Fact: the first rappers wasnt from da Bronx... they was Pimps down south

IllmaticDelta

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Behind The Mic and On The Set: The Legends Of New York Radio

My name is Ken ‘Spider Webb” and I have been on the radio waking New Yorkers for over 50 years. I have worked at WBLS 107.5 FM, 98.7 KISS FM, and WWRL 1600 AM and now I can be heard weekdays on Sirius XM Soul Town from 6am -12:00pm. I am reaching out to you to support my documentary “Behind the Mic and On the Set: The Legends of New York Radio.”

My campaign is designed to shed light on the journey of a group of people in the greatest city in the world whose unsung story has never been acknowledged or documented in the annals of radio history. Nowhere can you find substantial information on the journey of African American radio pioneers and their historical contributions to radio broadcasting industry that spans over 70 years. The documentary will help you to understand their journey; the value and significance they had and continue to have on many of the stars of radio today, whose recognition and notoriety rests on the heels of the legends of yesteryear.

This funding campaign is important to me because I want to impress upon millions of people the true significance of the story of the voices behind the mic, and how we can no longer take them at ‘face value’; they are the trusted voices that emanated from the radio; they were like family –they woke us up, spurred us into action or contemplation, told us what to wear, and how to get where we needed to be in a timely and enjoyable manner. We relied upon them to provide us with the news and information that we needed to begin - and end, our day, through good times and bad. It is important to understand and know who they are and what sacrifices, prejudices, and triumphs they encountered while attempting and succeeding to nurture and hone their craft for the benefit of themselves, those who followed in their footsteps, and the listening audience. You will be intrigued, inspired, and educated by the value and importance of telling their journey. This is a heartfelt and provocative documentary, destined to enlighten you in ways that you may have never known. This is a story that needs to be told.







Video teaser from the forthcoming documentary Behind The Mic and On The Set "The Legends of New York Radio. Legendary Rappers Kurtis Blow and Melly Mel discuss the impact that New York Radio legend Hank Spann of WWRL 1600 AM had on the evolution of the New York MC'S and early rap music in the late seventies
 

IllmaticDelta

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This is considered the first jamaican "deejay" (toasting) song on record.

Sir Lord Comics, "Ska-ing West" in 1966





Listen to the syncopation and cadence, then compare that to these 1940's Gospel related songs...







@ 34 secs:blessed:



 

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I thought it was that white dude spittin bars about the train in 1931
 

IllmaticDelta

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The first modern rappers in he scene(s) that birth HipHop were actually Disco Dj"s!!. For the record, Coke La Rock didn't rap like a modern rapper and he's actually from North Carolina


The first people in NYC to "Rap" on the mic were these Disco DJ's like Dj Hollywood and Lovebug Starski . The Kool Herc school of "Mcing" which started off with his main sidekick/MC by name of Coka La Rock . The confusion as where to Rapping started comes from the misconception that American Rapping evolved out of Jamaican "Toasting" via Coke La Rock who was thought to thought to be of Jamaican descent




"The first emcee in hip hop history has been ignored and disrespected for far too long. That is why he will be the first representative of the original hip hop generation to be inducted into the High Times Counterculture Hall of Fame at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam on November 25, 2010. In this video, Coke discusses how he got his name (from drinking chocolate milk), some of the errors in fact that have been circulated about him, and talks in detail about the night Kool Herc was stabbed at a party, an event which led to Coke withdrawing from the hip hop scene just as Grandmaster Flash, the L Brothers, The Funky Four, and the Cold Crush Brothers were emerging to take hip hop to new heights."


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Herc and Coke La Rock did not rap or do syncopated talking that rhymes while flowing to a beat/music. What Coke La Rock did was more like a radio Dj which is more like Jamaican toasting. Now, the question is, what is the relationship between American Rapping and Jamaican Toasting? The connection is oldschool Afram Jive speak/patter/other oral traditions! Jamaican Toasting is an offshoot of Afram Jive that Jamaicans picked up on in the 1940's/50's from Black Radio DJ and Jazz R&B records. Read below..


New interview with Caz confirming everything I said....

1. There were no rappers in the modern sense in the Kool Herc scene inn the early days HipHop

2. Coke La Rock was the one talking on the mic not Herc and neither of them rapped in the modern sense. He did shout outs/freelance talking

3. Dj Hollywood was the only one rapping in the modern sense back then


@ 3:19



@ 4:43

"Dj Hollywood was thee blueprint for the syncopated style"

:sas2:
 

IllmaticDelta

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:sas2:

Hip To The Jive And Stay Alive: An interview with Count Matchuki

MG: The jive talk that you did – did it just come out of you?


