Show Notes:

For today’s show we spotlight a ten-year period following the career of pianist/bandleader Paul Gayten who cut terrific sides under his own name as well as backing numerous fine artists. As New Orleans researcher/writer John Broven wrote: “New Orleans Rhythm & Blues history would never have been complete without Paul Gayten. His band was as formative as Dave Bartholomew’s for the success of New Orleans R&B from the late 1940s into the ’50s. …. In addition to his own career as a singer, piano-player, composer and bandleader, he wrote songs and produced hit records for many artists, including Etta James, Larry Darnell, Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry and Bobby Charles. Paul Gayten’s early recordings left impressions on the young Fats Domino, Professor Longhair (who adopted Paul’s Hey, Little Girl) and others. Paul had a powerful, sonorous voice and his piano playing was heavily blues-based, often colored with ear-arresting bop-jazz phrasing and harmony. His band was at times a veritable hot-bed of great jazz talents, such as the saxophonists Lee Allen and Hank Mobley, the guitarist Edgar Blanchard and the two ‘Ellington musicians’, Aaron Bell, bass and Sam Woodyard, drums. The cream of the crop was Annie Laurie, whose strong and expressive singing strengthened the overall sound of the band.” Today’s notes are drawn from an interview Broven conducted with Gayten that appeared in Blues Unlimited no. 131/132 (‘I Really Got Tired of the Road, One-nighters, Buying New Cadillacs Every Year‘).

“I was born January 29, 1920 at the Charity Hospital, New Orleans. My mother Aria Gayten was the sister of Little Brother Montgomery. Everyone of my family played music, all of them. My great-great grandfather, Gunzy Montgomery, he had a band in New Orleans, it was a jazz band. I was about twelve years old when I started in music. We had a baby grand piano, my aunt out in Kentwood, Louisiana — all of my people are from Kentwood and Greensburg, Louisiana. We used to fight over that piano, my uncles, aunts and my mother all played. I left home when I was fourteen and I went to Jackson, Mississippi. I had a godfather up there. He had a nightclub. I had success with the piano there, I could play any time I wanted to. Little Brother Montgomery is my mother’s brother. I used to listen to him but I never did believe in copying anybody.

So at fifteen I started working with Doc Parmley’s band, I worked for him a year and travelled all over the United States. After Doc Parmley I went with the Royal American shows. We got up at 8 a.m., 9 o’clock we were on the bally — we had to go out and ballyhoo, I was playing the calliope. It’s like an electric organ, the thing with pipes on it. I played drums in the band. …We got up at 8 a.m., 9 o’clock we were on the bally — we had to go out and ballyhoo, I was playing the calliope. It’s like an electric organ, the thing with pipes on it. I played drums in the band…It was a lot of fun, good experience, and made you love people. We had private pullman coaches where we lived, on the Royal American and Silas Green shows. …. I was just a kid and I think it’s a great experience. Especially when I worked with bands like Doc Parmley’s band, Don Dunbar’s band in Jackson, Mississippi where we’d go in and play and make a dollar and a half a night — some nights we didn’t make that. I left the Silas Green show and went back to Jackson, Mississippi. During this time I had a six-piece band…

I was in Jackson through 1938 and 1939 and then in 1940 I was drafted into the Army. …After that I got out and married my present wife in Biloxi — she was from New Orleans. And then I went back to New Orleans and got a trio together and we made a record. I got my first recording session through a friend of mine, Al Young, he’s responsible for Fats [Domino] and a lot of others. …He made Lew Chudd [founded Imperial Records] a millionaire. …The first record we put out was the hit record, ‘True’. …’Peter Blue And Jasper Too’, I made that twice. I made that for De Luxe and one with a big band, too. …And I made ‘Hey Little Girl’ for Barrett Roa. I used to do all these things, I knew everybody that would come into the club. That’s the reason why I had a good rapport with people. I’d make certain things and call them names, they’d like that.

We didn’t have any trouble with studio time. We were the first to record at J & M studios, I had a radio show from there every Sunday at 3 o’clock and we put it on the map. Joe Mancruzo and Cosimo Matassa had it. …So we put J & M on the map, I don’t know what happened, they went out of business but in the studio we were using wax to record, we didn’t even have tape recorders. The first record I ever made was wax, and just before the ban when musicians couldn’t make records [the Petrillo Ban] we recorded for a whole week there. De Luxe have tunes on me and recordings on me which I don’t think they’ll ever release. This was to beat the ban. The studios were very primitive then, but we got a sound out of there! It was one room, not as large as my playroom…Roy Brown was a spiritual singer, he came to me at the Robin Hood, New Orleans and he started singing. …So he had this song ‘Good Rocking Tonight’ and I sat down with him one night and I said ‘Roy, we’re gonna have to do this in twelve-bar things’. I showed him everything, he’s a beautiful guy, he’s here in LA. He started singing ‘Good Rocking Tonight’ and that was it, and I think Al Young recorded him. He was on De Luxe and he was working on the show with us.

Eddie Gorman had a good voice, I liked him, he was coming round the clubs — he was singing with a girl he was going with, Chubby Newsom. ‘Hip Shakin’ Mama’, I cut that, you know. I liked his voice. I don’t know what happened to the man, but I tried with him. I thought he was something different. …Chubby Newsom had one song, and that’s the only thing I really dug on her. She was a kind of odd person to manage, I was in charge. She had hang-ups, I wasn’t too sure on her, but Eddie could have been a big star. …And we had another girl in New Orleans that I liked very much, her name was Myrtle Jones, great blues singer. She didn’t do too well because she died before we could get into some things with her — but she was a good singer.

