Ernie K-Doe - Emperor Of New Orleans - Extended Liner Notes
Ernie K-Doe - Emperor Of New Orleans
There was nothing particularly subtle or overly humble about legendary singer Ernie K-Doe. As befit a man sometimes brashly billed as the R&B Emperor of New Orleans (or even Emperor of the Universe), his stage presentation required him to be flamboyant in order to back up such outrageous boasts. He embraced the outsized role wholeheartedly, donning a flashy crown and flowing cape to properly emphasize his regal status around the Crescent City.
K-Doe’s eternal calling card was his irresistible “Mother-In-Law,” the Allen Toussaint composition and production that blasted up to the very peak of the pop and R&B charts in 1961 on the locally based Minit label. But Ernie—his real name Ernest Kador, Jr., born in New Orleans on February 22, 1936—continued to make highly memorable records that stretched into the ‘70s and beyond, usually with keyboard wizard Toussaint at the production helm.
From 1973 on, Allen and his business partner Marshall E. Sehorn worked out of their own Sea-Saint Studios, producing releases for their Sansu Enterprises operation as well as hosting outside clients as disparate as Labelle and Paul McCartney’s band Wings. The later period of Ernie’s prolific recording career is what this collection is all about, a period when K-Doe made funk-steeped platters for Toussaint that were perfectly in tune with their era. Even when disco was at its excessive peak and commercial interest in Crescent City R&B had fallen to a precipitously low ebb, K-Doe sounded like no one but K-Doe. That’s fortunate for us.
K-Doe was born at New Orleans’ Charity Hospital--the same facility where he’d pass away 65 years later--to a preacher and his wife, but was reared mostly by his aunt. Gospel music was Ernie’s primary influence early in life. He was particularly drawn to the fiery exhortations of sanctified screamer Archie Brownlee, lead singer of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. But the young man eventually crossed over to the secular side of the tracks, winning a WMRY radio-sponsored talent contest while attending Booker T. Washington High School. Then he moved to Chicago to live with his mom.
Despite his youth, Ernie snagged gigs at the Crown Propeller Lounge and the Club Bagdad on the South Side. In November of 1953, the 17-year-old even signed a pact with Leonard Allen’s United Records through a recommendation from the Five Blazes, one of the company’s more successful acts. But his four sides were shelved. Before long, he was back living in the Big Easy—and happily, his next session would see light of day. Ernie formed a vocal group known as the Blue Diamonds, who waxed a ‘54 single for Newark, New Jersey-based Savoy Records, “No Money.”
After that, Ernie went solo, signing with Art Rupe’s Specialty Records, an Los Angeles R&B label boasting a strong New Orleans presence. Billed as Ernest Kador, he made his first solo single, “Do Baby Do,” only six days after Little Richard waxed his explosive “Tutti-Frutti” at the same facility--Cosimo Matassa’s studio, which happened to be the only one in town of any consequence. His name was simplified to Ernie Kado when Al Silver’s New York-headquartered Ember Records unleashed the singer’s “Tuff - Enuff” at the beginning of 1959 with sax blaster Lee Allen leading the band (Allen’s swinging instrumental “Walkin’ With Mr. Lee” had been a ‘58 hit on Ember).
Ernie split the writers’ credit on his Ember single with Thibodaux, La.-born ex-Ray Charles trumpeter (and Lee Dorsey discoverer) Renald Richard and Ernie’s manager, WYLD radio deejay Larry McKinley. That same year, McKinley launched a record label with Joe Banashak, owner of A-1 Record Distributors in the Big Easy. They christened their fledgling venture Minit and brought Ernie aboard.
McKinley conjured up the phonetic spelling of Ernie’s surname to make things easier for people in the music industry. “I’d get calls back from the guys saying, ‘Man, how do you pronounce this son-of-a-bitch’s name? Kador? Caddor?’” said the late McKinley. “I said, ‘Don’t worry—when the next record comes out, I guarantee you everybody’s gonna pronounce it the same way!’ So I’m the one that put it in phonics: ‘K-Doe!’”
