Damita Jo born August 5, 1930

Damita Jo DeBlanc (August 5, 1930 – December 25, 1998), known professionally as Damita Jo, was an American singer and comedian who remains best known for the million-selling 1960 smash "I'll Save the Last Dance for You," her ingenious riposte to the Drifters' "Save the Last Dance for Me." 

Born in Austin, Texas, she was the daughter of Herbert and Latrelle (Plummer) DeBlanc, and she showed singing ability at a very early age. During World War II the family relocated to Santa Barbara, California, where her father was stationed in the United States Navy. She attended high school there but periodically returned to Austin to visit relatives. DeBlanc attended Samuel Huston College in Austin and the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1949 with the backing of pioneering Los Angeles disc jockey Joe Adams she landed a two-month residency at the local Club Oasis in Los Angeles. Signed to Discovery Records, DeBlanc, known simply as Damito Jo, released her debut single, “Until the Real Thing Comes Along.” 

                                       

In 1951 Damita Jo joined the rhythm-and-blues group Steve Gibson & the 5 Red Caps, making her recorded debut on their single "I'm to Blame." Damita Jo was not only the featured vocalist on the Red Caps' 1952 hit "I Went to Your Wedding," but two years later became Gibson's wife. As the group's fortunes floundered, so did their marriage, they divorced in 1958, but she remained with the group until 1960. 

Signing to Mercury Records by producer Shelby Singleton, Damita Jo supported her Steve Allen-penned debut single "It Takes a Little Loneliness" with an appearance on Allen's late-night television showcase. Despite the publicity the record was not a hit, but she scored a Top 20 R&B smash with the sumptuous follow-up "I'll Save the Last Dance for You," written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. With 1961's "I'll Be There," an answer song to Ben E. King's "Stand by Me," Damita Jo reached number 12 on the Billboard pop charts. That same year she married Biddy Wood, her manager, and they had a son.

In 1962 she recorded "Dance with a Dolly (With a Hole in her Stocking)", previously made famous by the Andrews Sisters and Bill Haley, for Mercury Records. Subsequent singles like "I Had Someone Else Before I Had You" and "I'll Get Along Somehow" stalled, and in the wake of the 1962 live LP Damita Jo at the Diplomat, a downturn in Damita Jo’s popularity led to Mercury’s termination of her contract.

She then signed with Epic and scored a minor chart entry with 1965's "If You Go Away." On May 9, 1967, she was honoured by the mayor and city council in Austin, Texas, on "Damita Jo Day" and by having a street named in her honour. Damita Jo gave birth to a daughter in 1970, but the girl died of sickle cell anemia three years later. With her recording career in decline, she turned to performing on the supper club circuit in the 1970s. She also toured with comedian Redd Foxx and appeared on his television show. In 1977 she toured with standup comedian Redd Foxx, and also played Atlantic City and backed up such greats as Ray Charles, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton. 

During her career she recorded on many labels, including Discovery, RCA Victor, Mercury, Epic, Melic, and her own label, Black Masters. In 1983 she also composed and recorded a song entitled "The Color of Your Skin Makes No Difference" which has been used as a part of a program for students in the public school system in Baltimore, Maryland. Following a 1984 Atlantic City residency in support of Joey Bishop, Damita Jo announced her retreat from secular R&B, performing contemporary gospel for the remainder of her career.

By the mid-1980s Damita Jo focused on performing strictly gospel music. After a long battle with respiratory illness, Damita Jo died on Christmas Day 1998 in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 68.

Singer Janet Jackson, whose middle name is Damita Jo, named her album Damita (2004) after DeBlanc. In 2009 Damita Jo DeBlanc was inducted into the Austin Music Memorial.

(Edited from Texas State Historical Association, Wikipedia & AllMusic) 

Mel Henke born August 4, 1915

Mel Henke (August 4, 1915 – March 31, 1979) was an American jazz pianist, Chicago bandleader, composer, arranger and jingle writer.

Henke was born in Chicago. Illinois and studied at the Chicago College of Music. He began to work professionally in music playing piano in the house band at the Chez Paris nightclub in Chicago, then working in small combos in clubs around the city in the late 1930s with Mitch Todd, Frank Snyder, Stephen Leonard and others. He recorded his first solo record "Henke Stomp / Lady Be Good" for the Collectors Item label in 1939, then recorded a few sides with Bill Davison during February 1940. In 1943 He joined Horace Heidt's band, replacing Frankie Carle, who left to form his own group. He worked in radio and television after World War II, and performed on camera on George Gobel's and Gary Moore's variety shows. He also worked behind leaders such as saxophonist Bud Freeman.

