Bill Kenny once re­ rock 6? roll. They are, to this day, considered the forerunners o f R6?B- called, “This style wasn’t getting the group anywhere.” Indeed, by g rou p sin gin g style. 1939 the Ink Spots were on the verge o f disbanding when In contrast to their contemporaries, such as the M ills Brothers, who brought them a ballad entitled “If I Didn’t Care.” vocally imitated the instruments o f a jazz band, the Ink Spots’ patterns For the first time, the tenor of Bill Kenny was paired off with o f vocal harmony “established, if not introduced, what was to become Hoppy Jones’s “talking” bass. A million seller, “If I Didn’t Care” inau­ a standard pattern for the majority o f black vocal quartets,” wrote Bill gurated a stream o f hit ballads in a similar vein, including “M y Prayer” M illar in his book T he Drifters. ‘T he baritone, bass and second tenor (successfully revived by in 1956), “Maybe,” “W e Three,” would harmonize an accompaniment to the primary vocal line, which “W hispering Grass,” ‘T he Gypsy,” ‘T o Each His Own” and “I Don’t relied chiefly upon a tenor lead ------It was but one o f the elements in W ant to Set the ^Vorld on Fire.” ’W orldwide touring, appearances black group singing which became known as rhythm & in the w ith artists ranging from Lucky M illinder to Glenn M iller and roles in , and, more so than any other black group of the tiW [the Ink such movies as The Great American Broadcast kept the Ink Spots on Spots] initiated a stream o f development w hich led in turn to the Raw top w ith both black and white audiences right up through the postwar ens, , the Dominoes and .” years and the dawn o f the 1950s. Clyde M cPhatter, former lead singer o f both the Dominoes and the During the Forties, the group pioneered the breaking down o f racial Drifters, was no doubt speaking for many o f his contemporaries when barriers by appearing in previously all-white Southern venues. W hen he told author Charlie Gillett in 1969, “W e patterned ourselves after the Ink Spots appeared in 1948 at Miami’s M onte Carlo club, headlin­ the Ink Spots.” ing over several white acts, B illboa rd reported: “Format is a radical de­ The Ink Spots’ story begins in in the late 1920s, where parture for this territory, for even if Jim C row laws are largely unwrit­ Orville “Hoppy” Jones, Ivory “Deek” W atson, Charlie Fuqua and Jer- ten and there is no law prohibiting Negro entertainers from working in ry Daniels gained early experience w ith such amateur and semipro white places or with white acts, no operator in the Deep South has groups as the Peanut Boys, the Percolating Puppies, the Four R iff ever had the nerve to try it.” Brother^ the Swingin’ Gate Brothers and King, Jack and the Jesters. By the late , however, the Ink Spots were beset by both musi­ During this time, Bill Kenny - who was to become the most famous cal and personal problems. The style that had once seemed so fresh had Ink Spot o f all - was gaining similar experience in his home town of hardened into a rigid formula. Newer groups such as and , . The music o f these early groups was inspired by the Orioles had taken their inspiration from the Ink Spots and were big-name jazz bands and old-time vaudeville acts. The members impro­ now moving the music forward. Even B illboa rd , while still recognizing vised harmony vocals, often simulating wind instruments with their the quartet’s success, had begun to call its style “old-fashioned.’^ ;? voices, and played guitars, tipples and string basses (or cellos retuned The Ink Spots’ lineup had begun to change due to illness (beginning to play as basses). with the sudden death o f Hoppy Jones in October 1944) and internal After Midwestern exposure via live radio appearances on W KBF conflicts until it seemed that, except for Bill Kenny, the group changed (Indianapolis), W H K () and WL^A^ (), the origi­ personnel as often as it changed shirts. nal Ink Spots lineup - Jones, W atson, Fuqua and Daniels - came to There began a series o f legal proceedings in which Charlie Fuqua N ew York in the early Thirties. A legal conflict w ith bandleader Paul w on the right to establish his own rival Ink Spots group. (Charlie Fu­ W hiteman, who already had a vocal group called