Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 101; Larry Nager interview with Philip Paul, part 1 of 2

Q:

LARRY: Larry Nager and N-a-g-e-r.

Q:

LARRY: Well, King Records was unique for a lot of different reasons. I think the thing that really first struck me about King Records and I was back in college and I was a Stanley Brothers fan, I like blue grass music and a woman I was dating at the time had a James Brown album I was looking at and I was thinking, you know, isn’t it strange the two record labels that are so completely different would have the same name and then I learned that it’s the same label and then I learned that it’s the same label and the same studios where you have James Brown and the Stanley Brothers. James Brown is the hardest funk imaginable. The Stanley Brothers is the most mountain blue grass imaginable. It’s hard to imagine these two people in the same universe, let along on the same record label, in the same studio, in the same building. And, that’s what really make King unique was that diversity. You had every form of country music, every form of rhythm and blues, ballads, there was jazz, there was, you know, kind of pop jazz of the time where the tenor sax would play romantic ballads and you also had the hard stuff, the honking tenor saxes and then that whole evolution as the music shifts from rhythm and blues in the late 40’s and early 50’s into what we would come to know as soul music, that rhythmic subtlety. And, I think that is where Phil Paul comes in because of the use of the brushes and that coming out of a jazz discipline and there is the discipline of jazz involved where he is able to play at a more subtle level, more subtly rhythm and that happened at King with people like Little Willie John who, uh, was a pretty tragic figure, he would die in prison but he was one of those people that changed the music, that shift from, uh, just to say Elvis, you saw a shift from country music in what they called hillbilly boogie into rock and roll. Little Willie John was one of those pivotal figures in a shift from rhythm and blues into soul music and playing drums on those records was Phil Paul. So, King changed music in a lot of ways, uh, this is, uh, from my experience in the last few days, on Thursday, earlier this week if was at the Ryman (SP?) Auditorium in Nashville which is the home of the Grand Ole Opry and Ricky Skaggs was on stage and he opens his show with How Mountain Girls Can Love which was a Stanley Brothers record recorded at King. In the course of the show he did half a dozen different Stanley Brothers recordings done at King. _____ the house 2009 the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Just Kings presence... because it is blue grass and some of the best blue grass, country music and some of the most important and influential country music, uh, instrumental jazz, some of the most important and influential players, people like, uh, Milt Buckner. Bill Doggett’s organ can not be over emphasized, uh, his _____ organ. Uh, can not be over emphasized his influencing people like Booker T and the MG’s and the entire sound of 60’s southern soul. So, no matter what style of music you like there’s gonna be something on King that some of the most important records ever made and were done at King and I think some of that’s due to where King was located. A lot of things are being I the right place at the right time. Cincinnati is a gateway city from the South to the North. There was enough industrial, enough industry at that point that there were a lot of people coming out of the South out of, off of farms away from eastern Kentucky coal mines, southern plantations, etc., looking for a better way of life and they found that in Ohio, up in that industrial area, what we now call the I-75 corridor. So, these people bough records and they were hillbillies, African Americans and they gravitated to country music and to rhythm and blues, etc., and King offered them those recordings so, uh, it was the right label at the right time. At the time the music was changing after World War II. The big bands were a thing of the past. One thing about the Tiny Bradshaw Group that we talk about here was it was a small band it wasn’t five saxes and three trumpets and you know, a couple of trombones. They usually one of each horn but they played like big band arrangements. It was one of those things where the group sounded bigger than it was and it was that transitional sound, it wasn’t playing swing, it was kind of a harder R&B and with the addition of Phil Paul and his brushes it started playing some subtler music, soft, it was a real good example of that.

Q:

LARRY:

Well, you know Cincinnati was very early it was a broadcast capitol, uh, WLW was the largest radio station, WCKY was another extremely important and influential station. WLW was in the 1930’s and it’s hard to imagine this today, 500 thousand clear channel watts. You could get this radio station on your fillings I think, you could tune it in. So, it was everywhere and even then when it was reduced to 50,000 watts it still was broadcasting all over the country. And, so you had a place where on the staff you had people like Fats Waller, The Mills Brothers, uh, Chet Atkins got his start there in the 1940’s, this was back when radio stations had staffs of musicians there and they did a program, uh, it started out with the Renfro Valley Barn Dance in 1937 and became the Midwestern hayride, the Boon County Jamboree first and then the Midwestern hayride. So, this was a country music capitol. And that’s what Sid, uh, Sid Nathan, founder of King Records started with, it was country music. And, to the point where he couldn’t start in Cincinnati, he didn’t have a studio he had to take his musicians up to Dayton to record. His first recordings was a group called the Shephard Brothers which was made up of Merle Travis and Grandpa Jones both of them are in the Country Music Hall of Fame. He later formed the Brownsferry Four of those two musicians and the Delmor Brothers, all of whom are in the Country Music Hall of Fame. I mean, the people who Sid Nathan started from nothing were later to become... and that’s what I mean by in the right place at the right time. Oh, he put out a record by Lonnie Johnson. Lonnie Johnson by all looks at that point in the late 40’s was a has been. He made his records back in the 20’s. He played with Duke Ellington, played lead guitar on a tune called the Mooch and did a lot of country blues records. So, by 19, you know, 48, 49 he’s washed up except he does a song called Tomorrow Night and its ballad, a rhythm and blues ballad and sold more than a million copies of it on King Records. So, you have this label that’s producing all this different kinds of music, finding an audience for it locally and because Sid was a very sharp businessman, that was the whole idea of the all of... everything under one roof. He was able to record music and get it out quickly and quickly was the key because people were, you know, they were buying the song so if you had that record out it didn’t matter who the artist was, they bought the record. He had... the jukebox industry was a huge part of Sid’s business and he had a lot of distributorships under that as well. So he was able to get the music out. At the time when this new music was emerging people wanted entertainment and a jukebox would often take the place of live music. You didn’t have to hire a big band. So, the records Sid was making were really getting heard and I mean, across the board. Blue grass was a popular music at that time, was selling a lot. It was the largest country music label; he beat out Nashville in the early 1950’s. He was a bigger label than anything that was happening in Nashville for a while. More hit records. At the same time he’s leading in rhythm and blues with people like Wynonie Harris. So King was a powerhouse and centrally located, right, Cincinnati right in the center of everything so he was able to get those records out. He had distributorships on both coasts; it was a beautiful business apart from anything else. When we talk, they should start teaching King Records in business school as just a business model. You talk about entrepreneurship, it’s Sid Nathan. At the same time, blacks, whites, Asians, all working together in a variety of positions. Sid’s right hand man was Henry Glover who was African American, producer, uh, produced country sessions, co-wrote one of the greatest country songs of all, Blues Stay Away from me with the Delmor Brothers. So, really amazingly enough, I mean, people don’t think of Cincinnati, Phil talks about how his parents thought they had to roll up the sidewalks at the end of the day in Cincinnati and yet here Cincinnati, the first integrated record label. And, I think King can really make an argument to being the single most independent... important independent label after World War II because it wasn’t for King there wouldn’t have been a Sun Records, there may not have been and Elvis Presley, cause the music that got recorded by Elvis, Good Rockin Tonight is the perfect example was learned from a King Record and Elvis would have heard that on radio station WKIA or on Dewy Phillips, Red Hot and Blues show in Memphis. And, that’s the thing, all of that first generation of rock and rollers, the rockabilly’s, the Carl Perkins, the Rock and Roll Trio, Jerry Lee Lewis. These guys grew up listening to the R&B stations and the R&B stations were playing King Records.

Q:

