When The Wild Boys Roamed The 1950s Rockabilly Night-With Sunnydale Records In Mind.
CD Review
By Zack James
Sunnydale Records-The Early Days, various artists well-known and one hit wonders, Rem Records, 1991
[This compilation of mainly rockabilly records from Sunnydale Records, a small label working out of a recording studio in Vicksburg, Mississippi run by the local legend Sam McGee was hatched initially from and interview the rock music critic Seth Garth had with Sam. Seth, doing double duty as a rock historian here prodded Sam to let him listen to some of his material. And the rest is history. He contacted Artie Samuels of Rem Records to see if they would re-release the material after working laboriously through Sam’s tapes and reels. These twenty-two recordings are the result. If you want to know what it was like when men, and it was mainly men then, played rockabilly for keeps listen up.]
“You know the guys who came in here when I first opened my doors were the wild boys, the guys who were on the edge, the guys who wanted any way possible not be whatever fate had predicted would be in store for them. Maybe some of them were desperate too, at least some of them must have been desperate enough to fork down two dollars to record something, a lot of them couldn’t even carry a tune,” said Sam McGee to Seth Garth who was interviewing him for a history of rock and roll in the early days article that he was doing for Classic Rock magazine.
Right then Seth was looking for background information about all the guys who were not Elvis or Carl or Chuck or Jerry Lee and how they had fallen by the wayside in the fight for who would be king of the hill in the early days of rock when it was a jailbreak sound for a whole half generation of youth from East to West and back born during or just after the carnage of World War II which acted as a backdrop to what they were fighting a clandestine battle against. He had been tipped off about Sam McGee and his encyclical knowledge about and as a participant in the old days by Rodney Pease, a one-hit wonder back then with Shake My Tree which was originally recorded, demo recorded at Sunnyvale Records. He had met Rodney still at it at the Blue Note just off of Beale Street in Memphis, that town the natural spot to start looking of the roots of rockabilly which is what he needed more information on since he already had plenty of stuff on the blues, stuff associated with an off-shoot of the folk music minute of the 1960s. Rodney was doing rockabilly covers to the aging clientele who remembered when he kicked out the jams and made everybody dance when they were all kids.
Rodney had told Seth that he could find Sam at an assisted-living facility just outside of Vicksburg where it had all started for him, for Sam too. When he visited the facility, which he would do over a few sessions, he found a sprightly old man, filled with long white hair and a wispy old beard but still able to talk a mile a minute. Once Seth made his mission clear Sam was like a cannonball ready to explode. As background he told Seth that he had started out selling records and musical instruments out of what was then the Sunnydale Record Shop just after the war when he had come home from the European wars and decided that he would, having survived a few big battles, pursue his dream of working in the entertainment industry. That was when he got the bug, the idea of setting up a recording studio in the empty space in the back of the store after he had read too many stories about how Hank this and Jimmy that who had made it had started out via making a demo at this or that small recording studio.
Sam wanted in, wanted in bad, had half-dreamed that he could find the next gem, the next Hank, and later the next Elvis from the crowd who came through the Sunnydale doors. So from 1947 until he closed the shop and recording studio in 1961 to concentrate on his night club (which had only closed in 2000) after he realized that the big rockabilly minute that he had depended on, dreamed about had been eclipsed by other more sedate rock music Sam dreamed his big outlandish dreams (“outlandish” Sam’s expression).
Sam had made Seth laugh at that “wild boys who couldn’t sing or play an instrument” since early on in his life, back in high school when he was a wild boy himself and hung around with such he decided that since he couldn’t do either, sing or play, he would become a music critic, at least until he won his spurs as a journalist although he never got to be that big time generic journalist that he had dreamed of becoming. Hence this next in an endless series of musical history assignments.
Sam continued, “You know as many guys as came through Sunnyvale and there were plenty we only had that one big hit by Rodney Pease, and that was a fluke since there was a guy from RCA in that day looking for the next Elvis to add to their stable. All those other guys were getting waxed up for that record they could show their grandchildren I guess when they had them on their knees and they asked what rock and roll was down in the hills and hollows before it got sprung on the whole world, a whole generation which lost it inhibitions, or some of them listening and dancing to some primordial beat that they didn’t understand but made them jump.”
“But it was hard to stop them, hard to stop those hungry boys, or would have been if I had tried since Sam Phillip up at Sun in Memphis had his big breakthrough with Elvis although even he didn’t get the riches he deserved when he sold Elvis’ contract to RCA for what turned out to be cheap money. Frankly I needed the money myself so I wasn’t telling any guy and the few gals who came in not to fork down that two bucks. I was running a nightclub over on the Southside of Vicksburg, the Starlight Lounge and was running behind on all my payments until Sid Lawrence saved my ass when people were willing to pay to hear him in person but would not buy his records. Maybe it was his stage presence that didn’t get translated onto the vinyl. He could pack them in though God rest his wicked drunken, drugged up died at an early age soul. Here people were willing to fork up three dollars for a cover charge, drink an ocean of liquor, high shelf stuff too and would not fork out a buck for a silly 45 RPM which would have pushed him toward the big time. I am still trying to figure that one out.”
