Roy Brown was one of a group of Black singers who started the first wave of R&B music in New Orleans. He recorded a song that he had written called “Good Rockin’ Tonight” at Cosimo Matassa’s J&M Studios in 1947. Brown was from Louisiana, but he had worked in Los Angeles and Texas, before returning to try his luck in New Orleans. The majority of his earlier songs were blues-based, and now he added a touch of boogie woogie. The new track was his best so far, selling well nationally and reaching number thirteen on the R&B Chart. The structure of the song is a twelve-bar blues, with a big band sound. The horns are strong and jazzy, and the piano is well down in the mix. Brown’s vocals are clear and precise, like the pre-war vocalists of the Big Band era. What’s new is the rolling, slow boogie, very appropriate for a theme tune for the city known as the Big Easy.
Roy Brown (publicity photo)
Photo: Probably by Jonas Bernholm: 1949 (Wikimedia Commons)
Roy Brown released nine more songs over the next ten years, with two number ones on the R&B chart, “Long About Midnight” in 1947 and “Hard Luck Blues” in 1950. Both are slow, big band Blues, with the piano more to the fore, and that is where Fats Domino and Dave Bartholomew saw the future of New Orleans R&B.
