Billy Wright

Billy Wright 1955 with gold teeth and process. Billy Wright hosting disco drag show circa 1977 Billy Wright was a purveyor of the style of rhythm and blues that reached it's ultimate crystallization with the rise to stardom of Little Richard via the earth shattering sides issued by Specialty starting with Tutti Frutti 1955. Wright was gay and flamboyant, he had worked the tent shows in drag, a great southern, show biz tradition in itself and an important influence on rock'n'roll--hence the term "tent show queen". He sang the repertoire of said tradition, many of the same tunes Little Richard would clean up and take to the bank-- Tutti Frutti ( original lyrics-- "Tutti Frutti/Good bootie/if it don't fit/don't force it/just grease it/make it easy"), Busy Bootin' aka Keep A Knockin', Don't You Want A Man Like Me, etc. Other well known recording artists that came out what was a true underground movement of it's time include Frankie "Half Pint" Jackson, who recorded with Tampa Red in the 1930's, Esquerita, who taught Little Richard his piano style, Larry Darnell, and of course Little Richard, himself a protege of Billy Wright's back in Atlanta at the start of his career. A career that began with Richard performing in drag, balancing a chair on his chin while he sang. Billy Wright is mostly forgotten today, if he's remembered at all it's because of his influence on Little Richard who has never been shy about recognizing Wright's importance, but in the years 1949-51 he had four top ten R&B hits, he was a good draw in nearly every city with a significant black population, and was a sizable star in his hometown of Atlanta. Everything starts somewhere, Billy Wright popped out of his mother in Atlanta, May 21, 1932. He began singing in church, but he started his show biz career as a dancer, working at the 81 Theater in Atlanta as a young teenager. The 81 had its own traveling tent show, and Billy joined it a teenager, signing on as a dancer. He traveled with the show which toured all over the mid-west and south from Minnesota to Arkansas, and everyplace in between. Billy danced in a chorus line of female impersonators. Eventually he began singing-- "I did whatever was popular on the jukeboxes at the time: Wynonie Harris, Dinah Washington, Joe Turner, Buddy and Ella Johnson"*. In the winter the show would be back in Atlanta at the 81 Theater. Atlanta was hopping back in the late 40's, and Auburn Avenue, the main drag in the black section of town had dozens of clubs-- the Poinciana, the Congo, the Zanzibar, the Peacock as well as rhythm and blues and jazz shows at the Piedmont Theater and the VFW hall. Billy played them all. After a few seasons learning the ropes with the folks in the 81 Club show, Billy went solo and got his big break while appearing on a bill at the Auditorium in Atlanta that included Wynonie Harris, Charles Brown and Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams. It was Williams, a honking tenor sax player who had once been with Duke Ellington, then riding high with "The Hucklebuck", the best selling R&B disc of 1949, who brought Billy Wright to Savoy Records. Savoy signed Billy Wright in 1949 and recorded him at two sessions at a radio station in Atlanta. Teddy Reig came on as his manager and producer, putting his name as co-author on most of Billy's original tunes. Wright's first record: Blues For My Baby b/w You Satisfy was a double sided hit, the a-side rising to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart in early '49, the flipside made #9 in October of that year. Billy Wright took on the sobriquet 'Prince Of The Blues', and so he was. Wright recorded over thirty tunes for Savoy (some issued on the Regent subsidiary), including two more hits-- Stacked Deck (#9 in June of '51) and Hey Little Girl, a re-write of the Professor Longhair number which rose to #10 in October of '51, his last chart showing. His Savoy output includes some truly great records, rockers like Billy's Boogie Blues, When The Wagon Comes and Mean Old Wine, the sexual nod and wink innuendo of A New Way Of Lovin', his sublime reading of St. Louis Jimmy's Goin' Down Slow, an updated re-write of Baby Please Don't Go retitled Turn Your Lamp Down Low, the latin inflected If I Didn't Love You, and we can hear the emerging sound of rock'n'roll with Live The Life and After Awhile. He also managed to work in a great, rockin', Beer commercial that was issued on the Atlanta label in 