Hound Howl #097 – 20210613

Originally aired live June 13, 2021 on thehoundnyc.com. The Hound Howl is also available as a podcast on Amazon Music PodcastsApple Podcasts and Google Play.

Birthday Tribute to Lafayette “The Thing” Thomas
Birthday Salutes to Charlie Feathers and Howlin’ Wolf

Instrumental

  1. Trends – Runaway
  2. Johnny Carter & The Twisters – Rhythm Rock
  3. Travelors – Cyclon
  4. Vilados – Wild Party
  5. Accidentals – Twangin Machine

On Mic
11:08 – 13:07

2nd Set

  1. Jerry Thomas – Don’t Have To Worry (Jumpin’ In The Heart Of Town)
  2. “Bucky” & Premiers – Cruisin’
  3. “5” Royales – The Slummer The Slum
  4. Elroy Dietzel & The Rhythm Bandits – Teenage Ball
  5. Clarence Jolly – Don’t Leave Me

On Mic
24:41 – 26:58

Blues Hangover

  1. Howlin’ Wolf – All Night Boogie
  2. Baby Face Turner – Gonna Let You Go
  3. J.B. Lenore – Mamma Talk To Your Daughter
  4. Joe Hill Louis – Hydramatic Woman
  5. Hound Dog Taylor – Take Five
  6. Howlin’ Wolf – I’ll Be Around

On Mic
42:16 – 44:23

4th Set

  1. Charlie Feathers – Jungle Fever
  2. Big Walter & His Thunderbirds – Six Weeks Of Misery
  3. Dazzlers – Gee Whiz
  4. Sheriff & The Ravels – Shombalor
  5. Astronauts – Tryin’ To Get To You
  6. Wilbur Steinberg – Mop Bop Boogie

On Mic
58:11 – 1:00:53

5th Set

  1. Little Victor – Papa Lou And Gran
  2. Steve Carl with The Jags – Curfew
  3. Shirley Gunter – Crazy Little Baby
  4. Dave Day – Jelly Billy
  5. Ivory Jackson – I’m A Country Boy
  6. Jan Davis – Destination Love

On Mic
1:15:14 – 1:16:44

6th Set

  1. Slim Dortch – Big Boy Rock
  2. Lonesome Lee – Cry Over Me
  3. “Lucky” Joe Almond & His Hillbilly Rockers – Gonna Roll And Rock
  4. Bob Lee – Wanted For Questioning
  5. Sleepy LaBeef – I’m Through
  6. Jimmy McCracklin – She’s Gone

On Mic
1:31:48 – 1:33:19

7th Set

  1. Detroit Junior – Money Tree
  2. Teddy Redell – Knocking On The Back Side
  3. Bo Diddley – Crackin Up
  4. Arnold Parker & The Southernairs – Find A New Woman
  5. Big Chenier & His Night Owls – Let Me Hold Your Hand
  6. Wesley Fairburn & The Delta Boys – All The Time

On Mic
1:46:18 – 1:47:50

8th Set

  1. Mondo – Red Lips
  2. Bogard Brothers – Flying Rock
  3. Moonlighters – Broken Heart
  4. Gunter Lee Carr – We’re Gonna Rock

On Mic/Outtro
1:57:31 – 1:57:58

Howlin’ Bananna – Learn That Parrot To Talk (Part 1)

Lafayette "The Thing" Thomas

The Thing demonstrates how to keep white shoes clean while playing.
Jerhl was his middle name, but why did they call him “The Thing”?
Killer 1957 instrumental.

The Thing gets top billing on this 1955 b-side.