Seth then asked Sam how the guys who came in (we will assume that the few girls who came had the same basic bug) found out about his Sunnyvale recording studio way down in Vicksburg and what was driving them to do so. Sam replied, “Well you know after the war, after World War II since we have had a few more since then, the young guys who missed the war, missed the action, good or bad, were restless, couldn’t be kept down on the farm. I mean that almost literally since the overwhelming majority of them coming through the door in those days were farm boys influenced by first I think Hank Williams who after all had that same kind of poor boy, good old boy upbringing as they had and maybe if Hank hadn’t gotten busted up with drink, drugs, some sullen women, and all that they would have followed his trail, maybe there would have been no rockabilly and no rock and roll either, the white good old boy part anyway. But Hank passed on early and there was still that restlessness.”
“Maybe part of it was the rockabilly music they heard on the radio, although that was not what it was called back then just country like I said. What I know is this, these guys would all come in with their guitars, if they had any instrument at all, some of them in pretty good condition too, probably those pretty good guys did their ten thousand hours and had it down. Funny I was a jazz man back before the war, loved Benny and Artie Shaw, Chu Berry, and that music depended on horns and piano, even popular music too, show tunes, the guitar was from the back forty black folk (we called them n-----rs back then some still do in small clots drinking or in their exclusive country clubs) so there was a shift going on away from those more expensive instruments. Hell, you could get a guitar of some quality from the Sear catalogue for about five bucks along with your father’s tiller and your mother’s washing machine.”
“I wouldn’t underestimate the influence of Les Paul since a lot of guys, good or bad, had some of his licks, had picked them up either from a guitar book also purchased via Sears or had watched his television show if they had a television where they could see what he was doing while they couldn’t on his old radio show but I could tell when a guy had certain licks that he had been paying attention. Funny a lot of guys when I asked them said they were self-taught and probably many of them were but those guys didn’t go anywhere except back to the farm.”
“That might have been all of it though, that desperate idea of getting off the fucking farm. I know I slipped the noose myself and I couldn’t sing a note and was murder on any instrument I tried to play, and believe me I tried. I did have a good ear for music though, and a desire to do something in the entertainment field and so there you have it .Yeah, they didn’t want to plow fields like their fathers and older brothers, they wanted what I called at the time “kicks,” something different. So that is what I think drove the thing, that and ego, maybe before Elvis for a girlfriend or to play at some county fair how the hell do I know. All I know is that I always, long before Elvis, had plenty of two dollars being forked down. Almost had Frankie Lavin who made it big with Ducca Records a few years later come in because he was from Leverett the next town over from Vicksburg but I couldn’t get the production values up, that heavy bass beat that Frankie loved behind him enough on my two bit machinery back then, basically a reel to reel tape recorder and a couple of other sound instruments put together with baling wire and spit. Otherwise you would be addressing me not just as a rock and roll man from back in the day but as a man with the words of wisdom of an elder statesman from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
Seth had heard many stories of the deep separation between the races down South, down in the Mister James Crow South as Sam would call it and since Sam had brought up the point about the guitar being a simple-minded black instrument he decided to ask the “race question,” the race musical question that like everything else in America turned the dime on what was what back then, now too as Sam would gently put out when answering. Seth had prior knowledge from Allan Battles, the folk archivist who had interviewed Sam back in the early 1970s for a country blues article he was writing, that Sam had taken two dollars from good old boy white farm boys but also from black farm boys as well. Had had a shot at signing Chan Larson before he left the South and grabbed a lot of attention when he went to Chicago and lit up the electrified blues night at Chess Record.
“Yeah, I booked black guys in my place since you found out that information from Battles who was looking at something else, was trying to find guys, black guys who had performed in the 1920s, 1930s well before my time, in the time when RCA, the record company that made a ton of money off of Elvis later remember what I said earlier. They had sent out actual agents, guys, to comb the foothills, put posters up looking for what Battles called guys who did “roots music.” Really what he was looking for was “juke music,” the music of the Saturday night no electricity cabin, illegal liquor one guy picks up a guitar and plays until the early hours. And there was cussing, fighting, cutting guys up along the way, usually over some woman, some two-timing woman, just like with white guys hanging around their bars. I couldn’t help him directly since that really was before my time but I told him to go over to the Delta, over Clarksville way, over around Highway 61 and if anybody was still around that is where they would be, around the plantations, and small factories. Battles did find Tommy Jackson there, and through him whoever was left standing. He did write me to tell me I was in his article, later made into a book he said.”
