Frank Walker: A & R Man For Columbia
Peer’s A & R rival at Okeh and Victor was Frank Buckley Walker (born Oct. 24, 1889 in Fly Summit, New York; died in 1963). [For an interview with Mike Seeger:
http://www.johnsonsdepot.com/oldtime/frankwalker_interview1.pdf] Following school, banking, and the Navy, Walker went to work for Columbia in 1919 to learn record manufacturing. After a brief foray into concert promotion including Caruso, Walker went back to Columbia to do A&R work and became head of the race division at Columbia Records in 1923. He proceeded to sign Bessie Smith, who he first saw singing in a gin mill in Selma, Alabama in 1917. With the help of Clarence Williams he brought her back to New York to record again. On February 15, 1923 with Clarence on the piano, Bessie Smith recorded what was to be her first smash hit, Down Hearted Blues. In the first six months of its release it sold 780,000 copies. This was the beginning of an exclusive relationship for the decade, between Bessie Smith and Columbia records.
Columbia Enters the Country Music Market
After the success of Okeh’s recording with Fiddlin’ John Carson, Walker sent the word out to his record distributors that he was looking for similar talent. In Atlanta Gid Tanner was recommended and Tanner brought blind guitarist Riley Puckett with him to New York to back-up his fiddle. Puckett, who became Columbia’s and Walker’s first country star sang and picked his way through "Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane" accompanied on fiddle by Tanner. On the flip side Puckett yodeled on "Rock All Our Babies to Sleep," introducing a technique that was destined to longevity in country music. Their disc (107-D) was released on May 20 in Columbia's popular series was an immediate success.
Walker soon recorded Samantha Bumgarner, banjo, and Eva Davis, fiddle. "Big-Eyed Rabbit/Wild Bill Jones" (129-D) was their vocal-instrumental debut. Next came a blind minstrel, Ernest Thompson, from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who could play twenty-five instruments. Just as Puckett had used Carson's "Log Cabin" for a first record, Thompson covered Whitter's "The Wreck of the Southern Old 97," linking it with "Are You from Dixie?" (Columbia 130-D).
W.S. Fuhri, a phonograph industry pioneer, came from Okeh and become a Columbia vice president in 1924. He teamed up with Walker to produce a booklet, “Familiar Tunes on Fiddle, Guitar, Banjo, Harmonica, and Accordion,” designed to list the records of Tanner, Puckett, Thompson, and others "whose names are best known where the square dance has not been supplanted by the fox-trot" in November, 1924. This publication became the first exclusive compilation of traditional folk material gathered by the then very young country record industry. By January, 1925, the firm started the Columbia 15000-D series, Familiar Tunes – Old and New, paralleling its own 14000-D race offerings. Columbia was the first company to see the possibilities in an exclusive white folk series.
In July 1925 Walker recorded Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers in NYC, who scored his first big hit in the series with “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” released in September (Col 15038-D). The other major early artist in the series was Vernon Dalhart (also listed as Al Craver) who sold more copies than star Riley Puckett. Doc Walsh as well as Burnett and Rutherford recorded on the Columbia 15000-D Series.
As Peer had done, Walker arranged recording sessions in locations in the south. “I rode horses in the woods looking for people who were individualistic in their sing and could project the true Country flavor,” he once remarked. From Mike Seeger’s interview: “We recorded in a little hotel in Atlanta,” said Walker. “We used to put the singers up and pay another dollar for their food. We would build up the recording sessions in advance – getting the word around that at a certain time of year we were going to be there, and these people would show up from 800 or 900 miles away. How they got there I’ll never know and how they got back I’ll never know. This was natural. Life in the country, particularly in the early days was a lonesome life. Farmers would often talk to themselves or to a horse and stock… and the sound of that railroad train, that lonesome whistle has a powerful emotional impact.”
Walker’s biggest hit in the 15000-D series was Vernon Dalhart’s recording of “The Death of Floyd Collins” by Atlanta area composer blind Andrew Jenkins. The song sold reportedly 3 million copies (although the files show a scant 306,000 copies) and was Dalhart’s second biggest hit. Walker later organized country’s first super group, The Skillet Lickers, from his two stars Riley Puckett and Gid Tanner. Walker co-wrote (along with Dan Hornsby of WSB) the Skillet Licker skit “A Corn Licker Still in Georgia,” that became one of the group’s big early hits. Walker usually kept a few jugs of moonshine available at his country session to make the performers relax. He explained, “You brought a little of the mountain dew to take care of any colds or hoarseness that might happen and also to remove a little of their fears.”
