Harlem Hamfats
Encyclopedia
The Harlem Hamfats was a Chicago
jazz
band formed in 1936. Initially, they mainly provided backup music for jazz and blues
singers, such as Johnny Temple
, Rosetta Howard
, and Frankie Jaxon
for Decca Records
, but when their first record "Oh Red" became a hit, it secured them a Decca
contract for fifty titles. They launched a successful recording career performing danceable music.
comedians had of adhering burnt cork makeup with hamfat. Regardless, the name was most likely adopted in a spirit of facetiousness, since by all measurable standards the band members were talented musicians.
Despite their name, the Hamfats were based in Chicago
, and were put together by record producer and entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams
simply for the purpose of making records - perhaps the first group to be so created. None of the members of the band were actually from New York. "Kansas" Joe McCoy
(guitar, vocals) and his brother "Papa" Charlie McCoy
(guitar, mandolin) were from Mississippi; Herb Morand
(trumpet, vocals), John Lindsay (bass), and Odell Rand (1905 - 22 June 1960) (clarinet) were from New Orleans; Horace Malcolm (piano), Freddie Flynn (drums) and Pearlis Williams (drums) were from Chicago.
The diverse geographical backgrounds of the musicians played a strong role in the band's sound, which blended blues, dixieland
and swing jazz. Led by Morand and Joe McCoy, the main songwriters, the group initially provided instrumental backing to Williams' stable of artists, including Frankie Jaxon
, Rosetta Howard, and Johnny Temple
. They were perhaps the first example of a studio recording band becoming an act in their own right and recorded extensively.
Their first major hits were "Oh! Red", recorded in April 1936, and "Let's Get Drunk And Truck" (originally recorded by Tampa Red
), recorded in August of the same year. "Oh! Red" was popular enough to be covered by Count Basie
, The Ink Spots
, Blind Willie McTell
, various Western swing
bands, and, later, Howlin' Wolf
. Some of their other recordings, such as "We Gonna Pitch A Boogie Woogie", more clearly presage the later rhythms of rock and roll
. Their most recognizable work may be the modern jazz tune "Why Don't You Do Right?
", which was written by Joe McCoy and included on their 1936 record under the title "The Weed Smoker's Dream". The song had numerous drug references. The lyrics were later changed and the tune refined. Lil Green
recorded it as "Why Don't You Do Right", a tune about a conniving mistress and her broke lover, in 1941, and it was later recorded by Peggy Lee
with the Benny Goodman
Orchestra.
By 1939, singer Morand had returned to New Orleans, and changing fashions had made their sound less commercially attractive. The Harlem Hamfats were not thought to be the most innovative group of the time, and many of the band's original works dealt heavily with sex, drugs and alcohol, which may have hindered their music from being more widely available. However, as a small group playing entertaining music primarily for dancing they are considered an important contributor to 1930s jazz, and their early riff-based style would help pave the way for Louis Jordan
's small group sound a few years later, rhythm and blues
, and later rock and roll
.
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
band formed in 1936. Initially, they mainly provided backup music for jazz and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
singers, such as Johnny Temple
Johnny Temple (musician)
Johnny Temple was an American Chicago blues guitarist and singer, who operated in in the 1930s and 1940s. An acquaintance and near-contemporary of Skip James, Temple delivered sedate blues in the vein of Lonnie Johnson...
, Rosetta Howard
Rosetta Howard
Rosetta Howard was an American blues singer, who recorded in the 1930s and 1940s.Little is known of her life. She was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, and moved into singing by joining in with jukebox selections at the club where she worked. Around 1932 she began singing professionally...
, and Frankie Jaxon
Frankie Jaxon
Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon was an African American vaudeville singer, female impersonator, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s.-Life and career:...
for Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
, but when their first record "Oh Red" became a hit, it secured them a Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
contract for fifty titles. They launched a successful recording career performing danceable music.
Biography
The group was not from Harlem nor were they "hamfats". The name 'hamfat' derives from early 20th century slang in which the word was used to designate something as second-rate or a poor substitute. There is some disagreement about the roots of the word. Some believe it refers to a 'hamfat' cut of meat, which was cheaper and of poorer quality than the lean part of the ham. It has also been suggested that hamfat was used by poor country boys to grease the cork on their instruments, as opposed to the city slickers, who could easily find and afford cork grease. Others hold that it refers to a method black faceBlack Face
Black Face is the south wall of an east-west ridge in Arena Valley, south of East Beacon, in the Quartermain Mountains, Victoria Land. The feature is a prominent landmark and is formed by a dolerite dike which rises over above the floor of the valley...
comedians had of adhering burnt cork makeup with hamfat. Regardless, the name was most likely adopted in a spirit of facetiousness, since by all measurable standards the band members were talented musicians.
