Anatomy of a Song

As a child, I took a few trumpet lessons, but taught myself to sing and play piano. By the time I was seventeen, in 1950, I had a band and was singing at local clubs. We covered R&B jukebox hits like Blue Moon, Good Rockin' Tonight, and Honey Hush. My mother was a great cook and owned a popular sandwich shop in Kenner called Beatrice's Fish and Fry. I went there to eat and play the beat-up old piano she kept there. I was hoping to write and record a song that she could put in her jukebox. I hoped that fame would be my bus ticket out of town. The bigotry down there was unbelievable then. One day I was listening to WBOK and heard a black radio announcer named James Okidoki Smith who had his own twenty-minute show. Okidoki's appeal was his funny way of grabbing your ear. He'd say things like, "'Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, eat your mother's homemade pies and drink Maxwell House instant coffee.' Maxwell House was his only sponsor. I liked that line, Lawdy, Miss Clawdy. Days later I was with my band at Morgan's, a club in Kenner, when I began fooling around on the piano with Okidoki's line. At some point Okidoki came into the club and wandered over to where I was playing. He said, "'Hey, you're doing my thing from the radio!' He gave me a pat on the head and walked off. Around this time my girlfriend Nellie broke up with me. I was crushed. At my mom's sandwich shop I was playing the piano and working on my song, Lawdy, Miss Clawdy, with pitiful sorrow in my voice. All the way through I just stopped in frustration. A customer asked what I was playing. I told him without turning around. He told me to play it again and sing all the words. When I finished I looked up. Dave Bartholomew was standing next to me. I nearly fell off my chair. Dave was one of the most important musicians in New Orleans back in the late 1940s and early 50s. He was a trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He played all the black proms and big clubs. He also was a huge figure in the recording studios as an R&B producer. Dave Bartholomew I had dropped in to get a sandwich when I heard Lloyd playing that piano. The feeling in his voice caught me. It was completely original. Rick Roop, the owner of Specialty Records, a gospel label in Los Angeles, was holding an audition in a few weeks in New Orleans for young singers. I thought Lloyd should come by and sing his song. Price When Dave told me I had a shot at recording, I couldn't believe it. Dave had co-written, arranged, and played on Fats Domino's The Fat Man, a big R&B hit in 1950. Laudie Miss Claudie sounded like it, but with a younger feel. Weeks later, Dave called and told me to come down the next day to Cosimo Matassa's J&M Recording Studio on New Orleans' Rampart Street. That was like telling me to get on a plane and fly someplace. I had never been to the French Quarter. Fortunately, I knew a bus driver who let me ride for free, and he directed me to the studio. At J&M, seven or eight musicians were there, and Dave was explaining how my song would go. Art was there, too. He loved gospel growing up in Pittsburgh and was trying to bring gospel singing together with an R&B beat. Art Roop I had gone out to Hollywood in the early 1940s with hopes of becoming a writer for radio and film. I started my first R&B record label, Jukebox, in 1944, but changed the name to Specialty in 1946. By 1948, Specialty also was recording gospel, which soon had a big influence on R&B. I went to New Orleans in 1952 because I liked the Creole sound down there, particularly on Fats Domino's recordings. I wanted to emulate the sound. Cosimo owned the big R&B studio in town and put me in touch with Dave, Bartholomew. At the audition, Lloyd was the only one who impressed me, based on the commercial potential of Lawdy Miss Clawdy. Lloyd's voice and the way he sold it had gospel's intensity. Lloyd was nervous and shy, but he sang with such sincerity and passion that I decided to record him.