By the early '40s he had settled in Los Angeles, and for ten years or so continued to work as a performer. Henke recorded many jazz standards with his own arrangements, including a 1946 piano solo on Bix Beiderbecke's 1928 "In a Mist". In 1947 he recorded a few sides with Vido Musso & His Orchestra. Henke usually led a trio with Bill Newman on guitar and Bob Reed on bass, supplemented by Shelly Manne and Sammy Weiss on drums. This outfit landed a deal to make a pair of albums on the Contemporary label, which is where jazz buffs inevitably come across him. 

                                      

Henke's unusual career that included recording downright weird tunes such as "Shock Treatment," "Cocky Coo-Coo Clock," and "Frenzied Flight," as well as creating what might be one of the masterpieces in the genre of lounge music, although fans of the type of challenging jazz often presented on this label may find the concoctions of Henke a bit bubbly; his followers seem to drift in more from the aforementioned loungey or space age waiting rooms. just about the time he called his performing career quits.

In 1955, he joined the television department at Disney, where he composed most of their commercials and for a few television series, most notably , Disneyland, the first incarnation of Walt Disney's long-running series. He also became a partner at TV Spots, Inc., a production house that specialized in commercials. Unlike many musicians who dismissed commercial work as hack work, Henke took to the format immediately, and he was soon experimenting, adding sound effects and snatches of dialogue along with musical passages. He and graphic artist Eyvind Earle collaborated on numerous trailers for Hollywood movies, including "West Side Story." 

Inevitably, he created a series of albums in the early '60s combining these techniques with full-length musical performances and instrumental skullduggery. "La Dolce Henke", worth hunting down for its title alone, is considered his masterpiece.

Henke shows up in the rhythm section on some Louis Armstrong records, and meanwhile over in Nashville, he once successfully placed a song with Conway Twitty. Henke was trained to please in writing ad copy, an influence that has been considered both a pro and con factor in his recorded works. Perhaps Henke's greatest influence as a musician was in the advertising field itself, as he was innovative in producing attention-grabbing commercials of the '60s. His best-known jingles from over 2000 that he reputedly composed, included the Ajax cleanser "stronger than dirt" jingle, for Colgate-Palmolive, and "See the USA in Your Chevrolet" jingle for Chevrolet.

By the way, that's not Henke pictured on the top album cover -  it's actually San Francisco radio DJ Tom Donahue. According to the liner notes by Brother Cleve of Combustible Edison, it was a "bizarre marketing move...undoubtedly hoping for airplay in return."

Mel Henke died in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California, on March 31, 1979 (aged 63)

(Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & Space Age Pop)

Connie Converse born August 3, 1924

Elizabeth Eaton Converse (born August 3, 1924 – disappeared August 10, 1974) was an American singer-songwriter, best known under her professional name Connie Converse. A mysterious and deeply fascinating figure, she pursued her music in obscurity before vanishing completely from the face of the earth. 

Converse was born Elizabeth Eaton Converse in Laconia, New Hampshire in 1924. She was raised in Concord, New Hampshire, as the middle child in a strict Baptist family; her father was a minister and her mother was "musical", according to music historian David Garland. Converse attended Concord High School, where she was valedictorian and won eight academic awards, including an academic scholarship to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Though Connie had not shown much interest in instruments since abandoning her violin lessons in middle school, she began to teach herself guitar.

After two years' study, she left Mount Holyoke and moved to New York City, where she worked for the Academy Photo Offset printing house in New York's Flatiron District. She first lived in Greenwich Village, then in Hell's Kitchen and Harlem. She started calling herself Connie, a nickname she had acquired in New York. She began writing and recording her own songs, often plaintively beautiful storytelling folk songs recorded in her small apartment or by friends. She began smoking and drinking during this time, behaviours contrary to her religious upbringing. Possibly as a result, her parents rejected her music career. 

                                       

In 1954, Converse was encouraged by a friend to perform at a music salon hosted by the graphic artist and audio enthusiast Gene Deitch, who recorded the performance. Converse's only known public performance was a brief television appearance in 1954 on The Morning Show on CBS with Walter Cronkite, which Deitch had helped to arrange (unfortunately a recording of that appearance no longer exists). In 1956, she recorded an album for her brother Philip, Musicks (Volumes I and II). By 1961, Converse had grown frustrated trying to sell her music in New York. That year, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her brother was a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. Converse all but abandoned her musical interests, instead she worked in a secretarial job, and then as a writer for and managing editor of the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 1963. She played music for friends at parties, but not much more besides that. 