1950-- Man's Brand Boogie. Billy worked all over the country appearing at the Apollo in Harlem, the Howard in Washington D.C., the Bronze Peacock in Houston, the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans, the Regal in Chicago, these were all the best paying places an R&B singer could play in those days. He was known as a great performer and could always be counted on to draw a crowd. It was also Billy Wright who recommended Little Richard to RCA records, Richard's first label. Richard's earliest sides-- Taxi Blues, Every Hour, Get Rich Quick are basically impersonations of Billy Wright. So were his second group of recordings for Peacock in '54-- Little Richard's Boogie, Directly From My Heart, Fool At The Wheel, and Red Beans, Rice and Turnip Greens (some of these weren't issued until after he hit big with Tutti Frutti on Specialty). Billy Wright parted ways with Savoy in '54, he cut one session for Don Robey's Peacock label in Houston in 1955, which resulted in one killer single-- Bad Luck and Trouble b/w The Question, both sides featuring Roy Gaines' stinging guitar, but the two songs left in the vault were even better, the old drag show standard Don't You Want A Man Like Me and Let's Be Friends which are probably the best recordings he ever made. You can really hear how much Little Richard took from Wright on Don't You Want A Man Like Me, a tune Richard himself would record (there's also a great version by Jay Nelson on Excello). Wright didn't record again for four years when he made his final disc for the tiny Carrollton label out of Atlanta, a cover of the Dominos' Have Mercy Baby. He also cut a session in New Orleans in 1959 with Bobby Robinson for Fire Records but it was never issued (do the tapes still exist?). In 1981 eight sides by Billy Wright were released by the reactivated Savoy label on an LP called Southern Blues, followed in '84 by a full LP of his 1949-54 sides titled- Goin' Down Slow while the Swedish re-issue label Route 66 issued fourteen more sides on the album Stacked Deck around the same time (although two cuts are repeated from the Savoy LP). The final cut on Stacked Deck is this amazing rendition of the Dominos' Do Something, recorded live at the Harlem Theater in Atlanta in '52. Despite the scratchy acetate it was taken from, one can hear what an incredible live performer Wright was. Listen to the way he shrieks at the crowd and the way the crowd responds in kind, screaming right back. It's a shame there's so few live recordings from this era. Nowadays every time some idiot plugs in a guitar there's eleven people with video phones to document it, but when American popular music was at it's zenith, live recordings of blues, R&B and early rock'n'roll are mighty hard to come by. This old acetate was something Billy had saved over the years, not realizing its importance until Route 66's Jonas Bernholm contacted him while compiling the Stacked Deck LP in the early eighties. Despite the end of his recording career Billy Wright found steady work in Atlanta through the seventies, although Atlanta was no longer the jumping R&B central it had once been. Eventually he gave up singing and took up emceeing shows, such as the one advertised in the above poster. In this manner he was able to support himself until dying at the age of 59 in 1991. A series of strokes in the eighties left him in considerably diminished health in his final decade, but at least he lived to see the better part of his catalog re-issued. Of Billy Wright, Little Richard said: "I thought he was the most fantastic performer I've ever seen", and listening to Wright's recordings it's not hard to hear just how much Richard's singing style was based on Wright's (just throw in Clara Ward's "wooo" and Esquerita's pounding piano and you've got the entire recipe). The tent show queen tradition that produced performers like Billy Wright and Little Richard is a chapter of rock'n'roll's history that has been edited out by the stupid and misinformed people who have deemed themselves keeper of said history. Them and their idiotic Hall Of Fame. Kind of like the way the Catholic Church edited the Book Of Paradise and other parts of the Bible out in the Middle Ages. Well, I guess it's my job to set things straight... * Billy Wright quote comes from an interview with Jonas Bernholm done in 1977 and printed in the liner notes to the LP Billy Wright-Stacked Deck (Route 66 Kix 13)

Bobby Marchan

Bobby Marchan before.

