Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 275 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
I’ve written quite a few stories about the blues and blues artists over the years, both male and female, and examined multiple sub-genres that fit into the “blues” classification. But I’ve overlooked a blues performance style that has had a major impact on other genres of Black music over the years, and those who perform it.
I’m talking about blues shouters. I happened to be compiling my weekend birthdays and departures segment (which you will find in the comments section below) and one of the artists in the group this weekend was Wynonie Harris, born Aug. 24, 1915, and who joined the ancestors on June 14, 1969, at the age of 53. His is a name you may or may not be familiar with, however history will remember him as a “blues shouter.”
Songwriter Dan Reifsnyder makes an introduction to shoutin’ on Soundfly:
If you’ve ever been to a lively church (I live in the South, they’re a dime a dozen around here) you’ll find that music is often the centerpiece of the experience. Music helps convey that communal sense of joy and ecstasy of being saved by the religious deities. And that was no less true hundreds of years ago, when most slaves were no doubt too poor to obtain decent instruments. Parishioners would use their whole bodies as instruments, and their voices “like trumpets.” Clapping, stomping, and dancing, their voices would rise above the rhythm, baring their souls to their God.
This was also before the microphone was invented.
In the days prior to amplified sound, auditory projection was a sheer necessity. The gospel singer soloist needed to be heard above the choir, above the din of the congregation, and above the stomping and shouting. This technique was even passed on to some of the great gospel singers of the 20th century — Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin and many others — whose voices could soar above the music with exceptional power.
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Blues shouting is similar to that of those gospel singers trying to be heard over a choir or congregation. Blues frontmen had to use the full strength of their voices to be heard over the band, often a loud and wailing brass ensemble, and wild audiences; almost like underground nightlife opera singers.
More than just a simple curiosity however, blues shouting has been seen by some as a kind of bridge between blues and jazz, and that which directly led to the eventual creation of rock ‘n’ roll. In fact, Big Joe Turner — arguably one of the most prominent of blues shouters, alongside cohorts Jimmy Rushing, Walter Brown, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Wynonie Harris, and H-Bomb Ferguson — has been said to have directly helped create rock ‘n’ roll.
The All About Blues webpages also dive in with some “Blues Shouter” history:
The term ‘Blues Shouter’ means something more than the sum of the two individual words. It is true that most Blues Shouters belt out their songs at constant full volume, with very little regard for vocal dynamics. But to really qualify for the title, a performer also has to project a fervour and energy into their delivery that gets the audience on their feet and creates a certain electricity in the air. It is not that these people are incapable of singing quietly, it’s more that they can’t help themselves once they get going, lost in the moment, at the centre of the cyclone, given over to the power of the music.
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In 1929, pianist Bill ‘Count’ Basie and singer Jimmy Rushing had joined Bennie Molen’s band in Kansas City, and when Bennie passed away a few years later, the Count took over, with ‘Mr. Five-by-Five’ out front. Jimmy’s voice was so loud he barely needed a microphone, and his extrovert stage presence generated huge excitement on the crowd. Their ‘Kansas City Stomp’ style is a direct fore-runner of ‘Jump-Blues’ which is itself in direct line of descent to ‘Rock’n’Roll’. Jay McShann was also leading a swing band out of Kansas City and in 1938, Big Joe Turner took the Kansas sound to Carnegie Hall for the ‘Spirituals to Swing‘ concert. In the years before WWII, many of the great ‘big bands’ led by Benny Goodman, Tiny Bradshaw, Chick Webb, and Lucky Millinder, had ‘shouters’ out front. Artie Shaw and the incomparable ‘Duke’ Ellington always remained rather more melodic, but even the Duke hired Big Joe for his touring ‘Jump For Joy Revue’.
Here’s their example—Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie:
And here is more about “Mister Five-by-Five” Jimmy Rushing, possibly the loudest Blues Shouter of all:
‘Mister Five-by-Five’ was probably the loudest Blues Shouter of them all. Fronting the Count Basie Orchestra, Jimmy Rushing was still capable of injecting great emotional force into his performances at a volume that barely needed a microphone! His careful phrasing brought the Blues into the repertoire of swing bands as Count Basie’s front-man; his up-tempo Jump-Blues was popular in the post-WWII era; he continued as a solo artist from 1950; and he appeared in films and at Festivals all over the world in the 60s. Jimmy got the ‘Five by Five’ tag from a 1942 song by Ella Mae Morse, and that big voice came from a very solid foundation.