Around 1968–69, whist at the Institute of Pacific Affairs, Converse wrote a memo as a white member of People Against Racism, but lost her job when the institute landed in the cross hairs of the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee. Her family noted that Connie relied more heavily on smoking and drinking towards the end of her time living in Michigan. By 1973, Converse was burnt out and depressed. The offices of the Journal of Conflict Resolution, which meant so much to her, had moved to Yale at the end of 1972 after being "auctioned off" without her knowledge. This affected her deeply and her life seemed to hold no purpose or interest for her. After she suffered a nervous breakdown her colleagues and friends pooled their money to give her a six-month trip to England in hopes of improving her mood, to no avail. Her mother requested that she join her on a trip to Alaska, and Converse grudgingly agreed. 

Her displeasure with the trip appeared to have contributed to her decision to disappear. Around that time, Converse was told by doctors that she needed a hysterectomy, and the information appeared to have devastated her according to her brother. In August 1974, days after her 50th birthday, Converse wrote a series of letters to family and friends suggesting her intention to make a new life in New York City. Converse was expected to join an annual family trip to a lake, but by the time the letters were delivered, she had packed her belongings in her Volkswagen Beetle and driven away, never to be heard from again.

The events of her life following her disappearance remain unknown. Several years after she left, someone told her brother that they had seen a phone book listing for "Elizabeth Converse" in either Kansas or Oklahoma, but he never pursued the lead. About ten years after she disappeared, the family hired a private investigator in hopes of finding her. The investigator told them that even if he did find her, it was her right to disappear and he could not bring her back. After that, her family respected her decision to leave, and ceased looking for her.

In January 2004, her music was offered a public resurgence when engineer Gene Deitch played a then 50-year-old recording of her song "One by One" when he guested on New York music historian David Garland's radio show Spinning on Air. The song caught the ears of Dan Dzula and David Herman, who were moved to meet with Deitch and go through his archive to assemble a collection of her never-released songs. This collection materialized in 2009 as How Sad, How Lovely, a collection of 17 songs taken from various recordings that friends, family, and other Converse associates had preserved over the years. Her music finally reaching a broader audience, her uniquely intelligent maverick songs began to have an influence on a newer generation of folk and indie artists.

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

Johnny Kemp born August 2, 1959

Johnny Kemp (August 2, 1959 – April 16, 2015) was a Bahamian singer, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a songwriter in late 1979 and is perhaps best known for his solo work, including his single "Just Got Paid" (1988), which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song in 1989. His distinctive voice and rhythmic style helped him stand out in a crowded field of R and B performers during the 1980s, a decade known for its fusion of funk, soul, and emerging electronic production styles.

Kinky Foxx

Jonathan Kemp was born in Nassau, Bahamas. He began singing in nightclubs in the Bahamas at age 13. He moved to Harlem, New York with the band Kinky Foxx from 1979-1981. After going solo he developed a forte in writing songs for other artists and performed backup vocals for the B. B. & Q. Band on their 1982 album All Night Long (on which he co-wrote several tracks) and for Change on their 1982 album Sharing Your Love (on which he co-wrote "Take You To Heaven"). He also appeared on the obscure Network LP I Need You in 1984, where he had lead vocals on the song "Cover Girl", later re-recorded for his self-titled debut solo album.

                                       

Columbia Records gave him a record deal in 1985 and, through them, he released his first album, Johnny Kemp, in 1986. The album charted in the U.S. on Billboard's Top Black Albums chart, reaching No. 36 on June 28 of that year. It produced hit singles like “Just Another Lover,” “Can’t Get Enough,” and “Cover Girl.” Greater success came the following year with the release of his Secrets of Flying (1987) album, which contained a pair of Top 5 hits on Billboard′s Hot Black Singles chart, "Dancin' with Myself" and "Just Got Paid", the latter hitting No. 1. "Just Got Paid" hit No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1988, and sold over a million singles in the United States. 

It topped the Hot Dance Music/Club Play and provided his only UK Singles Chart entry, peaking at No. 68 in August 1988. Columbia initially offered the instrumental base for the song to Keith Sweat, who passed on it. Kemp listened to the track, wrote lyrics for it, and produced the hit track. His only other Hot 100 entry was "Birthday Suit", a tune from the soundtrack to the movie, Sing (1989), which climbed to No. 36 in 1989.

Following the release of his second album, Kemp’s visibility in the music industry waned. In the 90s Johnny Kemp and Sherry Goffin Kondor, the daughter of Carole King were the lead singers for the popular children's cover band Sugar Beats. The Sugar Beats featured The Broadway Kids members and Les Miserables (musical) stars Crysta Macalush Winton and Erin Rakow. Former Dream Street member and Summerland (TV series) star Jesse McCartney was a member of the Sugar Beats.  The Reading Rainbow series on PBS featured its theme song sung by Kemp for a few years. After releasing "80s Greaties" the Sugar Beats broke up in 2009.

