Bobby Marchan - Still My Baby - Extended Liner Notes
Bobby Marchan - Still My Baby: The Ace And Fire Sessions
Even in New Orleans—a perpetually wide-open destination renowned for its rich cuisine, zesty second-line rhythms, and gala parades to mark any occasion, especially funerals—Bobby Marchan stood out from the crowd. First of all, the incendiary R&B singer happened to possess a terrific soul-permeated tenor equally suited to sultry torch ballads or driving rock and roll. He also happened to be a glamorous drag queen. Around the swinging Crescent City, Bobby’s flamboyant image raised precious few eyebrows.
Marchan wasn’t a native of the Big Easy. Born Oscar James Gibson in Youngstown, Ohio on April 30, 1930, he arrived in New Orleans in 1953 as one of the stars of a barnstorming female impersonator troupe, the Powder Box Revue. They performed at Oscar Bolden, Jr.’s Club Tiajuana, where Huey “Piano” Smith happened to be in the house band. Not surprisingly, Bobby’s magical pipes were quickly noticed. He ventured over to Cosimo Matassa’s studio in the French Quarter to cut “Just A Little Walk,” his debut offering for Eddie Mesner’s Los Angeles-based Aladdin label, that March, nationally debuting the Marchan sobriquet.
Probably because of that previous release, when Bobby encored on Randy Wood’s Gallatin, Tennessee-headquartered Dot logo the following year with “You Made A Fool Out Of Me,” he spelled his surname as “Marchon,” a gambit destined to fool no one. It didn’t really matter, since neither single moved many copies on the R&B scene and Bobby remained an obscure figure everywhere but in the Crescent City, where he snagged a gig as the Tiajuana’s dynamic emcee.
That pesky outstanding contract with Aladdin again came into play at Bobby’s next label stop, Johnny Vincent’s Jackson, Mississippi-based Ace Records. Vincent had viewed Marchan’s drag act at Club Tiajuana and naively believed he had pacted a female blues belter for his label, handing Bobby a $200 advance. Bobby did nothing to dissuade that misperception at his first Ace session in 1955 at Cosimo’s, showing up in full female regalia. When Marchan finally fessed up, the band enjoyed a hearty guffaw at the gullible label owner’s expense.
That first session produced “Give A Helping Hand” and “Pity Poor Me,” Bobby’s first Ace coupling, issued under the handle of Bobby Fields because of that still-in-effect Aladdin contract. Both sides were solid city blues with authorship credited to the singer, the mighty house band at Matassa’s facility offering typically solid backing. It would be the only time the Fields alias surfaced. Master tapes for both tracks remain untraced, so suitable alternate takes for both titles are used on Sunset Blvd.’s Marchan collection.
By the time Bobby waxed his Ace encore in 1956, it was safe for him to revert to his Marchan surname—and thanks to pianist and prolific songwriter Smith, he had a superlative piece of material to wrap his prodigious pipes around. “Chickee Wah-Wah” rippled and rumbled over Huey’s marvelous two-fisted ivories work and a sax-powered cushion, Marchan’s elastic pipes at last given full glorious rein on the playful theme. This was Crescent City R&B at its finest, one of the first genuine classics distinguishing Ace’s growing catalog with Lee Allen the likely sax soloist. The alternate take is nearly indistinguishable from the version issued at the start of 1957, though Bobby delivers one line a little differently shortly after big Lee has his say.
Its blues ballad flip, “Don’t Take Your Love From Me,” listed no songwriter, but its publisher—Progressive Music—offered a clue as to its provenance. Marchan picked the piece up from East Coast trumpeter Joe Morris, who first waxed it for Atlantic in late 1950. It was the work of successful songsmith Jessie Mae Robinson, whose portfolio also encompassed R&B chart-toppers for Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson (“Old Maid Boogie”), Louis Jordan (“Blue Light Boogie”), and Charles Brown (“Black Night”). Bobby actually improved upon Morris’ original, sung by Laurie Tate, with his melodic innovations and unexpected falsetto leap on the title line. “Little Girl Of Mine,” unreleased at the time, seems to stem from the same session. Vincent likely archived the tune because Bobby had borrowed the melody and chord changes from Paul Perryman’s then-new Duke single “Just To Hold My Hand,” fated to become a sizable hit not for Paul but for Clyde McPhatter’s cover during the spring of ‘57 on Atlantic.
