30

30
they were good enough to record. He directed them to his studio, Memphis Recording Service. The studio's owner, Sam Phillips, had been leasing or selling master tapes of blues artists to Los Angeles' Modern Records, but when Modern lured B. B. King away, he decided to send the Ike Turner recordings to Chess Records in Chicago, who released it under the name of the singer with a made up name for the band - Jackie Brenston with his Delta Cats. The song - 'Rocket SS' - became a # 1 R&B hit. Here is:

Rocket SS :1/8

Musical history is full of complaints that a particular music was licentious or that it fostered lewdness. Rhythm 'n' blues - and later rock 'n' roll - suffered these complaints, but a 1951 rhythm 'n' blues song, full of suggestive lyrics, spent thirty weeks on the R&B charts, including 14 weeks at # 1, and crossed over to a respectable # 17 on the pop charts. The song is about a character with his roots in 19th Century minstrel shows 1956, when LaVern Baker put him on the pop charts. A 1921 song celebrated "The Lady's Man, Dapper Dan from Dixieland". A jazz group called the Black Dominioes recorded "Dancing an Fox Trot" in 1923; in 1930, Bessis Smith sang about her "Kitchen Man' - "Wild about his turnip tops, like the way he warms my chops!", and in 1931 she sang about "Hustin' Dan." In 1937 Georgia White sang about "Dan the Backdoor Man."

This 1951 hit was the brainstorm of Billy Ward, born in Los Angeles in 1921.