Lafayette “The Thing” Thomas was a guitarist who sure knew how to liven up a record. His style has been described as “incendiary”, as good an adjective to describe his playing as any I could think up. All but forgotten today, he appeared on dozens of records in the fifties and sixties, most prominently those of Jimmy McCracklin & his Blues Blasters whom he spent fifteen years with, as well as the best releases on the Oakland, California based Irma label, a handful of solo releases, and a smattering of other sides scattered over a bewildering variety of indie labels.
There’s not a whole helluva lot of information on Lafayette Thomas. He was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on June 13, 1928 (a Gemini, like me), there’s a nineteen year gap before our next sighting of the one who would be called, for reasons that seem lost to time, The Thing.
In 1948 he was living in San Francisco. He started out playing a steel guitar, he saved up for his first regular electric guitar by working at the American Can Company. He began his career he gigging around the Bay Area with Al Simmons, Little Bob Young, and Bob Geddins’ Cavaliers. His first recordings were with Geddins’ and with R&B shouter Jimmy Wilson for the tiny Cave Tone label, the first of many labels Bob Geddins would own. These 78’s are so rare I’ve never heard them, but you can look at them, as some candidate for canonization has seen fit to devote a page of cyberspace to an illustrated discography of our subject de jour.
Somehow, The Thing shows up in Memphis in 1951, were he recorded his first solo record for producer Sam Phillips, who leased the sides to Chess in Chicago. Sam’s Drag b/w Baby Take A Chance With Me were released under the name L.J. Thomas and his Louisiana Playboys on Chess in ’52. The a-side was a wonderfully primitive guitar instrumental with plenty of the speaker blowing distortion that Sam Phillips loved so much.The flip was a vocal blues, in fact it still is. Try finding an original copy today.
Soon he was back in the Bay Area, working at a joint on Filmore Street called the House Of Joy where he caught the ear of piano pounding rocker Jimmy McCracklin, whose band the Blues Blasters he joined in 1951. With McCracklin he would record for Swing Time, Modern, Peacock, Irma, Art-Tone, Checker and Mercury, producing more good records than any sane person can count. Some highlights of his early years with McCracklin include Blues Blaster Boogie (Peacock), Blues Blaster Shuffle (Modern), Josephine (Modern) , Beer Tavern (Irma), She’s Gone (Peacock), The Swinging Thing (Peacock) and You’re The One (Irma).
He also recorded solo sides, the next, which appeared the ridiculously obscure Trilyte label was a brilliant instrumental called The Thing b/w Weekly Blues in 1955. Another appeared in 1957 on Bob Geddins’ Jumping label — Cockroach Run, a killer guitar romp that was so low budget it didn’t even have a b-side (a goofy comedy break in called The Trial was used as the flip). Don Robey’s Peacock label in Houston recorded him as a leader after a McCracklin session with the blazing Jumpin’ In The Heart Of Town and Standing In The Doorway Crying but these, probably his finest solo recordings were left in the vault to rot until the U.K. Ace label salvaged them and released them in 1987 on the LP Bay Area Blues Blasters (Ace 224) which featured a photo of The Thing himself wielding a Stratocaster as if it were a battle axe.
In these years he played lots of sessions in the Bay Area, working for producers Bob Geddins (Art Tone, Irma, Big Town, Oak City, and others) or Ollie Hunt (Trilyte, Olliet, Oliver and Scotty’s Radio). Hunt paid him $128 a week at a time when session union scale was $44.25 for a four hour session. We can assume that not many people bought these records as they’re rare as hell.
Point in question, this rockin’ monster by Texan, Juke Boy Bonner (mis-spelled Barner on the label)– Rock With Me Baby b/w Well Baby (Irma), one of the greatest rockin’ blues sides ever recorded, Thomas sounds like his guitar has barbed wire strings. Collector Dick Blackburn says that less than ten copies are known to have survived*.
Some of the best of Lafayette Thomas’ playing can be heard on these mid-50’s recordings like Jimmy Wilson’s Big Town recording like Oh Red and Tell Me on which he solos. He also appears up on this classic by bad ass Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thorton– Big Mama’s Comin’ b/w Don’t Talk Back (Irma).
