Philo Records was founded by two brothers, Eddie and Leo Mesner, in 1945 on America’s West Coast in the city of Los Angeles. The label’s first release was “Flying Home”, an instrumental with Illinois Jacquet on saxophone, which was issued on Philo in August 1945. Eddie Mesner took charge of A&R, supported by West Coast music maestro Maxwell Davis, who worked for several of Los Angeles’ new independent labels.
The label’s name was a shortened version of Philharmonic Music Shop, the name of the brothers’ record store in Los Angeles.
The most significant of the early Philo 1945 releases is probably Wynonie Harris’ “Around The Clock” Parts 1 and 2, which were his first solo recordings. The label’s first hits came soon after that when Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers’ “Drifting Blues” and Helen Humes’ “Be-Baba-Luba” both climbed to number three on the Race Records chart.
In early 1946, the brothers received a notification from the Patent Office, refusing their application to register the name Philo because it was so similar to Philco, a radio company that was considering entering the recording industry. They were forced to change the Philo name, and their choice for the new name was Aladdin. The new logo picked up the tiny lamp from the original logo and made it a feature of the new design. The Philo releases were re-issued on the Aladdin label with the same serial number.
Most of Aladdin’s first releases were by Jazz artists, but the brothers were keen to cover all three aspects of Race Music. They regularly expanded the label’s roster, adding Lightning Hopkins, Little Miss Cornshucks, pianist Charles Brown, and Amos Milburn on the Blues front and the Soul-Stirrers to fly the Gospel flag. Over the next four years the company built a solid reputation that made them one of the leading West Coast labels. Amos Milburn in particular created some wonderful up-tempo recordings that took Boogie-Woogie piano into the realms of Rock & Roll and R&B, despite being issued as part of Aladdin’s Jazz series. 1947’s “Down The Road Apiece” is an instant classic, that still works well today.
The Soul-Stirrers made a series of excellent Gospel songs during this period.
In September 1948, Amos Milburn had his first number one hit on the Race Records chart with “Chicken Shack”. He followed that with “Bewildered” later the same year and that too went to number one, putting Aladdin firmly on the national music map.
In the following few years, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Tina Dixon (Lady Blues), Floyd Dixon, and the Five Keys were the most important new signings. In 1949, Big Joe Turner came to Aladdin to record a couple of tracks with Wynonie Harris. By this time, both were established artists and the resulting single was given the title “Battle of the Blues Parts 1 & 2”, with singers taking the verses in turn. It is in fact a look back to the Big Band Swing era, rather a move to R&B.
Nevertheless, Charles Brown maintained the momentum with several hits in 1949, including “Trouble Blues”, which reached number one on the newly-renamed Billboard R&B Chart in the Spring. Amos Milburn responded with more top hits too, with another number one, “Roomin’ House Blues”, later in the year. A dozen more Aladdin artists found their way on to the lower rankings on the chart.
Amos Milburn led the way again in 1950, with seven singles released during the year. The best of them was “Bad, Bad Whiskey”, which brought him another number one. Highlights of 1951 were Peppermint Harris’ number one hit “I Got Loaded”, Charles Brown’s number one “Black Night”, Floyd Dixon’s “Telephone Blues”, and the Five Keys’ “Glory of Love”, the first number one for the vocal group.
This level of success enabled the Mesner brothers to take two important decisions in 1951. The first was to introduce 45rpm versions alongside the usual 78rpm discs. The new format had been introduced by RCA Victor in March 1949 and required a record player that could play at the new speed. The Mesners could see the advantages of a smaller, vinyl disc, even though their many Black customers may not have acquired such a player yet. The brothers also introduced a 10-inch LP. The new long-playing microgroove album format was first issued by Columbia in 1948 for Classical recordings, so it was a bold move by the Mesners to use that format for R&B Music. It required a new record player and the discs were expensive compared with the old 78s. Very few of the new LPs were sold, as a result, and after five years they were phased out in favour of the more popular 12-inch LPs.
