The rare Stompin` Compilations have been in & out of my life since I was about fourteen. These magnificent, encyclopedic albums of distinction are really worth looking into. I`m not the first to wonder at their provenance. Perhaps not the last either ? Information is lean, & like all great mysteries there`s a story behind them, & its the tale of the Stomper`s musicians that I really want to isolate & then draw out into the open so that I might find out more about them. For, I think the lack of information behind the series is there so that one may delve deeper into their recesses & at the same time allow the process to improve oneself by learning more about this period of history.
As a youth I listened to the Stomper`s religiously. I credit them with providing an awesome backdrop of music that quite literally shaped my youth. They really did carve out my ego & gave me confidence & attitude. Not to mention assistance with everything from dancing to chatting up girls. So, last week, when I played one I was quite literally floored by the weight of pleasure that hit me the second time around. I had forgot just how good these were.
After thinking about them all week I decided to dedicate the following weekend to my collection of Stomper`s. It came as no surprise the second time around when I recognized these albums as not just any old compilations, but something real & meaningful. There was a story in there, but I had to look between the grooves to really understand it though.
My collection began resembling something more akin to a Mojo, or John The Conquer, then a pile of vinyl, as I played them, as Pixie my girlfriend & her friends began grooving round the room to them as they prepared to go out. They didn`t see what the Stomper`s were doing to their basic motor systems, but I could & I got it immediately. For me, I needed to get back in tune with these rare beasts that once swam around the recesses of my brain, like now.
Pixie now gone for the evening, I faced my exciting task head on. I now had the time & the space to get into the grooves & start communicating with them. I began by locating the vibrations that made everyone lose themselves. They were not easy to contend with, they were strong, tricky & buoyant. As I listened intently to every note I slowly felt as though I was being taken over by some ghostly snake charmer who controlled me with a mysterious lute. I was certainly transfixed. Yet, after a while I settled into proceedings & began easing up a bit. Laptop at the ready, I began to write as I listened. Here`s what I came up with;
Firstly, one has to understand, the Stomper`s are not your average, best of compilations, that usually end up in your Fathers record cabinet. These are very cool & very hip compilations, that have had massive amounts of love & time love literally poured into them. They border on the elusive & seem to attract themselves to those with an above average intelligence. These albums also suggest that the compilers had a sense of higher purpose when compiling them. A calling that the average man would never understand, even if you tried to explain it to him. Its seems odd to suggest such heady malarkey, but the quality of music & musicians really does blow in that direction. To not allow it such credence would be doing it an injustice.
The compilations do a lot of justice to everyone involved in the compiling of them. They hold water & feel good when you play them. The music is hip, cool & utterly absorbing, a real gas. For music this old & still sounding fresh is incredible. The compilers have a done a wonderful job putting the compilations together & should still be patting themselves on the back, even now. They look as though they run from one through to around thirty. But are incredibly difficult to locate. If you go looking for them you wont find them easily. They do show up randomly on odd record sites, but go in search of the holy grail of this series, Number One, & you`ll be hard pushed to find it anywhere. Frustratingly, I have been seeking it now for years, & have just about given up that pitiless task. Although I must admit that I was left asking myself why was there not more information available on the musicians ? One look at the cover & your left scratching your head. The sounds are legendary, but the artists are not, & this is what floors me. It`s also one of the reasons that I chose to undertake this task. I had an overwhelming desire to try & understand why these killer tunes & their artists are not house-hold names. They certainly should be.
I am a musician, not by profession, but love, & really appreciate passion in music. I play because I enjoy the sound my soul & mind make when I allow it too. Music is my world & there is nothing more important to me than playing & listening to quality sounds. Like John Miles said back in the `70`s, Music Is My First Love, & It Will Be My Last. Take a look at my vinyl collection & you will see that those sentiments sum me up perfectly. Girlfriends have come & gone, but my music still stands there. I am flawed, lost at times & try to to do the best I can. I think I`m normal because I love vinyl & my Drums as much as I do any anything else, but I maybe wrong. Yet the one thing that links my type up with everyone else in the Western world is pay-off. Now I don`t necessarily mean money, could be emotions, work, anything. What I mean by pay-off is cause & effect. If I do something that I feel is great & it sounds thus, then it deserves a platform to be heard. If I believe that the art I have created is great I can if I choose give it a platform to be heard, an opportunity to express itself freely. This is democratic, & also good form. In music there is always a pay-off because the work a musician put into his music is gold, & this is what causes it to progress. Appreciation can come from many mediums such as; social media, gigs, TV. If Its a labour of love, & deserves recognition than it should be free to express itself this way.
