Roy Brown (Born 10/09/1925, Died 25/05/1981)

He was born in the Crescent City but moved around all over the place in his youth, finally arriving in Los Angeles at the age of seventeen. He came up with 'Good Rockin' Tonight' whilst fronting a band in Galveston and the song was taken straight to the top of the R&B charts by Wynonie Harris. Apparently, Harris wasn't that interested in the song initially - presumably he was pleased he changed his mind, even if it was only after Brown's version started to receive favourable airplay!
Brown started to get R&B hits of his own as early as 1948 and was regularly in the charts on the Deluxe label right through to 1952, proving himself a talented songwriter as well as a skilled and extrovert performer. Hits such as 'Hard Luck Blues', 'Boogie At Midnight', 'Miss Fanny Brown' and 'Long About Midnight' kept him in the spotlight for a four to five year period, and then his Deluxe contract was bought out by King Records in 1952 - his records for King were still of a very high standard, but his sales declined dramatically. Given that he had paved the way for so much of the rock and roll that was charting at the time, it was unfortunate that Brown was unable to cash in on the music's popularity. The King material can be found on the UK Ace CD "Mighty Mighty Man"

In 1957 he moved to the Imperial label and worked with Fats Domino's arranger and producer, the great Dave Bartholomew, and he hit the charts again with a top 40 version of the Domino penned 'Let The Four Winds Blow' (which predated Domino's own rendition). He also cut some unjustifiably ignored sax driven rockers during this period ('Saturday Night', 'Ain't Gonna Do It' for example) but he also delivered a very derivative version of Buddy Knox's 'Party Doll' - it was a minor hit, but it was one of the worst things he ever committed to record.

He continued to record throughout the 60s on a variety of labels, including Summit, Mercury and Bluesway - good, solid boogie and blues but without any real commercial success - it actually got to the stage where he was supplementing his income by selling encyclopaedias!. He did start to pick up a little bit of momentum following an acclaimed performance as part of the Johnny Otis show at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival; a 1973 album on ABC-Bluesway followed but it all came a little bit too late for Roy. His last recordings came out on his own Friendship and Faith labels without much payback and in 1981, still only 56, he died of a heart attack.
He was an important link between post war R&B and the initial rise of rock and is still largely under appreciated by many who loved what followed him musically. He was undoubtedly an innovator, influencing any number of artists who followed, including Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. If you like your jump blues and boogie served up with style and panache, you should add him to your record collection. The best single CD collection is the Rhino set "Good Rockin' Tonight" which includes material from Deluxe, King and Imperial - in the UK available on import but still easily found.