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Excelsior Records
Excelsior Records was an American record label established by Otis René, which existed from 1944 to 1971. It is particularly notable as having released some of the earliest recordings of Nat King Cole. It is not to be confused with former MCA and current independent record label Excelsior Recordings of The Netherlands. History The Excelsior record label was established by Otis René in 1944, and ceased operations in original form in 1951, only to live on in a second incarnation until 1971. It is particularly notable for having released some of the first recordings by Nat King Cole. Otis René was noted to have earned $25,000 on one song in 1945, " I'm Lost", recorded by the King Cole Trio. René had written and produced the song, as well as distributed the record.Uncredited, Billboard, September 1, 1945Buck-Five Disk of Indies Seen Different Ways Retrieved 2012-03-21. Other artists on Excelsior Records included Herb Jeffries, the King Perry Orchestra, Timmie Rogers, the Flenn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otis René
Otis Joseph René Jr. was an American songwriter and record label owner. As a songwriter, he is notable as the co-author of "When It's Sleepy Time Down South", which became a signature song for Louis Armstrong. Biography Otis René was born in New Orleans. Prior to devoting his full-time efforts to music, Otis René was a pharmacist in New Orleans.Uncredited, Billboard, September 1, 1945Buck-Five Disk of Indies Seen Different Ways Retrieved 2012-02-23. He moved to Los Angeles and married in 1930. He is best known as the co-author of the 1931 song "When It's Sleepy Time Down South", co-written with his brother Leon René, and Clarence Muse. Other songs co-written by Otis René include "Someone's Rocking My Dreamboat", included by Murray Head on his 1975 album ''Say It Ain't So'' and "That's My Home", included by Tony Bennett on his 2002 album, '' A Wonderful World''. During the 1940s, with his brother, Leon René, Otis René established and ran the independent rhythm and blues ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spin Records (American Label)
Spin Records was a record label jointly owned by songwriter Otis René and rhythm and blues performer and music arranger Preston Love. History Spin Records was launched in the fall of 1952, as a joint effort between songwriter Otis René ("When It's Sleepy Time Down South") and rhythm & blues performer/saxophonist/music arranger Preston Love. The first three releases for the label were "Strange Land Blues" b/w "Cryin' For My Baby" by The Four Flames (later known as the Hollywood Flames) (with backing by the Preston Love Orchestra) on #101; "Kissin' Boogie" b/w "Jumpin' For Charles" by the Preston Love Orchestra (with vocals by Beverly Wright on A-side only) on #102; "Feel So Good" b/w "Huckle Boogie" by the Preston Love Orchestra (with vocals again by Beverly Wright on A-side only) on #103. The label is asserted to have ceased operations after these three releases. J.C. Marion,"Forgotten Sessions" 1999. Retrieved 2012-02-15. An additional release, Spin #105, was a reissue of "I'm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucky Thompson
Eli "Lucky" Thompson (June 16, 1924 – July 30, 2005) was an American jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist whose playing combined elements of swing music, swing and bebop. Although John Coltrane usually receives the most credit for bringing the soprano saxophone out of obsolescence in the early 1960s, Thompson (along with Steve Lacy (saxophonist), Steve Lacy) embraced the instrument earlier than Coltrane. Early life Thompson was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and moved to Detroit, Michigan, during his childhood. Thompson had to raise his siblings after his mother died, and he practiced saxophone fingerings on a broom handle before acquiring his first instrument. He joined Erskine Hawkins' band in 1942 upon graduating from high school. Career After playing with the swing music, swing orchestras of Lionel Hampton, Don Redman, Billy Eckstine (alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker), Lucky Millinder, and Count Basie, he worked in rhythm and blues and then established ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Rushing
James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901 – June 8, 1972) was an American singer and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948. Rushing was known as " Mr. Five by Five" and was the subject of an eponymous 1942 popular song that was a hit for Harry James and others; the lyrics describe Rushing's rotund build: "he's five feet tall and he's five feet wide". He joined Walter Page's Blue Devils in 1927 and then joined Bennie Moten's band in 1929. He stayed with the successor Count Basie band when Moten died in 1935. Rushing said that his first time singing in front of an audience was in 1924. He was playing piano at a club when the featured singer, Carlyn Williams, invited him to do a vocal. "I got out there and broke it up. I was a singer from then on," he said. Rushing was a powerful singer who had a range from baritone to tenor. He has sometimes been classified as a blues shouter. He could project ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timmie Rogers
Timmie Rogers (born Timothy Louis Ancrum July 4, 1915 – December 17, 2006) was an American comedian, singer-songwriter, bandleader and actor who appeared on many national TV shows in the 1960s and 1970s. Rogers was one of the first Black comedians allowed to directly address a white audience when he worked. Before Rogers, African-American funny men had to either work in pairs or groups, only conversing with each other, and they had to play a character, while popular white comedians, such as Bob Hope and Jack Benny got to play themselves. Rogers worked by himself, always dressed well, often wearing a tuxedo, and never wore blackface. His humor was clean, topical, and political. Rogers was inducted into the National Comedy Hall of Fame in 1993, and is often called the Jackie Robinson of comedy, because he opened the door for other performers such as Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby. As a singer, he often accompanied himself on a distinctive 10-stringed stringed instrument called a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy McCracklin