Sadly, Kemp died in a tragic accident in April of 2015, with his body being found off the coast of Montego Bay. He had been a passenger on a cruise ship that docked there, and he was scheduled to perform on the Tom Joyner Foundation Fantastic Voyage Cruise. According to the St. James Police, it’s believed Kemp lost his balance while walking on some rocks, fell, hit his head, and ultimately drowned. He left behind a wife, Deirdre Fisher-Kemp, and their two sons, one of whom, Jared Kemp, is an actor. Ultimately, Johnny Kemp’s passing marked the end of a life, but not the end of his musical impact. Through Just Got Paid, his voice continues to echo across generations, ensuring that his contribution to R and B and pop music history remains recognized and appreciated.

(Edited from BlackPast, Wikipedia & Singers Room) 

Bessie Tucker born circa 1906

Bessie Tucker (c. 1906 – January 6, 1933) was an American classic female blues, country blues, and Texas blues singer and songwriter. She is known to have recorded 24 tracks, seven of which were alternate takes. Her songs include "Penitentiary" and "Fryin' Pan Skillet Blues".

Bessie Tucker was probably born in East Texas about 1906. Her exact birthplace and date have not been adequately determined or documented. Greenville in Hunt County, Texas, and Rusk in Cherokee County, Texas, have both been suggested as probable birthplaces. The researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc state, on the basis of her death certificate, that she was born in Rusk, Cherokee County, Texas, the daughter of Georgia (née Connor) and John Chris Tucker. The 1910 federal census recorded the family living in Hill County, where her father worked as a cook in a restaurant. Bessie was listed as age four and had two brothers.

Little is known about the life of Bessie Tucker beyond the few facts related to the music industry. Though she was slight in stature, her recordings reveal a powerfully dark voice. Tucker’s vocal style is best described as a folk variant on the field holler vocal music sung by African American slaves working in the fields and later by African American prisoners sentenced to forced labour. The field holler style is related to the call and response work songs prevalent among cotton and cornfield workers and on sugar and rice plantations. These vocalizations, from which early blues music was derived, served as an emotional outlet and expressed anguish and pent-up feelings. They also served a social purpose as well as represented a source of motivation in repetitive work.

                                      

In August 1928, she recorded a number of songs, most of which she wrote, for the Victor label in Memphis, Tennessee. She was accompanied on piano by the Dallas-born K. D. Johnson. This recording session yielded her best-known song, "Penitentiary". The subject of the song was reputedly not unknown to Tucker. A second session in Dallas followed in October 1929, at which she was again accompanied by Johnson and by the guitarist Jesse Thomas. Tucker’s blues are mesmerising – grainy, tough-minded songs of deceit, desertion and violence. In Penitentiary Blues she contemplates killing an uncaring man, while in Got Cut All To Pieces she threatens the woman who has stolen her lover. Fryin’ Pan Skillet Blues begins more cheerfully, with a cry of ‘Bring me some black-eyed peas!’, but she is in the kitchen to entice a man to sample her cooking. And Fort Worth And Denver Blues is a Texas train blues underscored by a piano part full of lonesomeness and impermanence.

After these recordings Tucker disappeared from performing, apparently for good; no data exists on the later events of her life except that the 1930 census recorded Tucker as living in her father’s household in Dallas, and her occupation was listed as “sales lady” for the Victrola industry. Only one photograph of Tucker has been identified. According to her death certificate, she died of pulmonary tuberculosis at Woodlawn Hospital in Dallas on January 6, 1933. The document stated place of burial as Woodland Cemetery but did not specify whether the graveyard was located in Dallas County. Some researchers have surmised that her burial site is in Woodland Cemetery in Red River County, Texas.

(Edited from Texas State Historical Association, Loudersound.com & Wikipedia)

Smoky Babe born July 31, 1927

Robert Brown (July 31, 1927 – May 1973), who performed as Smoky Babe, was an American acoustic blues guitarist and singer, whose recording career was restricted to a couple of recording sessions in the early 1960s.  

Robert Brown aka Smoky Babe is a shadowy figure from the early days of the '60s folk-blues revival. The scant details of his life read like a prototypical country bluesman's bio; born in Itta Bena, Mississippi, raised on a plantation, had a hard life of sharecropping, picked up the guitar along the way, under the strong influence of Robert Petway and Tommy McClennan, seeing them performing and listening to their records. 