When Walker was young he heard the melody of the famous song “Red River Valley” (possibly as “A Lady in Love” found in 1889 Wehman's Collection Of Songs). He claims he titled the song “Red River Valley” in 1926 from the less successful title "In The Bright Mohawk Valley” and gave it to Riley Puckett to record. Puckett and Cross had a big hit with it in 1926.
Walker’s Johnson City Sessions
Probably in response to Peer’s highly successful Bristol Sessions, Walker organized the Johnson City Sessions in 1928 including artists such as Clarence Green, Tom Ashley, Roane County Ramblers, and the legendary fiddler and entertainer, Charlie Bowman. The Johnson City sessions were a series of recording auditions conducted in Johnson City, Tennessee, in 1928 and 1929 as part of a search for native Appalachian-Blue Ridge Mountains musical talent. Walker was known by Johnson City citizens simply as “Uncle Fuzz”. He acquired his unusual nickname from having always grown a beard before making such audition trips, perhaps believing that he could better relate with the people he was recording.
On Saturday October 13, 1928, Walker auditioned musicians, with recording sessions scheduled for the following week at makeshift studios at the Brading-Marshall Lumber Company in Johnson City. Hopeful amateur musicians brought their fiddles, banjos, guitars and voices to Johnson City to display their talents for Mr. Walker. Participants in the 1928 project included the Shell Creek Quartet, the Grant Brothers, the Roane County Ramblers, Renus Rich and Charles Bradshaw, Clarence Green, the Wise Brothers, Ira Yates, Uncle Nick Decker, the Proximity String Quartet, Hardin and Grindstaff, the Greensboro Boys Quartet, Richard Harold, Charlie Bowman and His Brothers, the Bowman Sisters, Bill and Belle Reed, the Reed Children, the Reed Family, the Hodges Brothers, the Hodges Quartet, Bailey Briscoe, Robert Hoke and Vernal Vest, McVay and Johnson, Earl Shipley and Roy Harper, George Roark, the Ed Helton Singers, the Garland Brothers and Grindstaff, Dewey Golden and His Kentucky Buzzards, the Holiness Singers, Frank Shelton and the McCartt Brothers/Patterson.
Returning to Johnson City on February 20, 1929, Walker’s second group of participants included Blalock and Yates, Jack Jackson, George Wade and Grancom Braswell, the Roane County Ramblers, Wyatt and Brandon, Roy Harvey and Leonard Copeland, the Spindale Quartet, the Queen Trio, Earl Shirley and Roy Harper, the Moatsville String Ticklers, the Weaver Brothers, Byrd Moore and His Hot Shots, the Bateman Sacred Quartet, Fred Richards, Clarence Ashley, the Bentley Boys, Charlie Bowman and His Brothers, Fran Trappe, Eph Woodie and the Henpecked Husbands, Ira and Eugene Yates, and Ellis Williams.
Popular recordings such as “Roll on Buddy,” a bluegrass standard, and “Moonshiner and His Money” by Charlie Bowman and His Brothers along with “Johnson City Blues” by Clarence Greene emerged from the Johnson City Sessions. In addition to the Johnson City sessions, Walker scheduled recording sessions in Atlanta (1925 – 1932), New Orleans (1925-1927), Memphis (1928), and Dallas (1927-1929) to search out hidden musical talent throughout the southern United States. His recordings of Cajun musician Louis Falcon are among the first recorded works of that style of music.
Later Years
In the ‘30s and ‘40s Walker worked for RCA Victor and recorded blues, country and jazz, supervising three more essential recordings: Glenn Miller’s (1904-44) “In the Mood” in ‘39, Coleman Hawkins’ (1904-69) “Body and Soul” in ‘40, and Duke Ellington’s (1899-1974) “Take the ‘A’ Train” in ‘41. Miller’s “In the Mood” (which was No. 1 for 12 weeks, available on Miller’s The Popular Recordings 1938-42) exemplifies “Big Band” for many people.
In 1946 Walker was hired out of retirement to start a new label for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a subsidiary of Loew's Inc., the movie and theater giant. Fred Rose knew Walker who had previously as the head of A & R for the Columbia and RCA Victor labels. And so in 1947 Hank was signed by MGM as one of their first artists and had his first big hit, “Move It on Over.” MGM became one of the six big labels of the 1950s.
After Williams became a star around 1950 he started drinking and became difficult. Walker telephoned Williams and asked him to do a session for MGM.
“Can’t do it,” said Hank, “sore throat.”
Have you been to a doctor?” asked Walker.
“Yup,” Hank said.
“What did the doctor say it would take to cure you?” asked Walker.
“ ‘Bout twenty-five thousand dollars,” said Hank. He knew Walker had no choice but pay him.
Walker started a second career in the 50s when he wrote biographies on Hugo Wolfe and had just completed a biography on Verdi before he died Oct. 15, 1963 in Little Neck, N.Y.