When Ernie’s first Minit platter, the rocking “Make You Love Me,” hit the streets in late ‘59, it was simply credited to K-Doe—no first name on offer. But that was a one-time deal. The atmospheric “Hello My Lover,” the singer’s Minit encore during the summer of ‘60, properly listed its performer as Ernie K-Doe, and that’s the way his billing largely stayed. From the start of his Minit tenure, Ernie’s output was produced, arranged, and often composed by brilliant young pianist Allen Toussaint, the label’s innovative A&R man.
Toussaint was born in New Orleans on January 14, 1938 and began playing the 88s when he was only six-and-a-half. “I understood the structure of the piano very soon, and I began picking out little melodies that I heard on the radio,” said the late Toussaint. “My sister would point out, ‘This E that you’re playing, this is there on the page.’ So it started like that.” He later adopted Roy “Professor Longhair” Byrd as one of his primary influences. “I first saw him when I was 16 at a record hop,” he said. “He was playing a little spinet piano, and I saw him briefly at a record hop, just playing solo one day. And I was very excited about that, because I had learned everything that he had come out with.” Allen made his first album for RCA Victor in 1958 and did a fair amount of session work, making him an excellent candidate for Minit’s A&R post.
McKinley brought Toussaint into the company. “I said, ‘Well, Joe, okay—you’re the distributor, I’m the deejay, but we need a music man. I know a guy named Allen Toussaint. He’s playing at a club called the Joy Tavern. Let me go contact him, Joe.=” said McKinley. “He had 50 percent and I had 50 percent of the company. So I said, ‘Well, Al, we ain’t got no whole lot of bucks, but we can give you some stock.’ So that=s how we got Allen Toussaint in.”
It took a bit of time for Toussaint to dial in on K-Doe’s wavelength. “When we first got started, I had a problem. But I did finally soak into what was the best way for him,” said Toussaint. “When I first began writing for Ernie K-Doe, he used to like to scream a lot, like the Five Blind Boys, the early ones. And he used to really like to scream. And I didn’t think when I was about to do this recording on him, I didn’t think it should be the kind that he screamed and carried on on. I thought it should have some sort of rein that could be held on to that others could hold on to as well, rather than just take off and scream. So I wrote one song with Danny White=s kind of voice in mind, and about as far as Danny White would go, and I would give that to Ernie K-Doe to sing. And that’s how that happened. That=s how that muse got out.”
The combination struck major paydirt when K-Doe waxed Toussaint’s “Mother-In-Law.” Allen was forging a new Crescent City sound, sidling away from rock and roll to instead blend in a Ray Charles-rooted soul influence (Toussaint’s in-the-cracks ivories prowess was a major part of the change too). Allen assembled a studio vocal group consisting of booming bass singer Benny Spellman and tenors Calvin Lee and Willie Harper for “Mother-In-Law,” a playful, utterly irresistible novelty number.
“Years ago, mother-in-laws were the brunt of many, many jokes of the stand-up comedians. I actually liked the way the line goes melodically, and the word ‘mother-in-law’ fit into that melodic line very well,” said Toussaint. “I liked that melodic line. And the word ‘mother-in-law’ fell right into that melodic line. And it was easy to write verses in between that line to get the point across about ‘mother-in-law.’”
Released at the beginning of 1961, Ernie’s “Mother-In-Law” zoomed up the R&B charts to the very top that spring, crossing over to achieve the same spectacular feat on the pop listings as well. It was a career-making record of the first order, and K-Doe made the most of it, heading out to tour the Northeast. McKinley’s managerial acumen came into play prior to his departure.
“When K-Doe went to go into New York, he was rollin’. So I said, ‘Okay, K-Doe, I’m gonna tell you. You’re goin’ to New York now, first time. You’re goin’ to play at the Apollo. Now you can’t go up there with that country shit, man! You gotta be smooth. You’re goin’ to New York.’ I=m giving him the rundown, you know. He listened to me. He said, ‘Well, boss, you mean I can’t eat no bullets?’ He’s talking about the red beans! I said, ‘Yeah, you can eat all the bullets you want!’ I’m tellin’ him not to go up there and make it all country. He’s worried about what to eat!”