However, what I began to find as I researched the Comps was a definite lack of appreciation for the artists, beyond the inclusion of their music on the albums. The closer I delved into the provenance of the artists the more I continually came up against a disturbing lack of information surrounding them. Everywhere I looked there was a vast, oceanic void of facts, & the deeper I swam the more it unsettled me. I guessed what I was coming up against were issues that had been kicked into the long grass years ago & conveniently forgotten about. As though there was some ethereal, unwritten rule insinuating silence surrounding the background of these musicians. And it was uncomfortable the more I persisted.
Some time ago I had put on my thinking cap, donned a brave face & confronted this gargantuan personal desire for more information on the Stomper musicians. Excited, intrigued & with perhaps a little naively, I had dived into my research with the excitement of a child. Naturally, this brought up many memories & feelings from the past that I must include if I am to make any real sense here.
As a kid growing up in leafy, suburban Surrey I was not geographically equipped to cope with the logistics of getting hold of great vinyl. There was, of course, Record Collector. A wonderful, monthly bible of proportion, that drove me to use the ads section at its rear. It equally drove me into fits of frustration too, due to my impatience at having to wait for the post whenever I had ordered records. I could not rely upon RC, & so after a while, I went elsewhere.
One Saturday morning, in the early `90`s, I stumbled into Rays Jazz Shop, in London. On first entering the place I instinctively knew I had stumbled into a palace fit for a king, well, a wet kid from Weybridge really. As a boy I must of spent more money in Rays than I did anywhere else. Strangely though I knew that every time I spent a few pounds I knew that I was making a good investments for my future. The conundrum I continuously found myself in was one where I needed to be in a good position to get my hands on those fabulous sounds that only Rays ever managed to acquire.Weybridge was not accommodating enough when it came to buying mean, dirty R+B from the States. The place was too clean & it did`nt take me long to fly away from it.
I learnt more about Jazz & Blues from Ray`s employees than I did from the internet or library. Rays employees were good at keeping secrets simply because they knew so much about the distinct genres. I remember creeping in there one morning, just as it opened, & immediately I was pulled to one side by the guy who worked in the basement. He took me down the stairs & whispered barely audibly, " Hey man, come check this out, right now". He slipped his arm around my shoulder &, like I was not really supposed to be there, he took me down those labyrinth of stairs & into a dark corner where he proceeded to play a brand new arrival just in from the distribution company, from outer Mongolia for all I cared. Then he played me my first introduction to the Stomper`s, & with all the weight of a Sonny Liston punch, I was hit hard by the genre of the album. The sounds that emanated from that Hi-Fi system they had down there battered me around & around the circumference of the little room for about half the side of volume five. I was aching all over by the end of it, but not physically. Financially was where I was beginning to sting. I needed them all, & at £15.00 a pop, I knew that I may lose the bout. I was emotional.
Instantly hooked, I took to the Stompin` compilations like a fish to water. They were just phenomenal & so musically powerful. In fact, so good that you could pick up your stylus, put it down anywhere & still get a kick out of any track on any side. Deliciously good, & exciting beyond all reasonable doubt, I wanted more. But research was needed if I was to really enjoy the sounds that were fast changing my philosophy on life. So I decided to set myself the challenge of what later turned out to be the near impossible task of finding out where these guys came from, & why the hell were they had not been bigger than they were.
Research was much more difficult back then. Information was not so freely available & there always seemed to be a mistrust from my parents whenever I asked them about their past. It seemed like I was extracting teeth whenever I asked them about groups they had watched as youths back in the `60`s. I remember once asking my Father what it was like sitting in front of Howlin` Wolf whilst he chatted to Muddy Waters, before they went onto play together, in some bar in the West End, but all he could share with me was a shrug & a," Well, OK". Astrologically blessed, the fool had been placed universally as fortunate as man could be, & he failed to see it !
