Clarence Williams' Blue Five - Pickin' On Your Baby

This is a request. Clarence Williams' Blue Five were a series of recording sessions that featured some of the best jazz musicians and blues singers of the early 20's. The early Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins and Bubber Miley all were playing solos, and blues singers such as Sippie Wallace, Margaret Johnson, Virginia Liston and Williams' wife, Eva Taylor all contributed vocals. Louis Armstrong was playing in New York with Fletcher Henderson at the time these recordings were made. Née Irene Joy Gibbons in St. Louis, Missouri in 1895, on stage from the age of three, Taylor toured New Zealand, Australia and Europe before her teens. She also toured extensively with the "Josephine Gassman and Her Pickaninnies" vaudeville act. She settled in New York by 1920. There she established herself as a performer in Harlem nightspots. Within a year she wed Clarence Williams, a producer, publisher, and piano player. The newlyweds worked together on radio and recordings. The couple recorded together through 1930s. In 1922 Taylor made her first record for the African-American owned Black Swan Records, who billed her as "The Dixie Nightingale." She would continue to record dozens of blues, jazz and popular sides for Okeh and Columbia throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Although she adopted the stage name of Eva Taylor, she also worked under her birth name as "Irene Gibbons and her Jazz Band." She was part of The Charleston Chasers, the name given to a few all-star studio ensembles who recorded between 1925 and 1930. In 1927, Eva Taylor appeared on Broadway in Bottomland, a musical written and produced by her husband, lasted for twenty-one performances. During 1929 Eva had her own radio show on NBC's Cavalcade, then worked for many years on radio WOR, New York (guested on Paul Whiteman Radio Show in 1932. Taylor stopped performing during the '40s, but she returned in the mid-'60s following her husband's death, with tours throughout Europe. Eva Taylor died of cancer in 1977. Her husband Clarence Williams (1898-1965) was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersand's Traveling Minstrel Show, then moved to New Orleans. At first Williams worked shining shoes and doing odd jobs, but soon became known as a singer and master of ceremonies. By the early 1910s he was a well regarded local entertainer also playing piano, and was composing new tunes by 1913. Williams was a good business man and worked arranging and managing entertainment at the local African-American vaudeville theater as well as various saloons and dance halls around Rampart Street, and clubs and houses in Storyville. Williams started a music publishing business with violinist/bandleader Armand J. Piron 1915, which by the 1920s was the leading African-American owned music publisher in the country. He toured briefly with W.C. Handy, set up a publishing office in Chicago, then settled in New York in the early 1920s. In 1921, he married blues singer and stage actress Eva Taylor with whom he would frequently perform. He supervised African-American recordings (Race Series) for New York offices of Okeh phonograph company in the 1920s; He recruited many of the artists who performed on that label. He also recorded extensively, leading studio bands frequently for OKeh, Columbia and occasionally other record labels. He was the recording director for the short-lived QRS Records label in 1928. Most of his recordings were songs from his publishing house, which explains why he recorded tunes like "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home", "Close Fit Blues" and "Papa De-Da-Da" numerous times. He mostly used "Clarence Williams' Jazz Kings" for his hot orchestra sides and "Clarence Williams' Washboard Five" for his washboard sides. He also produced and participated in early recordings by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith and many others. The legendary King Oliver played cornet on a number of Williams' late 1920s recordings. In 1933, he signed to the Vocalion label and recorded quite a number of popular recordings, mostly featuring washboard percussion, through 1935. In 1943 Williams sold his extensive back-catalogue of tunes to Decca Records for $50,000 and retired. This musically brilliant record (however with presently hard to take politically incorrect lyrics) was made on January 7th, 1925.

Author: kspm01
Keywords: Pickin' Picking On Your Baby Clarence Williams Blue Five 78RPM
Added: November 23, 2008