Review

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE BLUES: WEST COAST VARIOUS ARTISTS

Here’s the sixth episode in Fantastic Voyage’s 'Let Me Tell You About The Blues' series. So, let me tell you about this release.

After decades of dominance by major labels, California experienced a phenomenal growth in independent recording in the post war years. Millions had flocked there during the war and these people wanted entertainment. So, it all began with 'The GI Singsation', Cecil Gant and his 'I Wonder', a blues ballad that caught the public’s imagination.

Charles Brown, Jimmy Witherspoon and T-Bone Walker set the fashion for cool, laidback blues, while the likes of Gene Phillips, Amos Millburn and Jimmy Liggins added a little heat to the pot. After Big Jay McNeely’s 'The Deacon’s Hop' and Wild Bill Moore’s 'Rock And Roll', honking sax instrumentals became a major sales incentive, and the market was overrun with pianists/singers like Little Willie Littlefield, Ivory Joe Hunter, and a young Ray Charles. With the start of the fifties, R&B took centre stage, preparing the ground for the advent of rock ‘n’ roll. Percy Mayfield remained cool, but newcomers like Lloyd Price, Etta James and Linda Hopkins sang to a stronger beat. However, the blues hadn’t been forgotten because Pee Wee Crayton, Jimmy Wilson and Johnny Fuller still stirred the emotions. But music was changing, so was public taste and within two years the music celebrated here in this cd package was considered to be old-fashioned and was passed by.
Words SHARON DAVIS