Roy Milton was born in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, in 1907. His grandmother was a Chickasaw native American; Milton grew up on a reservation, later relocating to Tulsa. He joined Ernie Fields’ band towards the end of the 1920s as a singer and then became the group’s drummer too.
He moved to Los Angeles in 1933, where he formed his own band, which he called the Solid Senders. Camille Howard played piano. For the next twelve years, the band earned a living playing in the clubs of Los Angeles and the West Coast, until an opportunity arose to record for a new independent record company Juke Box Records that had been set up by Art Rupe and his partners in 1944. The Solid Senders cut several tracks with Rupe which resulted in the release of two singles, the first being “Milton’s Boogie”/ “Groovy Blues”, and the second being “R.M. Blues”/ “Rhythm Cocktail”. “R.M. Blues” was a big cross-over hit, reaching number two on the R&B Chart and number twenty on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart. It sold over a million copies! The single launched Milton’s recording career and enabled Rupe to leave the partnership of Juke Box and go it alone, setting up Specialty Records in 1945.
Milton took a similar decision, probably following Rupe’s example. He set up his own record company with two partners, Forrest Perkins (a Los Angeles DJ who owned a record store and a record pressing company) and Ben Waller (Milton’s manager and booking agent). The new label issued four Solid Senders’ singles in 1946: “Rainey Day Confession Blues” Parts 1 and 2, “It Never Should Have Been This Way”/ “Red Light”, “Mr. Fine”/ “Milton’s Boogie”, and Grooving With Joe”/ “Blues In My Heart”. He called his record label Roy Milton Record Company and came up with a brilliant idea to make his releases stand out.
He hired a New York illustrator who had designed some racy book covers and asked him to design some individual cartoons for every release. The illustrator William Alexander came up with something very original, a different cartoon for every single.
Here is the first:
“Mr. Fine” the third single is, like the previous tracks, Jazz-based with a Blues vocal, a pattern that is strongly reminiscent of pre-war songs. Roy Milton plays drums on the track. Camille Howard features strongly on piano and takes lead vocal. There is a talented horn section comprising Chaughey Roberts on alto sax, Buddy Floyd on tenor sax and Hosea Sapp on trumpet, and Edward David Robinson completes the line-up on bass.
The B-side, “Milton’s Boogie”, is a Boogie-based Jump Blues. It is a track that takes the band into R&B territory and points the way forward.
Three more singles by the Solid Senders were issued on the Roy Milton label, including a re-issue of the Juke Box hit “R.M. Blues”, before Roy Milton left the band and signed for Specialty. He signed a new singer to take his place at Roy Milton Records, a young teenager with a good Blues voice called Jimmy Grissom (who fronted the Blenders rather than the Senders) and then the Roy Milton Record Company was renamed Miltone Records in 1947. Two 1947 singles feature Roy Milton on one side of each release; they were probably already recorded when Milton moved on.
Roy Milton’s decision to move to Specialty gave him greater market exposure. Art Rupe certainly worked hard to promote Milton’s songs, putting out twenty-nine singles between 1947 and 1951. Nineteen of these were top ten hits. “Hop, Skip and Jump” (1948), Information Blues” (1950) and “Best Wishes” (1951) were the most successful, all making the top two or three on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart.
When Milton left Specialty in 1955, he moved to Dootone Records, where he recorded his compositions “I Never Would Have Made It”, (1955), “I Can’t Go On” (1955), “You Got Me Reeling And Rocking” (1955) and “Baby I’m Gone” (1956). All four singles are full of bounce, typical of the Los Angeles version of Jump Blues.
He recorded with eight more labels from 1960 to 1989 with eleven more releases. He played at the Cavalcade of Jazz concert at Wrigley’s Field in Los Angeles in 1950 and later joined the Johnny Otis Band, with whom he played at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1970. He died in Los Angeles in 1983.
There are several very good compilations of his songs, including one from Specialty (above) and one from Acrobat Records.
Meanwhile, back at Miltone in 1947, the roster was expanded. Milton’s replacement, Jimmy Grissom, didn’t stay long. After the release of six singles on Miltone, he left to join Modern Records in 1948 and then the Recorded in Hollywood label in 1951. That pattern was repeated by many artists on the West Coast, who didn’t sign long-term contracts but cut a few sides before moving on.
Blues singer Jesse Thomas made two singles at Miltone in 1948 before moving on to Specialty, Swing Time, Hollywood, and Elko. Wright Holmes added one release, a Country Blues. Little Miss Cornshucks made three singles for the label, bringing a touch of the old Vaudeville Blues. West Coast maestro Maxwell Davis dropped by in 1949 with his orchestra and tenor sax player Buddy Floyd to record an instrumental “Just Before Sunrise”, an echo of the pre-war swing big bands plus a touch of R&B.
Without a big name since Milton left, the company struggled to make a mark. Finally, in 1950, Miltone was sold to Gotham Records.
There is a compilation of the label’s releases issued by Acrobat, which includes some tracks cut in New Orleans by De Luxe, which were leased to Miltone. Also of interest are two other labels which have the same cartoon-style record labels, with around half a dozen releases between them, mostly big band Jazz. They are Ace and Foto, both of which were probably associated with Miltone. Only a few releases are known.
