A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - PLEDGE WEEK: “Shake a Hand” by Faye Adams

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

Welcome to the fourth in the Pledge Week series of episodes, putting up old bonus episodes posted to my Patreon in an attempt to encourage more subscriptions. If you like this, consider subscribing to the Patreon at http://patreon.com/join/andrewhickey . This one is about “Shake a Hand” by Faye Adams, a classic of gospel-tinged R&B that influenced Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Paul McCartney among others. Click the cut to view a transcript of this episode: (more…)

This is not a proper episode of the podcast. Rather, this is something else. I've decided to hold a pledge week to try to get a few more subscribers to my Patreon. So every day this week, I'll be putting one of the backer-only episodes I've done over the past year up on the main podcast feed, so people can hear what it is you get

if you sign up for the Patreon, with this little introductory piece before them. If you're already a backer, you will already have this episode, so you can skip this, and everything else labeled Pledge Week. I do one of these every week for my backers, and backers even at the lowest levels get them.

If you sign up for a dollar a month, you get each new one as it comes out, and access to all the old ones. There are 59 of them up so far, as well as a few other things, like the monthly Q&As I've been doing for backers. I'm only making seven of these available on the public feed, so there's a lot still there for you to listen to.

If this works well, I might do another one next year, where there'll be another 50-odd episodes to choose from. None of this is meant to put any pressure on anyone who can't afford it to back the podcast. The podcast will always remain free to listen to, and I hope it will remain ad-free as well. I know times are especially tough right now, and many of you literally can't afford the money you're already spending, let alone paying any more out. I only want backers who can spare the money. but if you can afford it and if you like these bonus episodes enough then go to patreon.com

slash Andrew Hickey that's spelled H-I-C-K-E-Y or follow the link in the show notes and sign up and you'll get one of these the same day as every new episode. If you can't, well, enjoy this extra free bonus and don't worry about it.

Welcome to this week's Patreon-only bonus podcast Today we're going to have another look backwards to another song I've referenced several times in the main podcast but never properly talked about. Today we're going to look at Shake a Hand by Fay Adams. Shake a Hand is one of the most important R&B ballads of the early 50s and one which inspired almost every musician working in the field at the time.

But its writer would never live to see exactly. how important the song became. Joe Morris was a trumpet player who had worked in the 40s with a lot of the most important names in jump band music, and in particular he'd spent several years with Lionel Hampton before striking out on his own and forming his own band. His first record as a bandleader was a cover version of Drinking Winespo Diodeode with Wynoni Harris singing lead.

In the early Drink wine And had had a big hit in That mess to fail to In the early 50s Morris had been performing With a female singer Laurie Tate

And had had a big hit in 1950 With her singing on Any Time, Any Place, Anywhere But by 1952 Tate was thinking of leaving The group And Morris was looking for her

replacement, and so Herb Abramson at Atlantic introduced him to a singer who had been born Fanny Toole, but performed under her married name Faye Scrooggs. Scrooks had started out in the gospel field. Her father was a gospel singer, and he was supposedly a key figure in the Church of God in Christ, though since almost every article I can find uses that exact wording, which they seem to have copied from her Wikipedia page, and I can find no independent confirmation of the fact. It should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, Marve Goldberg also uses that wording, and Goldberg knows his stuff and can generally be trusted. I suspect Wikipedia copied it from Goldberg. Her big break came when Ruth Brown saw her performing in Atlanta, and was so

impressed that she got several of her musician friends to go and see this new singer. Count Basie, Billy Eckstein, and Marshall Royal all went to see her, and Royal suggested that she start working with a vocal coach called Phil Moore. Moore was famous for coaching people such as Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge, and also released a few records himself, like his Bebop Christmas recording, Chinchy Old Scrooge. in Harlem and up and down the street nothing was shaking and all the hipsters was beat the only joint jumping with business frantic and huge was a dingy old hawk shop run by chinchy stingy old scrooge everybody was busted hawking horns fiddles and skins and when old scrooge get your man scrooge

always wins there they'd sneak in and then they'd just drag out more started working with scrooks and brought her to the attention of Herb Abramson at Atlantic, who in turn paired her with Joe Morris, who agreed that Scruggs would make a suitable replacement for Tate. Almost immediately she was in the studio with him. Tate was advertised as performing with him on a tour that ended on December the 11th, 1952, but by December the 23rd, Scroggs was recording with Morris. At their first session together, Scroggs sang Lee,

on three songs and duetted with Morris on That's What Makes My Baby Fat. Herb Abramson wanted to push scrox as a singer, but unfortunately Abramson was drafted to fight in the Korean War, and the other Atlantic executives seemed much less interested, both in her and in Morris. Both of them went to Herald Records, and in the transition between labels, Scruggs also changed her name, to Fay Adams. Her first single under the new name was written by Morris, and recorded with Morris's band and a vocal group called The Five Pennies. By this point, Phil Moore had become Adams' manager,

and she was being promoted as a star in her own right, not just as Joe Morris's singer, even though she was still also singing with Morris's band. Shake her hand would go on to become a classic, covered by many artists. Even at the time it had a number of competing versions, including a country one by Red Foley. As Shake her hand was such a big hit,

Atlantic decided to release some tracks they had left over from her earlier sessions with them, under the new name of Fay Adams. Herald Records threatened a lawsuit, but the Atlantic tracks had little success anyway, and Adams' career was unaffected by their release. She was, though, increasingly dissatisfied working with Joe Morris, even though they had several more hits together,

and Adams eventually decided to start working with Bill Doggett instead. Doggett and his band accompanied her on stage, and various different musicians worked with her on records. Her commercial success seemed unaffected at first. Her third R&B number one came out after she moved on from Morris. But after that we must find somebody new. I wish I knew some other way. But after that, her career slowly declined,

each record selling a little less than the one before, and she was eventually dropped by her label. She had a comeback in the late 60s and became a gospel artist again under her new married name, Fanny Jones. According to Wikipedia, she's still alive, age 96, but Marve Goldberg says on his website that he's found one source saying she died in 2016,

but he can't find another source to confirm that. So we don't know if she's alive. We do know, sadly, that Joe Morris died all too young. Morris was only 36 when he died, suddenly, of a brain hemorrhage in 1958. He didn't live to see shake a hand taken up by Laverne Baker, Jackie Wilson,

Paul McCartney and more. These days, probably the best-known version, is the one cut by Elvis Presley towards the end of his life. But still, the definitive version of the song is the one cut by a young woman known as Faye or Fanny, Scroggs or Adams or Toole or Jones,

the little woman with the big voice who might or might not be alive to this day.