Doin’ That Hand Jive With His Feet

When the Johnny Otis Show appears on stage, it brings years and years of rhythm and blues history with it.

There�s piano and vibes player Otis himself, who started out in the early 40�s as a drummer leading a swing jazz band, then moved into R and B after somebody Otis credits Roy Milton �accidentally� discovered that music. He soon became something of a musical catalyst, and the number of people Johnny Otis has introduced to us is nothing short of fantastic: Hank Ballard, Big Mama Willie Mae Thornton, Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Little Esther . . . to name but a handful.

Then there�s Big Joe Turner, the Boss of the Blues, who became famous, after nearly two decades of singing, as the man who did �Shake Rattle and Roll� before Bill Haley — and you know what happened after that! Ask Big Joe and he�ll tell you he was �doing rock and roll a long time before that, �cept they didn�t ' call it rock and roll.� There�s also Eddie �Cleanhead� Vinson, whose �Cherry Red� made his name a household word in the post-war ghettoes, right up there with Wynonie Harris, Charles Brown, Percy Mayfield, Bullmoose Jackson, Jimmy Witherspoon; and Turner.

Add to that 17-year-old guitarist Shuggie Otis (Johnny�s son), a bassist and drummer, a four-man horn section, two more solo vocalists, and a four-girl singing group called the Otisettes, and you�ve got a 1 6-piece traveling show.

Otis brought his revue to Berkeley this Spring to play at the University of California. The afternoon before the concert, he relaxed on his hotel bed and talked a blue streak about the last 25 years of music, about his experiences in electoral politics, about how he was always considered �just another black bandleader� until he revealed in his book, Listen to the Lambs, that he was actually white; and of Greek ancestory.

The story actually begins right there in Berkeley, where the Veliotes (his real last name) family lived when Johnny was a wee child. His father ran a corner grocery store in the black ghetto. In his book, Otis talks about how he adopted the black lifestyle, despite warnings from his parents and teachers and everybody else who was white, because he found in it �that elusive quality called soul� that he says simply doesn�t exist in the white community. From then on, he has moved almost exclusively in black .circles.

It was, he says, his adoption of the black lifestyle, that led him to take up black music, and not the other way around. At any rate, before he was out of high school, Otis was sneaking off to Oakland with his school chums to play the teen dances. A friend named Otis Williams was the leader of his first band.

�Otis was a great singer and barrelhouse piano player,� Johnny recalls, �He didn�t wanna have a group to go be a big success commercially, he wanted to have a group so we could go play at the little hops in, West Oakland and maybe make u: a little bread to get us a little wine. I�d liked Gene Krupa anc the great Joe Jones with Count Basie, so I liked the idea o being a drummer.�

Otis Williams is now dead, but after playing Oakland�s win jug circuit, he and Otis got themselves a gig in Reno, Nevada in 1941. And that did it — at the age of 20, Johnny Otis wa now a professional musician, on the road.

Until 1948, Otis and his various bands criss-crossed th country, playing swing jazz. His first hit was �Harlen Nocturne.� Basie was still King then, but there were lots o opportunities, because this was the music that was happening and it was much in demand everywhere. In 1948, Otis followed several others in jumping to a prototypical rhythm and blues sounds, and that�s when things started getting really interesting. It�s still interesting to Otis when he talks about it today, because nobody really Mew just what it was he�d done until he already did it.

�R and B, as you know, is a hybrid music that�s a combination of country blues and swing bop: Guys like myself, Roy Milton, Sonny Thompson, who had big band backgrounds, when we went into the rhythm and blues thing, we would liked to have taken our big bands with us, but we couldn�t because two things happened,� Otis explains.

�First, the black community asserted itself, in this sense:, it showed a preference for what it wanted to buy in recorded music, and that was R and B songs. The smaller sounds appealed to them more than the big sounds. That factor, plus the economics of the day — we couldn�t support the big band thing; I guess one caused the other.

�So when we broke down our big bands, here�s how R and B was created. Guys like Roy Milton and later myself still wanted the brass section and reed section, and the best we could do was a tenor sax and a trumpet and the baritone. But you put them all together and something happens. Good jazz musicians are always based in the blues, that�s whefe their roots are, and those guys will always find the right notes, you know, the real bluesy sound with the 7th oh top. It wasn�t long before, at least in my case, I preferred that sound to the big band.

