Free ebooks by authors who died before 1955 and whose work is therefore in the public domain in Australia. Good Quotations by Famous People: Famous quotes, witty quotes, and funny quotations collected by Gabriel Robins over the years. Whether your interest is white magic spells or black magick spells; the magical and religious usages of charms, talismans, amulets, or gemstones; Southern root work. Understanding Coin Values. Before I go any further, let me just release a blanket apology to all the folks who ask me about their 1935, 1944, or 1953 pennies and who. Title: It Can't Happen Here (1935) Author: Sinclair Lewis * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0301001h.html Edition: 1 Language.Marv Goldberg's R& B Notebooks - The Ravens. The Ravens - Part 1. By Marv Goldberg Based on interviews with Leonard Puzey,Warren Suttles, Maithe Marshall,David Bowers, Tommy Evans,Ollie Jones, and Ray Richardson. Note: the original of this article appeared in. Discoveries #9. 3 - 2/9. The others are: Bill Kenny (the Ink Spots), Sonny Til (the Orioles), Clyde Mc. Phatter (the Dominoes), and Frankie Lymon (the Teenagers). While the others are all tenors, the Ravens uniquely featured a bass lead. But when it comes down to it, the Ravens are remembered for Jimmy Ricks. The Ravens' material isn't difficult to classify; it was anything that they could sing: R& B ballads, R& B uptempo, Pop standards (done as Pop), Pop standards (done as R& B), novelty numbers. You name it, they tried it. And they were generally superb. And their fans loved it. Ricks, whose inspiration was the Delta Rhythm Boys' Lee Gaines, had a bass voice that had depth and breadth and any other quality that you could name; it was a natural winner (his range, according to original Ravens baritone Warren Suttles, was three octaves). James Thomas Ricks (known as . Actually, his mother (who was 1. Florida in order to get a better job; Jimmy was raised by his aunt and uncle (Mamie and Luther Ricks), until he was around 1. Jacksonville. Here are some insights into the early days of Jimmy Ricks, as told to me by his cousin, Jeannette Smith. During the summers he had to crop tobacco and around September he had to pick cotton. Indastro provides free Vedic Astrology birth chart, Indian Astrology Compatibility, Daily Horoscope, Monthly, free Horoscope reading based on moon sign. The. way that the family made the days pass quickly and not to think so much of how hard the work was. Daddy had a good ear for music so he taught them. On Sunday mornings he had to attend the Adrian Chapel C. M. E. Everyone. at the church wanted to hear JT lead the song . The family was quite talented and still is. There are still family members who sing today, but have never. There were so many of his relatives who can sing that. I cannot name them all. It wasn't that they could just sing, but the family seems to just know how to blend. After JT moved to Jacksonville, I don't think that he thought much of his. He went to New York just to escape the South. As for his. voice, he had this range where he could go to tenor or sing the deepest bass. I guess it was just a God- given thing. In 1. 94. 5, he was working as a waiter at the Four Hundred Tavern (on 1. Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, in Harlem), and belonged to a group called the Melodeers. In the Spring of 1. Melodeers had secured an engagement at the Plantation Club in St. Their lead singer, Herb Kenny, went to say goodbye to his brother Bill (lead of the Ink Spots), who, that day, happened to be auditioning singers to fill the . Herb heard someone trying out, approached him, and suggested improvements. Everyone listening realized that Herb could do it better than any of the hopefuls, and he was persuaded to join the Ink Spots. He was originally from Fairfield, Alabama, right outside Birmingham. It was a steel manufacturing town, but Warren remembers mostly prejudice, pure and simple. That's what drove him to abandon Alabama when he was discharged from the Army, when he came to New York to seek his fortune. He enjoyed playing baseball and had an uncle in New York named George . By the time Warren hit New York, however, Mule was managing a bar. Warren fortunately turned to music. Ricks and Suttles found a shared interest in singing, spending lots of time harmonizing along with tunes on the jukebox (especially those of the Delta Rhythm Boys). In early 1. 94. 6, they had abandoned the Four Hundred Tavern for the L- Bar, and it was then that they decided to form a group; this was the beginning of the Ravens. Raven number three was Leonard . Since he played first base, and the first baseman for the New York Giants in the late 3. Zeke Bonura, the other kids nicknamed him . The Evans agency then recommended Henry Oliver . The Ravens were ready to spread their wings (to coin a phrase). At this point they added a song written by Ollie to their repertoire: . In 1. 94. 