Bob Astor, an employee of Moe Gale’s New York booking agency, saw Marchan whip up the crowd at New Orleans’ Dew Drop Inn as he sang “Chickee Wah-Wah” and recommended his boss bring him aboard. Moe licensed the song from Vincent for his short-lived Gale label in early ‘57 and started representing Bobby for live performances, dispatching him up and down the East Coast for a month of bookings that included a slot on Alan Freed’s Easter rock and roll show at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater.
In addition to raising his profile considerably outside the Big Easy, that East Coast swing cemented Bobby’s working relationship with Huey. They shared a bill at the Royal Theater in Baltimore, Smith leading a band for Shirley & Lee while Marchan worked as a single. Huey’s “Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu” on Ace, co-billing his studio group, christened the Clowns, was just beginning to break back home; Smith joined forces with Marchan in June of ‘57 to create a zany vocal aggregation by that name so they could do their own thing onstage and in the studio. Since Smith wasn’t a strong lead singer, Marchan would handle that aspect of the presentation.
The transition wasn’t immediate. Ace pressed up a second solo Marchan single later that summer pairing two more jaunty city blues, Bobby’s own “I Can’t Stop Loving You” (no relation to the Don Gibson country classic of the same title) and “I’ll Never Let You Go,” its creation credited to someone named Booker (young New Orleans piano genius James Booker comes to mind, but the song isn’t listed in his BMI queue).
Left in the can from this date were the piano-pounding rocker “I Know” and Bobby’s revival of Faye Adams’ steamy 1954 R&B chart-topper “Hurts Me To My Heart,” penned by prolific New York songsmiths Charles Singleton and Rose Marie McCoy (they wrote Nappy Brown’s “Piddily Patter Patter,” the Eagles’ “Tryin’ To Get To You,” Little Willie John’s “Letter From My Darling,” Ruth Brown’s “Mambo Baby,” and plenty more together in addition to their separate exploits with a pen).
But rock and roll was now where it was at from a sales perspective. The hilarious antics of Huey and his Clowns (at one uproarious outdoor performance at New Orleans’ Municipal Auditorium, they modeled black tux coats and Bermuda shorts) were more attuned to the teenage market than Bobby’s heartfelt blues outings. Marchan participated in Huey and the Clowns’ massive ‘58 singalong smash “Don’t You Just Know It” and fronted its equally seminal flip “High Blood Pressure” as well as the similarly madcap follow-ups “Havin A Good Time” and “Well I’ll Be John Brown.”
Since Marchan’s name was worth keeping in the spotlight, Vincent occasionally took a couple of sides by Huey and the Clowns and pressed them up under Bobby’s handle. Such was the case with the riotous “Rockin Behind The Iron Curtain,” a Cold War classic issued in early ‘59 sporting a wailing sax solo from Robert Parker, still seven years away from his own dance smash “Barefootin’.” The vocal interplay between Marchan and the Clowns was priceless; these guys really were out to have a good time, as their song had insisted. There are obvious vocal differences between the issued take and the alternate also aboard the compilation; Bobby’s rib-tickling improvisation “Hey comrade, pull down the shade! Here comes the man!” shifted to an Amos ‘n Andy riff on the alternate (the Clowns’ vocal patterns and blend clearly changed too).
Its opposite side “You Can’t Stop Her,” like “Iron Curtain” a Huey concoction, was no less boisterous; New Orleans rock and roll didn’t come much wilder, and Marchan had the incendiary pipes to thoroughly ignite the number. A cute “Oh Me Oh My,” unissued at the time, may also come from this session. It’s anyone’s guess as to when Bobby waxed the charming “Tiddley Wink,” another unreleased-at-the-time gem.
“Hush Your Mouth” likely also comes from this date, though Johnny held onto the track until the summer of 1960, when Marchan was riding the wave of his biggest smash for his new label. It’s prime Huey and the Clowns, Bobby rattling the studio walls with his rowdy front work. For unknown reasons, Vincent paired it with “Quit My Job,” which actually featured fellow Clown “Scarface” John Williams in the lead role instead of Bobby even though Marchan was listed as its artist on the label. It’s here for the sake of completion, along with the obvious fact that it’s a solid effort (Bobby may be in the background chorus; the Clowns resembled a revolving door when it came to personnel).
Perhaps Marchan wouldn’t have left Ace in his rearview mirror had Vincent unleashed his hard-driving rendition of “Loberta,” which Huey penned for him, in its original form. But Johnny had fallen in love with the concept of white teen idols; he had one in his stable with Jimmy Clanton, whose “Just A Dream” was a mammoth pop seller during the summer of 1958, and he was looking to make another of handsome Frankie Ford, who had a real feel for belting rocking R&B. So Johnny wiped Bobby’s vocal off “Loberta” and replaced it with Frankie’s, changing the name of the title lass to “Roberta.”