LARRY: Well, I first heard about Phil Paul, it would be... I hear different rumors, you know, people would call, there’s this guy and that sort of thing and if your sitting at the desk at the daily newspaper, I was the music guy at the paper... a lot of this stuff you hear about it and it’s not necessarily true and a lot of it is just you’ve gotta have the time to go out to do it and at a daily newspaper the historic stuff is not that important. Uh, you know, it’s hard to convince your editors that this guy, he made great records 40 years ago. You know, it’s, it ends to be a little rough. On the other hand I personally feel this stuff is very important. I think this is, you know, music is still oral tradition and every generation follows the previous generation and the music shapes the music to come. History is real important. And, so when I finally got to meet Phil which was over 10 years ago, it, you know, he was everything you could ask for. He’d been there, he was still playing great, he was able to tell the stories and a perfect gentleman and a great guy. I mean, it’s like you couldn’t choose a better ambassador for what King Records was than Phil Paul. And, wanting to bring this history out because I think one of the, you know, I worked in Memphis I was at the daily newspaper in Memphis the first half of the 90’s and wrote a book called Memphis Beat and seeing what a music heritage does to a city, the acknowledgement of that. I mean, in Memphis it’s accepted that this is the home of the blues, that this is where all this music came from. It makes it possible for every generation... if W.C. Handy hadn’t succeeded in Memphis with the Memphis Blues and St. Louis Blues there probably wouldn’t have been these groups to follow. And, you know, if, if Elvis succeeds it makes it real to all the other kids in town, that hey I can do that too. You know, every BB King out there inspires another generation of BB Kings. Here in Cincinnati, James Brown inspires Bootsie Collins, etc. So, but Cincinnati had lost that, they really didn’t realize what the importance of King Records, how people did this before, there was a great record label here, there were great musicians here, there were people who made a living and you know. If it happened before, it can happen again. So, I think, but music to me is always more important than just something to listen to. I think it’s a... if nothing else it’s a symptom of culture, it’s a you know, a definite side effect of who we are. And, I think in Cincinnati is the most musical town that I’ve ever been in that doesn’t realize it. Uh, the casino scene, there you know, the music that was played in the casinos in Northern Kentucky it was so important to Cincinnati. The best musicians in the world toured there, played there and these elaborate, you know, along with places like Hot Springs, Arkansas... Northern Kentucky is one of the great underground, you know, pleasure centers in the, uh, in the world for a long time like Havanna, Hot Springs, Cincinnati. Unusual combination there. But, Phil was a part of all those scenes and spoke to those. So, his, you know, his importance in that couldn’t I think really couldn’t be overstated. In addition to which he was on those records. I mean, you know, records that... I mean, Fever still gets played today. So, what I’d... so from it’s just... growing up in New York the center of the jazz universe, coming out of the journalist perspective, from a story tellers perspective, Phil Paul is a great story. I mean, afro-Caribbean tradition which, you know, let’s face it is the heart of percussion. You know, the Cubans, uh, you know, the Caribbean music where drums play such a vital role and on a much more sophisticated level than it does in our culture. You know, it’s... American popular music is a wedding of, you know, western ham... in it’s simplest form, western harmony and African rhythm and I think it really came to it’s highest art form in the Caribbean. If you’ve spent any time in Cuba, I mean, the percussionists there are amazing. So, for Phil to come out of the tradition and then go through, uh, what he did in New York when New York was indeed the center of the jazz universe and jazz was the popular music. That’s, that’s he’s the right man, at the right place at the right time and he soaked it all up. He came out here on a lark, he was young, he wanted to travel a little bit and got a gig there, met a pretty woman and decided to stay around and what’s not mentioned is that Tiny Bradshaw had suffered a series of strokes and was off the road. Phil had free time, Phil was able to go into King Records and really, uh, you know, delve into that which is how he became the session drummer. So, a lot of... some of its lucky this. But, he had the ability and one thing Phil does, umm, you know, beyond playing that in the pocket was Phil plays the songs. You know, Phil is not out there to say, look what a great drummer I am, you know, Phil plays the music and I thinks that’s the thing that’s kept him... that’s what a great session drummer does beyond anything you can, you know, do. Obviously, he’s a great player but the goal is to make great music and that can be two different things. You see that with, you know, the really... the good musicians, the great musicians are the ones who play the song, serve the music. It’s not just there, hey _____ look at me.

Q: accidents. Phil says he didn’t plan any of it, I don’t think he could have planned any of

