Evolution & The Cadillac Boogieman
“The mind I love must have wild places.”― Katherine Mansfield
Sure you know the names of Ike Turner, Little Richard, and Carl Perkins: they are more often than not referenced when the long-long-long times old story of the creation of rock ‘n’ roll is discussed, along with their song contributions Rocket 88, Tutti Frutti and Blue Suede Shoes respectively. But how about Roy Brown or Big Mama Thornton? Sister Rosetta Tharp or Sister Wynona Carr? I know much of the readership of The Signal knows these names. Knows that Big Mama was the first to sing Hound Dog and Roy Brown Good Rocking Tonight. You cannot post Sister Rosetta Tharp’s video Up Above My Head enough times, because with every viewing comes the same excitement her performance inspires, from her head raised smilin’ singing to her high-heal guitar slinging, with a choir surrounding and clapping. These are the names that have been elevated in recent years when new scholarship seeks to redefine when the rock ‘n’ roll era was ushered in, setting the stake a number of years before Turner and Richard and Perkins punched the red record button and laid down their genius. For they were standing on the shoulders of those who came before and there is a lot of new scholarship demanding that those before are not the pre-rock ‘n’ roll harbingers, but the actual evolutionary figures from which the sound was birthed.
One of the pivotal artists in this fuse igniting era is early Specialty artist Jimmy Liggins. Born 106 years ago today, Jimmy Liggins and his Drops of Joy were known for their chaotic, wild stage antics and playing the most electrifying show in the circuit. Liggins on guitar, either Harold Land or Charlie “Little Jazz” Ferguson going crazy on the tenor sax, the group became Specialty hit makers. Rough Weather Blues, Baby I Can’t Forget You, Saturday Night Boogie Woogie Man…these songs may not be well known now, but they were chart toppers in their day and Jimmy, his brother Joe and Roy Milton were the carpenters that built Specialty.
But it was Liggins’ song Cadillac Boogie that changed everything. Yeah, the song talked boogie woogie with the jive that was ever-present in the jukes of the day, but there was something more driving about it, more immediate, less groove and more push with double tenors Ferguson and Land letting it all out crazy on the bridge near the song’s end. Darwin would say it had the adaptive trait needed to survive and influence. Within three years Ike Turner would record Rocket 88 (under the guise of Jackie Brenston) which very closely copied the structure of Cadillac Boogie (compare the the two…they are very very similar). Little Richards’ Long Tall Sally found less obvious inspiration…but it is there too if you listen closely. Liggins…a hit maker at the time…had songs on the radio. His music was heard. Heard by mass audiences, heard by burgeoning artists who were finding their own voice. He was heard and adapted.
Liggins didn’t start out gunning to be a musician. While his older brother Joe was cutting R&B tracks for Exclusive Records, Jimmy held various gigs: a disc jockey (oh yeah, the love of music DID run in the family), a professional wrestler (he went by Kid Zulu) and finally as the driver for his brother when he hit the road to play shows. It was on the road that Jimmy came to the realization that there was money to be made in the music business (mistake #1) and put together a band and started writing songs. Joe took it to the brass at Exclusive but was denied. Little Brother Jimmy was more primitive in style that Joe, wilder, different. Jimmy went to audition for Art Rupe, not even a year into the launching of his new label Specialty Records. Rupe eventually signed Jimmy, releasing what would be Jimmy’s first hit single I Can’t Stop It on December of 1947 (Joe would sign up with Specialty in 1950).
Unfortunately, with the lack of live photography for most artists in the late 40s/early 50s and a lack of concert recordings, it is hard to get an understanding of how crazy Jimmy Liggins and the Drops of Joy were…and word has it that they put on an electrifying show. On the recordings you hear it in the slamming drums, the crazed horns blowing all over the place and Jimmy’s talk-singing style ringmastering a mischievous air and swindlers smile. Great recordings…historic recordings…but there is a sense of chaos that seems left out.
Jimmy was a guitar player, yet there is barely any guitar on the Specialty tracks…or you have to listen reeeeeeeeeaaaaallly hard to hear it. The hit recordings are very much a blower’s paradise. His playing does take center stage in some of the blues numbers, for example, in the three same-sounding recordings that make up a sort of trilogy: Cloudy Day Blues, Dark Hour Blues and Going Down with the Sun. His hard-picking slightly-distorted guitar leads become the main event, cousins to those of T-Bone Walker. Misery Blues follows the same format until the end of that number when the guitar pulls a Kansas tornado, blowing through some crazy fuzz tunnel into Oz. Where else can you hear that sound in 1950? During times of rapid releases post recording, and given Misery Blues was recorded in 1948, did Rupe hold back because the track ended so…unusually? Those last thirty seconds of the song prophesizes deep into the future, to what is (Black) to Comm, from Link Wray to The MC5 to Tony Joe White to Sonic Youth .
For a while, Jimmy Liggins was releasing singles close to monthly, with more hits than misses. It was a powerful reign albeit short lived. In 1949, he was shot in the face in a “freak accident” in Jackson, Mississippi (on April Fools Day, to add insult) which also included the stabbing of Little Jazz Ferguson. He made an incredible recovery (as did his horn player), and went on to have a few more hits: Drunk in 1953 and the post-Specialty hangover answer I Ain’t Drunk on Aladdin Records in 1954.
As his success waned, Jimmy interestingly turned to the other side of the business. To start, he moved to Durham, North Carolina in the late 1950s and birthed Duplex Records, releasing a slew of killer post-R-n-B-n-R-n-R singles including Ervin Rucker With The Joe Liggins Orchestra’s Baby You Were Meant For Me, Screaming Jack Wilks’ Come and Get Me and even later some pure funk with the likes of Bobby Williams and his Orchestra with Funky Super Fly and the incredibly named Communicators & Black Experiences Band with Is It Funky Enough. These records never went anywhere…but damn were they great.