Despite their name, the Hamfats were based in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and were put together by record producer and entrepreneur J. Mayo Williams
J. Mayo Williams
Jay Mayo "Ink" Williams was a pioneering African-American producer of recorded blues music. Ink Williams earned his nickname by his ability to get the signatures of talented African-American musicians on recording contracts...
simply for the purpose of making records - perhaps the first group to be so created. None of the members of the band were actually from New York. "Kansas" Joe McCoy
Kansas Joe McCoy
Kansas Joe McCoy was an African American Delta blues musician and songwriter.-Career:McCoy played music under a variety of stage names but is best known as "Kansas Joe McCoy". Born in Raymond, Mississippi, he was the older brother of the blues accompanist Papa Charlie McCoy...
(guitar, vocals) and his brother "Papa" Charlie McCoy
Papa Charlie McCoy
Charles "Papa Charlie" McCoy was an African American delta blues musician and songwriter.-Career:Born in Jackson, Mississippi, McCoy was best known by the nickname 'Papa Charlie'. He became one of the major blues accompanists of his time...
(guitar, mandolin) were from Mississippi; Herb Morand
Herb Morand
Herb Morand was an American jazz trumpeter associated with the New Orleans jazz scene.Morand began on trumpet at age eleven after hearing King Oliver. He played with Nat Towles in New Orleans, then moved to New York City and played with Cliff Jackson...
(trumpet, vocals), John Lindsay (bass), and Odell Rand (1905 - 22 June 1960) (clarinet) were from New Orleans; Horace Malcolm (piano), Freddie Flynn (drums) and Pearlis Williams (drums) were from Chicago.
The diverse geographical backgrounds of the musicians played a strong role in the band's sound, which blended blues, dixieland
Dixieland
Dixieland music, sometimes referred to as Hot jazz, Early Jazz or New Orleans jazz, is a style of jazz music which developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s.Well-known jazz standard songs from the...
and swing jazz. Led by Morand and Joe McCoy, the main songwriters, the group initially provided instrumental backing to Williams' stable of artists, including Frankie Jaxon
Frankie Jaxon
Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon was an African American vaudeville singer, female impersonator, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s.-Life and career:...
, Rosetta Howard, and Johnny Temple
Johnny Temple
John Ellis Temple was a Major League Baseball second baseman who played for the Redlegs/Reds ; Cleveland Indians , Baltimore Orioles and Houston Colt .45s . Temple was born in Lexington, North Carolina. He batted and threw right-handed.Temple was a career .284 hitter with 22 home runs and 395 RBI...
. They were perhaps the first example of a studio recording band becoming an act in their own right and recorded extensively.
Their first major hits were "Oh! Red", recorded in April 1936, and "Let's Get Drunk And Truck" (originally recorded by Tampa Red
Tampa Red
Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
), recorded in August of the same year. "Oh! Red" was popular enough to be covered by Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots were a popular vocal group in the 1930s and 1940s that helped define the musical genre that led to rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and the subgenre doo-wop...
, Blind Willie McTell
Blind Willie McTell
Blind Willie McTell , was an influential Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he used exclusively a twelve-string guitar...
, various Western swing
Western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands...
bands, and, later, Howlin' Wolf
Howlin' Wolf
Chester Arthur Burnett , known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player....
. Some of their other recordings, such as "We Gonna Pitch A Boogie Woogie", more clearly presage the later rhythms of rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
. Their most recognizable work may be the modern jazz tune "Why Don't You Do Right?
Why Don't You Do Right?
"Why Don't You Do Right?" is an American blues- and jazz-influenced pop song – now a standard – written in 1936 by Kansas Joe McCoy. It is a twelve-bar minor key blues form with a few chord substitutes, it is considered a classic "woman's blues" song....
", which was written by Joe McCoy and included on their 1936 record under the title "The Weed Smoker's Dream". The song had numerous drug references. The lyrics were later changed and the tune refined. Lil Green
Lil Green
Lil Green was an American blues singer and songwriter.-Life and career:Originally named Lillian Green, she was born in Mississippi; after the early deaths of her parents, she went to Chicago, Illinois, where she began performing in her teens and where she would make all of her recordings.Green was...
recorded it as "Why Don't You Do Right", a tune about a conniving mistress and her broke lover, in 1941, and it was later recorded by Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and...
with the Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
Orchestra.
By 1939, singer Morand had returned to New Orleans, and changing fashions had made their sound less commercially attractive. The Harlem Hamfats were not thought to be the most innovative group of the time, and many of the band's original works dealt heavily with sex, drugs and alcohol, which may have hindered their music from being more widely available. However, as a small group playing entertaining music primarily for dancing they are considered an important contributor to 1930s jazz, and their early riff-based style would help pave the way for Louis Jordan
Louis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...
's small group sound a few years later, rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
, and later rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
.
Selected discography
| Year | Title | Genre | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Let's Get Drunk and Truck | Swing jazz | Fabulous |
| 1997 | Hamfats Swing 1936-1938 | Swing jazz | EPM Musique |
| 1994 | Harlem Hamfats, Vol. 4 (Import) | Swing jazz | Document Records |
| 1994 | Harlem Hamfats, Vol. 3 (Import) | Swing jazz | Document Records |
| 1994 | Harlem Hamfats, Vol. 2 (Import) | Swing jazz | Document Records |
| 1994 | Harlem Hamfats, Vol. 1 (Import) | Swing jazz | Document Records |