CM: No. To be honest, what gave me that idea, I was walking late one night about a quarter to three somewhere in Denham
Town. And I hear this guy on the radio, some American guy advertising Royal Crown hairdressing. (affecting an American accent) “You see, you’re drying up with this one Johnny , try Royal Crown. When you’re downtown you’re the smartest guy in town when you use Royal Crown and Royal Crown makes you the smartest guy in town.” That deliverance! This guy sound like a machine! A tongue twister! I heard that in 1949 on one of them States stations that was really strong. I hear this guy sing out pon the radio and I just like the sound and I say to myself I think I can do better. I would like to play some recordings and just jive talk like this guy

http://www.dancecrasher.co.uk/interviewsdiscogs/hip-to-the-jive-and-stay-alive/


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Jive Talking and Toasting



“The Jives of Dr. Hepcat” by KVET-AM DJ Albert Lavada Durst, published in 1953.

I was reading Beth Lesser’s amazing Rub-a-Dub Style: The Roots of Modern Dancehall, which is available for free download here, and I found a quotation from Clive Chin that set me off on a wild goose chase through the roots of toasting. I have long had a fascination with the connection between toasting and hip hop and have written about that in this blog before, and presented on it at conference after I had the pleasure of interviewing DJ Kool Herc last year, but I hadn’t thoroughly ventured back to jive–until Beth Lesser.

Clive Chin, writes Lesser, remembers toaster Count Matchuki carrying around a book. “There was one he said he bought out of Beverly’s [record shop] back in the ‘60s. The book was called Jives and it had sort of slangs, slurs in it and he was reading it, looking it over, and he found that it would be something that he could explore and study, so he took that book and it helped him.” Lesser writes that this book of jive may have been a boo, written in 1953, The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, which was published by Albert Lavada Durst, a DJ on KVET-AM in Austin, Texas. This version (read the entire copy here) featured definitions for words and phrases commonly used by jive talking DJs like “threads,” which are clothes; “pad,” for house or apartment; “flip your lid,” for losing one’s balance mentally; and “chill,” to hold up or stop. Durst wrote in the introduction to his book, which sold for 50 cents, “In spinning a platter of some very popular band leader, I would come on something like this: ‘Jackson, here’s that man again, cool, calm, and a solid wig, he is laying a frantic scream that will strictly pad your skull, fall in and dig the happenings.’ Which is to say, the orchestra leader is a real classy singer and has a voice that most people would like. For instance, there was a jam session of topnotch musicians and everything was jumping and you would like to explain it to a hepster. These are the terms to use. ‘Gator take a knock down to those blow tops, who are upping some real crazy riffs and dropping them on a mellow kick and chappie the way they pull their lay hips our ship that they are from the land of razz ma tazz.’


Cab Calloway’s “Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive,” 1944 version.

I decided to search further and found there was another popular book of jive written before Dr. Hepcat, although it is likely that Matchuki obtained Durst’s version given the era and the content. But Cab Calloway had his own publication of jive called “Cab Calloway’s Hepster Dictionary: Language of Jive” which was first published in 1939 and then revised to add more words in a 1944 printing. Calloway was the original emcee, the master of ceremonies, the hepcat, who understood jive and brought it to those who wanted to become part of this culture. As frequent band leader at the Cotton Club in front of Duke Ellington’s band during performances that were broadcast all over the continent, and as star in a number of feature films, Calloway brought the language of Harlem, jive, to audiences uneducated in the dialect of the black musicians. He established jive as a form of discourse.


Interior of Cab Calloway’s “Hepsters Dictionary”

Some of the words in these dictionaries, and certainly the word “jive” itself, appear in the toasts of Count Matchuki, Lord Comic, and King Stitt. The style is similar as well, scatting over the music, punctuating the rhythm with verbal percussion, and boasting. Next week I will blog about the jive-talking American DJs like Vernon Winslow, Tommy Smalls, and Douglas Henderson, who influenced the Jamaican toasters since these similarities are fascinating as well.

Jive Talking and Toasting - Foundation SKA

Here is some additional information from Beth Lesser:

Hi Heather,

To continue the conversation from Facebook, this is what Steve Barrow wrote to me about the Hepcat book:
Count Machuki actually told me that he bought the magazine in Beverley’s ice-cream parlour, and that it was called ‘Jive’. Dan Burley did a ‘Jive Dictionary’ too. I used the quote in the ‘Rough Guide’ and in subsequent sleeve notes for Randy’s. Maybe Clive got the info from there ! I asked Count Machuki – where did you get your lyrics from ? and he told me from imitating various styles – even ‘British cockney’ as he called it… Then he said about the magazine called ‘Jive’, from ‘Harlem’, exact words !! Dan Burley turned out to be quite a character, an early ‘nationalist’ type of ideology, played piano, invented ‘skiffle’ [word] and claims to have invented the word ‘bebop’ [perhaps] But quite a few of Chuki’s genartioon looked to ‘harlem’ as the black ‘capital. Junior Tuckers dada was another, the one who wrote the Jamaican national anthem, and of course all the soundmen who could travel to the States in late 40s early 50s – Dodd, and Edwards in particular. They dug all that slang and imagery.


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Jive Talking and Toasting part two

Last week I wrote about the connection between toasting and jive talking from Cab Calloway and Albert Lavada Hurst, which writer and historian Beth Lesser brought my attention to through her work. This week I continue this connection between the jive talking DJs in America and toasters like Count Matchuki, Sir Lord Comic, and King Stitt and I focus on a few of the key DJs during the 1950s.


