Description
• A brimful CD compilation dedicated to the important R&B pioneer Roy Milton in the continuously updated ‘Rocks’ series on Bear Family Records®.
• • Milton is considered one of the originators of the jump blues genre on the U.S. West Coast.
• • The album features his rockin’est, fast numbers recorded with his great band between 1946 and ’63 for such record labels as Specialty, DooTone, King, Warwick, Cenco and Thunderbird.
• • Musical highlights include Red Light, Milton’s Boogie, Hop, Skip And Jump, Junior Jives, You Got Me Reeling And Rocking and Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu.
• • His 1955 Specialty single What Can I Do is reissued here for the first time on CD.
• • Johnny ‘Junior’ Rogers, Roy Gaines and Roy Montrell are three of the outstanding guitarists.
• • Expertly narrated by Bill Dahl, plus lots of photos and illustrations in the substantial booklet and recordings carefully remastered for this edition.
Any comprehensive list of postwar rhythm and blues pioneers has to position Roy Milton and his
band, The Solid Senders, right near its top. The Los Angeles-based Milton was a rock-solid drummer whose rich, full-bodied vocals were perfect for the swinging stormers that comprise Bear Family’s ‘Roy Milton Rocks.’ His combo, anchored by Camille Howard’s rippling boogie piano and accentuated by a punchy small horn section (and as time went by, Johnny ‘Junior’ Rogers’ dazzling guitar work), helped define the jump blues genre, which in turn provided an indelible blueprint for the first wave of rock and roll.
This compilation spans the band’s incredible career from their early days of recording in L.A. with the madly jumping Red Light to their hitmaking heyday on Specialty Records (Milton’s Boogie, Hop, Skip, And Jump, Oh Babe!, and the jawdropping Rogers-led instrumentals Junior Jives and Junior Jumps are among the highlights) through his mid-‘50s hookups with DooTone (Fools Are Getting Scarcer, You Got Me Reeling And Rocking, and two killers with his wife Mickey Champion fronting, the scorching Bam-A-Lam and a swaggering I’m A Woman) and King (the instrumental Succotash and Roy’s cover of Huey Smith and The Clowns’ Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu) and his later waxings for Warwick, Cenco, and Thunderbird. A plethora of additional heavyweights passed through The Solid Senders-saxists Buddy Floyd, Jackie Kelso, and Eddie Taylor, guitarists Roy Montrell and Roy Gaines, bassist Dallas Bartley – but Milton was the primary focal point, a visionary early R&B architect who deserves a considerably higher profile in the annals of music history.
CD:
You Got Me Reeling And Rocking Wakin’ Up Baby Oh Babe Hop, Skip And Jump (Cenco) Succotash My Blue Heaven Baby, Don’t Do That To Me Little Boy Blue I Want To Go Home Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu That’s The One For Me Baby You Don’t Know It’s Later Than You Think Bam-A-Lam (feat. Mickey Champion) Junior Jumps One Zippy Zam Train Blues Milton’s Boogie Fools Are Getting Scarcer Tell It Like It Is A Bird In The Hand Red Light Hop, Skip And Jump (Specialty) I’m
A Woman (feat. Mickey Champion) Big Fat Mama Playboy Blues Junior Jives Driveway Blues When I Grow Too Old To Dream Baby I’m Gone What Can I Do