“Being a white act--and white acts were selling better than black acts--the young girls that were buying the record could relate to ‘Roberta,’ and not ‘Loberta,’” reasoned the late Ford. “‘Loberta’ was a black name. So they could relate to that a lot easier.” Frankie marveled at the dual 88s attack on the track. “That is Huey Smith and James Booker,” he revealed. “There’s two pianos on ‘Roberta.’ That is impossible on one piano. That was a big secret.”
Vincent did the same thing with another potent Smith rocker, “Sea Cruise,” removing the duet vocal of Huey and lone female Clown Gerri Hall with that of Ford and twinning it with the newly retitled “Roberta” as Frankie’s second single. The strategy proved hugely successful, “Sea Cruise” making Frankie a star during the early months of 1959. But Smith soured on Ace because the royalties weren’t up to par on his hits, so Johnny lost his invaluable session pianist and bandleader when he defected to Imperial, where trumpet-blowing bandleader Dave Bartholomew handled A&R, in the summer of ‘60.
Speaking of defections, Marchan bid Ace adieu as well, but not because of “Loberta.” When Marchan proposed a two-sided cover of tenor sax blaster Big Jay McNeely’s “There’s Something On Your Mind” with a melodramatic B-side recitation reminiscent of Bobby’s major influence Larry Darnell, Johnny took a pass. McNeely’s original version, with Little Sonny Warner handling the vocal, had just been a Top Five R&B hit the previous year on Hunter Hancock and Roger Davenport’s Los Angeles-based Swingin’ label, so Vincent’s reaction wasn’t altogether unreasonable.
“‘There Is Something On Your Mind’ was my biggest hit. I paid $25 for it,” said the late McNeely, who acquired the song from singer Rocky Wilson. “When I was playing with the guy, I said, ‘Man, this is a hit!’ He was singing with the Rivingtons (still known as the Sharps at that point). In fact, he wrote the song in my wife’s house. What happened was, he said, ‘Give me $25!’ I handed him the money. I said, ‘I’ve gotta get this tune!’ So I recorded it in this guy’s (Joe Boles in Seattle) basement, and went back and got it the next year, and I took it to all the deejays. And they said, ‘Oh, no. This ain’t nothing.’ So Hunter Hancock and I were very close. He said, ‘Big Jay, this is nothing. But I’ll put it out because we’re friends.’
“I was backing Bobby Darin and Chuck Berry. I was only getting $150 a night. I had a six-piece band. But I knew I had a hit record. Got to San Francisco and put it on the air with Rockin’ Lucky, and that was it, man. People started calling all the stations. Nobody in town had it but him. They were calling the radio station, and the disc jockeys were calling the stores!
I finished the tour with them up to Seattle and I came back with B.B. (King), and we drew 5000. Then everybody covered us. The Hollywood Flames covered us, put it out in Pittsburgh. Bobby Marchan cut it in New York. So they thought I was covering them, but they was covering us!”
Vincent’s reticence spurred Bobby to pitch his idea to Bobby Robinson, owner of Harlem-based Fire Records. Robinson was more receptive. They met up in Chicago (not New York) to lay it on tape with guitarist Lefty Bates leading the studio band. Marchan had the last laugh when Part 2 of what he called “There’s Something On Your Mind” sailed to the top of the R&B hit parade in July of 1960. It was a violent tale of obsessive love and shocking murder when Bobby learned he’d been betrayed, the narrative sandwiched between musical interludes (Part 1 was a reasonably faithful cover of Big Jay’s original version with Warner up front). That doesn’t seem like something that would garner widespread airplay on Top 40 radio, but it somehow climbed to #31 pop nonetheless.
That wasn’t Marchan’s first Fire platter, however. Robinson’s imprint, whose star-studded talent roster also included Chicago slide guitarist Elmore James, whooping Carolina harp blower Buster Brown, and Earl Lewis’ doo-wopping Channels, had already pressed up a Marchan single three months earlier that was clearly done in New Orleans (Bobby penned both sides). Not only did the rollicking “Snoopin’ And Accusin’” capture the loopy vibe of his previous sides on Ace, it second-billed “Scarface” John Williams and his vocal group, the Tick Tocks, designated on the label as “formerly Huey Smith’s Clowns,” which couldn’t have thrilled Vincent very much. Its plattermate “This Is The Life” was a slow, sumptuous doo-wop theme, Bobby’s distinctive lead tenor floating atop the Tick Tocks’ classy vocal harmonies.