In 1952, the Mesner brothers followed the lead set by several other West Coast independent labels and looked to New Orleans for new talent. They signed Shirley & Lee and several other lesser-known acts, whose recordings were made in New Orleans at Cosimo Matassa’s studio, produced by local New Orleans bandleader Dave Bartholomew. (Full details of the New Orleans recordings for Aladdin can be found in Volume 1 of this series, “Icons of New Orleans”). Just as Imperial and Specialty had discovered, the New Orleans singers had a special magic. Shirley & Lee took Aladdin into the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Chart for the first time, with “Let the Good Times Roll” (an R&B number one) and “I Feel Good” (an R&B number three).
Sadly, the bold decisions didn’t really pay off. In 1952, only four Aladdin releases entered the top ten on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart. That reduced to two in 1953 and then one in 1954. Several artists chose to move on, including the Five Keys.
The Mesners thought that the solution to this problem might lie with Rock & Roll. They launched the new 12-inch LP series with a compilation of the label’s biggest hits to date, which they called “Rock n Roll with Rhythm and Blues”. It sold pretty well, but the eight albums that followed didn’t solve the problem. The series was cancelled in 1956.
A brief success came in 1957, when Thurston Harris came to Aladdin. His recording of “Little Bitty Pretty One” reached number two on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and number six on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart. It sold over a million copies.
Over the years, the Mesners set up various subsidiary labels, including Score (1948), Intro (1950), 7-11 (1952), Ultra (1955), Jazz: West (1955), and Lamp (1956), covering mainly Jazz, Pop and Classical music.
By 1961, the decline in sales meant that brothers could no longer continue to operate the label. They sold their company to Imperial Records, which was acquired by Liberty Records, who were subsequently taken over by Capitol Records in 1979.
In 1994, EMI Records USA issued a double CD of fifty-three Aladdin tracks, which is a good introduction to the West Coast label.
Selected Aladdin Artists
Amos Milburn was born in Houston, Texas, in 1927. He auditioned for Aladdin in 1946 and signed for the Mesner Brothers’ label, staying for eight years and recording around seventy-five tracks. He was an accomplished pianist and led his own band, until going solo in 1952. When the sales of his recordings fell, Aladdin ended his contract. He moved to Ace Records, but his style of Jump Blues was no longer in vogue. He died aged fifty-two in January, 1980. Fats Domino has cited Milburn as an influence on his piano-playing.
Amos Milburn 1950
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Amos Milburn recorded some tracks for Motown between 1962 and 1964, with Clarence Paul and Andre Williams producing. Stevie Wonder adds a burst of harmonica and there is even a classic Gospel track to close, “I’ll Leave You In His care”.
Wynonie Harris was born in 1915 in Omaha, Nebraska. At the age of sixteen, he left high school and joined a series of bands, before moving to Los Angeles in 1940. When the musicians’ strike started in 1942, he was forced to go solo and earn a living through live performances. He toured the country and was signed up by Lucky Millinder as a vocalist for his band in 1944. The band also had a female vocalist – Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Harris made his first recordings that year, “Hurry, Hurry” and “Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well”, which were later released by Decca. In 1945, he began a dispute with Millinder over money, as a result of which, Harris left. His replacement was Bull Moose Jackson. “Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well” added to Harris’ fame; it spent eight weeks on the Billboard Race Records Chart.
Wynonie Harris
Publicity Photo (Wikimedia Commons)
Back in Los Angeles, Harris decided to record a couple of singles with Aladdin. He didn’t stay long, before moving to Apollo in New York and then on to King Records in 1948, where he built a strong body of work, including a cover of Roy Brown’s “Good Rocking Tonight”, which went to number one on the Billboard Race Records Chart. He later moved to several other labels. His final recordings were made at Chess Records in 1964. Harris died in Los Angeles in 1969.
Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers were four young men from Texas. Johnny Moore played guitar, his brother Oscar did too, Eddie Williams played bass and Charles Brown played piano and sang. They made their first recordings for Atlas Records, and achieved their first hit backing Ivory Joe Hunter on “Blues at Sunrise” in 1945. They then recorded four singles for Aladdin, including “Drifting Blues” in 1946, which they co-wrote. The song has been covered by many Blues singers, including Bobby Bland, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker, and Eric Clapton, who included it many of his performances. It is a Blues song, but it is more melodic than usual.
