OSCAR McLOLLIE Born 22 September 1924, Caldwell County, Louisiana Died 4 July 2008, Oakland, California Baritone singer / orchestra leader Oscar McLollie was one of the missing links between jump blues and rock 'n' roll. For someone who had only one modest hit, he had a lot of influence : many of his records were covered, as we shall see below. In the armed forces during World War II, Oscar sang in a quartet called The Bullets, putting on USO shows for fellow servicemen. After the war, he made his way to Los Angeles, the location where he would make all of his recordings. After a short stay at Mercury Records in 1951, McLollie started to record for Leon Rene and his son Rafael, also known as Googie. They had just set up a new label, Class Records, after the bankruptcy of Exclusive Records, but decided to make a quiet start and struck an arrangement with the Bihari brothers to release the Class masters on Modern Records. Leon Rene would be Oscar's manager, producer and chief songwriter (often using his pseudonym Jimmie Davis) throughout his recording career. McLollie's first release under this arrangement was "The Honey Jump" (Parts 1 & 2, 1953), credited - as would be all of his Modern records - to Oscar McLollie and his Honey Jumpers. Though not yet quite rock 'n' roll, it has many elements of the genre. Two saxes try to out-honk each other, while the piano man is pounding away on the 88 keys. Wild stuff. The song was covered by the Sauter-Finnigan Orchestra on RCA and ...
Tags: Hot, Banana-Oscar, mclollie, Honey, Jumpers-'54-Modern, 932
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