Meanwhile, Jimmy McCracklin finally hit paydirt with the smash hit– The Walk on Chess subsidiary Checker in 1957 which featured Thomas’ classic guitar lick. McCracklin cut a handful of rockin’ singles and an LP for Checker (in fact, the Japanese re-issue of the LP adds the words “featuring Lafayette Thomas” to the cover) in 1957-58. My favorites are Everybody Rock b/w Get Tough, and this instrumental LP track Trottin’. Checker also recorded Lafayette solo on this great track which remained in the vault until the 1980’s when it showed up on the aforementioned Japanese album– Claim On You.
In ’58 McCracklin moved to Mercury Records, recording another batch of excellent singles in the same mold as The Walk, Georgia Slop being the best of the batch. Although no discography credits Thomas on the McCracklin Mercury sides, anyone with ears can hear it is him. He seems to have left McCracklin’s band somewhere around this time. McCracklin would go on to have hits on Geddins’ Art Tone (including Just Got To Know a #2 R&B in ’61) and Imperial (Think, #7 R&B in ’65) and release over thirty albums and hundreds of singles spread out over dozens of labels. In fact, he’s still at it.
Around ’59 or ’60 Lafayette Thomas moved to New York City briefly, working with rockin’ pianist Sam Price he cut one excellent single for Savoy– Lafayette’s A Comin’ b/w Please Come Back, he also played on two Prestige LP’s with Little Brother Montgomery, played in Memphis Slim’s band for awhile then returned to the Bay Area for good.
By the mid-sixties work was getting scarce and he took various jobs outside of music, including working in a factory assembling hoses. He was signed by Liberty subsidiary World Pacific and cut some sides with blues pedal steel player L.C. Robinson in ’68, he can be heard on the Arhoolie LP Oakland Blues, his final job was backing up Sugar Pie DeSanto whose 1972 single Hello San Francisco was his last recording. At this point music was a sideline for Lafayette Thomas. In the early 70’s he made some blues festival appearances and then 1977, only 48 years old, he dropped dead of a heart attack.
Today he’s mostly forgotten except for me, Jimmy McCracklin and the guy with illustrated discography web page. So what? Who cares? That was fifty years ago! Why do I keep digging out these obscure names and writing this swill? I asked myself these questions while I’m logging the tunes onto this page for anyone who wants to hear (or download) ’em. I mean, I already have the records, I can hear ’em whenever I want. I guess I’m still amazed at how many incredible, unique characters were out there that could channel their personal idiosyncrasies through rock’n’roll. It sometimes astounds me how many great records there are to hear. Like a bottomless well of great, wild records that only a handful of people have heard. Sadly, the well seems to have dried up sometime around the mid-sixties. In a way, there’s probably more good guitar players around today as ever, but good as in technically proficient, the wrong kind of good, because unfortunately they all sound the same to these ears. I guess back before the corporate takeover of the music biz, the guys who ran these little labels were always looking for something new, something unique. Unique was Sam Phillips’, the first to record Lafayette Thomas solo, mantra. Nowadays the knuckleheads in charge want everything to sound the same. Same drum beat— just pick a setting on the machine (there’s probably one built into your computer, there’s one on mine), even the Rolling Stones do it, sample the drums that is, but it’s the same with guitar players, a stage full of effects pedals don’t help, it still sounds like the same shit. But these old guys, they all sounded different. Lafayette Thomas didn’t sound anything like Ike Turner who didn’t sound anything like Johnny Guitar Watson who didn’t sound anything like Link Wray who didn’t sound like Lowman Pauling….you get the picture. You hear one of these guys, none of ’em were technically great players, some of ’em can hardly play, and some of the best played out of tune (i.e. Chuck Berry) but you can recognize their sound in a second, it was them, their whole personality, all the bullshit in their lives, channeled through six strings and fed into a broken down amplifier. I guess that’s the so called point of all this. And that’s what I like about driving myself crazy trying to find every record Lafayette Thomas played a guitar solo on.