the King’s Jesters, qua’s cousin fronted the M oonglows during the 1950s; led to a name change from King, Jack and the Jesters to the Ink Spots. he later became a top executive and producer at M otow n Records.) By The group won a regular radio spot on W JZ ( City), made 1953 these upheavals had caused the original Ink Spots to disband, al­ appearances at the A pollo, the Savoy Ballroom and the Roxy and even though scores o f groups have continued to perform and record under appeared in a movie short (W hat a Business) before signing with RCA the name. But the Ink Spots’ tradition o f romantic, bluesy ballads sung in 1935. in perfect harmony continues to exert its timeless appeal, A t this time, the Ink Spots’ music was still heavily based on 29 right up to the present day. R□ C K AND RDLL HALL DF FAME

ROCKIN’ IN RHYTHM

1 9 4 2 ^ 1 9 5 4

By J^ic\ Tosches

T h e STUFF OF HISTORY is n o t as neat and orderly as historians would meant that no union musicians would be able to make records after July, have us believe. The big and the small o f it lie in darkness, beginnings and companies rushed to lay in enough to last them through the strike. ends interwoven in shadows. W e seek to discover exactly the moment The ban went on for more than a year, but it didn’t affect the industry and manner o f the world’s origin, but at the same time w e do not even the way most feared it would. Nineteen forty-three turned out to be the know for sure when or where, for example, the first baseball game was industry’s most prosperous year in more than a decade. The problems of played. A s it is w ith baseball and that older game o f creation, so it is with the shellac shortage, erratic distribution and the A F .M . ban were more rock 6? roll. Studying the various elements that comprise this century’s than offset by a record-buying public that wanted dearly to be distracted music, it is no easier to discern die moment where rock 6? roll begins than from the grim reality o f war and had the money to pay for that distrac­ it is to discern where blue be' tion. The style and spirit o f popu­ comes indigo in the spectrum. lar music were changing too; and The term itself, roc\ & roll, is change creates excitement. Big- little help in solving the mystery. band swing was still the rage. The phrase, as an erotic metaphor, Benny Goodman, Glenn M iller, was augured in J. Bemi Barbour’s the Dorseys, Harry James - these song “M y Man Rocks M e (with were the men whom music be­ One Steady R oll),” which the longed to in the early 1940s. blues singer Trixie Smith recorded Goodman and James recorded for in the fall o f 1922. But ro c\ w a s Colum bia; M illef and Tommy also used in a like fashion b?p Dorsey for V ictor; Jimmy Dorsey Shakespeare, in Venus and Adan' for Decca. These three labels dom­ is, back in the days before Vari­ inated the industry at the time o f ety. In the fall o f 1934 - Gladys theAF.M . ban. Presley of Tupelo, M ississippi, In 1938, Decca, the least con­ was pregnant that autumn — the servative of the three major com­ Boswell Sisters, a pop act, had a panies, had signed a thirty-year- hit with “Rock and Roll.” But it old singer and sax player named didn’t rock and it didn’t roll. A . Originally from A - few years before that, however, , Jordan had come to New , recording as the York and joined Chick W ebb’s Jungle Band, cut an instrumental band in 1936. T w o years later, he called “Rackin’ in Rhythm.” The had formed his own -based record didn’t sell very w ell but group. Jazz; bands in N e w Y ork at nevertheless became one o f the th at tim e w e re bein g rent apart. windblown seeds o f that soon-to- Those musicians who were be music. By early 1942, when not bending their sharkskin Cab Calloway proclaimed in song, knees in fealty to the strange ‘*®sWant to Rock,” that seed in new strains that would later be­ the wind, and countless others, had taken hold; and there was something come be-bop were becoming involved w ith that other strange new mu- growing, w ild and lush. si© that w ould eventually be known as rhythm & blues. By the time he Rhythm 6? blues, the golden dawn o f rock fer* roll, blossomed in the signed w ith Decca, Louis Jordan, whose music was growing