Love

The Jolly Jax

Love

Tina Records 201
200 W. 57th St., New York City

1959

Newspaper Clip from September 1949

The Jolly Jax were from Baltimore and were a fixture on the club scene
there for quite a few years. Formed in 1949, by the early 60's they were
down to a trio (brothers Herman, Jerry & Carroll Hill). The Jolly Jax were used as a comedy opening act in many of the small concerts and apperances of major stars. They often were used to loosen up the crow before the feature act come on.

According to Charles, of The Tunetoppers, “Our first long standing gig was in east Baltimore at the Clover Club at Fayette and Wolfe Sts. And not only did we pack them in but just across the road was the Club Ambassador which nightly presented the equally popular Jolly Jax,” said Charles.  The Jolly Jax from Turners Station in Baltimore County, which included brothers Herman and Carroll, would for several years be the main competitors in the city to the Tunetoppers and, in fact, would often share the same bill. During that time frame of 1957, the Jolly Jax on stage would all be wearing Mouseketeer ears after their national hit, “Mickey Mouse Rock” (Teenage #1005)

Atfter their Tina release, they had two singles on Airmaster Records, the first, introducing a new dance "The Pony Shuffle"  :

The Jolly Jax, might finally have a winner on their new Airmaster record. "The Pony Shuffle." A dance of the same title has been rivaled by the Jax who won raves after demonstrating it on "The Buddy Deane Show" on WJZ - TV in Baltimore and In New Jersoy. For Pittsburghers the Jax will demonstrate the new steps on 'The Clark Race Show" on KDKA - TV, Saturday, April 13. [newspaper, April 15, 1961]

Also in 1961 also for Airmaster, they recorded a tune in honor of Astronaut Alan Shepard. entitled "Everything's A OK." They sent Shepard copies and he congratulated them personally.



1962.  On V-Tone, they recorded "There Is Something on Your Mind", issued as a two-part single on V-Tone 233. The song is a familiar one, done earlier by Big Jay McNeely and Bobby Marchan, and later by King Curtis, all of whom charted with it. The Jolly Jax version never charted, although it wasn't a bad version, except for one glaring detail. The spoken passage in Part 2, obviously meant as a joke, was, even by the standards of 1960 [edit: 1962], clearly over the line, describing in graphic detail someone murdering his girlfriend. The spoken part begins: "Mayhap you discover, that you have a contemptible girl, who is egotistical, antidisestablished and ridiculous, and refuses to abide by the laws of your abode. Go down to the pawn shop, steal a gun, a switchblade knife, and the little baby brother, the razor blade. Come back and introduce her to United States steel company....Cut her long, deep......"   From there, we'll leave it to your imagination.   [1]

Carroll Hill said. ."We consider this ridiculously funny. If anything. There was no Intention on our part of being offensive. It's the beat record we've ever had. Naturally we were disappointed when It was banned after getting off to such good start. "Mack the Knife" Is worst  than our recording. It suggests much more violence than ours, and It wasn't banned." [Jolly Jax Record Banned, The Pittsburgh Courier from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania · April 7, 1962]

Tragedy hit them In August 1963 when Herman Hill, leader of the trio, died while learning to fly.  "He was scared to even travel in an airplane as late as 1961.  Yet, he died while learning to fly. I guess it was just his time" said "philosophically" his widow, Ernestine Hill.   According to his brother Carroll, Herman took an interest in flying when an employee at the club where they have been playing for eight weeks, invited them to go for a flight.  "when we were playing in Bermuda, Herman hated the idea of flying, but after he went up with our pilot-friend he began to like it and decided to learn to fly".


Replacing Herman for awhile were Hump Jones, a popular keyboardist and comic.  Hump Jones' can be heard on Further On Up The Road (Monticello Records)..


After a few soul singles on Ru-Jac, Landa (as The Jolly Jacks) and Cookin' and they backed Lynn Martini on Soulville, their last waxing, as far as I known.  But then the thrill was gone, I guess

With mouseketeer ears, 1957

The Jolly Jax  / Jolly Jacks discography

56/10 — Teenager 1003   I’m Bad / Walk On — Herman Hill & The Jolly Jax
57/04 — Teenager 1005   Mickey Mouse Rock / Walk On
59/12 — Tina 201/202    Love / Honeymoonin'60/12 — Dasher 501      Ugly Face / This Day61/03 — Airmaster 601   Pony Shuffle / Things Are Tough
61/04 — Airmaster 602   Everything Is A-Okay / Tweedle Dee And Tweedle Dum
62/03 — V-Tone 233      There's Something On On Your Mind     Part.1 / Part.2
64/02  — Ru-Jac 09      The Money Cha Cha / Meadow Of Love   — Vcl Judd Watkins
64/— — Monticello 0012 Further On Up The Road* / The Popp    *Harmon "Hump" Jones, vocal
65/03 — Landa 707       There's Something On Your Mind / Rock The House   — Jolly Jacks
66/07 — Cookin' 609     ‘Preciate It  / Tiphe Tina 
69 — — Soulville 1016     I Wish / Now    — Lynn Martini & The Jolly Jax
60s-— Sound Plus    I Don't Need Your Love / Let Them Talk       Acetate (Philadelphia's Sound Plus Studios)

