Ollie Shepard

Vocalist and pianist Ollie Shepard offers sometimes been misidentified being a nation blues musician, probably because from Oct 1937 to Apr 1939 his rings were billed seeing that Ollie Shepard & His Kentucky Children. In most cases, his groupings purveyed a nice, decidedly urban mixture of blues with unusually uplifting lyrics, leap blues, jive, and golf swing. Shepard, whose essential statistics continue steadily to elude research workers, began his documenting profession in Chicago and had taken himself to NY in 1938, attaining popularity being a Decca musician and switching to Okeh in 1941. Some of his bandmembers possess yet to become identified, Shepard do begin with alto saxophonist Edgar Saucier and guitarist Lonnie Johnson, lower four edges with trumpeter Frankie Newton, tenor saxophonist Robert Carroll, and guitarist Teddy Bunn in-may 1938 and was luckily enough to get tenor saxophonist Chu Berry and pianist Sammy Cost in the music group in Apr 1939. Other people who are recognized to possess documented with Shepard in NY through the years 1939-1941 are tenor saxophonists Walter Wheeler, Stafford “Pazzuza” Simon, and Theodore McCord, who also doubled on clarinet; Duke Ellington’s longtime string bassist Wellman Braud, guitarist George Francis, and drummer Johnny Wells. A female by the name of Ollie Potter also sang on the program that occurred in 1940. In January 1942 Shepard trim eight edges for Okeh using a quartet that included tenor saxophonist Saxie Payne, and guitarist Carl Lynch, but these information weren’t released to the general public. A sampling of Shepard’s comprehensive recorded functions as reissued by Record in 1996 whets the urge for food, but his professional lifestyle after 1942 ‘s almost impossible to patch together. A program for Columbia that occurred in November 1950, for instance, discovered him collaborating with performing trumpeter Hot Lip area Page, but game titles from that time, such as “Crazy using the Blues” and “Big Great Automobile” usually do not appear to have got managed to get onto any Sizzling hot Lips Page series. The reported life of various other postwar recordings for the recently maintained Okeh label, in addition to Apollo, Coral, Gee, and Johnson appears to be to justify the third quantity from Record or a extensive anthology of Shepard’s full recorded functions as innovator and sideman. Although he’s known to possess recorded as past due as 1960, frustratingly small attention continues to be paid to the designer since his heyday through the years instantly preceding the next World War.