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CHAPTER ONE
BLUE JAY 109
I gleaned the following information from the spring 1991 issue of the doo-wop collector’s magazine, Sh-Boomin’:
Harlem, NY
August 18, 1955
The five giddy young men walked through the door marked BLUE JAY RECORDS. Sitting at the reception desk of the closet-sized office was a middle-aged African-American woman.
“Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”
Chris, the group’s bass singer, answered in a deep, booming voice. “Yes, we’re the Imperial Knights. We’ve got a recording session with Mr. Brooks.”
“Ah, yes! He was expecting you.” As she dialed Walter Brooks’ extension, the young men whispered among themselves.
“Man! I still can’t believe we got a record deal.”
“Well, let’s not mess it up, huh? This is our shot at the big time. We do this shit right, we get played on Jocko, Alan Freed, Dr. Jive....”
“Night Train Wayne?”
“Damned right! But we got to sing our asses off, you dig?”
The receptionist hung up the receiver. “If you gentlemen would like to have a seat, my husband will be out in just a minute.”
They thanked her and sat down.
Arthur, the first tenor, whispered, “She called us gentlemen.”
“That’s ‘cause she don’t know us yet,” said Randy, the baritone.
As the teens suppressed their laughter, an African-American man of forty came through a door at the back of the room. He was six feet tall and husky, with vibrant green eyes, processed black hair, and a thick mustache and beard with streaks of gray. The man was dressed in a navy blue business suit that must have cost several hundred dollars.
“Gentlemen.”
The Imperial Knights got to their feet and took turns shaking hands with the man who had signed them to Blue Jay.
Floyd Gooley, the lead singer said, “Mr. Brooks, we just want to say once again how much we all appreciate this opportunity. We won’t let you down, sir.”
“I know you won’t. Now let’s make some records.”
Brooks led the young men through the door at the back of the reception area. They walked down a corridor jammed with filing cabinets, cardboard boxes full of forty-five RPM records and reels of tape, assorted janitorial supplies, and a bookcase that was empty except for three overflowing ashtrays. On the walls were several framed records with the Blue Jay logo. Under each single was a small white card that stated the record’s sales figure. The most successful had sold close to three hundred thousand units and had spent a month on Billboard’s national Rhythm ‘n’ Blues chart. Also on the wall were autographed pictures of some of America’s best-known R&B disc jockeys, some of whom were listed as co-writers on Blue Jay’s records even though they had never actually composed a song.
As Brooks led the group into the tiny recording studio, Henry, the second tenor, whispered to Chris, “This is it?”
“It’s a start, man, it’s a start.”
“Damned right it’s a start,” said Brooks.
“Oh,” Henry exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks. I didn’t mean....”
“It’s all right, man. And lay off that ‘Mr. Brooks’ shit, will you? It’s Walter.”
He went into the control room and emerged moments later with two armloads of sheet music. As he passed it out to the group members, Brooks said, “These are the four songs you’ll be recording. You’ll be glad to know one of them is the tune you auditioned with.”
Floyd’s cherubic face lit up. “We get to record our own song?”
“That’s right. Now, I also wanted to go with something familiar. So, you’re going to cut ‘Keep On Churning’....”
“That Wynonie Harris?” Arthur asked.
“Sure is.”
“Goddamn! I used to love Mr. Blues.”
“Me, too,” said Randy. “Whatever happened to him, anyway?”
Brooks seemed not to hear the question. “I also picked a song from World War Two, ‘When The Lights Go On Again.’”
“I know that tune,” said Floyd. “My mama used to sing it to me when I was little. Used to put me to sleep.”
Chris grinned. “Let’s hope our record don’t that to folks!”
Brooks said, “Finally, one of my tunes. It’s called ‘Ball, Baby, Ball.’ Now, you boys get to practicing, and I’ll call the band.”
What the Imperial Knights didn’t know was that Walter Brooks was an ardent perfectionist who would keep them in the studio for the next eleven hours. But even after the boys went home exhausted, Brooks himself remained in the control room for the rest of the night, mixing the master tapes until he had what he felt was a pair of songs good enough to release. First thing that morning, Brooks delivered the masters to the Bronx pressing plant he always used, and went home to sleep.
The following afternoon, he called the Imperial Knights back into the studio, but not to record. He handed them each a forty-five RPM and announced, “Gentlemen, your ticket to the big-time.”
The group members could barely contain their excitement as they looked at every square inch of their single. Blue Jay 109, the label read.
Floyd asked, “Uh, Walter?”
“Yeah, man?”
“Where’s the song we wrote?”