Bobby Marchan after.

Bobby Marchan answering the musical question, where ya goin' fat bitch?

Bobby Marchan, and a face full of make up early 50's.

Onstage at the Tijuana Club, New Orleans, early 50's.

Although forever equated with classic New Orleans rock'n'roll as lead singer for Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns, Bobby Marchan, (Oscar James Gibson, born April 30, 1930) was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio (today, best known as the home of Truckworld, the world's largest truckstop).

As a teen he began hitting the local drag shows (Youngstown had drag shows in the 40's? Indeed it did), and soon young Bobby began "dressing up" and performing in full drag. Influenced by another highly effeminate, Ohio born, rhythm and blues star of the era-- Larry Darnell, now renamed Bobby Marchan, our hero, also started singing. By 1953 Marchan had formed a group of six female impersonators he dubbed the Powder Box Revue and hit the road. The drag tradition in blues and rhythm and blues is an old and grand one, which culminated in the rise of Little Richard, a subject I touched on partially in my posting on Billy Wright last year, if you care for more background on the subject. Marchan found his most receptive audience in New Orleans, a town where the best sepia room-- the Dew Drop Inn had a full time female impersonator Patsy Valdalia as its emcee, and was host to such drag performers as pre-Specialty Little Richard (who also balanced a chair on his chin while he sang), Esquerita, and many others. Dr. John in his wonderful autobiography Under The Hoodoo Moon (St. Martins Press, 1994) remembered meeting a drag queen named Loberta, a few days later he met Bobby Marchan, he had no idea they were one and the same. Although Marchan occasionally worked the Dew Drop, his main outlet was around the corner at the Club Tijuana, an important R&B venue where Guitar Slim, Earl King, and Marchan's soon to be partner in sound Huey "Piano" Smith all began their careers.

Bobby Marchan began his recording career in the fall of '53 when Aladdin Records recorded him in New Orleans, issuing a single-- Have Mercy b/w Just A Little Walk in early 1954.

The disc was a typical R&B disc of the time, very much in the ballad style of Larry Darnell and it did nothing. Two songs from the session remain unissued until this day. Later that same year, Marchan recorded his second single for Dot in Nashville-- You Made A Fool Of Me b/w Just A Little Wine, basically another Larry Darnell impersonation, it didn't sell, nor did it hint at what was soon to come as Marchan found his own voice and style in the coming years.

Performing in drag at the Tijuana, he fell in with Huey "Piano" Smith, who after an apprenticeship with Guitar Slim, and some touring with Earl King and Shirley & Lee, was working for Johnny Vincent who had been fired from his A&R post at Specialty Records and was just launching his own Ace label, based out of Jackson, Mississippi, but using mostly talent from New Orleans. Marchan's first record for Ace, with Smith on the piano with Lee Allen (tenor sax), Edgar Blanchard (guitar) and Charles "Hungry" Williams (drums) was issued under the name of Bobby Fields (probably because he was still under contract to Dot at the time)-- Helping Hand b/w Pity Poor Me. Again, this disc only hint at the glories to come. But he was getting closer.
Meanwhile in 1956, Huey "Piano" Smith, with the vocal group The Clowns had cut two excellent singles for Ace before Marchan joined as lead singer-- Everybody Whalin' b/w Little Liza Jane followed up in early 1957 with Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu pts 1 and 2. In 1957 Marchan cut another solo disc for Ace, with Smith and his band in support-- Little Chickie Wah Wah b/w Don't Take Your Love From Me, the same  year he joined the group full time.

