OKeh stands alongside Chess Records as a major purveyors of blues music. But whereas Leonard and Phil Chess founded their eponymous label in 1950, having bought into Aristocrat Records a few years earlier, its Chicago neighbour could boast a longer history.
Like the Chess brothers, Otto Heinemann had European roots. The German-American incorporated the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation in 1916, set up both a recording studio and pressing plant in New York, and started issuing records in 1918. He chose the name OKeH (as it was originally styled) not to echo street slang but to reflect his initials.
OKeh, along with Paramount and Columbia, was one of the major companies involved in the issue of what became to be known as ‘race’ records, an all-encompassing title indicating records aimed at the black consumer. The ‘big three’ had it sewn up when it came to signing the better singers, leaving the smaller companies to scramble around looking for good second-division material.
OKeh scored its first big hit in 1920 with ‘Crazy Blues’ by Mamie Smith, reckoned to be the first recording of vocal blues by an African-American artist. This kicks off our first disc. Three years later, Sylvester Weaver ma e what were reportedly the first blues guitar recordings.
In his reference guide Recording The Blues, Peter Guralnick reveals that ‘in 1921 there were fifty blues and gospel records made. By 1925, 250 were being cut… By 1928, the hillbilly and race record catalogues accounted for nearly 44 per cent of all phonograph sales.’
OKeh sent mobile recording trucks to tour the South, capturing local talent in an attempt to cash in on the boom. Among those recorded were WC Handy, whose ‘The Memphis Blues’ is buried on our second disc. It was written as a campaign song for a candidate for the mayordom of Memphis and, when played on the corner of Main Street and Madison, it stopped the traffic. ‘We played it over and over and over,’ Handy recalled, ‘and Mr Crump got elected. Later, I published this number and I couldn’t use Mr Crump’s name…so I changed the name to ”The Memphis Blues”, which was the first blues published.’
‘The Memphis Blues’ sold thousands of copies of sheet music and transforming Handy, ‘the Father of the Blues’, into a household name. He formed his own publishing company and published his next hit, ‘St Louis Blues’, himself.
It’s interesting to note the preponderance of female artists in the early days of OKeh – a fact that reflected the blues scene in general. The experience gained in touring minstrel shows, vaudeville and clubs in the major cities gave women performers an added maturity. Their male counterparts were, for the most part, involved in the rural areas of the South, relying on minimal musical accompaniment for their developing country blues: in contrast, the ladies relied heavily on jazz musicians for their backing.
Like their competitors, OKeh would often advertise for new talent, and Victoria Spivey’s brothers sent her to St Louis from Houston to audition for talent scout Jesse Jackson. There she cut four tunes, including her own ‘Black Snake Blues’, and duly found herself on her way to New York to record further titles. She had worked the Texas clubs with Blind Lemon Jefferson (also featured here) and had acquired a reputation as a no-nonsense singer whose blues were described as ‘stark and sinister’.
Another native of Houston, born eight years earlier than Spivey, was Beulah Sippie Wallace, described by Paul Oliver as having a voice with a ‘pleasantly relaxed feeling’ carrying a ‘slightly moaning sound’ and having ‘the qualities of shading and inflection that marked the classic blues artist’. Testimony indeed for an artist who survived to record with Bonnie Raitt in the Seventies.
Defined as ‘tough and throaty’ by Giles Oakley, Bertha ‘Chippie’ Hill is also noteworthy. Born one of 16 children in Charleston, South Carolina, headed for New York at a very early age, working the theatres and clubs, briefly with King Oliver. She debuted on disc for OKeh in 1925 with ‘Low Land Blues’ and ‘Kind Man Blues’, only to desert full-time music to look after her seven children. She suddenly reappeared in 1946, working New York’s Village Vanguard, but was killed in Harlem by a hit-and-run driver four years later.
OKeh was bought out by its rival Columbia Records, of which it became a subsidiary, in 1926. Recording continued, and our selections extend to the Forties with the likes of Memphis Minnie, Bukka White and Big Bill Broonzy. All would make their mark on the postwar blues scene, along with Sonny Terry, Champion Jack Dupree and Roosevelt Sykes.
The label was inactive for periods in the Thirties and Forties before being revived in 1951. Its greatest Fifties success came with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Brook Benton, Chuck Willis, Major Lance and others. It was revived by Sony (as Columbia now were) in the Nineties as an urban label and relaunched once more as a jazz imprint in 2013, but this compilation of OKeh’s earliest successes remains and will forever remain unparalleled.
trax disc 1:
1. Crazy Blues - Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds 2. Black Snake Moan - Blind Lemon Jefferson 3. Blowin' The Blues - Sonny Terry 4. Wrong Woman Blues - Lonnie Johnson 5. 44. Blues - Roosevlet Sykes 6. Scarey Day Blues - Georgia Bill (Blind Willie Mctell) 7. Warehouse Man Blues - Champion Jack Dupree 8. T.B. Blues - Victoria Spivey 9. Guitar Rag - Sylvester Weaver 10. Penetrating Blues - Mary Copeland 11. Levee Camp Moan Blues - Texas Alexander 12. Sorrow Valley Blues - Irene Scruggs 13. Rolled From Side To Side Blues - Little Hat Jones 14. Irresistible Blues - Eva Taylor 15. Low Moaning Blues - Snitcher Roberts 16. Everywomans Blues - Rosa Henderson 17. Stand Up Suitcase Blues - Uncle Bud Walker 18. Your Jelly Roll Is Good - Alberta Hunter 19. That Lonesome Train Took My Baby Away - Charlie McCoy W/ Bo Carter 20. Walkin' Talkin' Blues - Sippie Wallace 21. Miss Ora Lee Blues - Peter Chatman & His Washboard Band 22. Muddy Water Blues - Papa Freddie 23. Something Going On Wrong - Peter Cleighton 24. Roll & Tumble Blues Hambone - Willie Newbern 25. Sitting On Top Of The World - Mississippi Sheiks
trax disc 2:
1. stack o' lee blues - Mississippi John Hurt 2. when i been drinkin' - Big Bill Broonzy 3. double trouble - Brownie McGhee 4. pratt city blues - Bertha "Chippie" Hill 5. you scolded me and drove me from your door - Mississippi Bracey 6. when you are gone - Blind Boy Fuller 7. me and my chauffeur blues - Memphis Minnie 8. st. louis blues - W.C. Handy 9. giving it away - Birmingham Jug Band 10. cow cow blues - Dora Clark 11. lonesome woman blues - Rosetta Crawford 12. panama limited blues - Esther Bigeou 13. a woman gets tired of one man all the time - Stovepipe & David Crockett 14. blue blood blues - Blind Willie Dunn's Gin Bottle Four 15. mean low blues - Blues Birdhead 16. achin' hearted blues - Sara Martin 17. tickle britches - Ed Macon & Tampa Joe 18. worried blues - Gladys Bentley 19. ants in my pants - Bo Carter 20. evil mama blues - Ada Brown 21. hard scufflin' blues - Little Buddy Doyle & Big Walter Horton 22. fattening frogs for snakes - Carrie Edward 23. canned heat - Sloppy Henry 24. if i let you get away with it once you'll do it all the time - Margaret Johnson 25. parchman farm blues - Bukka White
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