Dejection led me to read clandestinely about these mighty warriors that traveled overseas to London to entertain unappreciative people, such as my parents. Fortunately though not everyone was insatiable. There were many switched on folks that could see the importance of what was happening, & grasped the opportunities presenting themselves & recorded, for future generations, many great happenings. Blue Horizon, for one, really took advantage of the transition, knowing that there were once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to get down on plastic some of the lesser known great, like Otis Spann & Curtis Jones. Giorgio Gomelsky`s knew that his band, The Yardbirds needed to record an album with Sonny Boy Williamson if the man ever came by. He did & what you have is the incredible Fontana offering of them all together in 1965. God almighty, if you want hear some sweet sounds, check into that.
Eventually though, other pressing engagements, such as University & girls, matched the attention the Stomper`s deserved & my focus waned. My interest went to sleep for a few years as my education jostled for the attention it needed. Although the whole way through University those compilations continually tantalized me like some beast lurking in the background of my unconsciousness. Always whispering that I should get the task done & uncover as much as possible as I can about those artists. Freud once said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but not this time, this beast was alive & kicking, just as Kip Anderson was when he belted out, Try My Love, on Volume four. So I knew that I had an uncompleted job that would one day need to be finished, & I hate untidiness.
In total there are around twenty five Stomper`s, but like all things connected to them, I cant be too sure on that either. What I do know is that they were released unofficially as a whole package. That later went by the wayside & they quickly gained notoriety for being elusive & hard to get hold of. To make matters worse they were never re-released. One look at the record label & you will also see that the matrix numbers give little information either. Inpector Clouseau would be hard pressed to glean much information from them & they seem little more than white labelled DJ copies. Although their not, they are authentic. I guess, scant information can work up the mystique a little ? Which can be good for business, but I`m not sure that is the case here. I respect the compilers & can see that the lack of information is not their fault. It runs deeper than that.
The tracks on the Compilations are literally stomping R+B/ R `n` R, from the late 1950`s & early `60`s. The general sound does at times leans slightly towards Doo-Wop, but not exclusively. There is a little Blues in there too, but not enough to begin attracting in the Barbeque Bob/ Lonnie Johnson worshippers. Nor, thankfully does it give any allegiance to the Cab Calloway brigade. What makes the foundations of the Stompin` compilations is a divination of downtrodden, little heard tracks from unknowns. A quite fascinating window into very early Black Rock n Roll, & its unlike anything else your likely to hear. In fact, I can imagine my heroes, cats like Howlin`Wolf & Elmore James settling down for an evening of Tender Slim in some backwater Speakasy, just before the Psychedelic period arrived to mess it all up for them.
The logistics the compilers have gone for is not altogether clear. They seem to have started the series with the music on the earlier volumes around 1955, then slowly, towards the end, working up to around 1962. However, like all things associated with this series, there is confusion here too. If you line the albums up in order you will find the musical periods circumbulates & do not move consistently throughout. 1962 is the cut-off point, but the lack of information on credits & timings leaves almost no room for the dissection of facts. I guess though any later than that & the genre could begin transmogrifying into something resembling a K-Tel special, & nobody wants that.
The compilations artists are wide & varied in a generous way. Everybody featured in the series takes more than one sitting to really appreciate. Although, to be completely frank, if you walked into The 100 Club next Saturday night, & Tender Slim was whooping his brand of nectar over the PA, then you would, unless you were ill, break into the Flip, flop & Fly almost immediately. The music really packs a punch & you`d be hard pressed to find a stinker anywhere in the series, & that adds up to around 500 tracks in total ! Here there is certainly a lot of pound for your pound. The theme the compilers have attempted is magnificent & it looks like they have tried to remain as consistent as they possibly could throughout the project. Naturally, it must be said, that my lack of information is also theirs. The artists are sensual, exciting & utterly rambunctious. And it is this that keeps the whole thing alive. They all shine & do exactly what is not said on the covers.
