I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemon
On the street where I was born (Yeah)
Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee
And Muddy Waters singin’ “I’m A Rolling Stone”
From ‘Cleaning Windows’ – Van Morrison below in the mix.
Play the whole specially sequenced playlist in order for maximum impact
Makes you want to move to Kansas City when you get to that song! God knows what it’s like now. But can you imagine being there during the 1920s and 1930s when the city operated as a “wide-open” town under political boss Tom Pendergast who was highly corrupt but it was a time given “the freedom” to blow when jazz really flourished in a lot of top spots. Robert Altman captured the feeling wonderfully on his for the ages 1990s film Kansas City, one of the best films about jazz that featured the cream of American jazz at the time who took on acting roles at the Hey Hey club run by the gangster Seldom Seen played by Harry Belafonte. Check out this accompanying gem on YouTube.
Walter Brown is a much forgotten figure nowadays. Born in Dallas, Texas in 1917 – he had a short life and died in 1956 – he brought a raw, crying vocal delivery to Jay McShann’s orchestra, providing a natural counterweight to McShann’s sophisticated arrangements and driving boogie-woogie piano. He joined the band in 1941 and featured on the Decca sessions that helped establish McShann nationally. The presence of Charlie Parker in McShann’s ranks gave the music an added significance that would become clearer with hindsight.
On ‘Hootie Blues’, Brown’s blues vocal is set against the playing of Parker, whose alto work was already distinctive. The combination captures something important about McShann’s orchestra at the time: it was a successful blues and swing band, but one whose personnel included musicians who would play a central role in the development of bebop. Brown’s singing kept the music firmly connected to the blues even as Parker and the other horn players were beginning to extend the musical language of the band.
Brown’s association with McShann became increasingly intermittent during the early 1940s. His problems with alcohol and drugs contributed to difficulties in maintaining his work with the orchestra, and by 1944 he was pursuing opportunities away from the band. After Brown’s departure, the singer Blues Bailey worked with McShann before Jimmy Witherspoon subsequently became the orchestra’s principal vocalist. Brown’s departure was therefore part of a period of change for the band rather than simply a straightforward handover to Witherspoon.
Brown began recording under his own name in New York in December 1945, with a large ensemble led by Archie “Skip” Hall for Queen, a subsidiary of King Records. Further sessions followed in 1946, and Brown continued to work with a succession of labels as the market for blues and rhythm and blues developed after the war.
In 1947 he recorded with the Tiny Grimes Sextet for Signature, including a version of the popular novelty number ‘Open the Door, Richard!’ The record became caught up in the controversy surrounding the song’s risqué lyrics and the wider “Richard” craze. WOR banned the recording and Signature recalled it, although the episode was part of a broader reaction among broadcasters to the material rather than simply a case of the record being rejected by the entire radio industry.
As the market increasingly shifted towards smaller rhythm and blues groups, Brown’s big-band blues-shouting style became less central to the emerging sound. He continued to record and perform, however, including further work in the Midwest and a reunion with McShann in 1949. Brown also made recordings with McShann in Houston, while his final known studio recordings were made there in 1951 for the Peacock label.
Brown subsequently withdrew from the music business as his health deteriorated. He died in Lawton, Oklahoma, in June 1956, aged 38. His recorded legacy is closely tied to the most celebrated period of Jay McShann’s orchestra, when Brown’s forceful blues singing and Charlie Parker’s emerging alto style existed side by side in a band that stood at an important point between Kansas City swing, blues and the music that would become bebop.
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