*The quote from Dick Blackburn about the rariety of the Juke Boy Barner Irma 45 comes from Angel Baby’s radio show Lost In Paradise, which Blackburn appears on monthly. Angel Baby broadcasts live every Monday night at 7:30 PM PST and can be heard streaming or on podcast. If you want to hear some really rare and great records give a listen.

Friday’s 5 45’s — Guitar Slingers (and big dick swingers…)





Okay, I’ll take you commenter’s suggestion and try and make this a weekly feature. Five 45’s. Here’s this week’s stack.
Since I’m a lazy shit, this week I just leaned over, from the reproduction of the couch that Sigmund Freud had in his own office, if I lay backwards on the one in my own office I find myself at eye level directly in front of the instrumental section of the 45 shelves. Easy enough. I love rock’n’roll instrumentals, especially guitar instrumentals. For seventeen years I opened my radio show with five instrumentals (take a listen here). I didn’t exactly grab these randomly, I wanted to give you some discs that hadn’t been re-issued, at least not on CD as far as I  know, and by guys who you might’ve heard of, if it not heard of, at least heard (and maybe didn’t know it). And I wanted ’em to be great records. I think these past the test.
Roy Buchanan was amazing in his early days, he contributes some truly ominous guitar sounds to Dale Hawkins sides like Cross-Ties, early fuzz wackiness on Cody Brennan’s version of Ruby Baby and even made a handful of great 45’s under his own name. By the time his ship came in via a PBS documentary which portrayed him as the great, lonesome blues  man, he’d turned into a bore, but this platter, a rendition of Erkstine Hawkins’ After Hours for the Philadelphia based Bomarc label illustrates just how cool he once was. Buchanan himself had long credited the Jimmy Nolen (guitarist with the Johnny Otis Show and James Brown, see the Dec. Johnny Otis I for more on him) waxing of After Hours (Federal, you can hear it on the Johnny Otis I posting) as his all time favorite and most influential disc. Here, Buchanan adds a few of his own tricks, including using the volume knob on his Telecaster as a primitive Wah Wah pedal (or as Hasil Adkins called it– the Bow Wow pedal), and some almost tasteful use of feedback. Quine used to say Buchanan was the only guitarist whom he couldn’t tell if he was black or white, on this disc he sounds grey with red pinstripes.
J.J. Cale is somebody I used to file in the same part of my brain as Jimmy Buffet, but the aforementioned Quine re-introduced me to Cale’s stuff and damned, if you really listen he’s almost the white Jimmy Reed. Ask Eric Clapton, who stole Cale’s sound, songs and band and durn near modled himself after the lazier than hell Okie trash genius (when told he had a hit record and should go out and tour to promote it Cale asked his manager “if I got a hit, why do I have to promote it”? Turns out Cale has a long history and appeared on quite a few  great rockabilly and hillbilly discs back in Oklahoma before setting out for L.A. where he recorded as the Leather Coated Minds for Sidewalk in 1968 before returning to Tulsa and laid back near stardom. This instrumental, Shock Hop he’s billed as Johnny Cale, it is from ’63 and could sit proudly next to such classics as the Frantics’ Werewolf (see Halloween I posting) as instro-spook rock’n’roll at it’s best.

Lafayette “The Thing” Thomas wielded the Stratocaster on many great Jimmy McCracklin records including The Walk. McCracklin found him playing in Jimmy Wilson’s band where he can be heard on such monsters as Big Wheel Rollin’ (Goldband) as well as a few great records under his own name for Peacock (Jumpin’ In The Heart Of Town being the best). This VG- R&B instrumental with the snappy title of Cockroach Run saw life as the only issue on the Jumping label out of God knows where (the flip was a dumb break in record called The Trial credited to nobody). Thomas ended life working as a hose fitter. There’s a lesson in all this but I don’t know what it is. Great record, pops, clicks and all.
Jody Williams- Lucky Lou (Argo). Jody Williams started out in Bo Diddley’s band when they were called the Langley Ave. Jive Cats or something like that. He can be heard soloing on Bo’s Who Do You Love. As a session man he’s on dozens of incredible Chess/Checker/Argo discs including many by Howlin’ Wolf. He only got his due recently, and as of a few years ago was still playing at top of his game. I have fond memories of the first Ponderosa Stomp (when it was still called the Mau-Mau Ball) at the Circle Bar in New Orleans when Jody played a killer set with blues steel player Freddy Roulette. On this Argo disc, his only solo record for the Chess brothers, he displays all his best tendencies. Great record, no bout a doubt it.
Jimmy Dobro (James Burton)- Swamp Surfer (Phillips). This is of course James Burton, hero of countless fine rockabilly records by Dale Hawkins (Suzi Q), Bob Luman, Ricky Nelson, as well as sides by Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gram Parson and even John Denver. He’s probably one of the most deservedly praised guitar players in history but his solo work (an LP for A&M in ’72 and a duet LP with Ralph Mooney for Capitol in ’66) are good but never quite click into high gear. This, my favorite of all his solo sides, was cut under the name Jimmy Dobro because the a-side is a corny dobro-novelty called Everybody Listen To The Dobro that really isn’t worth posting. I love the vibe of this one, especially the way the rhythm section modulates south without breaking tempo. Swamp Surfer isn’t so much a monster as a real sleeper, in the best sense of the term.
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