RARE MAMIE SMITH BLUES 78 JENNY'S BALL / ED LANG +LONNIE JOHNSON -2 TONE STOMP E

	£		24
	$		32

AN EXCELLENT COPY OF THIS VERY RARE DOUBLE SIDED BLUES 78 ISSUED ON THE UK PARLOPHONE LABEL IN 1932

IT FEATURES FIRST LADY OF THE BLUES - MAMIE SMITH WITH "JENNY'S BALL" ON ONE SIDE

AND GUITAR WIZZARDS ED LANG AND LONNIE JOHNSON ON THE OTHER WITH "TWO TONE STOMP" 

WONDERFUL STUFF!!

 Mamie Smith was the first to record blues songs in 1920 with her versions of Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues", and "It' s Right Here for You" on Okeh Records. The record was a wild success, selling over a million copies in less than a year, and finally ending up selling over two million copies. After this it dawned on record companies that there was a lot of money to be made selling what was then called "race records" to various minority groups in big cities. The success of "Crazy Blues" prompted other record companies to also try to find other female blues singers that could match the sales of "Crazy Blues". It was a very important record, because it opened the doors of the recording industry to African-Americans, whether they were Blues, Jazz or popular singers or musicians. 

Smith herself really wasn't that much of a Blues singer. She was more of a vaudeville performer, although she included Blues and Jazz numbers as part of her act. She got her start as a dancer at age ten in the vaudeville act the Four Dancing Mitchells and later toured with them as part of the Salem Tutt Whitney and Homer Tutt's show, "The Smart Set". Mamie moved to New York in 1913 with "The Smart Set" and decided that she wanted to stay and quit the show. 

She started performing as a singer in Harlem at venues such as Baron Wilkin's Little Savoy Club, Leroy's, Edmunds, Percy Brown's and Banks' Place. Her first recordings were made in early 1920. They were a couple of pop songs "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down". They sold well enough and her manager Perry Bradford convinced Okeh Records that there was a market for earthier Blues records aimed at the large number of African-Americans who had migrated to the big cities of the north. 

Bradford put together a band he called the Jazz Hounds for Smith that was led at first by cornetist Johnny Dunn and then by Bubber Miley. Smith put on quite a show that included trapeze acts, dancing, comedy, lavish costumes and jewellery as well as music. While on tour in 1921 she heard a young Coleman Hawkins playing saxophone in a theatre pit orchestra. Smith asked Hawkins to joined the band, but his family refused to allow him to, because he was just sixteen years old at the time. On her next swing through town in 1922 they once again asked permission of the family and this time they acquiesced. Hawkins was soon given billing as "Saxophone Boy" and was a popular part of the act. Smith continued to record for Okeh until 1923. In the 1930s and early 1940s Mamie Smith continued to lead a successful career singing and recording as well as appearing in several films. Mamie set the standard for female blues singers that followed in her foot steps. Nearly every other Classic Blues singer of the 1920s borrowed something from her act or styled themselves to achieve her success. 

Eddie Lang was the first Jazz guitar virtuoso. A boyhood friend of Joe Venuti, Lang took violin lessons for 11 years but switched to guitar before he turned professional in 1924 with the Mound City Blue Blowers. He was soon in great demand for recording dates, both in the jazz world and in pop settings. His sophisticated European sounding chord patterns made him a unique accompanist, but he was also a fine soloist. He often played with violinist Venuti and with Red Nichols's Five Pennies , Frankie Trumbauer and Bix Beiderbecke (most memorably on the song "Singin' the Blues"). He played in many orchestras including Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra , Jean Goldkette and with Paul Whiteman (appearing on one short number with Venuti in Whiteman's 1930 film "King Of Jazz"). Lang was a versatile player who could back Blues singers, play Classical music, and jam with the greatest musicians of his day. He was the house guitarist at Okeh from 1926 to 1933. Using the pseudonym of Blind Willie Dunn, Lang often teamed up with Blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson.

Johnson was a pioneering Blues and Jazz guitarist and banjoist. He started playing in cafes in New Orleans and in 1917 he traveled in Europe, playing in revues and briefly with Will Marion Cook's Southern Syncopated Orchestra. When he returned home to New Orleans in 1918 he discovered that his entire family had been killed by a flu epidemic except for one brother. He and his surviving brother, James "Steady Roll" Johnson moved to St. Louis in 1920 where Lonnie played with Charlie Creath's Jazz-O-Maniacs and with Fate Marable in their Mississippi riverboat bands. In 1925 Johnson married Blues singer Mary Johnson and won a Blues contest sponsored by the Okeh record company. Part of the prize was a recording deal with the company. Throughout the rest of the 1920s he recorded with a variety of bands and musicians, including Eddie Lang, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

 Two Tone Stomp 

(Eddie Lang / Lonnie Johnson) recorded 17th November 1928 New York, New York US issue as Okeh 8637 

RECORD DETAILS:- 

PARLOPHONE R 1195   10" 78 rpm  SHELLAC

Condition = EXCELLENT COPY

PRESSED WITH THE ORIGINAL US STAMPERS

AN EXCELLENT COPY OF THIS RARE 1932 BLUES 78

FEATURING THREE OF THE EARLY BLUES GREATS!

DON'T MISS OUT BUY NOW!