Dr. Daddy O

One of these jive-talking DJs was Vernon Winslow who broadcast his show, “Jam, Jive, ‘n’ Gumbo,” from New Orleans with his character, “Dr. Daddy O,” and partner DJ Duke Thiele who portrayed the character of “Poppa Stoppa.” Winslow explains, “Poppa Stoppa was the name I came up with. It came from the rhyme and rap that folks in the street were using in New Orleans. Poppa Stoppa’s language was for insiders.”


Vernon Winslow, also known as Dr. Daddy O, was the first African-American disc jockey.



Tommy Smalls was a DJ in New York known as “Dr. Jive,” though he got his start in Savannah, Georgia. His catch phrase was, “Sit back and relax and enjoy the wax. From three-oh-five to five-three-oh, it’s the Dr. Jive show.” He was known as the “Mayor of Harlem” and unfortunately, in 1960 he was one of the DJs arrested, along with Alan Freed, in the payola scandal.


Tommy Smalls plants a kiss on Dinah Washington.


Dr. Jive



And Douglas Henderson, known as “Jocko” broadcast from a number of cities with his show, “Rocket Ship.” Henderson was also known as the “Ace from Outta Space.”Author Bill Brewster writes of Henderson: “Using a rocket ship blast-off to open proceedings, and introducing records with more rocket engines and ‘Higher, higher, higher…’ Jocko conducted his whole show as if he was a good-rocking rhythmonaut. ‘Great gugga mugga shooga booga’ he’d exclaim, along with plenty of ‘Daddios.’ ‘From way up here in the stratosphere, we gonna holler mighty loud and clear ee-tiddy-o and a bo, and I’m back on the scene with the record machine, saying oo-pappa-do and how do you do?”


The Ace from Outta Space, Douglas Henderson



Notice any similarity between the jive talking of these DJs and the toasts of Lord Comic and Count Matchuki? Some of Matchuki’s toasts have the same language as the jive of these DJs. Matchuki’s toast include “When I dig, I dig for mommy, I dig for daddy, I dig for everybody,” and “It’s you I love and not another, you may change but I will never,” as well as, “If you dig my jive / you’re cool and very much alive / Everybody all round town / Matchuki’s the reason why I shake it down / When it comes to jive / You can’t whip him with no stick.”

Count Matchuki, born Winston Cooper in 1934, is widely considered the first toaster. He was raised in a family that had more money than others so he grew up with two gramophones in the home and was exposed to swing, jazz, bebop, and rhythm & blues. He says that he got the idea to begin toasting over records after hearing American radio. He told this to Mark Gorney and Michael Turner as they recount in a 1996 issue of Beat Magazine. “I was walking late one night about a quarter to three. Somewhere in Denham Town. And I hear this guy on the radio, some American guy advertising Royal Crown Hair Dressing. ‘You see you’re drying up with this one, Johnny, try Royal Crown. When you’re downtown you’re the smartest guy in town, when you use Royal Crown and Royal Crown make you the smartest guy in town.’ That deliverance! This guy sound like a machine! A tongue-twister! I heard that in 1949. On one of them States stations that was really strong. I hear this guy sing out ‘pon the radio and I just like the sound. And I say, I think I can do better. I’d like to play some recordings and just jive talk like this guy.”


Count Matchuki

Sir Lord Comic, whose real name was Percival Wauchope, began as a dancer, a “legs man.” He began toasting for Admiral Deans’ sound system on Maxwell Avenue in 1959 and his first song was a Len Hope tune called “Hop, Skip, and Jump.” In Howard Johnson and Jim Pines’ book, Reggae: Deep Roots Music, Sir Lord Comic recalls, “When the tune started into about the fourth groove I says, ‘Breaks!’ and when I say ‘Breaks’ I have all eyes at the amplifier, y’know. And I says, ‘You love the life you live, you live the life you love. This is Lord Comic.’ The night was exciting, very exciting” (Johnson Pines 72). Lord Comic’s first toast, he says, was, “Now we’ll give you the scene, you got to be real keen. And me no jelly bean. Sir Lord Comic answer his spinning wheel appeal, from his record machine. Stick around, be no clown. See what the boss is puttin’ down.”


Sir Lord Comic

One article in the Daily Gleaner on May 1, 1964 advertised Sir Lord Comic’s performance at the Glass Bucket Club, an upscale establishment. “Sir Lord Comic will be at the controls with his authentic sound system calls,” it stated. Some of his recorded songs include “Ska-ing West,” “The Great Wuga Wuga,” “Rhythm Rebellion,” “Jack of My Trade,” and “Four Seasons of the Year,” among a few others. Sir Lord Comic’s “The Great Wuga Wuga” was likely inspired by the jive talk of Douglas “Jocko” Henderson who spoke of the “great gugga mugga.” Additionally, Henderson’s show, “Rocket Ship,” became a song recorded by the Skatalites with Sir Lord Comic toasting over the instrumentals, calling out the title of the song to begin the instrumentals and continuing with his percussive techniques.

Jive Talking and Toasting part two - Foundation SKA
 
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