The group didn’t sign any contract with Aladdin, so they were free to record elsewhere. When Charles Brown left the group to record as a solo artist for Aladdin, they went on to have hits with a series of different lead singers on a string of different labels, such as Modern, Exclusive, RCA Victor and Swing Time.
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown was born in Vinton, Louisiana, in 1924, but he grew up in Texas. His father was a railroad worker and a multi-instrumental musician. He taught his son to play piano, guitar and violin. By the age of ten, Brown was on stage playing guitar. Later, in his teens, he also played drums in various bands. In 1947, he cut his first two singles at Aladdin. The first was “Gatemouth Boogie” / “After Sunset” and the second was “Guitar In My Hand” / “Without Me Baby”. Maxwell Davis was responsible for the production and led his orchestra on the sessions, lending a hint of Swing to the Blues tunes.
Clarence Gatemouth Brown in 1947 or 1948 at the Bronze Peacock
(Wikimedia Commons)
In 1949, he joined Peacock Records, where he had his first chart success with “Mary Is Fine”. Over the next fifty-five years, he had continued to enjoy success, playing Blues and Country and everything in between!
Floyd Dixon was born in Marshall, Texas, in 1929. His family moved to Los Angeles in 1942, where he met Charles Brown, pianist and vocalist with Johnny Moore’s group (see above). Dixon cut his first single at Supreme in 1949, and then moved to Modern where he formed the Floyd Dixon Trio and cut six singles. In 1950, he moved to Aladdin, where he made a series of recordings. He took Charles Brown’s place in the Three Blazers when Brown left and also played with Eddie Williams’ Brown Brothers (Eddie played in the Three Blazers too!). The last of his eleven Aladdin singles was released in 1955. One of his Three Blazers tracks, “Telephone Blues”, made the R&B chart in 1950, as did his solo single “Call Operator 210” two years later.
Dixon switched to Specialty in 1952, then to Cat Records in 1954. He worked for around ten years, frequently changing labels, until retirement came in the sixties. There were a few more appearances during the seventies and eighties and a late album for Alligator.
In 1993, Dixon was given a Pioneer Award by the Rhythm & Blues Foundation. He died in 2006.
The Five Keys started life as a Gospel quartet, the Sentimental Four, formed around 1949 in Newport News, Virginia. The group consisted of two sets of brothers, Rudy and Bernard West and Ripley and Raphael Ingram. The quartet quickly added some secular songs to their repertoire as they performed in fairs and carnivals around the country, inspired, no doubt, by the Ink Spots. After winning several local talent contests, they were invited to sing at the Apollo Theatre in New York. When Raphael then decided to leave, two new singers joined the group, Maryland Pierce and Thomas Threat, and they changed their name to the Five Keys. Soon after that, in 1951, the Mesner brothers offered them a contract and they joined Aladdin.
The Five Keys 1955
Capitol Records Trade Ad (Wikimedia Commons)
The company released twelve singles by the group between 1951 and 1955, the last two after the Five Keys had left to join Capitol in 1953. They also issued an album “The Best of The Five Keys” in 1956 and then King in 1959. The group’s only chart success at Aladdin was with “The Glory of Love”, which topped the Billboard R&B Singles Chart in 1951. The song had been recorded by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra in 1936, with vocals by Helen Ward, during the era of Jazz and Swing, but now the Five Keys slowed it down and added a flavour of Gospel. It was very different!
Jay Warner summed up the importance of the group’s musical output in these terms: “One of the most popular, influential and beautiful-sounding R&B singing groups of the 1950s, The Five Keys were not only a link between the gospel/pop units of the ’40s and the later R&B and rock groups; they led by example, having hits in R&B, rock ‘n’ roll, and pop before the decade was through”. After 1960, the group made no real impact.
The Five Keys were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002.