Robinson had other New Orleans acts on his roster—Lee Dorsey, on the sister Fury imprint, would give him a 1961 R&B chart-topper with his playful “Ya Ya”—so it wasn’t too far out of the ordinary to see Robinson in the Crescent City to produce Marchan’s self-authored dance grinder “Booty Green,” with Allen Toussaint tickling the 88s. The basic New Orleans sound had changed in large part due to Toussaint’s artistic contributions, but Marchan adapted easily to the updated groove. Since Ace never got around to releasing Bobby’s version of “It Hurts Me To My Heart,” the singer recut the blues ballad for the opposite side of the autumn ‘60 single, complete with a brief snatch of dialog from a fawning female (seemingly Marchan himself) on the intro. Robinson offered no songwriter info on the label.
Right on its heels, Fire unleashed Marchan’s two-part remake of Chuck Willis’ tender blues ballad “You’re Still My Baby.” The ill-fated Atlanta blues shouter had enjoyed a major R&B seller with his composition in 1954 on Columbia’s OKeh subsidiary. Bobby brewed up another monolog for Part 2, preaching up a storm about his long-lost lady before the band kicked back in halfway through. The gimmick didn’t click on the charts a second time, however, perhaps because there was no murder spree closing out the narrative.
Marchan went head-to-head up against newcomer Maxine Brown’s original reading of her own sultry blues ballad “All In My Mind” at the start of 1961, but his Fire cover didn’t stand a commercial chance against Maxine’s original for Tony Bruno’s fledgling New York-based Nomar Records. Maybe that was because Brown was singing about her own life. She was working with a vocal group called the Manhattans (not the aggregation that scored so many soul hits during the ‘60s and ‘70s) when bass singer Freddy Johnson issued her a challenge one auspicious day, inadvertently leading to her first smash.
“One day I’m sitting there, and I’m angry at the world,” said Maxine. “Not the world, but at certain men. I’m sitting there steaming. The reason I was steaming, the leader of the group said, ‘You never donate anything to the group. Here, here’s a title. Go write something!’ And so that’s why I was sitting there steaming. How dare he just throw this title at me? So I’m thinking about all my past experiences in the short span that I was out there, and all of a sudden this melody came to me, and the words just started coming, and in about ten minutes I was through! And I wrote the song, and I presented it one day in rehearsal, and they said, ‘Okay.’ They just wanted to know whether I did it or not. No one flipped over it, nothing. So I just put it away until two years later.”
Brown’s new manager and future husband Mal Williams rescued her forgotten composition from undeserved oblivion. “We were looking for material, so he said, ‘Don’t you have anything?’ I said, ‘No!’ He kept pestering me for some songs, some original songs. I said, ‘Okay, the only thing I have is when I wrote with this group, the Manhattans.’ I had this old song. It was ‘All In My Mind.’ And he said, ‘Well, this is better than the stuff we’re going in the studio with.’ And we went in and recorded that. Really, the flip side was supposed to be the A-side. But it turned out ‘All In My Mind’ was. And that demo, as we made it, is still the same demo today. That was the beginning of my career in rhythm and blues.”
Bruno loved the master, and rightly so—it sailed to #2 R&B and #19 pop during the early months of 1961, launching his short-lived Nomar logo in style (alas, it was out of business only a few months later). Marchan’s cover was eminently heartfelt, producer Robinson following Leroy Kirkland’s original arrangement right down to the blustering trombone until Bobby broke out one of his patented recitations over flowery organ halfway through.
There was no writer or publishing credit on the opposite side of the 45. “I Miss You So” was a revival of Lillian Offitt’s strutting blues shuffle, known as “Miss You So” when Ernie Young’s Nashville-based Excello label pressed up her original in 1957 (Excello house scribe Morgan Babb, mostly known for his gospel proclivities, penned the tune). Bobby sang the first half in a sky-high female range, then effortlessly switched into his lower pitch following a savage two-chorus guitar break before ending the number with a one-man dialog between his two quarreling lovebirds. All in all, a yeoman performance.
Robinson must have decided covers weren’t the way to go from there; Marchan’s next Fire offering in the spring of ‘61 paired a couple of his originals. “What You Don’t Know Don’t Hurt You” sounds like another New Orleans master (maybe from the “Booty Green” date), an uncompromising up-tempo workout with the Tick Tocks or someone that sounded like them bopping along behind Bobby and a slashing guitar break. The majestic soul ballad “I Need Someone” on the opposite side benefitted from churchy vocal backing and sanctified piano chording that urged a particularly passionate performance from Marchan.
