508 Park Avenue Revisited

March 23, 2013

Music on the outdoor stage at 508 Park Avenue

 Live music filled the air again at the Dallas site where some of the most significant blues and western swing recordings of the 1930s were made, the Brunswick Radio Corporation recording studios.  This occasion offered free concerts by area blues bands as community outreach of the Stewpot Ministries and First Presbyterian Church.   "We are excited to have a new generation of local blues and country artists stepping forward to pay tribute to the history of 508 Park, where artists such as Robert Johnson and Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys recorded,” said the Rev. Bruce Buchanan, executive director of the Stewpot. "This is the first in a series of concerts that 508 Park will host."  Unlike the June 2012 event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the historic 1937 recording sessions where the artists played the music of Johnson and Wills in devoted replication of their original styles, this time around, the bands played more contemporary, amplified arrangements that owed more to the blues/rock styles of the 60s and 70s than to the 30s.  While I prefer the music that was offered last year over this year's event, I'm glad to see the progress being made in revitalizing and repurposing this historic art deco building.

 The event got me thinking again about the "On That Day" 75th anniversary presentation last year (see Texas Songbook post from July 6, 2012).  As I wrote in the earlier post, "On That Day" focused appropriately on Robert Johnson's last recordings, which were part of the June 1937 sessions at 508 Park Avenue, and added highlights that paid tribute to Bob Wills and the other western swing bands of those sessions.  I noted the Light Crust Doughboys were featuring their newest member, Deon Pride, son of Country Music Hall of Fame member Charley Pride.  It may be a healthy sign of the times that it was only on reflection months later that the oldest western swing band, having taken on a black musician, a very talented one, as its newest member, playing at this commemorative event had any special significance.  Seventy five years prior, two of the greatest musical figures of the time recording at the same set of recording sessions didn't use the occasion to record some tracks together, they most likely never spoke to each other.  They were from two separate racial worlds and bridging the two would have been out of the question.

Deon Pride

 Charley Pride was a pioneer himself, breaking into a pretty much all white country music genre in the 1960s and going on to having a spectacular country music career.  Ray Charles had to overcome a lot of resistance in both worlds to cross over from R&B to country successfully in the 60s, but today it doesn't turn many heads when Darius Rucker crosses over from rock to country and picks up a CMA award.  When you consider the diverse roots that Bob Wills and others used to create the western swing sound in the first place, it is long pas time for western swing bands today to reflect that diversity.



Charles Townsend,  Bob Will's biographer, frequently mentions how strongly Wills felt his music was influenced by the black blues singers he worked along side in the cotton fields.  He was such a fan of blues songstress Bessie Smith in the 1920s that he rode his horse from his Turkey, Texas home 40 miles to Childress to see her perform.  (Bessie Smith was also Janis Joplin's greatest inspiration if you can imagine her and Bob Wills having that in common!)  So we can imagine what it might have been like if Robert Johnson had sat in with the Texas Playboys on some of their bluesier numbers, or if Bob Wills had played fiddle with Robert Johnson on "Sweet Home Chicago."  Kokomo Arnold, from whom Johnson got that song, also wrote "Milk Cow Blues," a hit for Bob Wills.  Wills and Johnson had certainly enough common musical ground for a collaborative session, but the potential magic would have been unthinkable in the 30s even though it would be a dream scenario today.

But back in the 30s, the classic version of the Light Crust Doughboys, after Bob Wills and Milton Brown departed, came a bit closer to the kind of multicultural, multiracial collaboration that the western swing style would have naturally suggested.  The new creative leaders, Marvin Montgomery and Knocky Parker, were partial to the musical inspirations they found in the bars and music halls in Deep Ellum, a thriving center of blues, jazz and black culture in general rivaling Harlem.  They would carry these influences back into their western swing offerings, but of course, in their case also, the racial divide prevented direct collaboration.  Today we can enjoy the contemporary western swing sound, inclusive of many cultural and racial influences, with a band composition a little more reflective of its roots in the current Light Crust Doughboys composition.