Satellite Baby

 Satellite Baby

 Satellite Baby

 ★ 

Exact facts regarding Skip Stanley, his biography, and the recording of "Satellite Baby" are not easy to come by.  According to one source "He was working nightclubs in Toledo, Ohio as a stand-up comedian when he wrote and recorded the song in 1956 at the age of 28. A couple years later, he returned to California and eventually Los Angeles to work in real estate."

From another source : "While on the road, he wrote a song about the space race between the U.S. and Russia.  When Stanley had a tour stop in New York in 1956, he recorded his song and called it "Satellite Baby."

In fact, Skip Stanley recorded the song twice.  The first (1956) version [perhaps recorded in New York] was issued on Spotlight Records, a corporation which had probable links with the Detroit's Flame Show Bar owned by Morris Wasserman.   Al Green, talent agent who booked the artists performing at the Flame, and his protégé, a young Nat Tarnopol, who once worked at the Union Tire company and used to hang out at the Flame Show Bar had certainly an interest in Spotlight Records.

The release of the 2nd version were annonced in Billboard Magazine in 1957 (in the November 27 issue) :

Satellite Record Co., a new label , headed by Skip Stanley with offices at 44 West 88th Street"  has released its first pressing "Satellite Baby" and "Planets"   Skip Stanley, A night club and TV comic, has worked the Casa Seville at Hempstead, Long Island, Cafe-of-Tomorrow, in Chicago, Lake Club in Springfield, Ill.  Larry's Potter Supper Club in Hollywood.  Ralph Stein, formerly a&r man for Flair-X Records, did the arranging on the first Satellite release, and will continue in that capacity.

First release on Satellite? Not quite, earlier in the year "Planets" had already been issued on his own Satellite label [SX-91] backed with "Manganese Blues".  Anyway, Skip Stanley went to radio stations around New York City to get them to play his record.  But Hoffman couldn't land a record deal, and spent $3,000 on trying to get the song pushed.

An unknown singer by the name of Bobby Darin wanted to record his song, "Satellite Baby," which he had written because of the space race between Russia and the U.S., but Skip Stanley was by then so embittered by broken promises of celebrity and wealth that he turned Darin's offer down, to his eternal regret.

★

Stanley Jerry Hoffman (born in 1929)  first called himself for stage purposes Stanley Hoffman, then Lee Hoffman, then Skip Stanley, and then Stan Hoffman yet again and more recently began calling himself Kwayzar "the oldest rap singer"

He started his career in showbiz when he was 4 :

When he was four, he tried to break into acting. It was 1932, he auditioned for a role in the The Little Rascals. Hoffman's mom was bed-ridden with tuberculosis, so a family friend drove Stanley to the audition.

The director made Stanley's guardian leave the room, which made him panic. He said they began to ask him basic questions -- like where he was from, his name -- and he just froze. The studio called him back for another interview, but the same thing happened. He didn't say a word. He still thinks of that moment, and says; "What would have happened to me in that career if I just talked?"

He had enlisted in the Navy during WWII, and during the time Mao Tse Tung was driving Chiang Kai-shek out of mainland China, Hoffman was stationed in Shanghai and saw dead bodies of G.I.s floating in the Whangpoo River, which was a tributary of the Yangtze.

Upon his discharge from the Navy, Hoffman continued to pursue his dream of "making it big" in showbiz. "I wanted to be a comedian in the movies," he says.   His determination to be an actor was so strong that his mother moved the family into an apartment that was close enough for him to attend Hollywood High School.  He spent two-and-a-half years in drama school on the G.I. bill.


He would team up with one of his school buddies and form a stand-up comedy team — Wallace and Lee (he dropped the first part of Stanley).  

Later, after the failure of his recording artist career, and while in one of the most precarious period in his life, he had to turn to selling real estate to make a living. Fortunately, he was good at it. He finally starting making money -- before losing $375,000 in the stock market.

More recently, the name change to Kwayzar was prompted by his discovery of rap, which nudged Hoffman in a new direction. He says he was influenced by Ice Cube and Eminem.

