TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we continue our archive series R&B, rockabilly and early rock 'n' roll. Before Elvis Presley recorded "Hound Dog," it was recorded by Big Mama Thornton. The record's drummer and producer was Johnny Otis, whose interview we're featuring today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOUND DOG")
BIG MAMA THORNTON: (Singing) You ain't nothing but a hound dog. Been snooping 'round my door. You ain't nothing but a hound dog. Been snooping 'round my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't going to feed you no more. You told me you was high class, but I could see through that. Yes, you told me you was high class, but I could see through that. And, Daddy, I know, you ain't no real cool cat. You ain't nothing but a hound dog, been snooping 'round my door. You're just an old hound dog. Been snooping 'round my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't going to feed you no more. Oh, play that thing, boy. Oh, listen, ain't that them old hound dog?
GROSS: Otis was also an R&B singer and musician, a band leader, nightclub owner and talent scout. He started out leading a big band that had the 1945 hit "Harlem Nocturne." Soon after, his band, like most of the big bands, broke up for financial reasons. Otis organized a smaller unit that played a hybrid of swing and blues that became known as Rhythm & Blues. Otis' Rhythm & Blues Caravan became the first R&B touring road show. Through his nightclub, talent shows and road show, Otis discovered such singers as Esther Phillips, who first worked under the name Little Esther, Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard and Etta James, who we'll hear from later in the show. Otis had several R&B hits in the early '50s, and in 1958, his record "Willie And The Hand Jive" made it to the top 10 of the rock 'n' roll chart. Although Otis is a pioneer of R&B and played almost exclusively with Black performers, he was a white Greek American who grew up in a Black neighborhood where his father ran a grocery store. During the British invasion of the '60s, his style of music became decreasingly unpopular. Otis died in 2012 at the age of 90. When I spoke with him in 1989, he was back on the road and in the recording studio. His sessions from the 1950s had just been reissued. We began with his first hit - that 1945 instrumental recording of "Harlem Nocturne."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: There's a great story behind recording this record. Would you tell it?
JOHNNY OTIS: Well, this goes back to the mid '40s, and it was my first record date with my own band, as I recall. And we did three things. I went to the producer after we had completed the third one and I said, well, Mr. Renee (ph), that's it. Three songs in four hours, and we got plenty of time left. He said, no, you've got that wrong. It's four songs in three hours. Now, get out there and get another song together. So, we were - the house band at the Club Alabam on Central Avenue here in LA at the time, and I remember when we would play this particular song, the chorus girls and the show girls would come out of the - out of their dressing rooms and dance on the balcony, and they would always ask us to play it. And I thought it must have some charm if the ladies like it that well. So I said, let's play that. And it was a stock arrangement that had been recorded once before by Ray Noble and an Earle Hagen tune. So - but I slowed it down, and I was a drummer then. I then went, boom, boom, boom on the tom toms, and we recorded it. And the songs that we had done previously with Jimmy Rushing, the great Count Basie singer, and some wonderful arrangements, they didn't do it, but "Harlem Nocturne" became an instant hit.
GROSS: And when "Harlem Nocturne" became an instant hit, then you started touring with Louis Jordan and with The Ink Spots. And they were some of the biggest Black acts of the time. Can you describe a little bit what the atmosphere was like at the concerts in which you shared the bill?
OTIS: That same feeling you feel the day before the curtain opens, that great anticipation, they're going to see Bill Kenny and The Ink Spots. They're going to see Louis Jordan. And we were lucky enough to be the band.
GROSS: Did the audiences assume that you were Black?
OTIS: Of course. In those days, many of the places we played, had they suspected I was white, we would have been arrested.
GROSS: Well, I remember when I interviewed Solomon Burke, he told a story about how when one of his records crossed over to the country charts, he started getting invitations to play certain places in the South with white crowds who would have never asked him to play if they knew he was Black, and he showed up to one of these places, and it was quite a scene. Did anything similar ever happen to you?