�So now we�re doing the blues, a country blues thing with riffs and whole notes and with backgrounds, where the horns took the part of maybe a vocal group humming behind the singer. And they also harken back to the swing era by setting riffs as the singer sang. And the electric guitar filled incidentally in between, and then a solo, and this didn�t occur in the big bands; we never used an electric guitar. Add the piano, that we had used in the big band and of course boogie woogie with Earl Hines, Count Basie�s boogies, Duke Ellington, so that wasn�t new.

�But to put the piano, the twang of the electric guitar with the drum accentuating the afterbeat real strong . . . in fact, when we went to record, we used to have to press the engineer :o give us the sound we wanted, because he didn�t want it. They thought it was too loud, the guitar was too twangy. And hen you add the horns to that with the singer singing the jlues on top of all this, and you had rhythm and blues. We iidn�t know it, but that�s what happened. I knew I had it in 48, but I heard it in Roy Milton�s music and others as early as 43 and �44, so it was already there when I knew I�d finally bund it.�

Around the same time, Otis hit upon the idea of putting on i package show. His swing band had toured previously With he Ink Spots, so he was already thinking in terms of a revue vhen he opened the Barrelhouse Club in Watts in 1948.

�In the Barrelhouse,� he says, �we had a talent show every weekend, and little by little I found the elements. I didn�t now that�s what I was building, but it turned out that way. �ete Lewis was the guitar player, Don Johnson the trumpet ilayer, and all the players and singers were just kind of added . . Mel Walker the blues balladeer, Little Esther, the tobins . . .

�Once we had it all together, we put it on as a show at the larrelhouse. These were the singers and players in my band, ut we�d use them as a show . . . we�d play for dancing, and lien do a show. Then in �48 we got a hit on the West Coast rith �Midnight at the Barrelhouse� and we went to San Diego, nd I designed a placard to advertise the show, and 1 told the lan that rather than use a little one, to use a big carnival lacard, and put a picture of everybody and their name. And it >oked like a carnival once you put it all together, and it

looked like so much more than it really was even. Later, we called it the Rhythm and Blues Caravan, so when we got the hits with Little Esther, we used that package.�

The hits with Little Esther (then 13), often singing with Mel Walker, were many over the next three or four years: �Cupid�s Blues,� �Double-Crossing Blues,� �Mistrusting Blues,� �Wedding Boogie,�* �Misery.� Walker also had a few hits (�Gee Baby,� �Rocking Blues,� �Cry Baby�), and the combination made the R and B Caravan a popular concert attraction. So the whole gang of nearly 20 loaded into a bus, converted into a mobile hotel, and toured, toured, toured; Otis views the following years with a mixture of amusement, awe that they ever made it, outrage for the way they were often forced to live, and pride.

�Anywhere there was a black population, we played it, I think we�ve played every state except Vermont and New Hampshire. At least half our time was spent in the deep South, and it was funhy how . . . well, whenever we were traveling and we�d cross the Mason-Dixon Line, somebody would holler and say we�d crossed it, and a quiet lull would come over the whole bus. And everybody would get real quiet and depressed, but after a while, well, we were in the South and as we�d go on things would come back to life.�

From that period, he remembers twice (1950 and �51) filling the house in Atlanta, Georgia; apparently, the R and B Caravan still holds the attendance record there. Maybe ten percent of the audience was white, and they were kept in a roped-off section of the balcony. (�In some places, whites could come down and dance, but they had to dance on one side of the room, roped off; there had to be a physical symbol, a barrier of some kind/�) Many of the whites sincerely dug the music even then, he believes, but a few always came around to drop stuff off the balcony onto the black dancers below. Today, Otis wonders more about the ones who came to dig the music.