As a member of Huey Smith & the Clowns , he  re-organized the vocal group--  the Clowns, with himself as one of the lead singers, he added Geri Hall (an out of the closet bull dyke who often bragged that she was the most masculine member of the group), John "Scarface" Williams, bass singer Billy Roosevelt and Eugene Francis, who couldn't sing much but with his dyed green hair, added much stage presence. Bobby Marchan's first record as a member of Clowns was I'm Just A Lonely Clown b/w Free Single and Disengaged, a good harmony number, with Huey Smith's rolling piano, they were now closing in on their unique sound.
It  would be their next disc-- High Blood Pressure b/w Don't You Just Know It that the sound of Huey Piano Smith & the Clowns would finally come together. It was and is one of the most unique and recognizable sounding discs in rockn'roll history, as well as being their best two sider, it would become their biggest hit. What can I say? Just listen to it. The a-side is more of a gang chant than a group harmony sound, on the flip, with it's nonsensical lyrics, The Clowns sound like the Little Rascals if they'd grown into teenagers and just huffed some glue-- "A Ha Ha Ha Ha/dooba dooba dooba dooba/hey-ayo"! It was all set over Huey Smith's rollicking, Professor Longhair influenced piano and Hungry Williams funky, second line drum beat, and sported a growling tenor sax solo from Lee Allen. It simply has never been topped. High Blood Pressure rose to #9 on the pop charts and the group hit the road. Huey Smith himself soon tired of touring and went back to New Orleans to work in the studio and eat beans and rice, a young James Booker was sent out as his replacement, the audience non the wiser. Meanwhile, Bobby Marchan had become the de facto leader of the group, on and off stage.  Although Marchan didn't perform in drag with the Clowns, they were sharp dressers ("One night we went out in matching plaid suits with Bermuda shorts, the crowd went wild when they saw those outfits"), and Marchan rehearsed the group on the dances and comedy skits that accompanied the tunes.
Huey Smith and the Clowns attempted to follow up their hit with two excellent discs-- Havin' A Good Time b/w We Like Birdland in early '58 followed soon by Don't You Know Yokomo b/w Well I'll Be John Brown. Both fine records, and good sellers around New Orleans, but neither made the national charts.  The first Clowns record to give Bobby Marchan top billing was You Can't Stop Her b/w Rockin' Behind The Iron Curtain, (these are alternate takes, as good as the issued versions). One of the groups toughest rockers-- You Can't Stop Her,  graced the a-side, while the flip exploited the ridiculousness of cold war politics in typical Clown fashion.  It was a decent size local hit, but again, it failed to chart nationally.
The record that should have sealed their fate as national stars however was hijacked out from under their noses by their own record company.  Everyone who heard Sea Cruise knew it would be a smash, however, Ace's owner Johnny Vincent, in the wake of Elvis Presley's unprecedented success decided that if he gave the tune to a white boy, he simply couldn't miss.
He didn't. The original master take, with Marchan and the Clowns harmony lead vocal was shelved and a local white kid named Frankie Ford, who sounded a lot like Marchan, was brought in to overdub his voice on to the master. It was one of the biggest hits of 1958 and Ford, who I like a lot, has been able to make a comfortable living off of the tune ever since. The same trick was used on the flipside-- Loberta (Bobby's drag name) on which Ford's voice was also dubbed, with the name changed to Roberta. It was a decent size hit on it's own. It sported one of early rock'n'roll's best lines-- "I pawned my pistol/I pawned my watch and chain/I'd of pawned Roberta but Roberta can't sign her name".  Huey Smith & the Clowns next disc was the below par Would You Believe I Have A Cold b/w Genevieve, they followed it up with the doo wop ballad Dearest Darling b/w Tub-Ur-Cu-Lucas and the Sinus Flu.  Ace issued Huey Smith and the Clowns first LP-- Having A Good Time, which sported a photo of only Huey Smith on the cover, a move that stuck in Bobby Marchan's craw. After all, it was him onstage, touring his ass off, holding the group together, and singing lead on nearly all their tunes. Also, from here Huey Smith & the Clowns singles would take a noticeable dip in quality, as Smith spent more and more time working with Ford and other acts, novelty and dance craze tunes like Beatnik Blues and Pop-Eye became the order of the day, although their were two more shining moments, the first issued under Marchan's name was Hush Your Mouth b/w Quit My Job, issued in 1960 it would be the last disc issued on Ace under Bobby's own name.  