wilder, middle o f a war. A s the hot summer o f 1942 began, the recording indus­ louder and more audacious w ith every note, had all but been disowned try’s outlook was bleak. Records were made from shellac, and the Asian by the jazz establishment. “It’s a shame that crap like this is played by a countries that were America’s main source o f shellac were blockaded. A t jump band o f this caliber,” complained D o w n B ea t in a 1941 review. the same time, the shipping and distribution o f records was becoming But as usual the critics were less attuned than the public. Jordan’s rec­ more and more problematic as the O ffice o f Defense Transportation com­ ords began rising high on Billboard’s “Harlem Hit Parade” — the first to mandeered every means o f transport. On June 25th, James Caesar Pe- hit, “I’m Gonna M ove to the Outskirts of Town,” came in the fall of trillo, the president o f the American Federation o f Musicians and a proud 1942 - and in 1944, with “” and “G.I. Jive,” they began enemy o f “the menace o f mechanical music,” announced that all record­ crossing over to the pop charts. ing licenses would become null and void on August 1st Furthermore, the Throughout the Forties, as he developed and defined the course of licenses would not be renewed until certain excessive demands were rhythm & blues and helped deliver rock & roll, Louis Jordan pro­ met. The industry felt as if it had received the kiss o f death. Since this duced some of the biggest and the best hits o f the era: “Caledonia” ROCK AND RDLL HALL DF FAME

M m i M m i m m

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JESSE S T Q AND COOKIES

(1945); “Beware” (1946); “Chao Choo Ch’ Boogie” (1946), from which Cole did not merely electrify the blues (though M oore played an am­ later lifted the guitar riff for “Johnny B. Goode”; “Let the plified guitar); he transformed them. Drawing from jazz, he remade the Good Times Roll” (1946); “” (1949); and scores blues into a-thing o f his own time and place. W hile aglow w ith all the o f others through 1951. He was the best-selling black artist o f the Forties, ineffable forlorn wisdom o f the old blues, Cole’s music embodied the and to this day only four other rhythm 6? blues aets - , sophistication and street-smart savoir-faire that was burgeoning on Aretha Franklin, and tfre Temptations - have had more hits both sides o f the tracks in N ew York, Los Angeles and as the or sold more records than Louis Jordan did way back when. And while w a r en d ed . recording technology since then has advanced immeasurably, the bril­ Understated and subtle, but never simple or coy, his small-group sound liance captured in those old shellac grooves left little room for advance­ became the standard o f cool. He was the Apollo to Louis Jordan’s rau­ ment and has rarely been equaled. cous Dionysus. A nd plainly he was the major influence on those younger Another Decca artist who, like Jordan, first hit the charts in the early and wilder singing players who led the first great wave o f W est Forties was Nathaniel Adams Coles, who went by the name Nat King Coast rhythm, 6? blues: Cecil Gant, whose wartime lost-love lament; “I Cole. Bom in Montgomery, Alabama, and raised on the South Side of W onder,” was one o f the biggest RfePB hits o f 1944- 45; Charles Brown, Chicago, where his father was a Baptist pastor, Cole had been making whose “Drifting Blues,” recorded with Johnny M oore’s Three Blazers in records since 1936; but it was not until late 1940 that he began to sing as early 1946, brought success in one cool gust to himself, M oore’s band and well as play piano on record. (According to one story, Cole reluctantly Leo Mesner’s new Philo Records; Ivory Joe Hunter, who also had his became a singer at the Swanee Inn in Los Angeles, at the drunken insis­ first hit, “Blues at Sunrise”^ 1945), with the Three Blazers; Amos M il- tence o f a group o f hecklers.) Though Cole is remembered mainly for the bum, who revolutionized both and drinking music with such hits sophisticated romantic ballads and immense pop hits that brought him as “Chicken Shack Boogie” (1948) and “Bad, Bad W hiskey” (1950); fame and fortune - “Nature Boy,” “Mona Lisa,” “Too Young” - he was Floyd