James David Walker Jr. (August 13, 1921 – December 20, 2012), better known by his stage name Jimmy McCracklin, was an American pianist, vocalist, and songwriter. His style contained West Coast blues, Jump blues, and R&B. Over a career that spanned seven decades, he said he had written almost a thousand songs and had recorded hundreds of them. McCracklin recorded over 30 albums, and earned four gold records. Tom Mazzolini of the San Francisco Blues Festival said of him, "He was probably the most important musician to come out of the Bay Area in the post-World War II years." Biography McCracklin was born James David Walker Jr. on August 13, 1921. Sources differ as to whether he was born in Elaine, Arkansas or St. Louis, Missouri. He joined the United States Navy in 1938, later settled in Richmond, California, and began playing at the local Club Savoy owned by his sister-in-law Willie Mae "Granny" Johnson. The room-length bar served beer and wine, and Granny Johnson served ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Cole
Coel (Old Welsh: ''Coil''), also called ''Coel Hen'' (Coel the Old) and King Cole, is a figure prominent in Welsh literature and legend since the Middle Ages. Early Welsh tradition knew of a Coel Hen, a 4th-century leader in Roman or Sub-Roman Britain and the progenitor of several kingly lines in Yr Hen Ogledd (the Old North), the Brittonic-speaking part of what is now northern England and southern Scotland. Later medieval legend told of a Coel, apparently derived from Coel Hen. He was said to be the father of Saint Helena and through her the grandfather of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. Other similarly named characters may be confused or conflated with the Welsh Coel. The legendary "King Coel" is sometimes supposed to be the historical basis for the popular nursery rhyme "Old King Cole", but this has been said to be unlikely.Opie and Opie, p. 6: "Because there is said to have been a Prince Cole in the third century A.D.... it does not follow that the song 'Old (or Good) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smiley Burnette
Lester Alvin Burnett (March 18, 1911 – February 16, 1967), better known as Smiley Burnette, was an American country music performer and a comedic actor in Western films and on radio and TV, playing sidekick to Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and other B-movie cowboys. He was also a prolific singer-songwriter who is reported to have played proficiently over 100 musical instruments, sometimes more than one simultaneously. His career, beginning in 1934, spanned four decades, including a regular role on CBS-TV's ''Petticoat Junction'' in the 1960s. Biography Lester A. Burnett (he added the final "e" later in life) was born in Summum, Illinois, on March 18, 1911, and grew up in Ravenwood, Missouri. He began singing as a child and learned to play a wide variety of instruments by ear, yet never learned to read or write music. In his teens, he worked in vaudeville, and starting in 1929, at the state's first commercial radio station, WDZ-AM in Tuscola, Illinois. Burnette came by his ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Beal
Eddie Beal (June 13, 1910, Redlands, California – December 15, 1984, Los Angeles) was an American jazz pianist. He was the brother of Charlie Beal. Beal started on drums but switched to piano in his teens. Early in the 1930s he worked in the orchestras of Earl Dancer and Charlie Echols. From 1933 to 1936 he toured China with Buck Clayton, then freelanced in California (with Maxine Sullivan, among others) until 1941. After military service from 1943–45, he accompanied Ivie Anderson, and led his own trio which accompanied Billie Holiday at one point. He also worked in the Spirits of Rhythm. As a composer, he penned the tunes "Softly" (covered by Holliday) and "Bye and Bye", a hit for The Turbans. He plays on the soundtrack to the 1951 film ''The Strip''; he also makes an appearance in the film. Later recording credits include work with Jimmy Mundy, Herb Jeffries, Helen Humes, Red Callender, and others. He led his own group in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1973-74, and in 1974-75 he pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buddy Banks (saxophonist)
Ulysses "Buddy" Banks (October 3, 1909 – September 7, 1991) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, pianist, and bandleader. Career Banks played in Charlie Echols's band in Los Angeles from 1933 to 1937 and remained in the group after it was taken over by Claude Kennedy, and then by Emerson Scott, after Kennedy's death. The group then scored a gig at the Paradise Cafe, and Cee Pee Johnson became its leader; Banks played in Johnson's ensemble until 1945. Following this Banks led his own group; this band featured tenor sax and trombone as its most prominent instruments, the trombone position being held by Allen Durham, cousin of Eddie Durham and Herschel Evans, and then by Wesley Huff. Guitarist Wesley Pile and drummer Monk McFay also recorded as members of this group. The ensemble played throughout southern California and recorded until 1949. Banks led a new group in 1950, but disbanded it quickly. Banks and his Orchestra performed at the fifth Cavalcade of Jazz held at Wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Preston Love
Preston Haynes Love (April 26, 1921 – February 12, 2004) was an American saxophonist, bandleader, and songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska, United States, best known as a sideman for jazz and rhythm and blues artists like Count Basie and Ray Charles. Biography Preston Love grew up in North Omaha and graduated from North High. He became renowned as a professional sideman and saxophone balladeer in the heyday of the big band era. He was a member of the bands of Nat Towles, Lloyd Hunter, Snub Mosley, Lucky Millinder and Fats Waller before getting his big break with the Count Basie Orchestra when he was 22. Love played and recorded with the Count Basie band from 1945–1947, and played on Basie's only No. 1 hit record, "Open The Door Richard." Love eventually became a bandleader himself, playing with Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, his friends Johnny Otis and Wynonie Harris, with whom he had several hits. In 1952, he launched the short-lived Spin Records, as a joint effort with son ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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