�We were kept apart, so I don�t know what kind of people they were. It would have been interesting to meet them and know who these white people in the South were, who liked to come to hear our black music.�

And then there was the problem of being black and constantly on the road: �We knew by experience that when the time came to eat, well that was touchy. And we�d get tired of going to the grocery store because you could only get cold cuts, artd we wanted a hot meal. So if we had a white bus driver, the cat would go in and inquire how they would allow us to eat, either come in the back door and eat in the kitchen, or come to the front door and get it in a sack, or maybe even to the front counter and get it in a sack. If we didn�t have a white bus driver, I�d go in and inquire. Sometimes I�d go in and buy the stuff, because they wouldn�t let anybody else from the show in, and I�d have to bring sacks back out to the bus. Mississippi was always the worst.�

And of course, in addition to all the indignities, there were enough times when they were all physically threatened.

Otis continued working with the R and B Caravan through most of the 5Q�s — never getting rich, but making do, as did most black musicians able to stay out on the road constantly. He had hits here and there with several people, worked as a talent scout for several labels, and did a bit of producing, though there was no such word then in the music biz.

Over the years, he was associated with zillions of labels in zillions of roles. Excelsior as an artist and producer. Mdderrt (now Kent) in the later 40�s. Savoy, Mercury, Apollo, Peacock, Duke, King, his own labels Dig and Ultra, and a few one-shot labels. And finally, by the mid-50�s, Capitol, and some kind of economic success, though artistically he�s not especially pleased with that period.

The Capitol period began in 1957. The big hit came in �58 with the �Johnny Otis Hand Jive,� a novelty dance tune that must be about due for a solid revival from somebody. He had smaller successes with such numbers as �Crazy C ountry Hop.� �Telephone Baby,� �Mumblin� Mose,� and �Three Girls Named Molly Doin� the Hully Gully.� Sound kinda hokey? Here's what Otis has to say:

�1 waiKchasing the-buck, trying to make a hit record; that was what you could call my �rock and roll period,� like Picasso�s �blue Period.� � That last remark brings a touch of self-derisive laughter, �It was mostly contrived bullshit that I'm almost ashamed ofxl like �Hand Jive� even though it�s just a jive little piece,. becaustNit�s fun. But some of that shit was really horrible. 1 love to do Tlahd Jive� even though the words are bubblegum bullshit, because it�s a groove. Hardly a work of art. but it's an honest piece of rhythm that we enjoy.�

Otis definitely sounds like a man who's been around, no? You're probably thinking he probably has some great stories about all those people who changed the course of popular music. Well, you�re right, and you�re in luck, too, because there are few things Johnny Otis likes better than reminiscing about those folks. His talk becomes more animated, he sits up and moves his hands about for emphasis. When he does talk about them, he tills in a few of the blanks in both the story of rhythm and blues and his own story.

CHARLES BROWN: �I was playing drums with Bardu Ali�s band at the Lincoln Theater in LA - this wa*; back in the 40�s

and during the talent show at the Lincoln a young man played Clair de Lime of all, things in the black community, very blues-oriented in those days. He won first prize, got an encore, and as a matter of fact played Rhapsody in Blue as an encore. That was Charles Brown, and we became very good friends.

�A year or so later I�m in the Club Alabama with my own band and Charles is gigging around town with a group called Johnny Morris' Blazers, and they got a record date and wanted a drummer, so they got me. Nat Cole was big then, so they had three Nat King Cole-type things and they needed a fourth song. So Eddie Williamson the bass player says, �Hey, Charles, remember that little blues thing you used to play?�. And Charles said �Oh, yeah my grandmother used to sing that thing,' it was a gospel thing she sang. �Like a ship out on the sea.� It had to do with Christianity. So he changed it around and right on the spot . . . now that record came out. and it�s hard to describe what it did in the black community nationally; it just swept, and you heard it and heard it and heard it. You could hear it in the air, on jukeboxes, for months and months. �Driftin� Blues� was like a theme song for several years. That was the first and biggest seller, but he had hit after hit. �Black Night.' Dozens of them.