Dixon, yet another displaced Texan like Brown, Hunter and M il- in his way, like Jordan in his, one o f the seminal forces in rhythm 6? blues. bum, who made his mark on the Coast; and Ray Charles, whose trio Johnny M ercer’s new Capitol label had barely gotten off the ground broke in the spring o f 1949 with “Confession Blues.” Though their names when Petrillo’s warning came. Yet Capitol not only survived, it thrived. would forever be more closely associated with the history o f rock roll Part of the reason was , who soon after “That A in’t than Nat King Cole’s, the fret remains that his music fathered theirs. Right,” his only Decca hit, became Capitol’s first black singer. W ith Os­ Out o f the M idwest came three o f the greatest figures o f early rock fe? car M oore on guitar and W esley Prince on bass (M oore would leave in roll. W ynonie Harris, bom in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1915, had been sing­ 1947 to join his brother’s band, Johnny M oore’s Three Blazers; Prince ing and dancing for more than a decade when, in 1944, “Hurry, Hurry” would be replaced by Johnny M iller), the King Cole Trio, with such his first record, became a minor hit. He had recorded it as a vocalist with hits as “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” “Gee, Baby, A in’t I Good to Lucky Millinder and His Orchestra, but the following year he went out You?” and “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” created a sound that on his own. A fter making records on Leo Mesner’s Philo and Alad­ popular music, black and white, has built on ever since. din labels in Los Angeles, Jim Bulleit’s Bullet in Nashville,; Ike and ROCK AND ROLL HALL DF FAME

Bess Berman’s A pollo and Lionel Hampton’s short-lived Hamp-Tone black vocal groups that ascended in N ew York, and Washington, in N ew York, he signed, in December 1947, with ’s King D.C., were descended musically from the M ills Brothers and the Ink Records in Cincinnati. His second King release was one o f the record­ Spots - groups that had been recording since the early 1930s - and from ings without which the story o f rock 6? roll wouldn’t have been quite urban gospel groups that flourished during the war years, like the Swan th e sam e. Silvertone Singers (“Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb”). They delivered Roy Brown (1925-81), who wrote “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” had him­ the final defining tone to Rfe?B. After them, the mongrel of rhythm fe? self recorded the song, for DeLuxe, in 1947. But that record, unlike many blues w o u ld b e ready to sire th e bastard o f rock fe? roll. of his later recordings - hits such as “Long About Midnight” (1948), First came the Ravens, the quartet organized by Jimmy Ricks in the “Rockin’ at Midnight” (1949) and “Hard Luck Blues” (1950) - went all spring o f 1946. They made their debut at the Club Baron, in Harlem, but unnoticed. Harris cut a version o f “Good Rockin’ Tonight” for King and their first records, for Hub, that same spring. Next came the Ori­ three days after Christmas 1947, and he breathed fire into it, and it shook oles, w ho cut their first record in the summer o f 1948, for It’s a Natu­ like nothing the world had ever heard. It ral (w hich after this release became Ju­ hit the R6?B charts in M ay o f 1948 — El­ bilee Records). These earliest of the vis was thirteen — and it stayed on the RfePB vocal groups were conservative charts for almost six months, rising to in both their style o f singing and their N u m ber O n e. choice of material. (The first Ravens Shouting and howling and swooning, record, for example, was a version of drawing from the horns and saxophones the ersatz Yiddish ditty “Mahzel.”) and drums and guitars behind him the Then came . In the begin­ most salacious and audacious licks and ning the Clovers were not much more cries and chords to ride, W ynonie Harris daring than the Ravens or the Orioles, was the first great pure rock fe? roll styl­ whose material, along w ith that o f the ist. W ith such songs as “ Lolly Pop older Charioteers, formed a large part o f Mama” (1948), “ Grandma Plays the the group’s early repertoire. By the end o f Numbers” (1949), “A ll She W