James P Johnson: lots of early stuff, even pre-1920 on piano rolls so good sound quality; try Carolina Shout, May 1921, but there’s tons more, just wonderful.
Boogie Woogie, got going in the 1930s I think: the big early names: Albert Ammons, Jimmy Yancey, Cow Cow Davenport, Pinetop Smith, Pete Johnson, Speckled Red, Mead Lux Lewis.
Fats Waller: one of the very best, a fabulous entertainer; hated boogie woogie as too repetitive. Try “My very good friend the milkman”, “Don’t let it bother you”, “Ain’t misbehavin’ “, “Honeysuckle Rose” but there’s lots more.
PS Fats Waller is uneven and some of his fooling around can be tedious, but at his best, great.
I’ve been meaning to list the 78rpm records I bought in 1952 to 1955 while at LRGS. You often/almost always had to order them and wait, sometimes for ages, for them to arrive. Sometimes they never did.
Here goes:
King Oliver Creole Jazz Band
Dippermouth Blues/Canal Street Blues
Mabel’s Dream/Riverside Blues
Armstrong Hot Seven
Willie the Weeper/Weary Blues
Potato Head Blues/Alligator Blues
Melancholy Blues/Wild Man Blues
Jelly Roll Morton’s New Orleans Jazzmen (can’t remember the pairings)
Doctor Jazz
High Society
The Chant
Steamboat Stomp
The Pearls
Tommy Ladnier (Mezzrow-Ladnier Quintet)
Royal Garden Blues/If you see me coming
Jimmie Noone
Sweet Georgie Brown/Way down yonder in New Orleans (1936)
Bessie Smith (Blues singing)
No one knows you when you’re down and out/Backwater Blues
I guess that’s adds up to as much as I could afford, and I think most of it is right.
After that it switched to LPs, 33 rpm and mainly 10 inch to start with..
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PS I also had three rare 78s, originals from the 1920s that Leo and Lilly Openheim brought me once, round about that time. (They lived in Chicago).
I can only remember one title, Savoy Blues played by the Louis Armstrong Hot Five.
I think one or even two were with the Okeh label and one with the Bluebird label. What happened to them? I think I gave them away.
Listen to the five tracks of the Erskine Tate Vendome Orchestra, 1923 and 1926; and see what it says on http://www.redhotjazz.com/etvo.html
The site
is great and has a huge amount of information on it.
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Greenwood family history 