“Only need two tracks for a single. Don’t worry, man, it’ll be on your next record.”
Brooks gave his new discoveries a carton full of records to do with as they pleased, after which he loaded a box into his car and set about delivering Blue Jay 109 to his disc jockey friends. He stopped at over a dozen different radio stations. Finally, at ten o’clock that evening, Brooks drove to his final stop, Brooklyn’s WBNX. His old friend, Earl “Night Train” Wayne, had just begun his four-hour show, The Rhythm and Blues Caravan.
When Brooks tapped on the air studio window, Wayne flashed his beatific smile and opened the door.
“Brooksie, mah man! What’s buzzin’, cousin?”
Brooks laughed. “Save that shit for your listeners, will you? I got me a brand new group here.”
He handed Wayne the Imperial Knights record. The disc jockey turned the sleeve upside down and shook it. When a handful of twenty-dollar bills landed on the counter, Wayne grinned and stuffed the money into his shirt pocket.
“Which side?”
“Better make it the jump tune.”
“Ah, yes! With the sole writer’s credit going to ‘W. Brooks.’”
“Damned right.”
“OK, Brooksie, you got it. Just one more thing: I’m doing a dance next weekend and I sure could use some prizes to give away. Any chance....?”
“Sure, man.” Brooks handed Wayne an extra twelve copies of the Imperial Knights’ single.
The disc jockey smiled. “You are truly a gentleman!”
Brooks chuckled. “You’d say that to Khruschev if he paid you enough.”
The record exec hadn’t driven more than two blocks when Wayne turned on the microphone.
“Oh yeah, baby! That was the Boss of the Blues, Mr. Joe Turner, and his brand new one, ‘Flip, Flop and Fly.’ Speaking of new ones, mah man Mr. Walter Brooks from Blue Jay Records just dropped by and laid a side on me by a group from 145th Street in Harlem. They call themselves the Imperial Knights, and we’re going to debut their record right about now, cousins. It’s called ‘Ball, Baby, Ball!’”
A screeching tenor sax jump-started the song, followed by the group’s frantic doo-wop chants and Floyd Gooley’s guttural lead.
As Brooks headed for the Brooklyn Bridge, he cranked up the volume on his car’s receiver and let his new discoveries fill the late-evening air.
That night, a fire broke out at Blue Jay. It destroyed everything in the building, including the master tapes and remaining copies of the Imperial Knights’ record. While nobody was hurt in the blaze, it spelled the end of both Walter Brooks’ label and the group’s career.
By the dawn of the ‘60s, rock ‘n’ roll had lost a great deal of the roughness and vitality that drew millions of white teen-agers to it just five years before. As a result, the rhythm and blues recordings of the early to middle 1950s enjoyed a revival, and the “oldie” was born.
The first rock ‘n’ roll revival was concentrated on the upper East Coast, mainly from Boston to Baltimore. And the R&B records to which these college-aged collectors gravitated were mostly by vocal groups. Forty-five RPMs on labels like Chance, Parrot, Herald, and Rama were in such demand, that Irving “Slim” Rose aimed his Times Square Records store exclusively at the first generation of doo-wop collectors.
Even at this early date, Blue Jay 109 was the Holy Grail of vocal-group recordings. Rose kept a plastic-wrapped copy of the original forty-five on his “rare wall” with a price tag of $100 — when even the hardest-to-find doo-wops were several times less expensive.
As the doo-wop era passed farther into history, Blue Jay 109 became increasingly sought-after and legendary. In 1970, a copy with a crack in the vinyl sold at auction for $775. Price guides of that era listed a mint-condition copy as worth $1,500 or more.
In 1975, a Los Angeles record dealer named Art Reilly decided to bootleg the single. However, being that rarest of breeds — a bootlegger with a conscience — Reilly made sure that the numerous shysters who dealt in rare vinyl would be unable to pass his bootlegs off as originals. Not only did Reilly make the deadwax (the run-off groove at the end of the record) considerably narrower than it was on the originals, he also stamped the incorrect matrix number into it.
A knowledgeable collector who studied one of Art Reilly’s forty-fives would know that it was a reproduction. But even so, those bootlegs sold for ten dollars or more. Two decades after the Imperial Knights made their one and only record, an original was so hard to find, even the purists who normally viewed bootlegs as immoral had to settle for a counterfeit or go without.
Finally, in the fall of 1990, the Estate of Robert Byrd, a recently-deceased doo-wop collector, sold his mint copy of Blue Jay 109 for $22,500, which inspired the piece in Sh-Boomin’.
I came into it a decade later.
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