“As far as the black thing, you know the n----r thing back then sure I took money from anybody who wanted to have a record pressed-pay two dollars please on the fist. Now I ain’t very proud of this but this is the truth about my situation. I had to record the black guys in a separate studio once the white guys found out that I recorded black guys in “their” studio, otherwise I would have been lynched myself probably. Here is the way it worked though, the white guys said the great unwashed black guys stunk up the place and why did I let them in anyway. I also had to record the black guys under the Sunset label as “race records” otherwise some redneck would have come in and waylaid the place. That’s all I have to say on the matter, and no more but if you check the label, the Sunset label, you will find a guy like Bukka White there under the name Jimmy Stewart and later Ike Turner, under the name Johnny John. That was before he broke out with that classic Rocket 88 of his.”
Seth having gotten all he was going to get from Sam on the race question shifted gears and was looking for anything Sam remembered about any of the guys who came in, what they played, who they covered, anything funny as well.
“You know, or maybe you don’t, although you look old enough but the automobile was the king crazy thing that guys wanted, young guys, white farm boys, black turpentine factory boys, so a lot of it was about getting a big car and maybe a fancy suit, a few bucks to impress some current girlfriend or something to make an impression on some honey they were eyeing. No way that they were going to get that on the farm or factory so they took a chance, a two dollar chance to see if they had “it,” see if they were going to be the next Elvis or Bill Haley, Chuck Berry or Muddy Waters. Keep that in mind, okay. Remember too that these were country boys, both races and as you well know those few guys who did “win,” the one hit wonders, the guys who made a few bucks on the red barn Saturday night or chittling circuit didn’t know squat about money, got taken advantage of by record companies, night club owners and radio stations who pieced them off with chump change, that big old Cadillac that they were craving and not much else. I wanted you to know that, know too that I cut a few corners with guys, not so much in the recording end as at that nightclub that burned money to keep up.”
“The very first guy who came in, Hal Wallace, from Glover, on the other side of Vicksburg, came in after a cousin who read an ad I put in the Gazette offering to record anybody who wanted to be recorded for that two dollars. Here’s a real good example of what I was just talking about. The guy could play the guitar like crazy, had a fair singing voice but would get the words to the lyrics all scrambled up. I offered him a sheet of music with lyrics that he was trying to play, I had a sideline of selling sheet music in those days as well as selling records. Get this, he said he “never had not learnin,’” had never learned to read so he was much obliged but he would have to sing what he knew. Jesus”
“After that I stopped wondering what would make a guy think he could make a living out of anything having to do with music. Just kept the doors open and let what would happen happen. One guy, Jimmy Joe something came in wanting to do an instrumental since he was shy about singing. Only problem was that the guitar he brought in wasn’t “store bought” is the way he put it but had been handed down to him by some relative and so only had five strings, was missing an E string and so he never could catch the high chords. Now you get what was going on down at the bottom, down where the dreams were a lot bigger than the talent. One poor boy black brother didn’t even have a guitar but asked me if I could lend him a hammer so he could nail a couple of nails in the wall and put up a string, one string, strangely enough he could play the hell out of that thing but its didn’t come through on the recording, although with today’s technology he probably would have sounded like he had an orchestra behind him.”
[Seth silently laughed to himself since he had a bug about over-produced songs, which the record companies, producers, hell, even the singers who were probably hard-pressed to realize that was them singing got pissed off about and would complain loudly to whatever publication he was writing for at the time.]
“I can’t tell you how many guys came in to sing somebody else’s song, one string of guys ran around Warren Smith’s Rock and Roll Ruby which was a great song, a classic but how many guys were going to succeed doing that single cover. Another string had Sonny Burgess’ Red-Headed Woman as its hook. I had to laugh every time some trend got big and you could tell all these good old boys were smiling and scheming thinking they had as much talent as whoever it was they were trailing.”
“I’d like to have a dollar though for all the near misses I had, all the money I spent promoting some record I thought had something to it, but see I just never had enough money to do it right, even with the guys who I knew could have created a niche for themselves. Can’t tell you how much I spent in postage alone sending first class parcels to anywhere from fifty to one hundred radio stations within two hundred miles of Vicksburg as the crow flies to get a nibble, a few got taken for local consumption by no big hits except Rodney’s and like I say that was a fluke but I liked my cut, no question on that one. Even back in 1954, maybe 1955 sent the big rock DJ Allan Freedman about a dozen records at different times when I heard an interview that he was interested in rockabilly as well and rhythm and blues as the roots of rock music. Never heard back though.”
“Either that would happen, no deal for my guy, or I would have a group come in, four or five guys with instruments and I just couldn’t put it together with my little space. That’s how I lost the Del-tones who did the big hit My Darlin’ Rock and Roll Susie and a bunch of others. So Seth when you write this article up, or the book when you get done with it, just remember old Sam McGee was in the thick of things when rock and roll and rhythm and blues rode the night waves. Say Sam almost made it, okay.”
