Fenton Robinson - Monday Morning Boogie And Blues - Extended Liner Notes
Fenton Robinson - Monday Morning Boogie And Blues
Fenton Robinson was the thinking man’s bluesman. Subtle and jazzy in his complex guitar work with a richly burnished voice to match, he didn’t fit the standard Chicago blues mold. Perhaps that was because he didn’t follow the traditional route up from Mississippi. Texas immortal T-Bone Walker was his early role model rather than the usual Delta giants, and some of Walker’s smooth urban sheen rubbed off.
“T-Bone, he was my influence,” said the late Robinson.
Born September 23, 1935 in Minter City, Mississippi, outside of Greenwood in Leflore County, and raised on a plantation, Fenton experienced both sides of the sanctified/secular divide growing up (as did so many developing musicians of his generation). “I was a spiritual singer, you know. I was born with that. Came up a kid singing spirituals, and I turned from spirituals to blues,” said Robinson.
“On the weekend, my parents would let us go to town. I’d sit around and listen to the box, the jukebox. Put a nickel in--it was a nickel then--and listen to guys like T-Bone Walker, ‘Big Boy’ Crudup, Lowell Fulson, Muddy Waters. And then I got interested in playing blues. B.B. King was sort of an influence singing blues, because he's been out there popular longer than any blues artists been around.”
Although he plucked at a piece of baling wire nailed to the wall (a longstanding Mississippi tradition) as a youngster, Robinson didn’t fully gravitate to the guitar until moving up to Memphis in 1951. “There was a friend of mine taught me how to play by the name of Charles McGowan. He was playing, and I bought myself a $13 Stella guitar. We used to walk the streets at night, playing and singing,” said the late Robinson. “They always had an amateur show at, I think it was the Palace or the New Daisy Theater there on Beale Street in Memphis. And we would go there every Wednesday night and be on the talent show.”
At the beginning of 1954 or thereabouts, Robinson and McGowan moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where the two had a band. Fenton would largely remain in Little Rock until 1961, though he and McGowan’s gigging radius extended quite a bit further than that. “We worked around Memphis; Little Rock; Missouri; St. Louis; Cairo, Illinois,” said Robinson.
By 1957, the young guitarist was ready to make his debut on wax. He returned to Memphis long enough to make a solitary single for Lester Bihari’s soon-to-be-defunct Meteor label, a subsidiary of L.A.-based Modern Records. Backed by his band, the Dukes, with his name misspelled as “Fention” and McGowan manning the other guitar, Robinson roared the Latin-tinged “Tennessee Woman,” laying a blistering guitar solo over J.W. Hewlett’s clattering drum pattern. B.B.’s early high-end crying vocal style informed Fenton’s aggressive singing on the downbeat flip “Crying Out Loud,” his stinging rapid-fire fretwork exhibiting B.B.’s stamp.
McGowan was gone by the time Fenton signed with Don Robey’s Houston-based Duke Records in 1958. “A guy by the name of Earl Forest recommended me to Don Robey,” said Robinson. “He was okay with me. We got along real well.” It was a package deal; bassist Larry Davis, another young bluesman with a dynamic set of pipes, was playing with Fenton, and he signed with Duke as well. Robinson added his muscular guitar to Larry’s Duke debut, “Texas Flood,” revived many years down the line by Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Cut in May of ‘58 in Houston as his first Duke platter, “The Freeze,” credited to Fention and the Castle Rockers, was something of a misnomer—a cover of an instrumental by Houston’s Albert Collins on the tiny Kangaroo imprint, with Robinson trying to sound like icy Albert as much as possible. Far more indicative of Fenton’s (or as Duke still insisted, “Fention”) strengths was his next Duke offering, issued at virtually the same time. The swaggering shuffle “Mississippi Steamboat,” supplied by trumpet-blowing Duke bandleader Joe Scott, boasted a hair-raising King-style vocal and a hip give-and-take between Fenton’s axe and a saxist (perhaps David Dean) midway through, with Davis supplying thundering electric bass underpinning. Robinson joined Scott to pen the opposite side, a hard-driving “Crazy Crazy Loving” with Fenton’s supple fretwork and soaring vocals again shining bright.
