Various independent labels were launched from during World War II to early 1950s and yielded new musics one after another, which had never appeared in big-band jazz of corporate companies. From this period the songs performed by less-personnel horns and a piano and emphatic rhythms of drums got dubbed as Rhythm & Blues, whose name came out from anywhere you didn't know and it was different from 'Rhythm & Blues' revival as the appropriate terms for categorizing some music after '90s. Percy Mayfield, released records from Los Angeles independent label Specialty since 1950, was a popular early-time R&B ballad singer. His baritone got us to feel its vulnerability and pathos and jazzy atmosphere, and, moreover, he enchanted us with his lyrics so specially that he would be called as 'Poet of the Blues'.
While there were many easy lyrics like "rock'n'rollin' all night long" or "you are my destiny", his Please Send Me Someone to Love, for example, was so proficient in the expression or the sense of terms or the depth of meaning that little craftspersons in large companies (Tin-Pan Alley) could produce such kind of songs. In his bests "Poet of the Blues" you can find yourself haunted by gloomy hits Strange Things Happening, What a Fool I Was, Lost Love, Cry Baby or The Big Question and penetrated by self-destructive tunes Life is Suicide or The River's Invitation. Although it was not because his pessimistic lyrics would have implied his future, he was seriously wounded by a fatal car accident in 1952 and it turned out that his facial scar halted his singing career. Even after the next year he made fine sides like Memory Pain or Loose Lips at Specialty, but he could get little fruits.
After several labels' recordings, he became one of the important composers of Ray Charles thanks to Ray's interpretation of his break-through Hit the Road, Jack. You can hear on the rares "Memory Pain" in Specialty days Percy's a cappella demo of Hit the Road, Jack, whose idea was a smart duet dialogue between a hard-hearted woman and a poor man. Ray's Hit the Road, Jack, often heard when Japanese major leaguer Hideo Nomo pitched in the game ("No More, No More, ..."), is also included in the reasonable 2-CD best "The Definitive Ray Charles" . It contains another Percy's composition At the Club, a story about a man flirted by a woman. These tunes are comical rather than lyrical. Meanwhile, there are Tell Me How Do You Feel appeared on Ray's Atlantic years box set "The Birth of Soul", and Ray's ABC sides like The Danger Zone, But on the Other Hand, Baby and Hide Nor Hair on the comprehensive box set "Genius & Soul". They are the blues with humorous but bitter lyrics in Percy's own right.
Now, it was the first time I kept Percy's songs in my mind when I heard the tunes from the album "His Tangerine and Atlantic Sides" with his episode on a FM radio program. Stranger in My Own Home Town was so straight a title that you could symphasize with him after the car accident, and I felt sorrow when I listened to it. If the blues sing human emotions, this should be the blues exactly. On this CD which I got directly by the Rhino mail order, you can hear his sides of Ray Charles' label Tangerine. It is a good stuff including new songs like Ha Ha in the Daytime or My Bottle is My Companion and re-recordings of Memory Pain, Life is Suicide or River's Invitation backed by Ray's band with his own piano. Percy Mayfield tunes are covered by various artists you cannot count, from Billy Vera who wrote the liner notes of Percy's 3 CDs (he also had a huge hit At This Moment in the credit of Billy & the Beaters (You can hear on '80s hits compilation "Like, Omigod !" )), Elvis Presley to Japanese jazz singer Tomoe Ayato. And it may be interesting that you have some imagination of both the life of a singer and a composer. (2004/10/04)(2006/01/29)