K-Doe would make more hits for Minit later in 1961: his self-penned “Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta” was followed by “I Cried My Last Tear” and its flip “A Certain Girl” (both scribed by Toussaint under his Naomi Neville alias), and in early ’62, he scored with his own “Popeye Joe.” But none came close to equaling the seismic national impact of “Mother-In-Law.”
Ernie stuck around Minit and then its Instant sister label into the spring of 1964, making splendid, lively Crescent City R&B platters aplenty that met with less and less commercial response. Only a month after his last Instant offering, “Talking Out Of My Head” (another Naomi Neville copyright), K-Doe defected to Don Robey’s Duke Records in Houston, debuting with the self-authored sequel “My Mother-In-Law (Is In My Hair Again).”
Ernie maintained the same sort of longterm label relationship at Duke that he’d nurtured at Minit/Instant, this one enduring until the end of 1969. Although he mostly worked with house A&R men Gil Caple and Wilmer Shakesnider, there was also reportedly some studio action up in Memphis for K-Doe with trumpeter Willie Mitchell in charge. Ernie posted a pair of R&B hits for Duke in 1967, his “Later For Tomorrow” preceding a revival of the dreamy oldie “(It Will Have To Do) Until The Real Thing Comes Along.”
Although Toussaint’s Minit/Instant tenure had been rudely interrupted when Uncle Sam came calling, he rebounded in a hurry after returning home to the Crescent City, this time working in cahoots with the loquacious Sehorn. “What made us get together permanently was when I got out of the military in early ‘65, Marshall approached me and said he would like to work with me in any capacity,” recalled Toussaint. “I thought, ‘Well, what about a 50/50 partnership in whatever we do?’ That=s how that got started.”
The two embarked on an extended roll producing Lee Dorsey, crashing the R&B Top Ten four times in 1965-66 for Larry Uttal’s New York-based Amy logo (“Working In The Coal Mine,” the biggest of the lot, also cracked the pop Top Ten). If Toussaint’s unique musical formula clicked that well with the laidback, jovial Dorsey, could the same outcome could be achieved with the more vocally aggressive Ernie?
They set out to do just that, recording an album for Janus Records, a New York indie with an esoteric talent roster that ranged from soul luminaries Cissy Houston and the Whispers to the British rock bands Mungo Jerry, who gave Janus one of its few major hits in 1970 with the impossibly infectious “In The Summertime,” and Status Quo. For unknown reasons, the label altered the spelling of Ernie’s surname to K. Doe, swapping his hyphen for a period.
Allen wrote eight of the set’s ten selections, including the delightfully buoyant funkfest “Here Come The Girls,” which Janus logically plucked as the plug side of the LP’s first single. It somehow avoided the charts at the time, only to belatedly bask in worldwide acclaim thanks to a 2007 TV commercial for Boots, a British drug store chain. Janus paired it with the uncharacteristically gentle and introspective “A Long Way Back From Home.”
Janus missed a bet by limiting the slinky “Whoever Is Thrilling You (Is Killing Me)” to album-only status; Allen’s number supplied Rufus with Chaka Khan with their first R&B chart entry in 1973. The set was full of genuine gems permeated in steamy Crescent City funk: “Lawdy Mama,” “Back Street Lover,” the pumping “A Place Where We Can Be Free” (the call-and-response between Ernie and the backing vocalists deftly recalls his Minit sound), and “I’m Only Human” cook like crazy. Opening with a blast of two-fisted Toussaint 88s, the sinuous “Fly Away With Me” rides a syncopated second-line groove for all it’s worth, and K-Doe indulges in some hair-raising testifying in the patented Brownlee mode on the majestic ballad “Talkin’ ‘Bout This Woman.”
