Title: Specialty Profiles: Percy Mayfield
Artist: Percy Mayfield
Label: Specialty
Catalog No.: SPCD 30056-2
Date: 2006
Title: Specialty Profiles: Larry Williams
Artist: Larry Williams
Label: Specialty
Catalog No.: SPCD 30054-2
Date: 2006
Specialty records, a Hollywood-based label that specialized in African-American blues and gospel records, signed Percy Mayfield and Larry Williams respectively in 1950 and 1954. Thanks to the Concord Music Group (current owner of Specialty) and the detailed research of music historian/producer Colin Escott, the Specialty Profile series commemorates these and several other lesser-known artists.
In the liner notes Escott comments: “While [Mayfield] might be known for just a handful of songs, his entire oeuvre repays attention. Don’t believe what the statistic book tells you; Percy Mayfield was a giant.” Endowed with a mellow, crooning baritone, Mayfield achieved his greatest success with the blues single “Please Send Me Someone To Love.” More fame came to him in the latter part of his career, when the “Poet Laureate of the Blues” penned one of his most recognizable tunes, “Hit the Road Jack,” for Ray Charles. Although Mayfield’s music is primarily identified as blues, there are tracks on the CD that exhibit some departure from the blues style. The up-tempo beat and jazz instrumentation of the duet “Sugar Mama-Peachy Papa” is more reminiscent of the big band sound of the 1940s. However, it is clear that his voice is more comfortable in the slow, mournful blues-based tracks, such as “Memory Pain.” Mayfield said himself, “I ventured into the world of sadness to find the subject matter for my songs. I fell in love with sadness because there’s more truth in it.”
Larry Williams, who signed with Specialty in the mid-1950s, had a successful albeit short career in the music industry. As a valet driver for Specialty label artist Lloyd Price, Williams gained access to producer Art Rupe. Williams’ hits “Short Fat Fanny,” “High School Dance,” “Bony Maronie” and “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” are essentially blues-influenced rock and roll numbers. In these tracks the shuffle beat is very apparent in piano and guitar lines, but there is more independence in the drum set. Unlike Mayfield, Williams did not use backup singers. He also relied less on call and response, and more on creative lyrics. According to Escott, “Along with the untutored vocals that went to the heart of rock and roll, his records had the beguiling innocence of the music’s infancy.” Aside from the four singles mentioned previously, the remainder of Williams’ work in rather unremarkable; it truly seems that his career ended almost as soon as it had begun.
Posted by Stephanie Fida
Editor’s note: Four additional CDs have recently been released on the Specialty Profile series: Lloyd Price, Roy Milton, John Lee Hooker, and Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers. Though each release includes two CDs, the second is a bonus disc of miscellaneous tracks from various Specialty CDs.