When I first began to take notice of the covers my first impression was that perhaps they were Bootlegs ? Cheap, `under-the-counter` copies of better produced records from elsewhere, probably somewhere like New York or Illinois, not England. Due to the fact that we have historically always been about seventeen paces behind them. Then I thought that perhaps the records were`seconds that I was wearing, like some kids who had to wear his Brothers cast-offs, as he grew up. Come to think of it, perhaps this is the reason why the fellow at Rays always seemed to shape-shift every time a Stomper turned up in his shop ? If ever I had the audacity to ask for one he would suddenly acquire an odd habit of glancing his head quickly from side to side presumably in case someone over-heard me mention the name, Stompin` ?. Then breaking out into a sweat at the thought that someone had the gall to ask for such a thing. I mean, I`m not joking. One Friday afternoon, I was told very quietly & very quickly to come back in forty five minutes, where volume six would be waiting upstairs for me in a sellotaped bag, & that I was to leave the money under the counter if nobody was there to serve me ! These records were not cheap, mind, just kind of blank. Bootlegs aside, play them & they sound awesome. Any logistics that may of seemed negative go straight out the window after one sitting. That`s why I take my hat off to the `chap` that put them together, & I say `chap` for a reason.
The Jamaican/ London Blues singer Big Joe Louis, at one of his gigs last Saturday, breathed to me, as we spoke before the gig proceeded, that he knew the elusive`chap` that had compiled the Stomper`s. I was staggered, then dumbfounded at hearing this news. It was as though someone had suddenly turned on the light & shone it into a corner of my sub-consciousness mind, saying, " There you go". My pilgrimage, I quickly thought, could be at an end, as I heard Big Joe utter this tantalizing snippet of gold. Here I was banging my head on the floor every time I walked through another door, & then immediately falling down due to it. Now right in front of my eyes stood a man who`s friend had compiled the Stompers ! I had the chance to learn what I had set about to do all those years ago.
Now I was thirsty for Big Joe`s sage. I leaned in discreetly, knowing Joe was just about to share with me some awesome wisdom. I sat like a child at the Buddhas feet hoping, waiting for something this great man could clear up for me. As though the mysteries of the universe hung from him & were about to be opened up to me. Joe looked at me, knowing instinctively that I was going to hang on every word he was about to gasp, even before he had mentioned them. Then, as he was about to speak to me, I heard, emanate from the rear; " Joe, come on, food". My one moment of potential vision dashed, gone. My last step towards enlightenment, my entrance to Solutio, all over. Right at the moment, Big Joe was gone & by the time I had grasped my composure, re-took my dignity, he was up on stage singing & channeling the Blues like nobody else in London today. True to form, just as I was about to realize more, the elusive nature of the Stompin` comps had got me again. Dashed.
Who is this`chap` Big Joe mentioned ? Like the music he`s elusive. In person, of course, he may not be. In my eyes he is. To me he`s also a man that has taken on near-mythic proportion. He drives a wedge between the ethereal & tangible. And like the music & artists, he represents, his elusiveness drives me to self-flaggelate. Is he real ? What else has he compiled ? All these questions & yet always no answers. Is it really that important ? Would it not be wiser to let it go, give it up & just enjoy the music for what it is ? Is not the whole point the music ? Well it could be, but I am not convinced that it is, actually.
As I prepared for this essay on my beloved Stompin` Compilations I picked up on something interesting, but sadly, also devastating. I suspect the compiler also came across this same fact too. As I sought to recklessly disobey my instincts & push it away, a word kept stubbornly coming back at me. It niggled away at me, this sensation went way beyond the music. I went on trying to ignore it, but as I did my mood got darker & sadder. Something that I did not want to feel, but grated & pulled on me. In this moment I realized what it was & why I was unable to get past earlier attempts quicker. I suddenly realized how deeply the wounds of pain ran. In that moment everything fell into place. A revelation went off in my head the same way, I guess, a bomb would go off on Putney High Street. This bomb was called Payola, & it wrecked a lot trouble, just like a bomb does.
Payola; the financial exploitation of artists, at the hands of American mainstream radio, coursed through the veins of `50`s American Radio-station culture like poison. Ghastly as it seems, Payola was part of the course of established 1950`s American Radios Stations, just as segregation was in the South. And like segregation, nobody ever seemed to want to talk about it.
It is a sad fact that Freed & his ilk, were practicing extortion rackets by controlling & dominating the charts of the American 1950`s. For people like him it was not about the music at all, but something much more primitive & vacuous. The concept of payola, established by the DJ`s of that time was disgusting & many, many great musicians missed the boat entirely, & its this dark art that today affords the Stompin` Compilations the clout they rightly deserve. Even though the exploitation took place fifty odd years ago, stealing folks art & denying the public access to quality music, not to mention destroying careers, is not only ghastly, but downright criminal. It should never of been allowed to happen. No musician should ever have to pay those in a privileged position for exposure. And like the musicians on these compilations, who tried in vain to get their incredible music out there, they were denied their opportunity because arrogant criminals like Freed were more interested in feathering their own nests. So many artists suffered at the hands of these thugs.
