Photo by Michael Ochs Archives - Getty Images
The Drifters
What better time than the holiday season to remember original Black rhythm and blues novelty hits such as The Drifters’ 1954 upbeat “White Christmas,” which continues to serenade customers at supermarkets and shopping centers.
Their sensational version of the Irving Berlin tune, first heard on radio by Bing Crosby in 1941, wowed the nation with Bill Pinkney’s booming bass and Clyde McPhatter’s soaring high tenor. Black kids at Milwaukee’s North Division and Lincoln high schools couldn’t get enough, with many boys imitating the voices.
Such popular, feel-good hits recorded by a variety of big and small Black names, often scored with white people seeking a belly-laugh. Turning on the radio in the mid-1950s for a quick, musical fix nearly became a national obsession.
But Black folks, especially, needed musical relief from rampant racial discrimination in their daily lives. Thus, when original Black R&B burst upon the scene in the late ‘40s, its talented, eager performers dutifully recorded novelty songs for a predominantly Black audience.
Open the Door
For example, showbiz legends Louis Jordan & his Tympani Five—as well as Count Basie—recorded the popular “Open the Door, Richard”; the sensational Dominoes scored on “Sixty-Minute Man”; the Treniers provoked laughs on “Uh Oh, Get Out the Car”; and King Pleasure tickled us with “Moody’s Mood for Love.”
Black R&B novelty tunes really came into their own under the auspices of male doo-wop vocal groups in the ‘50s. By the end of the doo-wop golden era in 1967, the landscape was dotted with popular novelty hits, including The Cadets “Stranded in the Jungle”; The Olympics “Western Movies”; The Clovers “Love Potion No. 9”; The Coasters “Poison Ivy”; The Robins “Smokey Joe’s Café”; The Moroccos “Red Hots and Chilli Mac”; and “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” by Jay & The ‘Techniques.
And how did talented groups such as these come to record so many songs that had so little to do with sweet romance, breaking-up and reuniting—the bedrock of Black R&B? Simple: Fooling around in the studios and the constant demand of Black and white record labels for new, saleable material.
According to the Spaniels’ late, great Willie C. Jackson, his Baptist preacher-like spoken lead on 1954’s “Play it Cool”—called the first rap record—happened while they goofed-off between takes.
“I got to preachin’,” he told me in a 1991 interview, “and Ernest Warren, who was very religious, started feedin’ me some words. Then the fellas came in with some gospel-soundin’ background.” And the rest is history. In part, to wit:
“How many more years, I wanna’ know, will it be, before I, I can get high … Before I can smoke…You know Mogen David, jumped on the White Horse, and he beat Paul Jones, down to the Sunny Brook …”
This classic Spaniels’ tune on Vee-Jay Records—naming liquor and cigarette brands—was the flip-side of their bluesy “Let’s Make Up.” And it was an instant smash among Black record buyers. This, while many were still celebrating the group’s ground-breaking “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight,” which introduced Black R&B to countless white Americans in 19054.
In those days, many of us enjoyed laughing while listening to our own, very special music—just as millions, Black and white, still do—especially during the current, often somber holiday times.