Fenton was back in Houston in 1959 for another session that produced his last two singles for Robey. The elegant downbeat “As The Years Go By” was dispatched to the pressing plant first with excellent reason: it was a masterpiece, Fenton’s hair-raising vocal and fleet-fingered guitar work (or was it house axeman Johnny Brown?) framing its regretful lyrics. Robey copped writing credit as Deadric Malone, but Fenton set the record straight. “Peppermint Harris wrote that tune for me,” said Robinson. “I get a lot of inspiration out of other peoples' tunes. It makes me feel good.” The romping Robinson jump “School Boy,” sporting a vicious guitar break, adorned the B-side.
The follow-up was just as brilliant. Fenton revisited “Tennessee Woman” in far more polished form; Duke’s house band, driven by bassist Hamp Simmons, was absolutely raging, and the lickety-split piano solo, credited to New Orleans wunderkind James Booker even though his fellow Crescent City 88s ace Edward Frank was added as co-writer beside Robinson, was brilliant. “Malone” purchased the exceptional flip “You’ve Got To Pass This Way Again” from some anonymous songscribe; Robinson wrung every ounce of emotion from the heartrending blues ballad in front of forceful horns and Simmons’ rumbling bass line. Either Fenton dubbed his non-stop guitar riffing onto the track prior to laying down his vocal or Brown took care of it.
Robinson finally bid Little Rock adieu. “I came to Chicago in 1961,” he said. “I just wanted to travel around, you know, and see what I could get into.” It didn’t take Fenton long to find a regular gig. “Started working down at Theresa’s Lounge, 48th and Indiana, and I worked there four or five years. Worked around the city. Pepper’s Lounge—that’s when he was out on 43rd Street and Vincennes there.” For a while, Fenton played in Junior Wells’ band. “We all worked around together, like Otis Rush, Mighty Joe Young, Buddy Guy,” said Robinson.
Never content to rest on his laurels, the guitarist took lessons downtown at Lyon & Healy for a time, then switched to private instruction from Reggie Boyd, an exceptionally light-fingered axeman who played the dazzling solos on Jimmy Rogers’ ‘59 Chess waxing of “Rock This House.” Fenton was versatile enough to back grizzled harpist Sonny Boy Williamson #2 onstage as well as saxist Prince James and be equally at home in both settings. “I worked with Prince James here in Chicago off and on for about four or five years, playing jazz,” said Fenton. “Great tenor player. We had a lot of fun together.”
Recording opportunities proved scarce for a while. Pianist Detroit Jr. finally hooked Fenton up with the U.S.A. label in 1966 (the previous year, Junior had nailed his own U.S.A. hit with the wry “Call My Job”). Junior and Marshall Neal were responsible for the marvelous swinger “Say You’re Leavin’,” with Junior tinkling the ivories and a solid rhythm section of bassist Bobby Anderson and drummer Billy Davenport. Robinson revived Little Richard’s downbeat “From My Heart” on the B-side, peeling off a gorgeously intricate guitar solo and giving the lyrics every bit as much feeling as Richard himself had.
Fenton’s next recording stop was Sunny Sawyer’s Palos Records, where he finally seemingly struck paydirt with the gripping slow blues “Somebody (Loan Me A Dime)” in early 1967. Pianist Alberto Gianquinto, soon to join Santana, joined bassist Anderson and B.B. King’s drummer Sonny Freeman in the driving rhythm section, and Fenton was on fire vocally and on his axe. Palos didn’t have had much promotional muscle, and after a strong start, the record didn’t make it much past the city limits. “It was a small company, and they couldn’t distribute the record like it should be,” he admitted. A funky, horn-laced “I Believe” was its plattermate.
