He's a solid gold cat but really a mellow hip fat

Thursday music corner: Oklahoma-born American R&B singer and pianist Joe Liggins (1916-87) was one of the early pioneers of American rhythm and blues music. Having moved to San Diego in 1932 and on to Los Angeles in 1939, Liggins was playing with Sammy Franklin's California Rhythm Rascals when Franklin declined to record a song Liggins had written, The Honeydripper. Liggins decided to form his own band to record it, and the number topped the R&B chart, then known as the "race" chart, for a mammoth 18 weeks in 1945. The Honeydripper was the first of many R&B hits for Liggins in the 1940s and 1950s.

Author Barney Hoskyns in his book Waiting for the Sun: A Rock 'N' Roll History of Los Angeles, recounts how Liggins' song dominated the Los Angeles music scene of the day:

Early in 1945, [composer and producer] Leon Rene got wind of a song -- a fifteen-minute brag-a-thon known as 'The Honeydripper' -- which Joe Liggins and his band were performing nightly at the Samba Club on 5th Street. Evolving out of a dance called the Texas Hop, and based around Liggins' insistent boogie piano riff, 'The Honeydripper' was tearing the house down every night, epitomizing the 'squashed-down' combo style described by Johnny Otis. By the late summer, on Exclusive, it was blaring out of every black record store in America. Liggins stayed at No. 1 on the black chart for eighteen straight weeks.

Joe Liggins & His Honeydrippers - The Honeydripper (1945)

See also:

Music: Jimmy Liggins - I Ain't Drunk (1954)

Music: Pvt. Cecil Gant - I Wonder (1944)

Music: Roy Milton - RM Blues (1947)