5, while treasurer of the Gale Agency (which managed the Ink Spots), Bart had set up the Hub Recording Company. The next year, he broke with Gale and, with Harry Lenetzka (another Gale employee), formed the competing Universal Attractions. The Ravens hooked up with Bart, through the efforts of their vocal coach, Joe Thomas, who'd been a sax player with Jelly Roll Morton (he wasn't the sax player of the same name who'd been with Jimmie Lunceford). Bart became their manager and, since they lacked arrangements and couldn't read music, he decided that they could do with an accompanist. Joe Thomas came through once again, suggesting pianist/arranger Howard Biggs (who had performed those functions for Luis Russell's Orchestra). Instead of having a lead singer with an impossibly high voice, the Ravens had a lead singer with an impossibly low one. Since their manager conveniently owned a record label, all the tunes would be issued on Hub. The first release was . The Ravens were on their way! The first engagement by the fledgling group was at Harlem's Baby Grand. They also played the Baron (at 1. Lenox Avenue) and the Club 8. Bronx). Next to be released was . For some reason, they left out the very first stanza to . As long as you're interested, it goes: . That is, they were big jukebox hits, but never really sold in stores. Even though Hub had decent recording artists (like Tab Smith, Don Byas, and Manhattan Paul), the label had poor distribution. While it's nice to have fans, sometimes they could get out of hand. At one appearance, with bandleader Illinois Jacquet, someone in the audience was insistent that they sing . They were brought there by William Jones, who was . How do you follow Stan Kenton and Nat ? It isn't easy, and they were scared. Their first song was, once again, . They did so well, in fact, that they were invited back a few weeks later (along with Sy Oliver's band), at which time they repeated their crowd- pleasing performance. However, Howard Biggs had a problem with Ollie Jones: Ollie's voice wasn't strong enough, and Biggs didn't like the way he blended in with the rest of the group. There was no animosity about it; Ollie wasn't fired. He was simply told that the Ravens would continue using him until they found a first tenor who could fit in better. And who would that first tenor be? Ricks came across a bartender (another Floridian) named Maithe Williams (who called himself . Maithe had a soaring tenor, which was just what the Ravens were looking for. Don't think that Ollie was left out in the cold, however, he went on to form the Blenders, and maintained a friendship with the Ravens. In 1. 94. 8, he was thinking of hiring bass James De. Loach, and had him audition for Ricks. Ricks even took the Blenders to see Al Green, president of National Records (for whom the Ravens were recording at the time); Green ended up giving them a contract. Finally, since the Ravens had more work than they could handle, Ricks made sure some of it was passed on to the Blenders. Ollie Jones would also be a founding member of the Cues and a successful songwriter (he wrote Nat . Warren felt that it was because it was now a . Possibly it was just to give them some practice with Maithe. The new recordings were kept in the can (for a while). In February 1. 94. Ravens were voted . Sid presented them with an award on his WHOM (NY) show. This is proof that people were listening to their Hub recordings. Possibly as a result of this, in April 1. Bart signed the Ravens with National Records (Hub Records would continue on for another year). While they were appearing with Cab Calloway at Broadway's Strand Theater, they recorded their first four sides for National, in a split session on April 2. The Delta Rhythm Boys had a bass, Lee Gaines, who was supposedly the deepest in the business. However, they recorded for RCA Victor, the industry leader. Gaines was told that he couldn't sing as low as he was able, because it would cause the resulting records (7. This would make the needle bounce around a bit in the groove and the record would wear out faster than normal. RCA Victor wouldn't allow this, because they prided themselves on a quality product. National, however, had no such scruples; Ricks was allowed to sing as low as he wanted. It was Ricks, not Gaines, who became the bass everyone else looked up to (although Gaines was Ricks' idol). This was the oddball . Written by Al Dubin and Joseph Burke in 1. Leonard said that they all thought it was ? The only reason I can think of is that they were friends of Al Green and he wanted something different as the first Ravens release; we'll probably never know. What we do know is that there were versions of the song by Art Mooney, Benny Goodman, Louis Prima, the Murphy Sisters, the Galli Sisters, Betty Reilly, Harry Cool, Ted Straeter, Larry Douglas, and Artie Wayne himself (note that most of these acts were demonstrably non- Jewish). I'm not willing to swear that the Ravens' version was the original. On May 2, the Ravens opened at the Apollo Theater, sharing the stage with superstar Cab Calloway. The next release, in June 1. Ricks: Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's 1. Taking advantage of the new . While Leonard confirmed that the event actually took place, the article went on to say that the only thing that saved the Ravens from being hustled off to jail was the timely intervention of Herb Abramson (a& r man for National Records, in one of his last acts before he quit to form Atlantic with Ahmet Ertegun) and Ben Bart. Abramson was quick to take the blame, calling it just a publicity stunt. Of course, the Ravens had to sing for the police to establish their identity beyond question. It was a big one; they recorded eight tunes: . It was supposed to be for a week, but they were held over for two more weeks. National released two Ricks- led tunes in October: .
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