When Boz Scaggs revived “Somebody (Loan Me A Dime)” in marathon fashion on his first domestic album for Atlantic in 1969 with Duane Allman on guitar, it should have resulted in a financial windfall for Fenton—but Scaggs’ album credits claimed he wrote it rather than Robinson. “I didn’t have it covered, so it was just laying there for somebody to pick it up. But I’ll never make that mistake again.” The error was eventually rectified, but the damage was done. It was the first of several bad breaks that would dog Fenton in years to come.
Husband-and-wife team Mel Collins and Joshie Jo Armstead ran Giant Productions and its sister Giant label, the latter snapping Fenton up later in 1967. The production company leased smashes by Ruby Andrews and Garland Green to larger concerns, and Armstead had her own national R&B hit on the Giant label the next year with her seductive “A Stone Good Lover.”
Saxist John Cameron was one of the principals when Fenton waxed “Farmers Son” (written by singer Jesse Anderson and Milton Middlebrook, an alias for Collins) and “Let Me Rock You To Sleep” (the work of Fenton and Middlebrook) for the Giant label in ‘67, backed by bassist James Green, drummer Bill Warren, and punchy horns. This was funky, modern upbeat blues with a soul tinge and plenty of commercial potential, but it didn’t happen chart-wise.
Ditto his 1968 Giant encore, both sides written by the guitarist and produced by Collins, with saxist Eddie Silvers providing the arrangements. The funk-laden “You’re Cracking Me Up” rode a churning bass line, its blasting brass rendering it as close to soul as blues. The sumptuous down-tempo blues B-side “I Put My Baby In High Society” was right in Fenton’s wheelhouse, with plenty of rapid-fire fretting. Jesse Anderson supervised Robinson’s other Giant platter, the tasty mid-tempo surger “There Goes My Baby” (he wrote it with Fenton and Middlebrook), which came attached to the stripped-down instrumental “Fen-Ton A Soul.”
John Richbourg, the extremely popular Nashville R&B deejay whose nightly broadcasts over the 50,000-watt airwaves of WDIA radio under the handle of John R could be heard across much of the country (few of his listeners suspected that he was white), produced records on the side for the Sound Stage 7 imprint. Richbourg’s main artist was soul singer Joe Simon, but SS7’s talent roster also included Sam Baker, Roscoe Shelton, Roscoe Robinson, Sir Lattimore Brown, Jimmy Church, and Ella Washington.
John R brought Fenton aboard in early 1970, and that’s where this Sunset Boulevard compilation picks up his story. Producer Richbourg initially steered him into a soul bag with a cover of Roscoe Robinson’s “Leave You In The Arms Of Your Other Man,” which Roscoe had out himself the year before on Atlantic. Clearly, the crunchy lead guitar on the insistent theme wasn’t Fenton, but the overall feel was soul with chanting chorines and arranger Bergen White’s thrusting horns. Fenton referenced abandoning the Windy City for sunny Florida on the self-penned opposite side “The Getaway,” a straightahead blues with the rocked-out axeman back.
Bassist/producer Tim Drummond assembled an iteration of the resident SS7 band (keyboardist Bob Wilson, guitarists Mac Gayden and Troy Seals, harpist Ed Kollis, and drummer Karl Himmel) to record with Fenton at Nashville’s Music City Studio with Elvis’ longtime lead guitarist Scotty Moore engineering. Born April 20, 1940 in Canton, located in central Illinois, Drummond played with Chicago rocker Eddie Cash before settling in Cincinnati and recording with James Brown at King Records (he was Brown’s touring bassist as well). Nashville was Drummond’s next home base. He became an anchor of SS7’s house band, his nimble bass pushing Simon’s ‘69 R&B chart-topper “The Chokin’ Kind.”