The other, issued in '61, but I'll bet was recorded much earlier was She Got Lowdown b/w Mean Mean Mean, the a-side being a tough, second line rocker of the highest caliber.  For all his hard work leading and touring with Huey "Piano" Smith & The Clowns, Bobby Marchan felt that he was getting little name recognition out of the deal. Both LP's and the EP issued by Ace featured only photos of Huey, and when Marchan approached Johnny Vincent about recording his rendition of There Is Something On Your Mind, Vincent vetoed the idea, since Big Jay McNeeley's version with Little Sonny on vocals was already something of a hit on the Swingin' label.  Marchan began recording for Bobby Robinson (who had been in and out of New Orleans recording hits with Lee Dorsey), first releasing  Snoopin' and Accusin' b/w This Is The Life on Fire in early '59,  a sort of cross between the Clowns and the Coasters styles, then the aforementioned There Is Something On Your Mind pts. 1 and pt 2, which he waxed in Chicago and leased to both Fire and Chess despite still being under contract to Johnny Vincent.  When There Is Something On Your Mind hit the charts in 1960 the lawyers went to work. Chess never released their version, and Bobby Robinson bought off Johnny Vincent for a reported $12,500. The record stayed in the charts for eleven weeks, peaking at #1 R&B (#31 Pop) on Billboard's charts. With There Is Something On Your Mind, Bobby Marchan would leave the Clowns style behind, the disc is a throwback to his drag days, an over the top bluesy ballad with a campy, spoken word breakdown in the middle (on the 45, the spoken part starts off Pt. 2, which would be the hit side that was played on radio). Bobby Marchan would record for Robinson's Fire label for the next two years including, recording an excellent proto-soul dance number The Bootie Green b/w It Hurts Me To My Heart with Allen Tousaint in support, and finish up his relationship with Bobby Robinson with a version of Guitar Slim's The Things I Used To Do pt. 1 and pt. 2, done in the same histrionic style of There Is Something On Your Mind, it would be released on the Sphere Sound label, Fire having gone into receivership earlier that year. Excellent though it was, Robinson was in poor financial shape and had no money to promote the disc, and soon Marchan had moved on. He would record two for excellent singles for Stax in '64 -- What Can I Do  and You Won't Do Right, one for Cameo (Shake Your Tambourine, a soul shaker and a minor hit in '66), and then Dial where he cut several singles including the stomping  Get Down and Get With It which would be covered by Little Richard and later Slade (the writer's royalties he made off the Slade hit would be the most money he'd ever earned off one of his records).  He toured heavily in the 60's, working with everyone from Otis Redding to James Brown, but by the early 70's demand had fallen off and he went back to working drag shows, becoming the regular emcee at Club Alhambra in New Orleans, then hosting a live, riotous version of the Gong Show at the Club 2400, appearing in a blond wig and tight, sequined cocktail dress. He kept his hand in the music biz, and in a way that has never been made quite clear was one of the original founders of the Cash Money label, the New Orleans hip hop (or as they call it down there, bounce) label that produced stars like Juvenile and Lil Wayne.  He also performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, back when local New Orleans legends were more welcome than Phish and Bon Jovi who seem to have taken the event over (which is why Ira Pandos and his Mystical Knights of The Mau Mau began the Ponderosa Stomp, going on this weekend down in New Orleans).  By the late 90's his health began failing. He had to have a kidney removed (why isn't that kidney on display at the rock'n'roll hall of fame?), and then was then struck down by cancer, dying on December 5, 1999.  The drag tradition in R&B continues on to this day in performers like New Orleans rapper Katie Red, but the real history of these "freakish men" has yet to be fully explored, and has never really been acknowledged. Of the many untold secrets that still hide up the rumbled skirt of R&B and rock'n'roll history, one suprise you will find is a black cock, and I'm not talking about roosters. 