How such a masterpiece of an LP could sink without trace in the marketplace remains a mystery. That didn’t discourage Toussaint from trying anew every so often with his old friend Ernie, however. Instead of creating an encore album, they concentrated on singles, Allen and Marshall finding a home for one platter coupling “Let Me Love You” and “So Good” on the Island label during the summer of 1975. Both songs were credited as being written by Marie Monley and arranged by Quezergue; “Let Me Love You” took a deliberate route, Ernie his usual effervescent self behind the mic.
More often, however, Toussaint and Sehorn issued K-Doe’s 45s on their own Sansu logo. That was the case with “You Got To Love Me,” a sumptuous soul ballad that Ernie wrote himself. Crediting authorship of its bawdy B-side to Sehorn was ludicrous; “Stoop Down” was the signature theme of blues guitarist Chick Willis, whose original shuffle reading on La Val Records was an underground sensation among blues lovers in 1972. At least Ernie’s horn-laden arrangement, complete with vocal chorus and a low-mixed harmonica, gave it a funkier spin.
Another roiling funk grinder, “Hotcha Mama,” was likewise pressed up on Sansu and suited K-Doe swimmingly. No one ever expected Ernie to cover Conway Twitty on wax, but that’s precisely what he did on the other side of the 45, turning in a surprisingly serious rendition of the country superstar’s “(I Can’t Believe) She Gave It All To Me” (that’s the way Sansu listed it, anyway; when Twitty topped the country hit parade with the ballad in early 1977, it was titled “I Can’t Believe She Gives It All To Me”). The song must have been hot in the Crescent City during this era—Johnny Adams waxed a solid version for producer Senator Jones.
The second disc is loaded with latter-day rarities, including intriguing remakes of “Mother-In-Law” and another of K-Doe’s Minit classics, “‘Tain’t It The Truth,” from a Sea-Saint rehearsal session, and Ernie does right by Little Willie John’s 1956 smash “Fever.” A duet rendition with Lisa Lee of Sam & Dave’s classic “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” contains some inspired repartee, while Ernie’s “Jump Into Your Love” appears to date from the mid-‘80s.
The set concludes with a series of live performances that remind us just how grandiose K-Doe could be any time he graced a proscenium (or even singing along with the jukebox inside his Mother-In-Law Lounge on North Claiborne Avenue, where he often held court for travelers that came from the four corners of the globe to pay homage). Whether he was giving Ray Charles a run for his money by digging deep on an elegant “Georgia On My Mind,” harking back to the early days of R&B with a revival of Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle And Roll,” or reprising the indelible hits that his legion of fans inevitably yearned to hear, Ernie K-Doe was a royal performing presence to the very end.
Kidney and liver failure ended Ernest Kador, Jr.’s life on July 5, 2001. In typically resplendent fashion, he was interred in a 200-year-old tomb in New Orleans--reportedly the same one that held his actual second mother-in-law (how’s that for irony?) as well as his longtime buddy, blues guitarist and master songwriter Earl King. K-Doe’s widow Antoinette kept the Mother-In-Law Lounge in business long after Ernie’s death, bringing it back to life after it was heavily damaged while suffering the wrath of Hurricane Katrina (she died in 2009).
All hail the Emperor!
--Bill Dahl
SOURCES
Blues Records 1943 to 1970—A Selective Discography, Volume One A to K, by Mike Leadbitter and Neil Slaven (London: Record Information Services, 1987)
Discogs website: www.discogs.com
Duke/Peacock Records—An Illustrated History with Discography, by Galen Gart and Roy C. Ames (Milford, NH: Big Nickel Pubs., 1990)
45cat website: www.45cat.com
I Hear You Knockin’: The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues, by Jeff Hannusch (Ville Platte, LA: Swallow Pubs., Inc., 1989)
Joel Whitburn’s Top R&B Singles 1942-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1988)
Learning English VOA website: https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/people-in-america-renald-richard/3839857.html
Rhythm & Blues in New Orleans, by John Broven (Gretna, LA: Pelican Pub. Co., 1978)
Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_K-Doe