After a long hiatus from his Fire release slate, Robinson gave Bobby one last chance to nail a hit in the summer of ‘62 with the stately ballad “Yes, It’s Written All Over Your Face,” transporting Marchan into the uptown soul milieu with its dignified violin section. Bobby’s yearning vocal was nothing short of gorgeous, soaring to the heavens. Marchan was one of its officially credited authors, along with Robinson and his well-heeled silent partner, Harlem restaurateur Clarence “Fats” Lewis, seldom hailed for his songwriting acumen despite his name turning up on a great many Fire and Fury releases in that alleged capacity.
Some effort was obviously given to making “Yes, It’s Written All Over Your Face” another lavish two-parter, judging from a pair of unreleased-at-the-time masters. Part 1 replaced the strings with a churchy vocal group, lending the ballad a delightfully bluesy tinge, and Part 2 was mostly a recitation before the band stepped back in near the end in what sounds like an abrupt edit. The same triumvirate was also credited as creating the other side of the 45, “Look At My Heart,” another strings-soaked entry that was the very definition of uptown soul with its bracing up-tempo Latin feel.
The demise of Fire meant that Robinson never had a chance to issue Marchan’s recasting of Guitar Slim’s epochal 1954 R&B chart-pacer “The Things That I Used To Do,” which the self-destructive blues axeman penned under his real name of Eddie Jones and waxed in New Orleans for Art Rupe’s Specialty Records with Ray Charles on piano. Bobby handled Part 1 pretty much the way Slim did in downbeat blues fashion, the studio guitarist copping Slim’s licks accurately and adding some mandolin-style picking on his brief solo. Part 2 contained two recitations, one at its top and the other midway through, but in both cases the band soon returned and the blues rolled anew. The Fire catalog was acquired by Larry Uttal’s Amy-Mala-Bell combine, Uttal dusting the two-parter off for a belated 1965 debut as “Things I Used To Do” on his Sphere Sound logo, complete with a plug for a new Marchan LP of the Fire material that Robinson should have compiled but never did.
Bobby moved over to Memphis-based Volt Records in 1963, thanks to a recommendation from his friend Otis Redding, for a two-part revival of Donnie Elbert’s “What Can I Do” and then an encore coupling two originals. Nashville producer Buddy Killen took a supervisory interest after that, inviting Marchan onto his Dial Records roster later in 1964 for a series of four singles (the second was the original version of the often-covered “Get Down With It,” which Bobby wrote).
Killen also produced Bobby’s five platters for Philadelphia-based Cameo Records in 1966-67, notably his self-authored “Shake Your Tambourine,” only his second R&B chart entry under his own name, and his last one, a revival of “Rockin’ Pneumonia.” After a last attempt at another Dial hit at the close of ‘67, Marchan and Killen temporarily dissolved their working relationship.
Only a few months later, Bobby landed at Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Gamble Records in Philly for “(Ain’t No Reason) For Girls To Be Lonely” (the gilt-edged duo wrote and produced the theme). But things got comparatively sparse for Marchan over the course of the next decade, with scattered 45s for River City, a relaunched Ace, Dial again, Sansu, and Mercury (something titled “Disco Rabbit” that Bobby scribed in 1977, with Killen producing him again).
Bobby did a lot of his later singing and emcee gigs in his adopted New Orleans environs dressed in drag, returning to his female impersonator roots. He became involved in booking shows and promotion all the way into the hip hop era, as well as operating his own label. Liver cancer killed Marchan on December 5, 1999 in Gretna, Louisiana at age 69, but his place as a pioneer in the New Orleans rhythm and blues community was long assured before that.
These two CDs by Bobby Marchan are an instant party!
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Blues Records 1943-1970, Volume Two L to Z, by Mike Leadbitter, Leslie Fancourt and Paul Pelletier (London: Record Information Services, 1994)
45cat website: www.45cat.com
Huey “Piano” Smith and the Rocking Pneumonia Blues, by John Wirt (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2014)
I Hear You Knockin’: The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues, by Jeff Hannusch (Ville Platte, LA: Swallow Pubs., Inc., 1989)
Independent website: “Obituary: Bobby Marchan,” by Spencer Leigh: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-bobby-marchan-1133124.html
Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles 1955-1990, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1991)
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1942-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1988)
Nervous Man Nervous: Big Jay McNeely and the Rise of the Honking Tenor Sax!, by Jim Dawson (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Pubs., 1994)
Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers, by John Broven (Urbana, IL & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009)
Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
WWOZ—A Closer Walk website: https://acloserwalknola.com/places/club-tiajuana/
YouTube website: www.youtube.com