Joe Weaver With The Don Juans, "Baby, I Love You So" c/w "It Must Be Love," Fortune 825 (rel. 1/1956)
For truly great music of a different sort, Fortune Records delivers the goods. I've yet to hear a Fortune recording that didn't delight, confound or charm the pants off me. A key figure in Fortune Records (and Detroit music overall) is Joe Weaver, composer, singer, pianist, arranger, producer...Weaver was a Motor City Zelig whose name pops up in the darndest places. I could laundry-list the canonical figures he worked with, but if it's Detroit or Motown-related, he was there at some point.
Born in 1934, Weaver learned piano in his childhood and started his first band while still in high school. The Blue Notes became a Detroit fixture as the house band of a Black-owned nightspot on Hastings Avenue. Visiting performers from all over the country had their backup when they performed. This gave the band deep exposure to what was going on in Black music and they soaked it up as a biscuit does gravy.
By 1954, The Blue Notes were the house band (or dirt-floor concrete shed band) for Fortune Records, the ground-zero indie label run by Devora and Jack Brown. The label's curious, often funny-sad story is told in depth in the essential book Mind Over Matter, co-written by Billy Miller and Michael Hurtt and available from Kicks Books. This rambling oral history-enriched saga is a staggering read and sits on my bookshelf beside Greil Marcus' biography of Sam Phillips and Michael Tisserand's book on cartoonist George Herriman. These books are in good company.
As often happens with house bands, they seldom got to make their own records, but Fortune gave them two shots at their closest approximation to fame and fortune. The Browns were terrified of success, as it meant a mountain of accountancy and toil to fulfill orders. Despite this, "Baby, I Love You So" became a regional hit in early 1956 and is one of the finest examples of the curious, moving sound of this label. It's the record I'd use to introduce new listeners to the Fortune Records experience--but only with the reissue from the early 1960s.
Fortune's 1950s releases suffer from excessive tape hiss and a bewildering array of pressing issues. The first version of this single has a WTF counter-pattern of circular radii atop the regular grooves of the record. They result in, as a 45cat.com member reports, "loud hiss plus a distressing warble...One of the worst sounding Fortune singles, which is unfortunate, because it's a great song."
The tape hiss is the result of the company's 45s being mastered at the wider grooves of 10-inch 78-rpm discs, which is common in the music world until 1956/57, when microgrooves became the industry standard. 78s were phased out in America by 1960 or so. Some of the greatest roots-music labels (Sun, Excello, Ace) were late adapters to the microgroove standard; one learns to abide their underlayer of hisssssssssssssssssssssss; some wise folks invest in a 78-groove-width stylus, as I should; it's the only way to hear these records as they were intended.
The worst of these artifacts were corrected for the single's second pressing. The odd patterns remain on the playing surface, but don't result in any warble. Much of the hiss remains, but given the primitive audio equipment on hand, and producer-engineer Jack Brown's misunderstanding of how things worked, that's baked into the master tapes and part of the Fortune charm.
Back to the record! "Baby, I Love You So" has a funky, earthy charm from the first note of Weaver's piano (which is out of tune), the eerie backup vocals of The Don Juans, who recorded for Fortune as The Five Dollars, and distant, muffled drums. I suppose there are bass guitar and rhythm guitar in the murk somewhere; they're sensed rather than heard.
The song's pleading, sweet melody is lovely, and the wacko vocal stylings of The Don Juans, swathed in Fortune's unique reverb sound, match Weaver's heartfelt lead to a T. The result: a recording that sounds as good the 11th time you hear it as it does on first listen. And that's a record for the ages, my friends!
Born in 1934, Weaver learned piano in his childhood and started his first band while still in high school. The Blue Notes became a Detroit fixture as the house band of a Black-owned nightspot on Hastings Avenue. Visiting performers from all over the country had their backup when they performed. This gave the band deep exposure to what was going on in Black music and they soaked it up as a biscuit does gravy.
By 1954, The Blue Notes were the house band (or dirt-floor concrete shed band) for Fortune Records, the ground-zero indie label run by Devora and Jack Brown. The label's curious, often funny-sad story is told in depth in the essential book Mind Over Matter, co-written by Billy Miller and Michael Hurtt and available from Kicks Books. This rambling oral history-enriched saga is a staggering read and sits on my bookshelf beside Greil Marcus' biography of Sam Phillips and Michael Tisserand's book on cartoonist George Herriman. These books are in good company.
