Roy Brown

Roy Brown - Broadcast March 2008

Last time we covered blues shouter Wynonie Harris, and in doing so we mentioned Harris’ biggest hit – Good Rockin Tonight. Today we will cover Harris’ contemporary and the man who wrote that track – an R&B star who like Harris, exerted a primary influence on the development of rock & roll, Roy Brown.

Let the man introduce himself …

1. Mighty Mighty Man – Oct 1947 – Hard Luck – Tk 4 –2.29

Roy Brown was 12 years younger than Harris, born in September of 1925 in New Orleans. Like so many of the artists we cover in these sessions, his mother was a church organist and also a director of the local gospel choir, and so like so many black performers before him, young Roy received his musical upbringing from the church. In 1939 Brown's mother passed away and as soon as he finished high school he moved to Southern California. In his late teens he tried his hand at boxing and had a short career numbering eighteen fights. He did well enough winning most of them, but he soon quit the game and looked for something else to do with his life.

At the age of twenty Brown entered an amateur singing contest held at the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles by doing an imitation of Bing Crosby. After a few local gigs in the L.A. area, he returned to Louisiana and landed a steady singing job in Shreveport and then on to Texas where he got some work in Houston and Galveston.

In Texas Brown put together a song with a snappy up tempo beat that he called "Good Rockin' Tonight" which got good reaction in the Galveston area.

Pianist Cecil Gant heard the tune and had Brown sing it over the phone to DeLuxe label boss, Jules Braun. Braun was also impressed all of which led to Roy Brown recording the tune in mid 1947 for DeLuxe.

2. Good Rockin Tonight – Jul 1947 – Hard Luck – Tk 1 –3.00

A NO DJ called Dr Daddy O later said of this track, with perhaps just a little exaggeration:

If I had to put my finger on an exact moment when rhythm and blues started in NO it was when RB came out with GRT. That really turned things around for music in NO. GRT was the first instance where NO felt there was such a thing as black music

(Daddy O is an interesting character – an arts professor from Chicago Dr Vernon Winslow who became NO first black DJ – working through to the early 1980s)

The record was an immediate sensation and despite inadequate distribution by DeLuxe, was soon a national hit. Along the way however, a strange thing happened. Wynonie Harris who had originally thought very little of the song had a change of heart and recorded his version for King Records and soon his cover version outsold the original and became a country wide sensation, and was later covered by Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many more early rock icons.

In Aug 1948, DeLuxe was sold to Cincinnati's King Records, the purchase was made to secure Brown’s recording contract, and this brought him to the same label that had Wynonie Harris.

Roy Brown didn't have to wait long to dominate the R&B lists. He scored 15 hits from mid-1948 to late 1951 for DeLuxe. Here are a few of them

3. Rockin at Midnight – Jan 1949 – Very Best – Tk 3 –2.42

4. Fanny Brown – Jan 1949 – Very Best – Tk 4 –2.45

And a typical double entendre number from the period:

5. Butcher Pete – Nov 1949 – Very Best – Tk 7 –2.26

His biggest ever hit came in 1950 - crying blues

6. Hard Luck Blues – April 1950 – Hard Luck – Tk 13 –3.04

Strangely, his sales slumped badly from 1952 on, even though his output for King Records rate among his hottest house rockers.

The decline of his fortunes coincided with his successfully winning a lawsuit against King Records for unpaid royalties in 1952, one of the few African-American musicians to do so in the 1950s. This has led some to believe that Brown may have been unofficially blacklisted.

7. Hurry Hurry Baby – Dec 1952 – Very Best – Tk 17 –2.27

Track covering Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog, which she recorded in 1952 and released early in 1953, and his own number from 1947

8. Mr Hound Dog’s In Town – March 1953 – Mighty Mighty Man – Tk 1 –2.31

Another track from 1954

9. Gal From Kokomo – May 1954 – Mighty Mighty Man – Tk 12 –2.34

An update on the fortunes of Miss Fanny Brown, also from 1954

10. Fanny Brown Got Married – Sept 1954 – Mighty Mighty Man – Tk 13 –2.22

11. Black Diamond – Sept 1954 – Mighty Mighty Man – Tk 15 –2.31

Brown was unable to cash in on the rock & roll idiom he helped to invent and in late 1956 King Records dropped him after a decade with DeLuxe and the King label.

He returned to King in 1959, but the tracks were sometimes excruciating

12. School Bell Rock – May 1959 – Mighty Mighty Man – Tk 20 –2.24

13. Good Looking and Foxy Too – May 1959 – Mighty Mighty Man – Tk 25 –2.14

He kept at it for a time in the early sixties cutting records that were quickly forgotten. He recorded a number of sides for the Memphis based Home Of The Blues label. He even had a shot with Chicago's Chess Records that produced some unreleased work. Sporadic recordings popped up in the later sixties on Bluesway, Summit, and a couple of labels he started himself. For a time he was a door-to-door salesman selling encyclopedias.

After a long dry spell, Brown's acclaimed performance as part of Johnny Otis' troupe at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival and a 1973 LP for ABC-BluesWay began to rebuild his long-lost momentum.

In the late 1970s a compilation LP of his old work brought about a minor revival of interest. In 1978 he had a successful tour in Scandinavia and from 1980 until his death he enjoyed considerable popularity. Shortly before his death he was on a major upswing, performing at the Whisky A Go-Go in West Hollywood, California and headlining the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival during the spring of 1981.

But it came too late; Brown died of a heart attack in 1981 at age 56, his role as a crucial link between postwar R&B and rock's initial rise still underappreciated by the masses. After his death, BB King said “he was my idol” and Bobby Bland added “he was the guy we all tried to sound like, but you know, none of us could”

One commentator wrote: “Roy Brown was one of the originator's of the style of music that took the world by storm in the mid fifties. It is such a raw deal that he did not benefit from the music he helped invent.”

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