OTIS: No. We're talking now, I assume we're back in the '40s. If we are, it was much different than the Solomon Burke days of the '50s or the '60s with Solomon Burke. You see, your life was on the line in those days. When our bus would cross the Mason-Dixon line, and the driver would say, well, we just crossed the Mason-Dixon line, a pall would fall over the entire show. We'd all get quiet because we knew we were down there where we had problems. And many times, we came close to being hurt. One time we stopped the bus to go to get some gas, and my little singer, Little Esther, who was only 13, jumped off and went to the restroom. And I looked up, and there's a guy with a gun in my belly. And he's shaking and he's all excited because the little Black girl went to the white woman's bathroom. And I thought to myself, any death but this. So she came out, and we went on down the road. But those things happened to us all the time. That was the open version of white racism as against the very subtle, pervasive and institutionalized version that we have today.
GROSS: Let me play one of the rhythm and blues records from the period that you made. And this was with the singer Little Esther, who we now know as Esther Phillips. And this was "Double Crossing Blues." Do you want to say anything about this? Did you write this song?
OTIS: Well, I can give you a little anecdote about it.
GROSS: Yeah.
OTIS: I was leaving my little chicken ranch in Watts, back in the '40s, and with me were a group of guys I had found at the Barrelhouse, where - I had a nightclub there called the Barrelhouse. And we were going to do their first record, and they became known as The Robins and later The Coasters. But Little Esther was a neighborhood little girl who used to help me, with the other children, catch my chickens when people would pick out the chicken they wanted. And then we would have refreshments later. And she ran and she said, Johnny, let me go. Let me go. So I said, oh, get in. So she got in. We went to Hollywood to the studio. And when we got there, we did the four sides by The Robins, and we had a few minutes left. So I told - I asked the producer, Ralph Bass. I said, man, we got some time. Let me get these kids together. I got a song I think would make sense. He said, well, hurry up. You've only got a couple of minutes. So we - I taught it to him, and we did it, and it was called "Double Crossing Blues." And he said - I said, can I do it one more time 'cause she kind of giggled. He said, no, that's it. But anyhow, that became the No. 1 song of 1950. And it brought Little Esther to stardom, and it did an awful lot for us, too.
GROSS: And you're playing vibes.
OTIS: Yeah, and I'm playing vibes.
GROSS: OK, here we go.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DOUBLE CROSSING BLUES")
ESTHER PHILLIPS: (Singing) I've been looking for you, Daddy. I just found you in time. You're with some other woman, and you swore that you are mine. What's the matter, Daddy? Don't my kisses satisfy? Well, if I don't thrill you baby, goodness knows how hard I've tried. Folks say that you've been cheating, and now I see it's true. Well, I can't quit you baby 'cause I'm so in love with you. What's the matter, Daddy? If you'd only tell me why. Well, if I don't thrill you baby, goodness knows how I've tried.
BOBBY NUNN: (Singing) You stayed out last night, said you were playing cards. Can't understand it baby, just what makes you play so hard. I'm gonna leave you.
GROSS: Johnny Otis is my guest, and by the way, he has a new album of some of his reissued recordings from the 1950s. It's called "The Capitol Years." We'll be hearing some of that in just a little while. You discovered a lot of talent, not just a Little Esther, Esther Phillips. What was your way of scouting for people?
OTIS: Actually, my first singer was Ernestine Anderson when she was just a little girl.
GROSS: Really?
OTIS: Then - yeah. And then came Esther Phillips. But after Esther Phillips' amazing success and became the big child star of the African American community nationally, then everywhere we played, people - they would bring me their sons and their daughters backstage. I guess they figured I was an expert who knew how to make stars out of kids. And that's how it started.
One day in Detroit at the Paradise Theater, I asked the manager. I said, during this week that we'll be here, how about me doing a talent show to avoid having to have all these people coming around with their kids? He said, great. And we did. It was to have been one hour, but it stretched into two hours. And we found so many wonderful singers and players that day. I found Little Willie John, Jackie Wilson and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on that particular show. And there were probably others, but the record company I was scouting for - King - only wanted to deal with three at the moment. And I thought years later, when Berry Gordy formed his great "Motown Story," I said, no wonder. Look at the reservoir of talent here in Detroit.
