The Legends Of Specialty Series Part 1

Among recent reissues in Fantasy's The Legends of Specialty series are the second volumes devoted to Roy Milton, Joe Liggins, Jimmy Liggins and Percy Mayfield along with a volume of Art Neville's Specialty recordings. Another reissue, Shouting the Blues, includes Joe Turner's recordings for the Texas Freedom label, Big Maceo's Specialty sides, and recordings by Smilin' Smokey Lynn
and H-Bomb Ferguson. Musically, most of these recordings date from the heyday of jump blues, the late forties through the mid-fifties. All six releases contain Billy Vera's perceptive annotations and discographical information.

The two prime reissues have to be Memory Pain (Specialty) by Percy Mayfield, and Groovy Blues (Specialty), by Roy Milton. Blues Poet is a label bestowed on many, but no more deservingly than on Percy Mayfield, who was also an urbane vocalist whose recorded such classics as Please Send Me Someone To Love, Strange Things Happening (both heard here in alternate takes), I Need
Love So Bad and The Voice Within. While Specialty's earlier volume of Mayfield's recordings, The Poet of the Blues is the essential Mayfield collection, this contains a number of excellent performances (although a few rough spots may be heard), and has a 1960 demo of his Hit the Road Jack, that became a monster hit for Ray Charles.

Drummer-vocalist Roy Milton was Specialty's first and biggest star until Little Richard. The Oklahoma born Milton was nearly forty when his easy going shuffle R.M. Blues was a hit in 1945, and proceded to make numerous 'jump blues' recordings over the next decade as his band the Solid Senders produced a scaled down version of the territory big bands of the thirties (such as that of Count Basie or Jay MacShann). As Billy Vera notes, economic factors led to the demise of the big bands, while recording techniques improved to make it possible for a five to eight piece combo to have almost as much a punch as a full big band leading many swing era musicians like Milton to adopt the approach of the Count Basie riff-oriented blues-based territory band in a smaller configuration with bluesy novelty vocals, honking sax solos, solid riffs, bass-heavy boogie rhythm and a heavy accent on the second and fourth beats. Few succeeded with this formula as did Milton whose warmly delivered vocals and solid rhythm anchored a strong combo which featured the wonderful boogie woogie piano of Camille Howard (who also takes several of the vocals, but her singing is not as earthy as her playing). Milton was equally at home with a rocking shuffle, or a remake of a standard like On the Sunny Side of The Street (with his vocal indebted to Louis Armstrong), or My Blue Heaven. Big Band roots are revealed by the versions of One O'Clock Jump and I Want a Little Girl from the Count Basie canon, and Thomas Dorsey's Marie. While Camille Howard's vocal on the title track, Groovy Blues, is bland, the music here is anything but bland.

This review appeared in Jazz & Blues Report in 1993. I am splitting it up and will include this top paragraph with all three parts. I received my review copies from Fantasy Records. I am not sure about the availability of these albums, although one might check ebay. Here is Percy Mayfield singing Memory Pain.