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The King Records Story - Part 1

© Barney Quick

Cincinnati is the kind of city that has two regional identities. Nestled as it is in the hilly Ohio River valley, in what locals call the tri-state area, it is both northern and southern. It shares many characteristics with other industrial midwestern cities. Like them, it is home to descendants of immigrants as varied as eastern European Jews, European Catholics, and blacks from the agrarian southern United States. It also has a strong Appalachian flavor. Those who have desired to trek northward from coal-mining country have often passed through this gateway.

Midwestern Hayride, a popular hillbilly-music program on Cincinnati's WLW radio in the 1930s and 40s, reflected this Appalachian component. It was a regional showcase for the top talent in the field.

The show counted a Cincinnati record store owner named Syd Nathan among its listeners. He saw country acts pass through the area and began to think about how lucrative it would be to record them when they did. Nathan, a gruff, stocky cigar smoker who wore thick glasses, put together an all-in-one operation to do just that in 1943. From a former ice house on Brewster Avenue, he and his staff cut deals, recorded artists, designed record covers, and packaged and shipped the product. He soon had a roster that included Moon Mullican, Grandpa Jones and the Delmore Brothers.

The booming market in the new postwar black popular music caught Nathan's attention. In 1946, he hired a former arranger for the orchestras of Jimmie Lunceford and Lucky Millinder named Henry Glover to match repertoires to performers and hire talent. Glover mined the Millinder organization for a wealth of it, including singer Wynonie Harris, sax-and-vocal man Bullmoose Jackson and organist Bill Doggett. At first, these black records were released on a Queen subsidiary and then on the King Race Series, then King proper and the Federal subsidiary.

Millinder had begun emceeing dances in Chicago in the late 1920s and went to New York in the early 30s, making a name for himself in the ballrooms of Harlem. He took over leadership of the Mills Blue Rhythm Band in 1934 from Irving Mills (a lyricist on some of Duke Ellington's biggest hits). In 1940, he put together an orchestra under his own name. Dizzy Gillespie played trumpet for him just prior to pioneering the bebop movement.

Wynonie Harris was a veteran of the Central Avenue club scene in Los Angeles. His reputation for pounding down liquor and consorting with lots of ladies had been growing since those days. In what was to be the prototype for his relationships with many of his r&b artists, Nathan viewed Harris rather cynically while instinctively knowing him to be a money-maker. With his slim, dapper frame and a voice well suited to bawdy blues lyrics, Harris was a reliable record-seller in the ghetto market.

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