Jackie Shane

In my posting about Billy Wright last June, I discussed briefly the tradition of the "tent show" queen in R&B and how many great R&B performers began their careers performing in drag. Well, my friend, collector and record dealer Barry Soltz sent in this wonderful clip of soul singer Jackie Shane (who I always thought was a woman) doing this rendition of Walking The Dog from some TV show in 1965. As you can see, Shane (who also recorded as Little Jackie Shane) was a man who performed (and probably lived) in drag. Shane who died back in '98 recorded for Stop and Sue and is quite revered amongst soul collectors. Great clip! Thanks Barry...

Shirley Clarke: Portrait Of Jason, The Cool World

Detail from Lobby Card for The Cool World that's too big for my scanner.

From Portrait Of Jason (1967) The Cool World (1964)

Last night we went to an opening at the Steven Kasher Gallery of photographs (and some artwork) from Max's Kansas City. The show was to celebrate the book Max's Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock'n'Roll by Steven Kasher (with some excellent commentary by Danny Fields among others). One photo that caught my eye was of Jason Holiday standing in front of Max's.

That photo (not in the book) wass labeled as "unidentified" (oddly enough a photo of him in the backroom which made it into the book is correctly labeled), which is a shame, as he is the star of one of the most fascinating documents of the era and the Max's scene- Shirley Clarke's fascinating documentary-- Portrait Of Jason (1967). Jason was a hustler, junkie and a character, who also often worked for rich ladies (including a stint as Carmen McCrea's houseboy in San Fransisco) as an assistant/butler/maid/go-fer. Clarke simply sat him down in the Chelsea Hotel and in one twelve hour long night, fueled by an ample supply of reefer and booze and had him tell his life story, which he did. Boy did he. Born Aaron Paine in Newark, N.J., his father was a street slick nicknamed Brother Tough and his mother was from "a good Negro family". By the time he was twelve it was obvious to all around him that he was a flaming queen, and as such incurred much wrath from his macho father. "I knew every whore, pimp and bulldagger in the town. And they all said 'You're queer'!" he relates to the camera. Jason had many scams, in addition to hustling, and working for rich old ladies (one of whom he admits drugging every afternoon so he could go out and cop while she dozed), he spent time in many jails and mental institutions, and was receiving an SSI gold check (crazy money as we used to call it) from the government to supplement his hustles.

But Jason, who was known in the backroom at Max's for performing at "showtime" longed to put together a cabaret act, which I don't think even came to fruitation. But as he gets higher and drunker, and more revealing, Portrait Of Jason gives the viewer a glimpse into a world few have ever reported on (although for those interested John Rechy's City Of The Night (Grove Press, 1963) would be the place to start). I have no idea what became of Jason Holiday, but Clarke's cinema verite portrait opens a window on a world long gone, the pre-Midnight Cowboy black hustler underground. In my post on Billy Wright last year I touched on the tent show queen tradition in rhythm and blues and rock'n'roll and how it crystallized in the music of Little Richard, Portrait Of Jason is another side of the same coin, and a must see for freak loving people watchers everywhere.

While we're on the subject of filmmaker Shirley Clarke, she also made another one of my all time favorite movies The Cool World a look at youth gone wild in 1964 Harlem and Coney Island, this pre-Civil Rights riots look at inner city black America is priceless, like a Chester Himes novel come to life.

Both Portrait Of Jason and The Cool World are available on DVD, I got my copies at the Museum Of Modern Art giftshop, although I'm not sure where you can find them out of New York City. Netflix has neither, but a Google search should turn up copies for those interested.

Shirley Clarke who passed away in 1997 is a sadly overlooked film maker these days, and she would go on to make an excellent documentary about Ornette Coleman-- Made In America (1985) among other films. I wish someone would do a retrospective of her work, it's long overdue.