The scores of bands that played the big hotels downtown, the dinner and dance clubs like the Pickwick and Blue Note, the country clubs and private supper clubs, all depended on providing music for dancing. Harrison Cooper: “Bill Nappi had a dance band that was pretty big. It was a dance band mainly. These were all mostly dance bands that were around here. There was Paul Smith. There were a lot of little old bands like that around Birmingham at that time. They were very popular. There were as many dance bands around at that time as there are rock bands that are around now. Everything is rock now; back then everything was dance.”
Tommy Stewart, one of the great trumpet players of the swing era, hit the road early: “The snake oil and medicine shows used to come from Atlanta, and a lot of them left with musicians who could read [music]. Plenty of tent shows came through. Over by Parker High School, there was a big old field over there. These guys came through and sell you some Hadecol, snake medicine or something — some of that stuff was colored water. They had live bands and I played with some of them. I made some money when I was about sixteen traveling with a circus … Birmingham was a hotbed for music ever since I was a little boy. You had bands like the Fred Avery Band, John L. Bell, a piano player had a band, John Hands had a band in the 1940s. Fess [Whatley] had a heck of a band. When Sun Ra left [around 1946] his band was still playing here.”
Birmingham’s segregated African American community had its own entertainment. Clarinetist and saxophonist Frank Adams “saw Cab Calloway at the Masonic Temple. I remember seeing him perform on stage. It was a black-only concert. There was no integration at that time. I remember seeing Duke Ellington for the first time at the Masonic Temple … I used to wonder how luxurious it was to see someone at an auditorium. They had a balcony, where we would sit and look out. I was really impressed with Duke’s band.” Tommy Stewart: “The Madison Night Spot on Bessemer Highway was the place; it had a big hall to dance: $2.50 to see B. B. King or Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Ray Charles, Howlin’ Wolf. There were a lot of clubs, five or six clubs along Auburn Avenue, some holes in the wall and some very good. Fess was playing at country clubs. Birmingham was real dirty, but there was a lot going on, the music scene was going strong and a sports scene was really something. Willy Mays — I saw him play at Rickwood Field. Birmingham had a lot of race problems. Fourth Avenue and Seventeenth Street was a black business district full of black businesses, a lot more thriving than you do now. I’d rather be in segregation any day because the music was better — you had four or five big bands, five or six combos making money, with guys working six days a week. On weekends you would go along Fourth Avenue, it was like a brand-new city in the middle of the city. It blew my mind when I first went down there … You could go down Fourth Avenue on Friday night and see the [tour] buses, they got stranded, or stopped to get a motel in the district or stayed in homes. It’s tough now when you read about it [segregation], but then they did not pay any attention — they liked to play, they were making music, they worked regular and they were doing all kind of stuff.” Frank Adams: “Live music was big. Tuxedo Junction was a park where they played. I can think of so many places where musicians played. I can think of so many, like the old Congo Club, which was out on Bessemer Highway. Monroe’s Steakhouse was another one. A lot of people got names for clubs in Birmingham after places that had opened in New York. We had a Cotton Club here … There were sometimes musicians who would sit out on Fourth Avenue and play. It was comparable to the French Quarter … Fourth Avenue was thriving at that point. It was downtown, and it was all that we had. It was the heart of entertainment. You worked all week so you could come into town on the weekend. You spent your money on Fourth Avenue.”
Things were changing for big band players in the postwar entertainment scene. Tommy Stewart: “Jazz musicians from the swing era, when work got slim at the end of the 1940s, a lot of them went into small bands. Louis Jordan was jump jive. His band was the Tympany Five, those smaller bands, he got it from Chick Webb. At this time the small bands were coming up, because there was less costs … Well, there were two factions of small bands: followers of Louis Jordan and [followers of] Charlie Parker. Jazz used to be dance music, popular music entertainment, then Louis Jordan went toward R&B, and jazz became intellectual listening music. R&B would still employ music from big bands. For example, the Clovers and Drifters — their first arrangers were old jazz musicians.” Tommy got hired to play trumpet in R&B singer Jimmy Reed’s band: “I had gone back to Gadsden [about sixty miles from Birmingham] and had formed a jazz band, three or four students, and we went with Jimmy Reed, we were just teenagers. We had sharp stage suits, you know, the Ivy League pants and big-brimmed hats. There I was playing in New York City at fifteen. Here comes my mama … That killed me right there! We played mostly black joints … Jimmy Reed had a big white following. I think the last club my mama pulled me out of was the Birmingham Country Club — she came over there and got me!” Frank Adams landed a spot in the great Duke Ellington band, which kept swing alive in the 1950s, albeit in a more modern form. Erskine Hawkins became an arranger and bandleader for James Brown, who was making a big impression with the African American audience for his soulful stage show. Sonny Blount (aka Sun Ra) worked with Wynonie Harris, a wild R&B singer who inspired Elvis Presley with not only his music but also his outrageous stage act. In 1948 Harris cut a record for the independent King label; “Good Rockin’ Tonight” was a hit and a portent of some important changes to come in the business of popular music.
“Good Rocking Tonight”
Written by Roy Brown in 1947, this influential song started off as a jump jive number: swinging tempo, heavy on the beat, and with clearly enunciated lyrics. Brown’s vocal style owed a lot to gospel and influenced singers like Bobby Bland and Jackie Wilson. Brown tried to sell his song to Wynonie Harris. He was not interested, but the song impressed the owner of the independent De Luxe Records, Jules Braun, to sign Brown and put the record out. Released in 1948 it reached number 13 on the Billboard R&B chart, and a year later Wynonie Harris’s cover made it to number 1 on the chart. This attracted some attention from country artists looking for up-tempo songs. Bill Haley was one of them. His cover of Jackie Brentson’s “Rocket 88” had done very well, and he followed this in 1953 with “Rock the Joint,” a pioneer rockabilly record. The beat, structure, and lyrics of the song owed a lot to “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” but changes replaced the names of R&B dances to country dances, and there was a lot more echo effect in the recording and a penetrating guitar solo by Danny Cedrone, which he used again on “Rock around the Clock.”
Country and Rockabilly
Bill Haley was not the only country artist trawling through the R&B charts looking for suitable material for audiences wanting faster tempos and more exciting rhythms. Sidney Louie “Hardrock” Gunter of Birmingham was also trying to cross over. Gunter was a singer who got some of his first gigs on radio — playing guitar behind the Delmore Brothers on the Alabama Hayloft Jamboree show. Gunter formed the Hoot Owl Ramblers in 1938 to broadcast on local radio — allegedly the band came from Hoot Owl Holler in Birmingham. In 1939 he joined Happy Wilson’s Golden River Boys, who had a regular spot on WAPI radio, which helped them get booked into the Princess theater chain, which covered Alabama and Georgia. Gunter acquired his nickname after a trunk lid fell on his head while unloading the group’s gear and he continued unhurt. Much of his music harked back to the string bands and comedy routines of the previous generation of old-time players, but it was changing with the times. He told the story of country music’s postwar transformation in a song he wrote called “I’ll Give ’em Rhythm.” This is a song of two halves: one with steel guitar breaks and lyrics about “purty love songs,” country homes, and the “good ole radio.” But he laments that there’s something wrong — they don’t like my songs, they want rhythm with a solid beat. The song takes off in a faster tempo with roaring saxophones and pounding drums as Hardrock proves he can deliver what he calls “rhythm and blues.” Although it “hurts his soul to dig for gold,” he does it anyway, along with hundreds of his contemporaries, black and white,