The most well-known of the shouters was Big Joe Turner. Jim White at Blues Roadhouse writes:
The shouters were big-voiced, full-throated singers who just stood in front of the microphone and sang. They didn’t dance, or play guitar behind their back. They didn’t need to. The power and passion of their vocals said all they had to say. Their voices were their instruments, and they were masters of those instruments.
Turner is one of my favorites. He was born in Kansas City in 1911, the city where he later became a singing bartender, later a big band singer, and even later put his pipes to work and helped create rock ‘n’ roll.
“Rock and roll would have never happened without him,” songwriter Doc Pomus said in Rolling Stone, after Turner’s death in 1985.
Here’s Big Joe Turner singing “Jump For Joy”:
Warren Huart writes for Produce Like a Pro on Turner and the impact of “Shake Rattle and Roll”:
Joe Turner was born in Kansas City on May 18, 1911. Starting his career as a bartender at the age of 14, he earned a reputation as the “singing bartender” – a blues shouter who didn’t need a microphone. Turner’s bold stylings caught the attention of bandleaders like Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk and Count Basie, who all brought Turner on tour at different moments in his career.
In 1938, Turner, alongside the incredible piano talents of Pete Johnson, brought his blues singing to the famed Carnegie Hall concert “From Spirituals to Swing.” That same year, the pair wrote and recorded “Roll ‘em Pete” which has been credited as one of the most important tracks contributing to the development of rock ‘n roll, and was later inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. With both Turner and Stone working in the Kansas City scene in the heyday of the incredible dance bands that came out of that region, the two musicians’ careers certainly crossed paths. And their lives in New York City also intersected through Abramson and National Records.
But in 1954, they came together to create another foundational track of rock ‘n roll. Stone recalled: “In January or February, 1954, Herb Abramson said to me, ‘We got Joe Turner comin’ in to record and we need an uptempo blues for a change.’ I threw a bunch of phonetic phrases together – ‘shake, rattle, and roll,’ ‘flip, flop, and fly’ – and I came up with thirty or forty verses. Then I picked over them.”
“Shake Rattle and Roll” is a classic 12-bar blues song; set up in a verse-chorus form. The chorus shares the title lyrics, repeating the phrase “shake rattle and roll” with Turner’s iconic vocal shouting. It has a laid back, but up-tempo groove, which gives it that “dance-ability” that Abramson was looking for.
Here it is live:
Before I go much farther, I want to make it clear that though most of the shouter lists only seem to mention men, I want to include the other side of the aisle, starting with Big Mama Thornton. Blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter Joe Bonamassa writes:
Big Mama Thornton aka Powerhouse blues vocalist Willie Mae Thornton was born in a rural town outside of Montgomery, Alabama. She started singing in church and taught herself how to play harmonica and the drums, later touring throughout the south before moving to Houston to start her recording career.
Her robust voice and confident stage presence earned her the nickname “Big Mama”. In 1952, she scored her the highlight of her career with a 12-bar blues song titled “Hound Dog”. The hit topped the R&B Chart for seven weeks.
Although Big Mama was the first to record the song, Elvis Presley also struck a monster hit with his version. She was also the first to sing “Ball and Chain”, later made famous by Janis Joplin. So, yeah Elvis just have a seat and Big Mama will show you how it’s really done.
In case you missed it I celebrated her right here. You can hear the power of her shout in “Bumble Bee,” which was written by Memphis Minnie.
A 1986 New York Times obituary, written by Jon Pareles references another female shouter, Sippie Wallace:
Sippie Wallace, a major blues singer and songwriter of the 1920s, died Saturday at Sinai Hospital in Detroit. She was 88 years old.
Mrs. Wallace, known as the ”Texas Nightingale,” was one of the leading blues shouters of the 1920s – a contemporary of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey – and she wrote such earthy, self-assertive blues songs as ”Women Be Wise” and ”Mighty Tight Woman,” songs that were embraced by feminists in the 1970s. She abandoned blues for gospel in the 1930s, but returned to secular music in the 1960s. During the 1970s, her songs were rediscovered by the singer Bonnie Raitt, who helped revive Mrs. Wallace’s performing career.
