Lil Green - Blues & Rhythm Series 5131: The Chronological Lil Green 1947-1951

Size: 111 MB
Time: 46:38
File: FLAC
Released: 2005
Styles: Blues, R&B, Jazz
Art: Full

01. I Want A Good Man Bad (3:04)
02. You've Been A Good Old Wagon (3:23)
03. I Want A Man (2:37)
04. Lonely Woman (2:57)
05. Take Me Back To Little Rock (2:46)
06. Aggravatin' Papa (2:42)
07. Daddy Daddy Blues (2:59)
08. Outside Of That (2:46)
09. I Gotta Have It (3:11)
10. Walkin' And Talkin' (2:36)
11. Rock Me Baby (2:48)
12. Them There Eyes (2:27)
13. Running Around In Circles (2:49)
14. My Be-Bop Daddy (3:03)
15. Every Time (3:11)
16. I've Got That Feeling (3:10)

This is the third and final volume in the complete recordings of Lil Green in chronological order as reissued by the Classics Blues & Rhythm Series. By 1947 Lil Green was beginning to sound more than a little like Ida Cox, even when handling songs from Tin Pan Alley rather than straight up out of the tried and true traditional blues repertoire. Comparisons could also be drawn between Lil Green and Nellie Lutcher or Julia Lee. While her "crossover" performances are worthwhile, there's nothing quite like hearing this woman savor the flavor of Bessie Smith hits like "Aggravatin' Papa," "Outside of That," and "You've Been a Good Old Wagon (But You Done Broke Down)." Green's own "Lonely Woman" has a powerful undercurrent running through it -- there is even a remote possibility that Ornette Coleman was inspired by this record when conceiving his own composition of the same title in 1959. Even if the link is purely coincidental, these melodies have something wonderful in common. Green's final recordings for the Victor label are strengthened by the presence of tenor saxophonists Budd Johnson, Lem Johnson, and David Young. "Them There Eyes," closely associated with Billie Holiday, gets the full-throttle Lil Green treatment, and her sanguine rendition of Big Bill Broonzy's "Rock Me Baby" is utterly delicious. Earlier in her career this tough little woman had cheerfully sung songs of unbridled hedonism, expressed most pointedly on her January 1941 recording "Knockin' Myself Out (Gradually by Degrees)." In December of 1947 Green recorded "I Got to Have It," which sounds at first like a hymn to cigarettes and nicotine but soon appears to be about addictions in general. Subsequently, her career sputtered and went out with a pair of sides for the Aladdin label in 1949 and two for Atlantic in 1951. These are very cool modern-sounding blues records, with electrically amplified guitar right out in front alongside the vocal on the Atlantic date. What sort of a comeback would this woman have staged if she had lived beyond the age of 34? One can only imagine. After contracting bronchial pneumonia, Lil Green died on April 14, 1954. ~arwulf arwulf

The Chronological Lil Green 1947-1951

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Lil Green - Blues & Rhythm Series 5099: The Chronological Lil Green 1942-1946

Size: 139 MB
Time: 53:28
File: FLAC
Released: 2004
Styles: Blues, R&B
Art: Full

01. 99 Blues (3:08)
02. Don't Know What I Wil Do (2:40)
03. You Got Me To The Place (2:55)
04. Keep Your Hand On Your Heart (3:00)
05. I Have A Place To Go (2:50)
06. If You Want To Share Your Love (2:49)
07. If I'm A Fool (2:32)
08. I'm Wasting My Time On You (3:03)
09. I'm Wasting My Time On You (Faster Version) (2:49)
10. No, Baby, Nobody But You (2:54)
11. Boy Friend (2:34)
12. Now What Do You Think (2:32)
13. Mr. Jackson From Jacksonville (2:34)
14. It's Bad With My Man And Me (2:55)
15. Blowtop Blues (2:50)
16. Ho Come You Do Me Like You Do (2:47)
17. That Old Feeling (2:51)
18. Last Go Round Blues (2:59)
19. No Good Man (2:38)

Lil Green was known as the Queen of the Blues in the early 1940s when her distinctive, seductive voice was highlighted on “Romance in the Dark,” “Why Don’t You Do Right?” and other blues and pop songs recorded for the Bluebird label. Born Lillie Mae Johnson in or near Port Gibson in 1901, she lived with her family in the College Street area as a child. She began her professional career in Chicago and later toured the country as a top attraction. She died in Chicago in 1954.

Lil Green was one of the nation’s best-loved African-American singers of her era, hailed in an Apollo Theater ad as “the greatest of all blues singers” when she appeared in Harlem in 1943. Her unique blues style and repertoire, incorporating jazz, gospel and pop, engendered widespread appeal, and she attained heights reached only by an elite number of blues singers of the 1940s. Green exuded youthful sweetness and charm yet retained a sultry, streetwise allure in her high-pitched delivery. Upon meeting her one writer described her as “disarmingly down to earth.”