LARRY: Yes, I spoke to Phil and went over to house and met him and Juanita and, you know, and fell in love with them, what can I tell you. And it became kind of a mission. At the time, I had organized local music awards in Cincinnati and, umm, I definitely had wanted Phil to be a part of that... that’s exactly, you know, we had a lifetime achievement award and I couldn’t think of a better candidate than Phil. Uh, I had been kind of working behind the scenes on a... there was a charity album that came out in Cincinnati called Hidden Treasures and when I first spoke to the people who were involved in that it was for the Inclusion Network, they were trying to do a golden oldies, just kind of a generic golden oldies project. They’d done one for a chili company in Cincinnati prior to that. I said, why don’t you do a King Records tribute instead, you can still have these golden oldies, things like, Fever, The Twist, songs everybody knows but I think you’ll be able to attract a higher level of artists to do it. And, we were able to get the group Over The Rhine to do Fever, uh, we were able to get Blessed Union of Souls that was active back then to do Tomorrow Night, the Lonnie Johnson ballad. And, the idea with the Hideaway was, uh, Peter Frampton had just moved to town a little bit earlier and I had interviewed him, so I thought well what a perfect thing. Every British rock guitar player from the 60’s knew Hideaway, learning it from the great John Male (SP?) ____ when Eric Clapton first joined the band. So, I knew Peter knew that song and he didn’t know that Phil lived in Cincinnati. He did not know... when Peter moved to Cincinnati that King Records had done all the Freddie King records, etc., and the that guy who played drums with him was still alive and still playing. So, we were able to arrange Peter Frampton to play with Phil on that track. I think that’s when people really started taking notice out of all that and he got the _____ lifetime achievement award shortly after that and, uh, just kind of people knew who he was which also helped Cincinnati in general because then people started knowing what King Records is and everybody knows the Twist, well the original version was recorded in Cincinnati, they can’t believe it. Same thing with Fever, same thing with Hideaway, the blue grass songs, I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow, the Oh, Brother Where Art Thou song. That was not only a Stanley Brothers song but the arrangement that was used in the movie was the one that the Stanley Brothers had recorded at King Records. So, this sort of this consciousness continues, I think there’s a project on Bootsie Collins coming out called Unsung. It’s gonna be... it focused on that as well. There’s a consciousness of what King Records did. I think as we learn the importance which no one realized at the time, those recordings were considered to be hits and then they were gone. There was no concept that you’d be selling them a year from now. They melted down the old records. So, I think the fact that it is such an enduring part of our culture. You know, we talk about as Americans how we can get back to a manufacturing society again and that sort of thing. One thing that we’ve always been able to sell the world has been our music. And, there’s a timelessness... the more you travel all over the world, everybody still knows these songs. You’ll find Otis Redding records in, you know, in the mountains of Argentina. Uh, you’ll find, you know, records by BB King in New Zealand. Our music as an American people has been one of our great exports, our cultural exports. And, I think King Records was so important to that as far as forming the foundation to what would become rock and roll, what would become soul music.

Q:

LARRY: The Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award I think that Phil’s getting in the summer of 2009, uh, the...it’s the highest honor the state grants traditional artists and I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more than Phillip Paul. He came out of a tradition, uh, the Caribbean tradition playing calypso music. He went through that school playing jazz in New York when, you know, at the... he jammed with those legendary nights at Mitten’s Playhouse, he got to play with Charlie Parker. Uh, you know, Phil went through this situation in his life and then came to Cincinnati, Ohio and did his greatest work in Cincinnati, Ohio recording on King and that influence but he’s also out in the community, he was playing clubs throughout the area, all different kinds of music. He was teaching younger, you know, younger drummers who had come to him. So, he’s someone who is part of a tradition who transcends that tradition to create a style of his own, influences generations to come, create some of the most enduring music of the world, not just in Cincinnati, not just in Ohio, not just in America but the world’s music. So, I can’t think of anyone who deserves the Ohio Heritage more than Phil.

Q:

LARRY: I wasn’t born for a little of that but, you know, King... again, you’re talking about a place in a sense...

RESTATE

Live music has kind of been going away throughout the entire 20th Century since we started seeing the invention of the record and the invention of radio but live music used to be everywhere. King was still at that point where live music was really important before television really started taking over. So, you had these musicians who would come in to do the Midwestern Hayride, the radio show. You had these musicians who would come to play in the casinos, who would play in the clubs, the Cotton Club was still active, the black night club in Cincinnati. So, a lot of touring musicians would come in and records were not what they are today, you know, now we think of a Michael Jackson makes a Thriller and all of a sudden it’s the largest selling album of all time. At that point, records were a good way to supplement their income but they weren’t the main way you made money as a musician. The main way you made money as a musician was you hit the road, you played ballrooms, people came to dance. So, there were a lot of live musicians out on the road and what Sid was able to do was again, the record industry started changing after World War II and Sid was one of the first start ups. He was getting, you know, black market shellac stock piles so he would be able to, you know, get to go. He was still making records in 1943 is when he stated which was right in the middle of the war, not many new records were coming out them. So, with King and again....

RESTATE – TAPE CHANGE