"Blue Yodel No. 9 (Standing on the Corner)," Jimmie Rodgers with Louis and Lil Armstrong (1930)

Too late to ask you to listen to this before looking at the picture but the music this silly looking guy-- Jughead from The Archies as a railroad conductor?-- makes, believe it or not, is about hustlers, prostitutes, guns, getting yours in bars, the demimonde of American cities or big towns, "standing on the corner," looking for a party, after the Crash of 1929 and on the eve of the Great Depression. The guy in the picture is Jimmie Rodgers, a founding father of Country music. Also present at this West Coast, Los Angeles, 1930 recording date: Louis Armstrong, founding father of Jazz music, at his tossed-off sleazy blues best, and Lil Armstrong, his partner in crime, on an equally raucous piano. This record is in its way a crowning achievement of an already nearly a century old mixed-race, multicultural, crossover musical tradition, spread by minstrel music, established in Black & Tan clubs (look 'em up), created, nurtured, and sponsored by the sex trade. That's right. Brothels, dance halls, backroom saloons, and beer gardens serving alcohol and music, economically driven by and sustained by prostitution, were central, the milieu where American popular music unsanctioned by the authorities developed and thrived before the birth of the recording industry in the 1920s. A place where the roots of Blues, Jazz, and Country were all mixed up together. Or so that's my hot take on the central thesis of Dale Cockrell's provocative book Everybody's Doin' It: Sex, Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917. I can see music fans complaining Cockrell spends too much of his research time on the sex and not enough on the music and dance but still the audacious case he makes here is more than worth the price of admission. To review: the foundations of American popular music, Blues, Jazz, and Country, and the birth of music recording industry, were incubated, brought to term, wet nursed, you might say, or since the 1840s, at any rate, by clubs and bars largely financed by the sex trade; in New York City, as chronicled in this book, but likely in similar (if smaller scale) circumstances in many other American cities and large towns like LA, where they were recording, or Memphis, mentioned in the song. Also reminds me of playing a Sidney Bechet record in my classroom after school one day. A student ventured that it sounded like "Stripper's music." How would they know such a thing, I thought to myself, but also funny how much the student actually did hear something in the song, how much of that sound came out of the milieu of the sex trade. "Blue Yodel No. (Standing on the Corner)," Rodgers in his goofy cosplay, sounds like it came from a similar place. 

"Cakewalking Babies From Home," Clarence Williams Blue Five (1925)

Featuring Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, the Blue Five are a 1920s supergroup. And Williams, leading the way, a Harlem Renaissance pianist, songster, music producer, impresario par excellence, is no slouch. (Also, his great grandson, Clarence Williams III, is Linc from the Mod Squad and Prince's tortured artist dad in Purple Rain, so there's that too.) "Cakewalking..." jumps you, unaware, then bowls you over, strutting with this wild, swaggering ensemble exuberance, duelling soloists, Eva Taylor stomping around like a mad Madame, a banjo jamming the downbeat. It is New Orleans hot jazz in its imperial NYC form. And it's such an explosion of colors it has to be some kind of sonic muse to classic Warner Bros. Cartoons. The Jazz Age confidence, humor, the joie de vivre are awesome.