To hammer home my point, how is it that a singer of Tender Slim`s caliber, who releases only two records during the whole of his career & both of them make a person shimmy like Sister Kate, & Pat Boone, Aunt Nellie`s favourite, releases a cover of David Dante`s, Speddy Gonzalez, & it gets to spend months & months at number one ? Payola, is the answer to that. Pat Boone`s label could afford to pay. Tender Slim`s independent label could not afford. Even if you compare the likes of Glen Glenn or Sammy Gowan, perhaps Tender Slim`s counterparts, you can still see the discrepancy laid between them by the controlling DJ`s. Guys like Glenn were still able to put their music into the public domain, although somewhat lesser than Boone`s. But a Doc Palmer or Jackie Dunham could not even manage that. Like Slim, Palmer, Dunham & many others that were left behind, simply because they could not afford to pay the big time DJ`s, like Freed.
Perhaps my young idealistic sentiment had shielded me earlier on from understanding the nasty concept of payola. Probably reading something about this as a child would of scared me off ? Even now it puts me in mind of cruel & nasty protection rackets of 1950`s London. Now I can see that Neil Young was right when he sang `Payola Blues`. What he was doing was making a statement. It said; Payola sucks !
The real truth about the Stompin` Compilations is not that there`s some romantic mystique surrounding the artists & their music. Nor are these compilations bootlegs. The only fundamental issue here, that surrounds all the elusiveness, is that the musicians music portray an uncomfortable picture of a racist, uncaring & greedy music industry of 1950`s America. An industry that cared for neither music, nor grace. People were commodities & they did not matter unless they paid. The Stompin` musicians were oppressed & suffocated simply because the American Radio industry wanted them to be. If a musician wanted to be recognized & heard then they had to pay the ferryman. They charged vast amounts of money for musicians to be exposed & because of this the only music that ever got heard was a big industry, polished sound. They denied everyone but the rich an opportunity. In this sense they added to the pain of social deprivation, hatred & later anger that spilled out into the streets & ghettos of 1960`s America. Listen carefully to Tender Slim, Doc Palmer, The Premiers & you will hear what I hear; oppression & frustration in their music. It is a sad fact that had these cats been given a fuller exposure than the America of today would of been a much different place.
What these Compilations contain is an awful genie-in-the-bottle that does, every time you rub it, emanate forth a sensation of historical oppression that leaves one frustrated. Much the same way as, I am sure, these musicians must of felt every time they tried to get there music over to a wider audience & had to stomach payols. Its clear these musicians were given no help or magical wish enabling them to break free in their musical output & they should of had. This is the experience one is left with after the persona of the music dies away. These cats were dictated to, stolen from, used, & then discarded like garbage. This sad fact is what makes the real story behind the Stomper Compilations so sad. Payola tore them apart, limb from limb, like a wild beast snarling & mocking them because it knows its going to win its meal with very little trouble.
Like a modern day Alan Lomax, the man behind this magnificent series of compilations needs to be seriously credited. The work his predecessor set before him was a large mountain indeed, but he has certainly risen to the challenge brilliantly. Because this is how I see the `Chap` that Big Joe spoke of last week. He is, like Alan Lomax before him, a modern day saint that has graced today`s culture with a series of music so brilliant that, if given the right platform, could actually change the way we view R+B music from that period onwards. He has also, in a unique, silent way, taught us about the cruelty of Payola & racism in 1950`s America, through the medium of R+B music.
Music gives people a non-verbal language. It enables them to communicate past boundaries of cultural identities. Music has been an essential medium over time, especially during the period the Stomper`s portray. Today`s generation are fortunate enough not have to stomach oppression in their music. Through the Stompin` compilations I have learnt how important freedom is, & how I have taken it for granted. The musicians here never had that, along with many others, & this music highlights this incredibly important factor.
The Stompin` compilations are timeless & their passion inspirational. And it is this reason that I am eternally grateful to every single musician on the whole of the series, along with the `Chap`, who compiled them.
Thank you, Mr `Chap`, whoever you are.
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