Green and several siblings left Port Gibson at a young age after the deaths of their parents, Elias Johnson and Ida Crockett. In Chicago, by various accounts, she was discovered singing at a revival meeting, sang along to records at her job in a department store, worked as a singing waitress, and got her first break when friends convinced a bandleader to let her do a number at a South Side club. Her biggest hit, “Romance in the Dark,” cowritten by Green and Big Bill Broonzy, came from her first recording session in 1940 for the Bluebird label, a subsidiary of RCA Victor. By 1941 Green was out on tour and on her way to stardom, already billed as the “Queen of the Blues” and the “In the Dark Mama.” Her recording of “Why Don’t You Do Right?” (written by Joe McCoy from Raymond, Mississippi) also earned classic status and was a smash hit for Peggy Lee, vocalist with the Benny Goodman band, in 1943. Broonzy, Simeon Henry and Vicksburg native Ransom Knowling played on Green’s first five sessions. They also made some early Southern tours with her, according to Broonzy, but once Green graduated to the upper echelons of black entertainment, her booking agency teamed her with the big bands of Tiny Bradshaw, Milt Larkin, and Luis Russell for shows at the country’s top African-American theaters including the Regal in Chicago, Howard in Washington, D.C., Royal in Baltimore, Paradise (one in Detroit and another in Nashville), and Apollo in New York. She also performed for whites at Café Society and the Blue Angel in New York, the Downtown Theater in Chicago and many segregated venues in the South where special seating was reserved for whites.

In the late 1940s Green partnered, on and offstage, with trumpeter Howard Callender, who played on several of her last RCA Victor records. Green continued to tour even as her record sales were declining, but uterine cancer began to take its toll. She recorded for the Aladdin label in 1949 and Atlantic in 1951 and was still able to play at the Regal and smaller Chicago venues, Detroit’s Flame Show Bar and other spots in the 1950s. She died in Chicago on April 14, 1954, of bronchopneumonia and was buried in Gary, Indiana, where her older brother Scott Johnson worked in a steel mill. She was only 34, according to published accounts based on her press biography and her death certificate, which listed her birthdate as December 22, 1919. But her girlish looks had enabled her to hide her true age. Her headstone bears a 1905 date of birth and she cited 1910 on her Social Security application. But her 1910 census entry points to a 1901 birth date, if she was born in December; hence, she would have been 52 when she died.

The Chronological Lil Green 1942-1946

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Lil Green - Blues & Rhythm Series 5072: The Chronological Lil Green 1940-1941

Size: 141,3 MB
Time: 60:18
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2003
Styles: Blues, R&B
Art: Full

01. Cherry Tree Blues (2:57)
02. Romance In The Dark (3:23)
03. Just Rockin' (3:21)
04. What Have I Done (2:43)
05. Give Your Mama One Smile (2:33)
06. My Mellow Man (3:00)
07. I Won't Sell My Love (3:02)
08. Why Don't You Do Right (2:59)
09. Love Me (2:59)
10. Let's Be Friends Because I Love My Daddy So (3:02)
11. I'm Going To Start A Racket (3:12)
12. You're Just Full Of Jive (3:06)
13. Country Boy Blues (2:56)
14. How Can I Go On? (2:42)
15. Hello Babe (2:50)
16. If I Didn't Love You (2:48)
17. Let's Be Friends (3:18)
18. Because I Love My Daddy So (3:15)
19. I'm Going To Start A Racket (2:59)
20. You're Just Full Of Jive (3:04)

Lil Green was a fine blues singer who is often remembered merely as a footnote to the Peggy Lee story. The two women were linked by the song "Why Don't You Do Right?," originally recorded in 1936 by the Harlem Hamfats as the "Weed Smoker's Dream." Its composer Kansas Joe McCoy modified the words and changed the title for Lil Green, who recorded it with Big Bill Broonzy in 1941. Fast forward to July 1942, when the Benny Goodman Orchestra backed North Dakota native Peggy Lee (née Norma Deloris Egstrom) on a career-defining rendition of this disarmingly honest ode to the vagaries of human nature; by the following January, it had become a lucrative hit. Peggy Lee admired Lil Green's pungent, bittersweet, tough girl delivery, and her famous cover version carried borrowed ballast from this African-American woman who led a difficult existence and passed away in 1954 before attaining the age of 35. The first of three CDs devoted exclusively to the works of Lil Green offers 20 tunes recorded between May 1940 and July 1941. "Romance in the Dark" sounds like a cousin to Lonnie Johnson's hit record "Tomorrow Night"; "I'm Going to Start a Racket" is stocked with charmingly delivered threats, and "Knockin' Myself Out (Gradually, by Degrees)" has got to be one of the most revealing accounts of casual if reckless self-medication ever caught on record. Green portrays the substance abuser's state of mind with uncanny accuracy, almost certainly because she was drawing upon personal experience. Melodically speaking, both "Love Me" and "I'm Going to Copyright Your Kisses" are very similar to "Knockin' Myself Out." Four titles by Broonzy are characteristically wonderful; indeed almost everything the man ever came up with was warmly suffused with his personal blend of musk and magnetism. Several recordings from the second half of the collection find Lil Green comfortably languishing at the crossroads of blues and small group swing. This collection and two subsequent volumes, released by the Classics reissue label in 2003, 2004, and 2005, are highly recommended for people who seek a better understanding of 20th century popular music. The combined stories of Peggy Lee's success and Lil Green's abbreviated career are representative of a pattern of cultural appropriation that has characterized the U.S. entertainment industry since the 1890s ~arwulf arwulf

The Chronological Lil Green 1940-1941

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