�I remember he�d hit the stage, he�s a tall, handsome man, and as a youngster in his 20�s, with this pure white suit on. 1 remember reading how Frank Sinatra�s agents at the Paramount Theater paid girls to swoon and get that shit started, but no one had to pay those little black foxes to scream and holler when Charles Brown hit the stage. Because he was a beautiful man, and when he sat down to play, that velvet voice was a whole new departure. Intimate? — It was as though he was singing into each one of those chick�s ears. And it was blues, but a love song; melodic, sweet . . . Here was a man who had classical, symphonic training. He was a music teacher in a college down South, somewhere in Texas. Shuggie and I recorded some stuff with him recently, and he still sounds just fine. I�m a real C harles Brown fan.�

HANK BALLARD, JACKIE WILSON, LITTLE WILLIE JOHN: �I asked the man at the Paradise Theater in Detroit

about l;95 I. I guess, if we could have a talent show, because 1 was a talent sCout for King Records at the time. I was never surprised that Motown jumped out of Detroit, because I remember that experience I had in Detroit, where ... we had talent shows in other cities, but never, other than in Los Angeles, never such a turnout of talent, of pregnant talent. And the ones that caught my eye that day were Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John,, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, though they had a different name then.

�It got to be kinda known there�d be a talent show when my band was in town, since I was constantly on the lookout for another good star we could hopefully launch into records. In those days, during interviews on radio, it was different than it is now. You know, with the format the way it is, who�s gonna call anybody in and do an interview with them except the underground stations, and thank God for that because at least there�s some of it left. In those days, it was all AM, and the R and B shows, when we got into town we�d go and talk and we d be talking directly to the community the day before or the day of the dance, and we�d always; announce a little talent show during the evening. Out in the audience are not just youngsters, but also adults. The adults very often would have the tables, and this is something that happened in the South, but not in the North; the big ballrooms would have tables'and it was called cabaret, and the adults would have tables that they�d paid for and they�d have their whiskey and stuff and in the back the kids would be dancing. Very often the dignitaries of the black communtiy would be sitting there — the teachers, doctors, lawyers.�

BIG MAMA THORNTON: �Don Robey, owner of Peacock Records, actually found her, and I was recording on his label and talent-scouting for him then. We got to Houston, and he said he had some people he wanted me to hear. I heard a bunch of people that day, and two of them I was really interested in Big Mama and Marie Adams. As a matter of fact, I took both of them with me. Big Mama right there on the spot. She had never recorded. So I took her with me, and we recorded that �Hound Dog� thing, which was a big hit. and she stayed with me for a year or more. And later when Little Esther left and I needed a singer, I got Marie Adams, and she stayed with me for years. She became the leader of the Three Tons of Joy, and we later had a big hit with her in England called �Ma, He�s Makin� Eyes at Me�.�

LITTLE RICHARD: �Richard�s first records were on RCA Camden, but it didn�t sound like Little Richard. But the next things he did, I produced four or maybe eight sides on Peacock. Now he�s first time known on record as Little Richard, with the Johnny Otis Band. I�m trying to remember the things we did, but it�s been so damn long ago. They were in between the Camden and that rollicking thing that Richard developed later. They were boogies, but it wasn�t quite what he got into later. It would sure be interesting to hear those today.� (It sure would!)

WYNONIE HARRIS: �He and Preston Love and I were friends in Omaha as kids. Wynonie jumped off and made it real big before we had any successes. Wynonie was a guy with a warped sense of humor; he was another handsome, real good-looking kid who was a lady-killer. All the girls just loved him. Never really had a singing voice, if you listen to his records. He never sang a slow blues or a ballad; everything was up. He had to because he had no voice, and he couldn�t play a fucking thing, just sang.

�He called last year, and I didn�t know who it was because I couldn�t recoginze the voice. When it said it was Wynonie, I figured he had a sore throat or cold. He asked me to come to his going-away party, said it was going to be a bitch. So he gave me the date and time, and I don�t go to parties, but I said OK. You know what it was? He had terminal cancer, and he invited all his buddies to a going-away party. 1 couldn�t go, had date on the weekend .-. . but what a powerful personality, to be able to pull off something like that! Then a couple months later he was gone the thought of that just destroys me.�

He's done it all.

JOHNNY ACT: �I was with him on everything except the first tune. �My Song.' 1 produced and played on them. The best known is �Pledging My Love,� but Johnny had a whole string of them.�

Yeah, so Otis has been around. And while his music has usually been right there' in the R and B mainstream, he has made a lot of things happen. Did he ever consider himself, say, something of a liason between the white businessman and the black artist?