He developed the same rhythmic guitar style, full of a furious energy, the similar passionate singing and, if one adds a great ability to compose autobiographic blues and to make every standard his own, you sure have with him a major bluesman!

                  Here's "Rabbit Blues" from above album

                                  

During the late 1940's and maybe at his mother's death, Smoky Babe leaves the miserable sharecropping to work in a factory in Alabama, then in New Orleans where he works as a longshoreman while playing sometimes in local clubs. Around 1953, he marries and the couple settles in Baton Rouge, buying a little farm and finding a good job as a car mechanic in a garage. He played at picnics and at local parties for friends and it's like that and only by chance that Harry Oster discovers him in February 1960 during a party at Robert Pete Williams' house (his neighbour) where there are other Robert Pete's neighbours, Lazy Lester, Clyde Causey or William and Sally Dotson!

Oster is stunned by Smoky's talents and then records him substantially during the following days. His brief recording career was limited to a pair of album-length releases recorded as "in the field" location sessions in 1960 and 1961 for the Folk Lyric and Bluesville and Storyville labels. His few recordings display a strong rhythmic sense in his guitar playing with a strong thumping bass line with the occasional foray into slide guitar. His vocals were nothing less than rich, strong and authoritative. Those wonderful records when issued on several albums and anthologies stir interest in the then small coterie of blues buffs in the USA and Europe.

Annie & Robert "Smoky Babe" Brown

But Smoky, quite suspicious, would turn down any offer to appear at colleges or festivals during the early 1960's, liking better to catch his steady work at his garage and his farm than trying his chance on a musical career. He seemingly disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. Other than his recordings, little is known of his life. The circumstances of his death are unclear. Some sources report that he died in June 1975, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc have stated that he probably died in May 1973 in Scotlandville, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

(Edited from AllMusic, Wikipedia & Gerard Herzhaft)

King Alex born July 29, 1934

King Alex ( July 29, 1934 - March 15, 2008) was a Kansas City bass player and blues singer whose career spanned over forty years.

"King-Alex" Littlejohn was born during the great depression in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Soon after Alex and his family moved to Ferriday, Louisiana where Alex grew up. His father worked for the city, but he also played guitar, fiddle and sang. In fact his whole family was musical. Uncle White played piano and guitar. Aunt Maude sang and played guitar. Alex remembered the music they made at house parties and fish fries.

When Alex was 14 he came to Kansas City with his Uncle and Cousin and lived in the 18th and Vine district, where he loved to listen to Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, T-Bone Walker, Frank Sinatra and later B.B. King. Alex attended the Kansas City Conservatory of Music for a while and also took Bass lessons from Claude "Fiddler" Williams, an original member of the Count Basie band.

                                  

Alex got his first break on stage at a club in Kansas City on 5th Street. He went on to play the East-side clubs such as O.G.'s, Club Harlem, Club Mardi Gras and the Black Orchid. As King Alex and the Kansas City Turnpikes he recorded a couple of sides in the late 1950's for Spindle, including "Hutcia Cutchia Lovin' Man" as King Alex & The Untouchables.

He had a chance to go national, but had newly married, had a good job at the Tension Envelope factory, just bought a house and a car. His family came first, so for decades King Alex had been playing around Kansas City and the region, defining the tough Kansas City Blues sound.

In the 1970's Robert Locke (drums) and Dough Hemphill (guitar) joined the band. In 1994 Charlie Booth (organ) joined the group and they had two cuts on the Kansas City Blues Society's Bustin Loose CD. In late 1995 Alex released his first CD "Grindin' Stone". 1996 saw King Alex play the Blues Estafette in Utrecht, Holland and received rave reviews.

Although Alex enjoyed his re-found fame, he was still a regular working man, putting in 40 hours a week at the envelope factory, which was perhaps a part of hiss appeal. More CD's followed "Hot As A Coffee Pot" (1997), "Sugar Bowl" (2001).  In 2002 returned to Europe for a three week tour. That year he was inducted into the Elder Statesmen of Kansas City Jazz along with former employer and life-long friend Richard "Dick" Berkley. He then decided to cut a greatest hits CD, "The Cream Of King Alex", covering over forty years of his song writing, o which Alex's rich vocals are complimented by his powerful band, The Untouchables. Heading the 2003 Kansas City Blues Festival, he was honoured for his many years of dedication. In 2004 he performed at the Poconos Blues Festival.

During his career Alex had played with B.B. King, Albert Collins, Claude "Fiddler" Williams and Little Hatch, to name but a few. He continued to play and sing the blues until his passing on March 15, 2008.

(Edited from CD liner notes)