The Music Diaries | Dave Bartholomew's legacy 100+ years
Published:Thursday | January 3, 2019 | 12:00 AMRoy Black
One hundred years is quite a long time for any man to spend on earth, considering that the time allotted to man is put at three scores and ten. Dave Bartholomew, perhaps the most important individual in the history of popular music, defied the odds and achieved that milestone on Christmas Eve. One can't help but wonder if he was being rewarded with longevity for his tremendous work and his life spared to witness the fruits of his labour.
To put it mildly, Bartholomew was a legend way ahead of his time. His impact was so great that it spread to Jamaica, where some of his creations helped to shape Jamaica's early music like boogie, ska, rocksteady, and, by extension, reggae.
Unbelievably, this one man wore the hats of musician, bandleader, composer, music arranger, record producer, talent scout, and vocalist - all at the same time. He was probably best known for his vocal recording of The Monkey Speaks His Mind, perhaps one of the first blues numbers to give a glimpse at rap music. In the song, which Bartholomew wrote, and backed by his band, he sought to rebut, what he thought was a commonly accepted inaccuracy - that man descended from monkeys - as he rapped in the first stanza:
"There's a certain rumour that can't be true,
That man descended from our noble race.
But their idea is a big disgrace.
No monkey ever deserted his wife.
Nor their baby, and ruin their life,
Yeah, the monkey speaks his mind."
As a singer, Bartholomew scored a national hit with Country Boy in 1949 and the gospel-tinged When The Saints Go Marching In while, Who Drank My Beer While I Was In The Rear and the bawdy My Ding-a-Ling in 1952 (successfully covered by Chuck Berry) were favourites with hard-core Rhythm and Blues (R & B) fanatics. Additionally, his band had several outstanding instrumental recordings during that period.
SERVED IN WORLD WAR II
Born in the cradle of R&B, New Orleans, on December 24, 1918, it was hard for Bartholomew to escape the influence of the music around him. He learnt the trumpet after leaving high school and soon began playing in local jazz bands before being drafted to serve in World War II. He used the opportunity to hone his musical talents while with the army's band before forming his own. That ensemble quickly became a popular unit that rocked and stomped behind Bartholomew's singing and trumpet arrangements. It was at one of those gigs at a local nightclub that a record deal was struck with the larger-than-life Imperial Record Company. They turned Bartholomew into the key A&R man with the entity, giving him full access to find and record talent while doing his own recordings.
Cited as the key figure in the transformation from jump blues and swing music to R&B, Bartholomew's discoveries of record talent, his compositions, productions, and musical arrangements with his band were crucial to the success of recording sessions at Imperial Records in the 1950s. It was the success of artistes like Fats Domino, Shirley and Lee, Frankie Ford, Smiley Lewis, Huey 'Piano' Smith, Gene and Eunice, and Jewel King - all this while conducting his own career.
Jewel King's 1949 blues hit, 3x7=21, which Bartholomew produced, arranged, and provided musical backing for, became a national hit while Fats Domino's debut - The Fat Man - which Bartholomew co-wrote and arranged that same year, kick-started Domino's career - while selling over a million copies. His follow-up collaborations with Domino produced the hits Ain't That A Shame, Blue Monday, My Girl Josephine, Country Boy, Sick and Tired, I'm In Love Again, Going To The River, Valley Of Tears, and Blueberry Hill.
Other big hits that Bartholomew wrote, co-wrote, produced, or arranged include I'm Gone (1952) and Let The Good Times Roll (1956) by Shirley and Lee; I Hear You Knocking and One Night Of Sin (1955) by Smiley Lewis; and Lawdy Miss Clawdy (1952) by Lloyd Price.
Bartholomew, in fact, had a hand in the success of most of the hits that came out of the New Orleans Blues scene in the 1950s. Considered as one of the true pioneers of the Rock 'n' Roll revolution, his string of hits brought the sound of New Orleans to both black and white teenagers across the globe.
When Sound System operators and record producers in Jamaica were experiencing a drought of American R&B records during the late 1950s, they copied heavily from Bartholomew's rhythms to make their own records in order to keep their business afloat. Worried Over You by Keith and Enid; We Will Be Lovers by Creator and Norma; Manny Oh by Higgs and Wilson; Boogie In My Bones by Laurel Aitken; and the transitional blues number Please Let Me Go by Owen Gray are just a few of the Bartholomew-influenced recordings that became the foundation on which Jamaica's later music genres were built.