�No. Definitely not.� He emphasizes his rejection of white skin privilege. �Because I didn�t operate in the white world at all. Whites ran the record companies, but most of them didn�t realize I was white. They assumed 1 was Afro-American. So there was none of that I was another black bandleader, another black producer to those people.�

Which naturally leads to a discussion of what it meant to be a black bandleader, a black producer in the 50�s.

�I had a guitar player named Pete Lewis. 1 had a young girl singing named Little Esther. Let�s just take those two people. I knew these were fine artists. I just knew they were. No one

Vinson, and Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans. Not shown: Margie Evans, Ivory Joe Hunter, and A Cast of Thousands.

else around me knew it, incidentally; by that, I mean that the people knew they loved �em, but they couldn�t articulate it as fine folk art. The record companies never knew it was fine fofk art. It was something to sell. And then to rip off the artists.

�I think this is less so today. I meet people who are in the business end of the recording industry who are sensitive to the art and artists. They are very, often kind of artistic people themselves, although they are basically business people. Don�t get me wrong, though; I�m not talking about all of them. I�m sure the wolves are still around, too.� �

When the 60�s rolled around, things started looking dim for Otis and his kind.

�A lot of things, including the Beatles came along, and we were out of it, we couldn�t even get a gig. I remember going to a job once and the guy said - first of all, he thought I was the band manager — he said, �Where is your group�.� So I said I was Johnny Otis; And he says �You�re Johnny Otis - oh yeah?�. I asked him where his piano was and he says, �Piano? People don�t use pianos anymore, don�t you play guitar?�. So I was out of it and I knew it. We�re talking about 1960-66.�

So Johnny Otis was out of it, and once a week he showed up at the unemployment office to pick up his check. He wrote a book called Listen to the Lambs, which grew out of a letter he wrote to a friend about the Watts riots of 1965. An editor at Norton saw the letter, and offered him a contract to write a whole book arouhd it. The result was a somewhat awkward and erratic work that jumped back and forth between his life in music and his political views. He also wrote angrily of the rewards whites get for their music, while black music is overlooked. He called rock and roll �artificial and contrived.� and labeled the psychedelic music that was coming out then �even more hysterical, ponderous, contrived, grotesque-sounding.� He affirms that opinion today, with some qualifications.

For example, he digs Jerry Lee Lewis� �clean white country soul.� The same for Carl Perkins' �Blue Suede Shoes.� and some Elvis songs. Among other white musicians, he professes a lot of respect for Mose Allison. Steve Cropper, Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. Bonnie and Delaney. Eric Clapton. Charlie Rich he calls a groove. And country music is �white America's folk music, even though I hate their polit ics."

�I think you know the things I'm talking about when I down rock.� he says. �Like most of the ones I like are influenced somewhat by the black roots, because everything in America is based on the black roots, right? I don't like to name names, but try. say. Tommy Sands or Pat Boone. Or even Bill Haley with �Shake Rattle and Roll.' Listen to Big Joe Turner's version of that song: �Wealin' those dresses when the sun comes shining through/Can't believe all that mess belongs to you.' Pure, honest sexuality. Folk music must have these elements or it's bullshit. Then you listen to the white, watered-down, acceptable version and sure it's artificial and contrived. I simply resent the fact that black people have innovated, created and breathed life into these art forms and whites can come along and become King.

�1 don�t have to defend my reaction to white thievery, but what 1 don�t wanna create is the impression that I�m a racist. It�s not racism. It would be fine if what the whites were doing was cultural borrowing . . . but when it�s a long-distance rape. All I'm really saying is that R and B and soul grew out of the black conVmunity and their experience, and whites can do nothing but imitate and emulate. People can emulate Bach, you know, buy they can't create Bach. To do so they'd have to have been that particular German at that particular time and place.� At this point, something very interesting happened

Shuggie, sitting quietly in a corner all this time, interrupted: �Are you saying a black man can�t create a symphony?�

�Sure he can, it would be a black man writing whatever symphonic work. We�re talking now about the branch of blues and jazz called rocking rhythm and blues, which grows out of the black community.�

Then: �Shuggie is much more contemporary than I am. And he has a broader horizon where music is concerned, and a greater appreciation and understanding of it, too. He�s younger and one of the people who create the songs of today while I am not, not in the sense that a young man like that would be. My cup of tea is the subjective preference.�

Otis also subscribes to a theory quite similar to one stated by Miles Davis — that whites playing alone can�t be funky, but mixed with blacks (as in Sly and the Family Stone, or Santana), they can. Still, he sticks to a pretty purist line in terms of personal listening habits: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Charles Brown, C'lara Ward, the Soul Stirrers, Swan Silvertones, the Caravans, Professor Alex Bradford, and the country bluesmen.

