Lester Melrose
Encyclopedia
Lester Melrose was one of the first American producer
s of blues
records.
, Illinois
, United States
, the second of six children of Frank and Mollie Melrose who owned a small farm. He relocated to Chicago
around 1914, and tried out unsuccessfully as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox
baseball team before starting work as a grocery salesman.
In 1918 (though some sources state 1922), he joined forces with his elder brother Walter
, and Marty Bloom (born Martin Blumenthal, 1893-1974), to form The Melrose Brothers Music Company, a publishing house and music store on the South Side of Chicago. In May 1923, he met Jelly Roll Morton
at the store, and Morton became the company's chief songwriter and arranger. By the end of 1923, Walter Melrose moved the music publishing business downtown, while Lester continued for a while to operate the music store with a new partner.
In 1925, Lester Melrose sold his share of the store and became a freelance A&R
man, combining the roles of talent scout and record producer. He started to promote many blues artists who became popular, recording them mainly in Chicago.
He worked for several record label
s simultaneously in the 1930s, including RCA Victor and its subsidiary Bluebird
, Columbia
, and Okeh
. Among the artists he recorded and brought to the world's attention were Joe "King" Oliver, Big Bill Broonzy
, Sonny Boy Williamson I
, Memphis Minnie
, Roosevelt Sykes
, Lonnie Johnson
, Big Joe Williams
, Bukka White
, Washboard Sam
, Champion Jack Dupree
, Jazz Gillum
, Arthur Crudup
, Victoria Spivey
and Leroy Carr
.
In many ways Melrose can be considered a founder of the Chicago blues
, although he favored acoustic over electric performances. Most of his recordings were made with a small group of session musician
s and had a similar sound overall. Muddy Waters
, who was rejected when he auditioned for Melrose, called it "sweet jazz". The music was a mixture of black blues and vaudeville styles and material with newer swing rhythms. Melrose's chief contribution was to establish a sound with full band arrangements, ensemble playing and a rhythm section, which appealed to the increasingly urbanised black record-buying audience, and prefigured the electric blues and R&B of the late 1940s and the small group sound that became dominant in rock and roll.
The Melrose sound dominated Chicago blues before World War II
, but the arrival of large numbers of Southern African Americans in Chicago during and after the war brought Melrose's dominance to an end as a harder, deeper blues sound proved more popular with the new audience. However, Melrose himself continued to work into the 1950s. He then retired to Lake, Florida
and died there in April 1968.
Although he could not play or sing a note of music, he owned the copyright to over three thousand tunes, mostly blues. As was the widespread custom at the time (and not just in blues music), Melrose often assigned composer credit and performance rights of the artists' songs to himself, paying the artists only for the record session. His name appeared on "Reefer Head Blues", recorded by Jazz Gillum and Aerosmith
, and "Me and My Chauffeur", recorded by Memphis Minnie and Jefferson Airplane
. His name also appeared on three Crudup songs recorded by Elvis Presley
.
Melrose is a member of the Blues Hall of Fame
.
, including the standards "High Society" and "Tin Roof Blues
", both of which were hits as late as the 1950s.
A third brother, Franklyn Melrose
(1907 - 1941), was a jazz
pianist
who also appeared under the name of Kansas City Frank. He died after a fracas in a club.
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
s of 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...
records.
Career
He was born Lester Franklin Melrose in SumnerSumner, Illinois
Sumner is a city in Lawrence County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,022 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Sumner is located at .According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all of it land....
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the second of six children of Frank and Mollie Melrose who owned a small farm. He relocated to 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...
around 1914, and tried out unsuccessfully as a catcher for the Chicago White Sox
Chicago White Sox
The Chicago White Sox are a Major League Baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois.The White Sox play in the American League's Central Division. Since , the White Sox have played in U.S. Cellular Field, which was originally called New Comiskey Park and nicknamed The Cell by local fans...
baseball team before starting work as a grocery salesman.
In 1918 (though some sources state 1922), he joined forces with his elder brother Walter
Walter Melrose
Walter Melrose was a music publisher and lyricist in the 1920s and 1930s.He was born in Sumner, Illinois, and was the brother of Lester Melrose, with whom he established a music store in Chicago. This became successful after the Tivoli Theatre opened in the same street, greatly increasing the...
, and Marty Bloom (born Martin Blumenthal, 1893-1974), to form The Melrose Brothers Music Company, a publishing house and music store on the South Side of Chicago. In May 1923, he met Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....
at the store, and Morton became the company's chief songwriter and arranger. By the end of 1923, Walter Melrose moved the music publishing business downtown, while Lester continued for a while to operate the music store with a new partner.
In 1925, Lester Melrose sold his share of the store and became a freelance A&R
A&R
Artists and repertoire is the division of a record label that is responsible for talent scouting and overseeing the artistic development of recording artists. It also acts as a liaison between artists and the record label.- Finding talent :...
man, combining the roles of talent scout and record producer. He started to promote many blues artists who became popular, recording them mainly in Chicago.
He worked for several record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
s simultaneously in the 1930s, including RCA Victor and its subsidiary Bluebird
Bluebird Records
Bluebird Records is a sub-label of RCA Victor Records originally created in 1932 to counter the American Record Company in the "3 records for a dollar" market. Along with ARC's Perfect Records, Melotone Records and Romeo Records, and the independent US Decca label, Bluebird became one of the best...
, Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
, and Okeh
Okeh Records
Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918. From 1926 on, it was a subsidiary of Columbia Records.-History:...
. Among the artists he recorded and brought to the world's attention were Joe "King" Oliver, Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
, Sonny Boy Williamson I
Sonny Boy Williamson I
Sonny Boy Williamson was an American blues harmonica player and singer, and the first to use the name Sonny Boy Williamson.-Biography and career:...
, Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie
Memphis Minnie was an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the only female blues artist considered a match to male contemporaries as both a singer and an instrumentalist.-Career:...
, Roosevelt Sykes
Roosevelt Sykes
Roosevelt Sykes was an American blues musician, also known as "The Honeydripper". He was a successful and prolific cigar-chomping blues piano player, whose rollicking thundering boogie-woogie was highly influential.-Career:Born in Elmar, Arkansas, Sykes grew up near Helena but at age 15, went on...
, Lonnie Johnson
Lonnie Johnson
Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson was an American blues and jazz singer/guitarist and songwriter who pioneered the role of jazz guitar and is recognized as the first to play single-string guitar solos...
, Big Joe Williams
Big Joe Williams
Joseph Lee Williams , billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar...
, Bukka White
Bukka White
Booker T. Washington White , better known as Bukka White, was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. "Bukka" was not a nickname, but a phonetic misspelling of White's given name Booker, by his second record label .-Biography:Born between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, White was the...
, Washboard Sam
Washboard Sam
Robert Brown , known professionally as Washboard Sam, was an American blues singer and musician.-Biography:...
, Champion Jack Dupree
Champion Jack Dupree
William Thomas Dupree, best known as Champion Jack Dupree, was an American blues pianist. His birth date is disputed, given as July 4, July 10, and July 23, in the years 1908, 1909, or 1910. He died on January 21, 1992.-Biography:...
, Jazz Gillum
Jazz Gillum
William McKinley Gillum , known as Jazz Gillum, was an American blues harmonica player.He was born in Indianola, Mississippi. After running away from home at the age of seven, Gillum spent the next few years in Charleston, Mississippi, working and playing for tips on local street corners...
, Arthur Crudup
Arthur Crudup
Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for writing songs such as "That's All Right" , "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later covered by Elvis Presley and dozens of other artists.-Career:Arthur Crudup...
, Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey was an American blues singer and songwriter. She is best known for her recordings of "Dope Head Blues" and "Organ Grinder Blues", and Spivey variously worked with her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey, and with Bob Dylan, Lonnie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Clarence...
and Leroy Carr
Leroy Carr
Leroy Carr was an American blues singer, songwriter and pianist, who developed a laid-back, crooning technique and whose popularity and style influenced such artists as Nat King Cole and Ray Charles. He first became famous for "How Long, How Long Blues" on Vocalion Records in 1928.-Life and...
.
In many ways Melrose can be considered a founder of the Chicago blues
Chicago blues
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums,...
, although he favored acoustic over electric performances. Most of his recordings were made with a small group of session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
s and had a similar sound overall. Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
, who was rejected when he auditioned for Melrose, called it "sweet jazz". The music was a mixture of black blues and vaudeville styles and material with newer swing rhythms. Melrose's chief contribution was to establish a sound with full band arrangements, ensemble playing and a rhythm section, which appealed to the increasingly urbanised black record-buying audience, and prefigured the electric blues and R&B of the late 1940s and the small group sound that became dominant in rock and roll.
The Melrose sound dominated Chicago blues before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, but the arrival of large numbers of Southern African Americans in Chicago during and after the war brought Melrose's dominance to an end as a harder, deeper blues sound proved more popular with the new audience. However, Melrose himself continued to work into the 1950s. He then retired to Lake, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
and died there in April 1968.
Although he could not play or sing a note of music, he owned the copyright to over three thousand tunes, mostly blues. As was the widespread custom at the time (and not just in blues music), Melrose often assigned composer credit and performance rights of the artists' songs to himself, paying the artists only for the record session. His name appeared on "Reefer Head Blues", recorded by Jazz Gillum and Aerosmith
Aerosmith
Aerosmith is an American rock band, sometimes referred to as "The Bad Boys from Boston" and "America's Greatest Rock and Roll Band". Their style, which is rooted in blues-based hard rock, has come to also incorporate elements of pop, heavy metal, and rhythm and blues, and has inspired many...
, and "Me and My Chauffeur", recorded by Memphis Minnie and Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965. A pioneer of the psychedelic rock movement, Jefferson Airplane was the first band from the San Francisco scene to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success....
. His name also appeared on three Crudup songs recorded by Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
.
Melrose is a member of the Blues Hall of Fame
Blues Hall of Fame
The Blues Hall of Fame is a listing of people who have significantly contributed to blues music. Started in 1980 by the Blues Foundation, it honors those who have performed, recorded, or documented blues.-1980:*Big Bill Broonzy*Willie Dixon*John Lee Hooker...
.
Family members
His older brother Walter Melrose (1889 - 1973) was a music publisher who received songwriter credit for several songs identified with the Original Dixieland Jass BandOriginal Dixieland Jass Band
The Original Dixieland Jass Band were a New Orleans, Dixieland jazz band that made the first jazz recordings in early 1917. Their "Livery Stable Blues" became the first jazz single ever issued. The group composed and made the first recordings of many jazz standards, the most famous being Tiger Rag...
, including the standards "High Society" and "Tin Roof Blues
Tin Roof Blues
Tin Roof Blues is a jazz composition first recorded by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1923. It was written by band members Paul Mares, Ben Pollack, Mel Stitzel, George Brunies and Leon Roppolo...
", both of which were hits as late as the 1950s.
A third brother, Franklyn Melrose
Frank Melrose
Franklyn Taft Melrose was an American jazz and blues pianist, who recorded as Kansas City Frank.He was born in Sumner, Illinois, the younger brother of Walter and Lester Melrose who set up the Melrose Brothers Music Company in Chicago in 1918, and went on to become leading figures in the Chicago...
(1907 - 1941), was a 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...
pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
who also appeared under the name of Kansas City Frank. He died after a fracas in a club.