GROSS: It must have been funny, though, when the parents were bringing you their children. You must have been exposed to a lot of really untalented kids also.
OTIS: Well, I learned quick. They would come and say - and they almost all had exactly - I don't care if I was in Mississippi or Massachusetts. They would say, Now, Mr. Otis, we know that you know. And if Junior has any real talent, you'll tell us the truth. And if he doesn't, of course - but they didn't mean that. I didn't know it. What they meant was, this is the world's answer to the great child star. This is it. And if I would dare to suggest they weren't, then I had an enemy on my hands. So I learned how to sidestep that and tell little fibs.
GROSS: We're listening back to my 1989 interview with the late Johnny Otis. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 1989 interview with the late Johnny Otis, an R&B musician, producer, nightclub owner and talent scout who discovered Big Mama Thornton, Esther Phillips, Jackie Wilson and Etta James, who we'll hear from later.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: We've been talking about rhythm and blues. When there was the transition between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, did you have to - did you find yourself changing the music, or were, maybe, the audiences changing that you were playing your music to?
OTIS: Yeah, that's true. When I was dealing with the classic rhythm and blues that we developed back in the '40s, we did a lot of bluesy material because the Black audience demanded it. As the transition occurred and as it developed, we then had to play more animated jump blues, boogie styles and act - put on an act for white folks, because they wanted it to be - they wanted to see us, you know, work and sweat. And that's what they liked.
The early Black audiences wanted a more musical, bluesy jazz thing. The white audiences wanted that jump tune, boogie-woogie kind of thing.
GROSS: Well, I want to play a song that you had that was a hit on the rock 'n' roll charts in 1958, and this is "Willie And The Hand Jive." Let's play it, and then we'll talk about it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WILLIE AND THE HAND JIVE")
OTIS: (Singing) I know a cat named Way Out Willie. He got a cool little chick named Rockin' Millie. He can walk and stroll and Susie Q and do that crazy hand jive, too. Papa told Willie, you'll ruin my home. You and that hand jive has got to go. Willie said, Papa, don't put me down. They're doing that hand jive all over town. Hand jive, hand jive, hand jive, doing that crazy hand jive. Mama, mama, look at Uncle Joe.
GROSS: That's "Hand Jive," which was a big hit for my guest, Johnny Otis, back in 1958. Tell me about writing this song.
OTIS: My manager, the late Hal Zeiger and partner, back at that time, we had a hit in '57 called "Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me" with the great Marie Adams singing, and it became a hit, not here in the States, but in Europe and England, it was No. 1. So he went over to set up the tour, and when he got back, he said, listen, I saw something interesting.
I saw the young people around the London area in the venues where they couldn't dance, at the concerts and the theaters. As they sat there, they would do a thing that you guys in the big Black bands used to do with their hands, you know, while the band was playing. And they call it hand jive. Why don't you write a song called "Hand Jive" and maybe we'll do some good over in Europe? Well, I did, and it - luckily, it became a hit everywhere.
GROSS: So the hand jive was a - basically, just kind of clapping and moving your hands...
OTIS: Yeah, while you're sitting.
GROSS: ...While you're sitting, in a dance-like version...
OTIS: Well, it became a whole dance later (laughter).
GROSS: I want to play something that you're featured on from this new re-issue called "The Capitol Years." And this is "Can't You Hear Me Calling."
OTIS: OK.
GROSS: And you're singing on this?
OTIS: Yeah.
GROSS: And what do you play?
OTIS: After a fashion (laughter).
GROSS: Oh, you sound really good on it.
OTIS: Oh, well, OK. You and my mother think so.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: OK. Well, let's give it a listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CAN'T YOU HEAR ME CALLING")
OTIS: (Singing) Can't you hear me calling, babe.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Babe.
OTIS: (Singing) Babe.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Babe.
OTIS: (Singing) Babe. Baby, please, don't go.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Baby, please don't go.
OTIS: (Singing) Baby, don't you know I love...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Love.