ants to the decade, however, the Clovers had be­ Do Is Rock” (1949), “Sittiri on It A ll the gun to rasp the glossy polish from their Time” (1950), “I Like M y Baby’s Pud­ music’s edge and to perform in a less re­ ding” (1950), “Good Morning Judge” fined, more vulgar manner. They became (1950), “Bloodshot Eyes” (1951), Harris the first of the tradition-borne vocal was the sum o f all that came before and groups to make the leap across the Jordan the infusing spirit o f all that came after. to the chicken shack that transcends all The only singer who Harris thought knowing. Coming to N ew York from was better than he was W ashington, D.C.,<$he Clovers - lead (1911-85), from Kansas City. Big Joe singer John “Buddy” Bailey, tenor Mat­ surely predated the classic rhythm & thew McQuarter, baritone Harold Lu­ blues era. He had performed professional­ cas, bass Harold W inley and guitarist Bill ly since 1929, the year he teamed up Harris - signed w ith A tlantic during w ith pianist Pete Johnson, and he had Ghristmastide 1950. On February 22nd, been making records since 1938; but by 1951, they went into the Apex studio in the end o f the war his was one o f the pa­ midtown Manhattan, and they came out triarchal voices of the new sound. By with one o f the biggest Rfe?B hits o f the 1950, when he signed w ith Atlantic Rec­ year: “Don’t You Know I Love You.” ords in N ew York, he had released more The rest is history: “Fool, Fool, Fool” than fifty records on a variety o f labels. (1951), “One M int Julep” (1952), “Good His first Atlantic single, “Chains of Lovin’ ” ((1953), “” (1954), Love,” hitvthe charts in 1951, and after “Your Cash A in’t Nothin’ but Trash” that the hits just kept coming: “ Sweet (1954),” straight on through to “Love Sixteen” (1952), “Honey Hush’l^p.953), Potion N o. 9” in postdiluvial 1959. “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” (1954) and The Midnighters began in Detroit as others just as fine. the Royals. Signed to King Records by The third o f the Midwestern triumvirate was Jesse Stone, bom in talent scout , the Royals began recording for King’s sister Atchison, Kansas, in 1901, and raised musically in Kansas City. Though R& B label, Federal, in January 1952. Success did not come. Then, in the Stone, who had been making records since 1927, was an accomplished summer o f 1953, another Detroit boy, sixteen-year-old , took musician, it was through his songwriting that he changed the course of over Charles Sutton’s role as lead singer. His style was much less tamed, American music. He was, w ith founder Ahm et Ertegun and Herb his voice more powerful. “Get It,” the first record the group cut with Bal­ Abramson, one o f the creative forces behind , which be­ lard, hit the charts that July. During the 1953-54 holiday season, Ballard gan as a small independent label in 1947 , developed into the premier wrote a song he called “Sock It to M e, Mary.” In the studio that January, R5?B label o f the Fifties and into one o f the major companies o f today. It producer told Ballard the title was “too strong.” W hile was Stone who, under his own name and the pen name Charles Cal­ Ballard was trying to amend the song, King engineer Eddie Smith’s houn, wrote many o f Atlantic’s biggest hits: “M oney Honey,” recorded pregnant w ife, Annie, strolled into the control room. W ithin a few by the Drifters in 1953, ‘Your Cash A in’t Nothin’ but Trash,” recorded minutes, “W ork with M e, Annie” came into being. Though it was de­ by the Clovers in 1954, “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” (1954), “Flip, Flop and nounced as “smut” by Variety, Doom Beat and others, it hit the RfePB F ly” (1955) and “Lipstick, Powder and Paint” (1956), by Big Joe Turner. charts in April, rose to Number One and emerged as one o f the biggest A s Ahm et Ertegun once said, “Jesse Stone did more to develop the basic hits of the year. A t that point, to avoid confusion with the “5” Roy- rock 6? roll sound than anybody else.” ales, the successful A pollo group that had been signed by King, the And from the street comers o f the East came doo-wop. The young Royals became the Midnighters. ROCK AND RDLL HALL DF FAME

