Slim Gaillard suits up for blast-off, 1953

Photo by Isaac Sutton, via the Jet magazine archives.

Champion Jack Dupree: Babs Gonzales and the Mother in Law Blues

Before we move to Europe with Champion Jack Dupree, I want to do a quick clean-up on a few stray tracks lying around that I haven't had a chance to note yet.  Specifically I want to talk about Babs Gonzales.

Babs Gonzales was a jazz and jive singer who lived in New York City and did the bulk of his recordings in the 40s and 50s.  His style of jive was less knocked out and random than, say, Slim Gaillard (he even wrote his own dictionary of jive much like Gaillard's published-on-Ichiban-somewhere Dictionary of Vout), and he eventually ended up in the weird world of vocalese, managing James Moody and no doubt sharing ideas with Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure, occasionally subbing for Mel Tormé at gigs. Champion Jack seemed impressed enough with his rap to incoprorate some of his nonsensery into his own introductions.

The two collaborated on the first side of the only Gonzales KING 45, "House Rent Party". Apparently Babs crashed a Dupree session to lay down this tale of crashing/mooching his way through a house party. Which, believe it or not, gets busted. Dupree lays down the piano on this cut.

In an interesting bit of expoobident coincident, the flip of this 45, "She's Just Right for Me", was apparently cut at a session led by last February's Ichiban front-figure, Joe Tex!

Since it's not on youtube, here's "She's Just Right for Me".

Back in Dupree land, here's him laying down his own rap, on one of his favorite topics.  From the Atlantic 45 and/or the "Natural and Soulful Blues" LP, here's "Mother-In-Law Blues".  She calls him son.  Too bad he can't say the rest of it on the record.