OTIS: (Singing) I love...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Love.
OTIS: (Singing) I love...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Love.
OTIS: (Singing) ...I love you so.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I love you so.
OTIS: (Singing) Now you got me all alone, alone and blue. And I'm sitting here crying over you. Can't you hear me calling, baby, baby, please, don't go.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Don't go, don't go.
OTIS: (Singing) Can't you hear me calling. I...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I.
OTIS: (Singing) I...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I.
OTIS: (Singing) I...
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I.
OTIS: (Singing) ...I can't go on.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I can't go on.
OTIS: (Singing) And now you know you got me crying.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Crying.
OTIS: (Singing) I'm crying.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Crying.
OTIS: (Singing) I'm crying. I'm all alone.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) I'm all alone.
OTIS: (Singing) Come on, baby, won't you tell me that you coming home. You don't want to leave me crying here all alone. Can't you hear me calling, baby, baby, please don't go.
UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Don't go, don't go.
OTIS: (Singing) In the morning...
GROSS: Johnny Otis from the new album "The Capitol Years." You know, Ben Vaughan wrote the liner notes for this record and in it he mentions that in one of - I guess it was a publicity shot - that your goatee was airbrushed out so that you would look less ethnic? What was the story behind that?
OTIS: (Laughter) Oh, Hal Zeiger, the late Hal Zeiger, God rest his soul. He was my partner at the time and he did these things without even asking me. Well, you know, he wanted me to look less Black. He wanted me to look less like a Greek. He wanted me to look like a nice Anglo-Saxon WASP, which is hard to do. But he tried.
GROSS: So he airbrushed out the goatee.
OTIS: Yeah (laughter). I don't think that sold any records (laughter).
GROSS: Now, your family is Greek? Was Greek?
OTIS: Yeah.
GROSS: Your parents?
OTIS: Yeah.
GROSS: And...
OTIS: Yeah. Were and are. Yes.
GROSS: ...And your last name was Veliotes?
OTIS: Veliotes.
GROSS: And when did you change it to Otis?
OTIS: The kids at school kind of made that decision for me. They decided not to deal with try to remember how to pronounce that. They would say, Johnny Otis. And that's the way it stuck.
GROSS: So, I know that your father had a grocery store. Was that in the same neighborhood that you lived in?
OTIS: Oh, yes. The grocery store was downstairs and we lived upstairs.
GROSS: And this was in a Black neighborhood?
OTIS: Yes. In the heart of the Black neighborhood.
GROSS: So that, I guess, helps explain why you grew up with such Black identification.
OTIS: It's also the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.
GROSS: So...
OTIS: He might, in fact, have put it in a WASP neighborhood. Then what would have happened to me?
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Did you not think of yourself as being white when you were growing up?
OTIS: I didn't think about that at all. I had no concept about that. Luckily, my father was absolutely wonderful in that respect. And my playmates were - I didn't know it then, but they were Black, African American. I thought we were all the same thing. And I don't think it's so unique in America for white kids to grow up with Black youngsters and come up together as brothers and sisters.
What might be unique is not to veer away. I could not veer away because that's where I wanted to be. Those were my friends. That's what I loved. Wasn't the music that brought me to the Black community. It was the way of life. I felt I was Black.
GROSS: What was it about the way of life?
OTIS: Everything about it. You know, different cultures have different characteristics, and the characteristics of the African American community became my own. And I just wasn't willing to give that up, to go become part of the mainstream community where people felt superior to Black people, and they oppressed Black people and they practiced democracy and preached racism.
I didn't want to be part of that. I want to stay in that sweet, beautiful Black place in the Black community.
GROSS: My interview with Johnny Otis was recorded in 1989. He died in 2012 at the age of 90. After we take a short break, we'll hear from one of the singers he discovered, Etta James. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE WALLFLOWER")
RICHARD BERRY: (Singing) Hey, baby. What do I have to do to make you love me, too?
ETTA JAMES: (Singing) You got to roll with me, Henry.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE ROLLING STONES' "NOW I'VE GOT A WITNESS") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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