Here’s Wallace singing “Suitcase Blues”:
Another sista who could shout ‘em down was Koko Taylor, who was born Cora Taylor Harris in 1928 in Memphis, Tennessee:
Accurately dubbed “the Queen of Chicago blues” (and sometimes just the blues in general), Koko Taylor helped keep the tradition of big-voiced, brassy female blues belters alive, recasting the spirits of early legends like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thornton, and Memphis Minnie for the modern age. Taylor’s rough, raw vocals were perfect for the swaggering new electrified era of the blues, and her big hit “Wang Dang Doodle” served notice that male dominance in the blues wasn’t as exclusive as it seemed.
Taylor was a 2004 NEA National Heritage Fellow.
Here’s “Wang Dang Doodle” live with Little Walter:
Barbria DeAnne posted this short bio of Tayor:
Switching back to the brothers, H-Bomb Ferguson was a shouter for sure, as well as a pianist and songwriter who was born in 1929 in Charleston, South Carolina.
How to define the inimitable persona of H-Bomb Ferguson? Someone said: “If you could combine the vocal style of blues shouter Joe Turner, the unbridled showmanship of Little Richard and the head gear of a well-aged Rick James, the end result would be something like H-Bomb Ferguson.” H-Bomb is the last performing of the original U.S. blues shouters. He recorded extensively in the 1950s for such labels as Derby, Atlas, Savoy, Prestige, Specialty and Federal. He then retired in the 1970s. One day he got an idea to perform in wigs and began a comeback. It included bringing the house down on the Chicago Blues Festival in 1992. Things have looked up ever since.
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Unique as the name was, H-Bomb was pushed to imitate the blues shouter style of Wynonie Harris. They were often paired in billing, with on stage antics of H-Bomb mimicking Wynonie. Though they were closely associated, they were not close, and H-Bomb lobbied to be able to create his own style. About his early recordings, H-Bomb says : “They were going for a big band sound. I always loved the sax. Bass, piano, and four horns were used. And I played with some of the best! Guitar played a minor part. I wasn’t playing piano in most of these recordings. At the time, they said my voice came out much better if I stood at the mike and didn’t play the piano.” H-Bomb made the circuit of regional clubs, singing and telling jokes in vaudeville tradition. He worked with Ruth Brown, Clarence “”Gatemouth” Brown, Willis “Gatortail” Jackson and Bullmoose Jackson, and did comedy with Redd Foxx.
Here’s his hit, “Good Lovin”:
A documentary, “The Life and Times of H- Bomb Ferguson” was released in 2006.
Last, but not least on my list (I’m running out of space, but will cover more in the comments section below) is Wynonie Harris:
Black music has known a vast number of larger than life characters. Few came larger than Wynonie Harris, the loud-talking, fast-living, womanising, hard-drinking and witty son of a gun. But he was a true original and arguably the greatest of the blues shouters. From 1948 until 1952 he was one of the biggest selling recording artists in the jukebox dominated rhythm and blues market.
Wynonie Harris was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to an unwed 15-year old mother and an American Indian father that he saw only once in his life. Despite accounts that Harris spent two years as a pre-med student at Creighton University, he was actually a high-school dropout who broke into showbiz as a dancer and a club emcee. He sang in Omaha nightclubs and was a bit of a local celebrity, but it wasn’t until he moved to Los Angeles in 1940 that his musical career began to gain some momentum.
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Though the quality of his recordings was undiminished, Harris’s star dimmed significantly with the advent of rock and roll. He helped to create the new music, but, try as he might, Wynonie could not sustain a career in rock & roll. At 40, he was just too old to be a rock and roll star. Teenage audiences saw him as a dirty old man singing dirty old songs about sex and alcohol. But as late as October ’54, Harris still had the arrogance to claim “I’m the highest-paid blues singer in the business. I’m a $1,500 a week man. I started the present vogue of rocking blues tunes.” (Interview with Tan magazine).
After one Atco single in 1956, he briefly returned to King in 1957. In the 1960s he recorded for Roulette and Chess, with no success. He was a sick man by then, but he kept on drinking and carrying on. His last known appearance was at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem in 1967, where he stunned the audience with his power- packed performance. On June 14, 1969, Wynonie Harris died of esophageal cancer at the USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was only 53
One of my Harris favorites is “Grandma Plays the Numbers”:
Hope you were shouted out of your seats today. Join me in the comments below and post some of your favorites.