AA + DMV Music history: Henry Creamer & Turner Layton wrote counter-"c00n music" (late 1910s-1920s)

[Fill Collins]

I bought a stack of 45s and came across this single (without a sleeve):


It's way better than it seems, did some research and it turns out it's a 1959 rock n roll cover of a pop song from 1922 with the tagline: A Southern Song, without A Mammy, A Mule, Or A Moon

The lyrics were by Henry Creamer, a songwriter born in Richmond who became a producer in NYC

And the music was by Turner Layton, who was from DC and studied in Howard's Dental School before moving to NYC and meeting Creamer

They had PAWGs singing about Black soldiers



Other pre-rock and roll standards they wrote together:




Creamer sadly passed in 1930, but Layton lived to see rock n roll and passed in England after moving there to perform with Clarence Johnstone until 1935 (Johnstone was caught PAWGing with some cac's wife ) and as a popular solo artist until 1945



Creamer did collab with a lot of other musicians, most notably the composer of the Charleston, James P. Johnson



We have an extremely rich musical heritage, don't let people tell you otherwise or box you in

​

 

[SupaDupaFresh]

Really interesting! We don't talk enough about these obscure anecdotes of American records.

 

[Justin Nitsuj]

This is dope.

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

That 1st song legit rock n roll before the term was even coined.

 

[Fill Collins]

That 1st song legit rock n roll before the term was even coined.

That's from 1959; Ike Turner did the first "proper" rock n roll song in '51



Blues is practically rock n roll too

 

[Sonic Boom of the South]

That's from 1959; Ike Turner did the first "proper" rock n roll song in '51



Blues is practically rock n roll too

Oh ok I thought that song was from the 20's

 

[Wiseborn]

Oh ok I thought that song was from the 20's

mad sexual innuendo in these songs/

The song about the white girl singing about the Black solider IN WORLD WAR I is crazy. I don't know how she got away with that.

 

[Samori Toure]

Duke Ellington and Billy Stewart are from Washington DC. Billy Stewart had a ridiculous voice and his rendition of Summertime is outrageous. He was a fantastic Soul Singer and doo wop singer.

 

[Samori Toure]

That's from 1959; Ike Turner did the first "proper" rock n roll song in '51



Blues is practically rock n roll too

In all honesty Louis Jordan might have been doing Rock and Roll before Ike Turner and Rosetta Tharpe. Jordan had a few songs in the 1940s that sounded like Rock and Roll to me.

 

[Fill Collins]

Bump

I thought we hated c00ns and loved our history

Really interesting! We don't talk enough about these obscure anecdotes of American records.

There's an erasure of Black American art history, you'd think it was all "modern art" and rap music by the way these people don't get mentioned

 

[Fill Collins]

In all honesty Louis Jordan might have been doing Rock and Roll before Ike Turner and Rosetta Tharpe. Jordan had a few songs in the 1940s that sounded like Rock and Roll to me.

I'll link it later, but the journalist Nick Tosches had a good book about pre-rock pioneers, not too sure if Louis Jordan's in it, but a lot of blues and trad. pop musicians, most of them Black and new to me, are in there