Growing up among Afro-Americans in Berkeley, CA, Greek-American
Johnny Otis (born
John Veliotes) always identified strongly with people of color. Before he had attained the age of 20 he was gigging with black jazz bands throughout the Southwest, and eventually organized an ensemble deliberately patterned after
Count Basie's orchestra. This highly charged album of historical musical artifacts documents the very beginning of
Johnny Otis' recording career. With one apparently unobtainable exception, the Classics
Blues & Rhythm Series has assembled all of
Otis' Excelsior recordings, made in Los Angeles between 1945 and 1947. This provides background and context for his more well-known Savoy material, and indeed for everything this amazing person accomplished during the second half of the 20th century.
Otis' first act as a recording bandleader was to borrow
Jimmy Rushing from
Count Basie!
Rushing sounds right at home with this group, which included tenor saxophonist
Paul Quinichette, pianist
Bill Doggett, and bassist
Curtis Counce. During "Preston's Love Mansion," as
Doggett quotes the famous riff from
Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts," the band hollers "
Johnny Otis!" instead. And well they might, for during this exciting number and indeed most of the performances throughout this collection,
Otis handles his drums with energetic insistence, "dropping bombs" and provocatively stirring the mix. This band was billed at first, in fact, as "
Johnny Otis, His Drums & His Orchestra." "Harlem Nocturne" was a success from the get-go, both this Excelsior version and an alternate take that was issued several years later on Savoy. "Love's Nocturne," from December of 1946, sounds like its sequel. According to the discography, alto saxophonist
Preston Love only blows his horn on this session, alongside the great
Buddy Collette. Big stylistic changes erupted in 1947 as
Johnny Otis & His Orchestra suddenly sprouted a twangy electric guitar, played by one
Pete Lewis. "Barrelhouse Stomp" is the hottest number in the whole package, with tenor saxophonist
Big Jay McNeely wailing like a fiend as the band boils over. A cool vocal group calling itself
the Four Bluebirds, heard here singing "My Baby Done Told Me," would later become famous as
the Robins. "Alimony Boogie" and "Courtroom Blues" (during which "judge"
Darby Hicks talks a little like
Pigmeat Markham while playing the hell out of the piano) introduce a humorous topical theater formula that would soon become one of this band's specialties. Altogether a fascinating historical reissue guaranteed to inform and entertain.