What happened about De Luxe, the Braun Brothers sold out to King Records, so they got together with Fred Mendelsohn and put together Regal Records in late 1949. ‘Goodnight Irene’ that was a big record for me on Regal. …Larry Darnell was singing at a club called the Dew Drop, he had a thing he was doing ‘I’ll Get Along Somehow’, the old standard tune. …So what happened, I called Fred Mendelsohn and he came down to listen to him. …. So I wrote ‘For You My Love (I’d Do Almost Anything)’ and from then he didn’t look back. The second record he came out with was ‘I’ll Get Along Somehow’ was just as big as ‘For You My Love’, it was a different thing altogether. After the company was going so great they decided they wanted to move out of it and the thing went into liquidation. I got a lot of songs tied up in that, still have.

After Regal I went to Okeh with Danny Kesler — I liked Danny Kesler, he was the man that helped B.B. King out of a lot of trouble. He had the Four Lads, he had Johnny Ray — he was beat out of Johnny Ray. He recorded a beautiful album with Allen Toussaint a long time ago. I was happy with him but he and Leonard Chess were very good friends. Danny made a lot of money, he threw it away at the racetracks. Larry Darnell and Annie Laurie came too, but I didn’t have anything to do with their sessions. Fred made the arrangement with Columbia Brothers after Regal went out of business, the Braun Brothers said they didn’t want to be in the business any more. I made them all millionaires. I brought a lot of people to that company, they made a lot of money. But they decided they didn’t want to be in the business so they left Fred with the thing and we all went to Columbia Records. And I wasn’t happy with Columbia Records because they didn’t promote like they do today and it was hard. People couldn’t find my records.

My contract was up so I wouldn’t re-sign with them. I went with Leonard [Chess] , but I didn’t go with Leonard just to be an artist because I was out of that. ‘The Music Goes Round And Round’, that was a big record for me, ‘Yo Yo Walk’, that was big, ‘Nervous Boogie’ — Dick Clark loved that. Every time I talk to him he talks about that, that was a big record for me. ‘The Hunch’ was big, but that wasn’t my thing, I didn’t want that. Really, when I joined Chess in 1956 I quit playing music. I had fifteen per cent of the club, the Brass Rail. But they didn’t know that, this kind of racial thing. I told my wife, ‘I’m tired of New Orleans’. A lot of things happened there, a lot of people migrated there from other towns, they didn’t dig. We had a very good thing there with all New Orleans people, they came in and ruined the city. It got to the place where you didn’t know half the people you were seeing. Those regular New Orleans people, you could play for them but the other people didn’t want to hear…”

As Billy Vera writes in the notes to Chess King of New Orleans: “By the mid-’50s, though, the pressures of running a band proved too much, so Paul joined Leonard and Phil Chess, with whom he’d been friendly since his Deluxe days. At Chess, he acted as A&R man, producer, songwriter, and promotion man in addition to sporadically recording. He produced fellow New Orleans performers Bobby Charles (“Later Alligator,” recorded by Bill Haley as “See You Later Alligator”) and Clarence “Frogman” Henry (“Ain’t Got No Home” and “But I Do,” co-written with Charles). With New Orleans rocker Eddie Bo, Paul co-wrote “My Dearest Darling,” which became a top 5 R&B record for Etta James in 1960. Gayten also hit the road taking care of Chess’ artists — Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, etc. — and generally watching out for company interests.”

“I loved a lot of guys in New Orleans, I think they have a lot of talent. If it was left to me it would be that kind of music. Like, Dr. John is one of the greatest talents we ever had, you know white talents. I always used to admire him, he used to cut our sessions and I gave him his first recording session. He was a kid, he used to come to listen to me play all the time. And Toussaint is beautiful, he has a lot to offer. There was a lot of people I helped to get into the record thing. I had a free hand to record anything for Leonard Chess in New Orleans but I didn’t have the time. I was trying to play music, do his promotion and be with him with the company. All this, I couldn’t do a good job. …To live in New Orleans is beautiful, but it didn’t move there enough for me. I love New Orleans and I just love the people there. But I can’t live there, it’s too slow for what I want to do. They live for the weekend and that’s it! … After setting up a West Coast office for Chess, I left them in 1969 and formed Pzazz Records.” Gayten continued to live in Los Angeles with his wife after retiring in 1978, and died there aged 71 in March 1991.’

Perhaps the best known bandmember is tenor saxman Lee Allen. Discovered by Paul at Xavier University, Lee is the featured sax soloist on most of the Chess cuts. He scored his own hit, “Walkin’ With Mr. Lee,” in 1958 on Ember Records, in addition to taking memorable solos on records by Fats Domino, Little Richard, Shirley & Lee, and many others. More recently, Allen was featured on the first three albums by Los Angeles roots rockers The Blasters.

Annie Laurie’s singing career started by singing for two territory bands led by Dallas Bartley and Snookum Russell. In 1945, she recorded a version of “Saint Louis Blues” with the Bartley led band for Cosmo Records. She relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana, and was engaged by Paul Gayten. In 1947. Recording for both the Regal and De Luxe labels between 1947 and 1950, Laurie sang on several sides backed by Gayten’s orchestra. Her first success was with her version of “Since I Fell for You” (1947), of which recording studio owner Cosimo Matassa said: “Annie Laurie did the first really good record that I liked… [She] was just fantastic, I mean nobody will ever make another version like that.” She followed its success up with “Cuttin’ Out” (1949), “You Ought To Know” (1950), “I Need Your Love” (1950), “Now That You’re Gone” (1950) and “I’ll Never Be Free” (1950). Laurie also toured with Gayten’s orchestra in 1951. Laurie’s association with Regal Records ended in 1951, and she started recording for Okeh. By 1956 her releases were issued on Savoy Records. Her biggest hit came in 1957 when De Luxe Records released “It Hurts to Be in Love.” She passed in 2006, aged 82.