He has gone into writing and producing rap videos fulltime now, which he uploads on YouTube (YouTube.com/kwayzar11). His cybermusic (also available in CD) bears such titles as the afore-mentioned "Satellite Baby," "Brave New World "(a nod to Aldous Huxley), "Cyberspace," "Chat Room," "Tech Support," and "Clone."

Latin and scientific phrases that alternate with salty language learned during naval days can be heard in his uptempo music videos. Two of his latest are "The Vote of a Lifetime," a rap in support of Obama, and "I Can Still Do It," which is a metaphor, he says, for young as well as old people not giving up, not quitting on that dream.

At this point, he says, "Writing and producing rap videos keeps me busy, keeps me active, and keeps me well, while I hope to be an inspiration especially to older people that they, too, can and should still lead productive, and thus meaningful, lives. The whole thing has become a labor of love."

Still practicing a bit of self-promotion, Kwayzar wants his sobriquet henceforth to be "The world's only senior cyber-rapper Caucasian."

*

*

Whats The Matter Baby

Jerry Mundo & The Hounds

Whats The Matter Baby

Betty Records 1200
Sonny Sawyer/Vaughn Morrison Productions
1967

What's a Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You) was written by Clyde Otis, Joy Byers and was first released by Timi Yuro in 1962

★ 

An ambitious entrepreneur, Sonny (or Sunny) Sawyer was running a small record-pressing plant in Chicago called Apex at 2009 W. 69th when, around 1965, he partnered with an older recording engineer, Vaughn Morrison, who designed and built a studio one door west. Most people knew it as Sunny Sawyer's studio and others simply called it Apex, but its proper name, painted on its glass-brick facade, was Morrison Sound Studio. In '61 Morrison had produced a top-ten pop hit, "This Time," for Indiana native Troy Shondell.  That's where Jerry Mundo landed a job as a writer/arranger and co-producer.

★ 

Jerry Mundo & Galaxies (1963)
Tower 91363 : "The Chimp" / "Sweet Barbara"

Born and raised in Chicago, Jerry fronted numerous local bands and eventually landed a job as a writer/arranger and co-producer at Apex.  Playing guitar and singing at clubs around the midwest and Canada, he eventually moved toward warmer weather.  He travelled throughout the south as a solo performer, wrote songs and honed his unique style of blues/rock. After working the cruise line circuit and numerous venues in the southern states, he finally headed for Las Vegas.   

Working with several bands and keeping his day job, he went into the studio with some great  new songs and came out with "Hard Money"

★ 

Betty label listing

Named after the wife of Sonny Sawyer, owner of the label

(Betty, along with another woman operated the machinery at the pressing plant while Sunny ran the studio) 

Related labels : Palos, New Breed

1200 Jerry Mundo
1204 Gloria And The T-Aira's
1207 Jim And Monica
1208 Jimmy Bruce
1209 Jim & Monica
1210 Jim & Monica
1211 Jim & Monica
1212 Billy Stocker
1213 The Shadows
1214 Rochelle And The Classmates

From Italy With Sadness

Little Richard "Get Rich Quick" (LP on Mr. Suit, Italy)

This ugly cover comes from Italy

Italy, how much I'm disappointed.  I'm sure this is the result of Ze Globalization extending its aeshetics all over the world. Italy, You have done so many beautiful things before. Until THAT.  

Speaking of beautiful things, I fondly remember the Italian neorealist movies from my childhood and specially one, "Riso Amoro" (Bitter Rice) from 1949, starring the beautiful Silvana Mangano.

Silvana Mangano

Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.


Top 26 Best Italian Neorealism Films

In The Year 1900 - Rock'N Roll

Homer Escamilla

In The Year 1900

Ronnex 1182

(European issue of U.S. Real 1311)

1956

Billboard, June 9, 1956

Homer Escamilla (1926-1959) was born to Jesus and Eva Escamilla. The Escamilla family was living in Floresville, Texas, a town south of San Antonio. In 1945, Homer enlisted in the U. S. Army in Fort Sam Houston. After his stint in the U. S. Army, Homer found his way to the Los Angeles, California music scene that took him on a varied path.

In 1954, Cowboy Songs ran an article about the Spade Cooley television show airing over KTLA in Los Angeles, California. It noted that regulars on Spade's show at that time were violinist Anita Aros, Phil Gray on vocals, Patsy Harding ("Miss Movie Teen"), "bouncing" Homer Escamilla and a comedy act known as Lotta Chatter.   

More info at Hillbilly-Music.com

Drummer and performer, he was also a songwriter. His songs have been recorded by Rose Maddox, Rusty Draper and Sheb Wooley, among others.

Sheb Wooley - Are You Satisfied?

Hank Penny -Homer Escamilla (vocal) "Fool's Lament"

Rusty Draper - Good Golly