Fenton’s grinding 1971 revival of slide guitar wizard Elmore James’ 1960 hit “The Sky Is Crying,” the album’s lead track, was chosen as his next SS7 single in 1971. It was paired with the simmering soul ballad “Let Me Come On Home,” penned by house songscribe Allen Orange and previously cut by Fenton’s former SS7 labelmates Bobby King in ‘65 and Sam Baker the next year.
SS7’s Seventy 7 imprint released Robinson’s 1972 album Monday Morning Boogie & Blues, its front cover artwork involving a drawing of a zebra in a jungle with no mention of the performer therein. Robinson’s input was curiously limited to vocals on the album’s Nashville recordings. “It was just the musicians, they done the track and I put my voice on it,” he said. “They were sorry after they recorded the album that I didn’t play more guitar on it.”
Producer Drummond and the SS7 combo supported Fenton as he revived a series of blues classics dominated by Howlin’ Wolf’s songbook. Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning,” “Little Red Rooster,” and “Moanin’ For My Baby” were all updated, along with Sonny Boy #2’s “Don’t Start Me Talking” and T-Bone’s immortal “Stormy Monday.” There was also a fresh reading of “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” pounded out with punishing force. Although listed on the album cover as being done in Memphis, Fenton’s own hard-charging “Give You Some Air” sounds like another Nashville performance, prominent harmonica and heavy guitar dominating its backing.
The LP sported one memorable exception that was cut in Memphis at Fame Studios’ short-lived outpost with Sonny Limbo behind the board and a band consisting of guitarist Mark Tidwell, keyboardist Sandy Kaye, bassist Neal Dover, and Robert “Tarp” Tarrant, long associated with Jerry Lee Lewis, on drums. “Little Turch,” a Robinson original, was a delicious horn-cushioned slow blues with backing that was a lot closer to what Robinson was used to up in Chicago, inspiring a thoroughly engaging vocal and plenty of Fenton’s impeccable lead guitar.
A number of extra SS7-generated tracks turned up later on. The Richbourg-produced “She’s A Wiggler,” likely done in Memphis, squeaked out as a Seventy 7 single in early ‘73. Another of Fenton’s own compositions, it was a sparkling bongo-laced gem with a highly danceable groove, skin-tight horns, and several choruses of slicing Robinson guitar.
The rest of the haul waited considerably longer than that to see light of day. A revival of Allen Orange’s “I’m Not Through Lovin’ You,” intensely introduced by Sir Lattimore Brown on SS7 in late 1965, suited Fenton’s uncommonly versatile pipes quite well. Rock-oriented axe was again in evidence, but a fat horn section kept the atmosphere strictly R&B.
A galloping “Sideman” was in something of a hybrid mode, perky chorines and horns signaling an intention to issue it as an R&B single despite a generous helping of southern rock-style slide guitar. “Mellow Fellow” might have pulled serious coin on the chitlin’ circuit had it been properly released on SS7, the languid minor-key blues benefitting from an ominous arrangement that brought the best from Robinson vocally as well as his dexterous guitar work. A downright joyous “I Wanna Ooh!” boasted muscular horns and incorporated an unexpected little guitar interlude.
“Laughing And Crying Blues” was thoroughly modern, lowdown and sinister with Fenton summoning precisely the right intensity for his vocal. Some highly unusual flamenco guitar and a string section really set what was then called “I Fell In Love One Time” apart. Robinson would rescue the minor-key stunner from undeserved oblivion on his first Alligator album as “You Don’t Know What Love Is.”
That widely acclaimed 1974 Alligator LP, entitled Somebody Loan Me a Dime (marking the third time he recorded his signature theme), finally put Robinson on the international map among blues devotees. Exquisitely produced by Alligator boss Bruce Iglauer and Fenton himself at Chicago’s Sound Studios with Stu Black at the controls and an extremely sympathetic combo that included rhythm guitarist Mighty Joe Young, bassist Cornelius “Mule” Boyson, and drummer Tony Gooden, the set saw Fenton revisiting past triumphs (“The Getaway,” “Directly From My Heart,” “Say You’re Leavin’,” Davis’ “Texas Flood”) as well as fresh material.