While he was out of music and writing his book, Otis was also taking a stab at electoral politics, almost as an extension of the riots and his book. He ran for State Assembly and lost. He was elected to the Los Angeles County Democratic Committee and even became chairman of the speaker�s bureau. But his experiences, as recounted mainly in the book, only left him disillusioned with politics, a disillusionment he carries today even though he remains outspoken, particularly on race.

He started finding his way back into music. It started when he and Mervin Dymalty, the first black state senator in the west (Otis was his deputy) went to investigate the topless clubs in San Francisco, a big political issue at the time. Someone in the club's bump-and-grind band recognized Otis. Two weeks later lie's at a political fund-raiser in Watts, and a couple of his old friends are whaling up on the bandstand.

�So I went up and played a little bit with them. Shit, that was the first time I�d been even near a bandstand in how long.

I enjoyed myself so. and as we�re going home Merv says that must have felt really good. But I wasn't feeling good! I was really depressed. I told him I feel so fucking bad I wanna cry, and when 1 got home I said it must be because 1 wanna play and I�m preempted. So the first chance I got to get playing again I put that politics shit down and went at.�

He credits Shuggie. because Johnny felt he was too old to make it alone. Shuggie gave him youth and fresh ears. Frank Zappa, who used to hand around Johnny�s recording studio, suggested to the folks at Kent Records that Johnny was making a comeback and they should grab him. They followed Zappa�s advice, and the resulting album. Cold Shot, was a critical success. Zappa got them a TV gig, and out of that came an invitation to handle the Saturday afternoon Blues and Rhythm and Blues Show at he Monterey Jazz Festival.

Johnny took his entire group, and augmented it with Little Esther, Ivory Joe Hunter, Roy Brown, Pee Wee Crayton, and Roy Milton. They blew the place apart, and have been gigging the West C'oast since on the basis of that show. (They�re due to go abroad this summer.) Epic recently released an LP of the Monterey show, and it is a sparkling double-album indeed. Things are looking better all around.

Bouncing about the stage, Johnny Otis does not look very close to 50. The twinkle in his eyes and the smile on the corner of his mouth take a good 10 years off. With his shades, his dark hair combed back, and his beard neatly trimmed, he bears a marked resemblance to Wolfman Jack, a man with whom he shares a somewhat similar background.

The audience is split almost evenly between young white students and middle-aged black people, most of them dressed pretty middle-class. Hoping to get a taste of that afternoon at Monterey, of their own youth.

Joe Turner opens the two-hour show, and Lord, can that 60-year-old man still sing his ass off. He does four songs, including �Shake Rattle and Roll� and �Piney Brown Blues.� Margie Evans, her sequin dress reflecting all over the walls of the auditorium, sings a few tunes, and is followed by Delmar �Mighty Mouth� Evans (no relation), who opens with �Turn On Your Lovelight,� then dances and jives his way through �Back to LA� and the �Watts Breakaway� with Johnny. He and Margie sing a couple together, in the Otis Redding-Carla Thomas tradition. Gene Connors (�The Mighty Flea�) does his trombone sermon, �Preacher�s Blues,� and everybody has fun, just like Johnny said, on �Hand Jive.� Shuggie does a slide guitar number, and tenor saxophonist Clifford Solomon is featured on �Honky Tonk.� Eddie Vinson steps out to blow his alto and sing his theme song in addition fo his most famous: �1 want you to rock me, baby/Until my face turns cherry red.� The Otisettes spin through some Shirelle tunes and other oldies, along with �Proud Mary� and �Higher.� Big Jim Wynn takes some fierce baritone solos throughout the evening, and the whole crew comes together at the end for an enormous finale.

And you can almost see Johnny Otis saying it to himself as they�re all up there working out while the audience whistles and cheers: It�s great to be back up on the bandstand!