In Durham, Liggins also opened Snoopy’s Records (a record store) and the Duplex National Black Gold Record Pool to help black artists start a career. Liggins said he wanted to “help and assist black people to own and sell the music and talent blacks produce.1” From what I can gander, he had created a studio/label/record store/mail-order-distribution system that would allow black artists to record and sell their own music (I would like to think he learned from Specialty honcho Art Rupe, of whom he had a good rapport with) . As he was with his revolutionary music, he was way ahead of his time with his direct to customer music business model.
Jimmy Liggins died in 1983 at just 64 years of age. It is incredible to think what he accomplished in his time on the planet. The years have not played well for Liggins’ legacy, as for many of his peers from those early days of rock n roll, like Milton, like his brother Joe, . These hit makers were eclipsed by what was coming up…when rock and roll took over not just the race charts but the pop charts. It is said that there is no competing with Tutti Frutti, but without Jimmy…that song just might not have been so fruity after all.
****AND BY THE WAY, Jimmy Liggins is one of the heroes of the Specialty Box Set Barb and I have been working on, which will include incredible original artwork from back in the day as well as recordings that were not initially commercially released.
It is the 100th birthday of the great Son Thomas today! (Check out this concert footage. It is incredible)!
BOREDOMS' ∈Y∋ will be the conductor, creating waves of sound together with 200 cymbal players. Swirls and swells that no one has ever experienced will emerge. "Arv100 (Arve One Hundred)" will be held at the Arakawa Lock Gate on November 3, 2024 as part of the Sumida River Doto 2024, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Arakawa Floodway opening! (from ∈Y∋’s twitter account).
A stunningly written article by Douglas Small about the rise of cocaine’s use in the 1800s…starting with the discovery that it could be used as a local anaesthetic. The early years included two peers of Freud fighting a duel over its use (one of the doctors, Karl Koller, was referred to by Freud as Coca Koller years before it was used in commercial form!). Great photos, images, stories…a snort of a read.
Han Kang wins Nobel Prize in literature for ‘intense poetic prose’ confronting human fragility
New Nobel Prize for Lit, another author that was not on my radar (which is not saying much). First Korean writer to win! To learn more about her the Korean Times posted a more in-depth story and the Nobel Prize organization posted an interview with her. She won the Booker in 2007 for The Vegetarian…might be the first book I dive into unless anyone out there has any other suggestions!
Whenever the handclap from We Will Rock You is triggered to a crowd at a ball game, does Queen get money from that? Can a rhythm be copyrighted? How about a rhythm that is the foundation for an entire genre of music which is the basis for an ongoing court case from Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson which could effect all reggaeton artists (the article sights it could effect the copyright of over 1800 songs).
Robert Pokorny is Lost In A Dream
"The California desert has been an escape for me," Robert Pokorny notes, "It is a place of transformation with its cosmic energy, open skies and Zen like landscapes and it became my inspiration for these paintings. There is a force in the desert that I wanted to convey, a spiritual, serene state where dualities meet and introspection occurs.
WARNING: A mind bending new reality: “Imagine you have a clock that only ticks when an atom is in an excited state. This is just like a chess clock, which only ticks when it’s your turn. If you reset the clock to zero before the photon enters the cloud and then wait till it comes out, you can look to see how much time the clock has measured and know how much time an atom has spent in its excited state.”
Vancouverite says Hansel and Gretel event ghosted with his money
This is one of those strange “I cannot believe this is an article” discoveries made during late night information gathering. I realize that the guy paid $46 for each ticket…which sucks…but important enough for a writer to spend time on??? The one comment left at the bottom of the article by a disgruntled reader of The Daily Hive is priceless (bad spelling intentionally kept): “Funny how Daily Hive reports on this, but when CityBox by Daily Hive completely dissapointed and then promised a refund, they gave my sister in law her money back, but then totally ghosted me, and I’ve somehow never been able to get a hold of them and have never been able to get my money back. Sad.”
Buffalo Bill
By e e cummings
Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death
l(a or (A leaf falls on loneliness)
by e.e. cummings
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
Cadillac Boogie Lyrics
I had to have a boogie when the woogie wouldn't wait
Park me along like cat like gate
It's all reet, side is steamlined
I'll joy and jump and Cadillac's on time
It's the Cadillac boogie, boogie woogie rolling along
Herb herb, herb guy
Herb herb, herb guy
Look out gate, don't be late
This reuben cat's got a Cadillac date
Air foam cushions on a modern design
V eight motor, body fleetwood line
Keep rollin jack, makin' time
That cat's purring got eight kitten's cryin'
It's a Cadillac boogie, yes the Cadillac boogie
It's a Cadillac boogie, boogie woogie rolling along
Sportin' around town, want to make a date
Get to a long black cadillac eight
Get to crusin' boy, follow the scene
Gal to start jumpin your money and be green
It's a cadillac boogie, boogie woogie rolling along
Now that you have got this Cadillac date
Hep cat daddy don't mess no dates
Travelling man, Herb 'n' Brown
Pickin' up all the fine chicks in town
It's a Cadillac boogie, boogie woogie rollin' along
Rollin' Boogie!
From “For the Records: How African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South: An Article from Southern Cultures 17:4” The Music Issue · Volume 17 by Joshua Clark Davis, 2011
Oklahoma Rock N Roll! 🙌🏼
The Vegetarian is excellent (and pretty short). Highly recommended!