Roy Milton Roy Milton - Rocks (CD)

Any comprehensive list of postwar rhythm and blues pioneers has to position Roy Milton and his band, The Solid Senders, right near its top. The Los Angeles-based Milton was a rock-solid drummer whose rich, full-bodied vocals were perfect for the swinging stormers that comprise Bear Family’s ‘Roy Milton Rocks.’ 

His combo, anchored by Camille Howard’s rippling boogie piano and accentuated by a punchy small horn section (and as time went by, Johnny ‘Junior’ Rogers’ dazzling guitar work), helped define the jump blues genre, which in turn provided an indelible blueprint for the first wave of rock and roll. 

This compilation spans the band’s incredible career from their early days of recording in L.A. with the madly jumping Red Light to their hitmaking heyday on Specialty Records (Milton’s Boogie, Hop, Skip, And Jump, Oh Babe!, and the jaw-dropping Rogers-led instrumentals Junior Jives and Junior Jumps are among the highlights) through his mid-‘50s hookups with DooTone (Fools Are Getting Scarcer, You Got Me Reeling And Rocking, and two killers with his wife Mickey Champion fronting, the scorching Bam-A-Lam and a swaggering I’m A Woman) and King (the instrumental Succotash and Roy’s cover of Huey Smith and The Clowns’ Rocking Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu) and his later waxings for Warwick, Cenco, and Thunderbird. 

A plethora of additional heavyweights passed through The Solid Senders-saxists Buddy Floyd, Jackie Kelso, and Eddie Taylor, guitarists Roy Montrell and Roy Gaines, bassist Dallas Bartley – but Milton was the primary focal point, a visionary early R&B architect who deserves a considerably higher profile in the annals of music history.