As often happens with house bands, they seldom got to make their own records, but Fortune gave them two shots at their closest approximation to fame and fortune. The Browns were terrified of success, as it meant a mountain of accountancy and toil to fulfill orders. Despite this, "Baby, I Love You So" became a regional hit in early 1956 and is one of the finest examples of the curious, moving sound of this label. It's the record I'd use to introduce new listeners to the Fortune Records experience--but only with the reissue from the early 1960s.
Fortune's 1950s releases suffer from excessive tape hiss and a bewildering array of pressing issues. The first version of this single has a WTF counter-pattern of circular radii atop the regular grooves of the record. They result in, as a 45cat.com member reports, "loud hiss plus a distressing warble...One of the worst sounding Fortune singles, which is unfortunate, because it's a great song."
The tape hiss is the result of the company's 45s being mastered at the wider grooves of 10-inch 78-rpm discs, which is common in the music world until 1956/57, when microgrooves became the industry standard. 78s were phased out in America by 1960 or so. Some of the greatest roots-music labels (Sun, Excello, Ace) were late adapters to the microgroove standard; one learns to abide their underlayer of hisssssssssssssssssssssss; some wise folks invest in a 78-groove-width stylus, as I should; it's the only way to hear these records as they were intended.
The worst of these artifacts were corrected for the single's second pressing. The odd patterns remain on the playing surface, but don't result in any warble. Much of the hiss remains, but given the primitive audio equipment on hand, and producer-engineer Jack Brown's misunderstanding of how things worked, that's baked into the master tapes and part of the Fortune charm.
Back to the record! "Baby, I Love You So" has a funky, earthy charm from the first note of Weaver's piano (which is out of tune), the eerie backup vocals of The Don Juans, who recorded for Fortune as The Five Dollars, and distant, muffled drums. I suppose there are bass guitar and rhythm guitar in the murk somewhere; they're sensed rather than heard.
The song's pleading, sweet melody is lovely, and the wacko vocal stylings of The Don Juans, swathed in Fortune's unique reverb sound, match Weaver's heartfelt lead to a T. The result: a recording that sounds as good the 11th time you hear it as it does on first listen. And that's a record for the ages, my friends!
Cash Box got the sides mixed up, but they
capture the essence of the Fortune sound in
this complementary assessment.
"It Must Be Love" is more in line with Weaver's jump blues sound. The Blue Notes shine on this side, which sounds like bandleader Louis Jordan on a serious bender and performing in a sordid Tijuana bar. Afro-Cuban percussion, primitive, fuzzy guitar and blurting brass/woodwinds surround Weaver's enthusiastic, funny vocal and lyric, which sports some quirky-clever lines. Bonus points for the sax player going into another musical key at the song's wrap-up.
Jack Brown couldn't produce a slick, conventional-sounding record no matter how he tried, but it's fun to hear him attempt. And who needs slick, polished productions? The world's over-full of them. Let the rickety, teetering sound of Fortune Records be heard more often. It celebrates the fumbling, crude attempts of man to make art against all odds.
Jack Brown couldn't produce a slick, conventional-sounding record no matter how he tried, but it's fun to hear him attempt. And who needs slick, polished productions? The world's over-full of them. Let the rickety, teetering sound of Fortune Records be heard more often. It celebrates the fumbling, crude attempts of man to make art against all odds.
Joe Weaver was hired by Motown as an early house band; they're heard on "Shop Around" by The Miracles, among other pioneering Motown-Tamla sides. Weaver tired of the instability of the music world and, sometime in the 1960s, shifted to assembly-line work at a local Ford auto plant, where he remained until his retirement in 1999.
Weaver got back into music and released an acclaimed 2002 CD as The Motor City Rhythm & Blues Pioneers. He played music festivals to the enjoyment of new, younger audiences. Had a stroke not felled him in 2006, he might still be with us, though it's likely he'd have retired from performing by now.
Weaver got back into music and released an acclaimed 2002 CD as The Motor City Rhythm & Blues Pioneers. He played music festivals to the enjoyment of new, younger audiences. Had a stroke not felled him in 2006, he might still be with us, though it's likely he'd have retired from performing by now.
Tomorrow: downright funky with Brenda Lee Melson (the Jean of Dean and Jean) on a rare solo 45 for Rust Records, released in early 1968. Another find from the Labor Day dig described at length on earlier posts!
Both these have a charming live-ish lo-fi sound. Love the break at 1:29 in "Baby, I Love You So" where he sings acapella ..."come home to me' and the guys do something Muppetty like 'wocka wocka ho'. Love that line 'Is love a heart disease?' in "It Must be Love."
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