“I really like the way that came out,” Robinson said. “My sound is based on good blues sound. I use a lot of chord progressions.
“Over a period of years, if you stay with it, you come up with beautiful sounds, beautiful chord progressions. I’ve been studying for a long time, off and on. I never do it every day. I may study three or four months out of the year, something like that, then I lay back. I don’t like to study too much. I don’t think it’s good to study too much.”
Somebody Loan Me a Dime should have made Fenton a major blues luminary, but bad luck intruded again. Robinson had fatally struck a pedestrian while behind the wheel of his auto back in 1969. He’d appealed his involuntary manslaughter conviction for years, but the court system decreed that he serve time at Joliet Penitentiary at the beginning of 1975 just as his album was breaking. A letter-writing campaign freed him after nine months of imprisonment, but his momentum was seriously impacted.
“I had a little accident,” he explained. “That hurt more than anything.”
Even though he didn’t typify Alligator’s rowdy “Genuine Houserockin’ Music” credo, the man christened “the Mellow Blues Genius” by his Japanese fans maintained a steady gigging itinerary once he was back on the street. He made a 1977 encore set for Alligator, I Hear Some Blues Downstairs, with an exuberant title track as well as a pair of T-Bone remakes (“West Side Baby” and “Tell Me What’s The Reason”) and a revival of “As The Years Go Passing By.” Although Fenton and Alligator eventually parted ways, the label picked up his 1984 album Nightflight, first out on the Dutch Black Magic imprint and produced by Robinson and Dick Shurman, for American consumption.
The live performances constituting the second disc of Sunset Boulevard’s Robinson collection present him working hard in front of an appreciative crowd, eschewing empty theatrics for advanced, soul-steeped musicianship. The mainstays of Fenton’s repertoire are scattered throughout his set: “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” “As The Years Go Passing By,” and Jimmy Rushing’s “Going To Chicago” and Little Willie John’s “Country Girl” (aka “Home At Last”) from his first Alligator album along with bandstand favorites by Rosco Gordon (“Just A Little Bit”), Lowell Fulson (“Everyday I Have The Blues”), and James Davis (“Blue Monday”). Robinson wasn’t afraid to push the envelope; his sweet rendition of the Temptations’ “My Girl” effortlessly made the Motown oldie his own.
Chicago eventually lost Fenton, first to downstate Springfield (where he taught blues in the city’s school system) and later to Rockford, Illinois. He made a memorable main stage appearance at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival in front of a massive throng of fans. But Robinson underwent an operation the next year to remove a brain tumor that he believed was a remnant of a 1952 auto accident.
“We turned over three or four times down in Memphis. I was a teenager. You know, I could carry it--young and strong,” he said. “It was there. I didn’t know it was bothering me as much until recently it started doing things. It started cutting me off of things. I was started to get nauseated, things like that.”
Sadly, the tumor grew back and turned out to be cancerous. On November 25, 1997, the Mellow Blues Genius died in Rockford, much too young at age 62. He was a unique presence on the Windy City’s then-teeming blues circuit—and a singular acquisition for Sound Stage 7 during his pre-fame years.
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Alligator Records website: https://www.alligator.com/artists/Fenton-Robinson/
Blues Records 1943-1970 “The Bible of the Blues” Volume Two L to Z, by Mike Leadbitter, Leslie Fancourt, and Paul Pelletier (London, UK: Record Information Services, 1994)
BMI website: www.repertoire.bmi.com
Chicago Soul, by Robert Pruter (Urbana, IL & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991)
Duke/Peacock Records—An Illustrated History with Discography, by Galen Gart and Roy C. Ames (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Pubs., 1990)
45cat website: http://www.45cat.com/artist/fenton-robinson
Living Blues No. 1970, 1986: “Living Blues Interview: Fenton Robinson,” by Ron Sakolsky and Jim O’Neal
Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenton_Robinson