“W ork with M e, Annie” was the Number One Rfe?B hit when, in 1953 the Orioles, with “Crying in the Chapel”; in 1954 the Crows, with May, Federal released the Midnighters’ “Sexy W ays.” Opening with “Gee,” the Chords, with “Sh-Boom,” the Charms, with “Hearts of Alonzo Tucker’s rough-blaring electric chords, which would become Stone” and the Five Keys, with “Ling, T ing Tong” — but none of these the most commonly copied riff in rock fe? roll, “Sexy W ays” - which ensuing crossover hits had either the potency or the excitement o f the one made “W ork with M e, Annie” sound like a nursery lullaby — entered that broke open the floodgate. Clyde McPhatter left the Dominoes in the charts while “W ork with M e, Annie” was still riding high. As June 1953, to form the Drifters, whose records on Atlantic - “Money that summer neared its end, the Midnighters had three o f the Top Ten Honey” (1953), “Honey Love” (1954) and the rest - did as much to fur­ R6?B hits, with their latest, “Annie Had a Baby” in the Number One ther R6?B as the Dominoes’ had just a few short years before. position. They had taken the vocal-group sound as far from its roots as Nineteen fifty-four. There was thunder in the air. Rhythm 6? blues their hearts allowed. was everywhere, like heat, like fire. Louis Jordan, W ynonie Harris, Amos The Clovers and the Midnighters ruled the alley. But the Dominoes M ilbum and the other R&B warhorses were mostly forgotten now, it were perhaps the classiest and most brilliant o f the vocal groups. Their was true; and Nat King Cole had long ago moved on. But those who had mastery o f rhythm and meter, their subtle interweaving o f the coarse and come in their,wake were making the thunder. Fats Domino in N ew Or­ the sublime, their lyrics, which seemed never to rhyme for the sake o f leans, in N ew York, Little Richard down in M acon. rhyme alone - these were the rare qualities that set them apart. The There was thunder everywhere. That summer, “ Shake, Rattle, and founder and leader o f the Dominoes was Billy W ard. Bom in Los Ange­ Roll” and "Sexy W ays” blared from wherever neon glowed, thunder les in 1921, W ard was a classically trained child soprano. He studied pi­ upon thunder. It was the beginning o f something, and it was the end o f ano, organ and harmony and began composing as a teenager, not long be­ something, too. On July 5th, an unknown nineteen-year-old boy fore becoming a Golden Gloves champion (and a soldier, a journalist and named Elvis Presley went into the Sun studio in Memphis, took that a Carnegie Hall voice coach). thunder and shook it down. It was in N ew York, in 1950, that W ard formed the Dominoes, re­ Beginning and end, end and beginning. cruiting tenor Charlie W hite, baritone Joe Lamont, bass Billy Brown and Only one more thing remains to be said here, in the way o f truth and a high-placed gospel tenor from North Carolina, eighteen-year-old Clyde tribute. A s Jesse Stone observed and the Drifters sang, it’s “M oney, Hon­ McPhatter. Making worldly music with sanctified fervency, the Domi­ ey” that moves this world. It’s what every business, and certainly the mu­ noes began recording for Federal in late 1950, and the best o f those rec­ sic business, is all about. But that thing called respect is not without its ords - “Sixty-Minute Man’* (1951), “Have Mercy, Baby” (1952) and worth, either. Louis Jordan, w ho was the biggest black star o f the 1940s others - represent a sort o f visceral poetic sensibility that rock roll since and who did much to create rock fe? roll, got barely a mention when he has rarely surpassed. O f equal historic importance is the feet that “Sixty- passed away in 1975. W ynonie Harris got less when he went, in June o f M inute M an” crossed over to the mainstream pop charts a little less than 1969. Amos M ilbum died forgotten in a Houston housing project nine three months after it hit the R& B charts, becoming the first record by a years ago this month. If the Rock and Roll Hall o f Fame serves any real hardcore R5?B group to do so. It set the precedent for things to come. _____ purpose, it is to supply that more elusive commodity, respect, Over the next few years other black groups would cross over - in 4 2 which so often gets lost or trampled in the marketplace.