Welcome to the fifth 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 "Ain't Got No Home" by Clarence "Frogman" Henry, a classic of both novelty music and New Orleans R&B.

Click the cut to view a transcript of this episode:



This episode is almost a request one -- Daniel Helton asked during the question and answer sessions last week if I'd thought about covering this song in an episode, and I said then that I'd do it as a Patreon bonus. I may do other songs suggested by backers in future bonus episodes, we'll see, but this one is a song that genuinely deserves at least a brief look:

[Excerpt: Clarence "Frogman" Henry, "Ain't Got No Home"]

Clarence "Frogman" Henry is from New Orleans, as you can immediately hear from the record. It's yet another of those classic records made in Cosimo Matassa's studio, but Henry was young enough that he grew up listening to those earlier records -- as a teenager, he was a fan of Fats Domino and Professor Longhair.

He started playing in bars in his teens, with various local bands, and he soon developed a unique vocal technique. At the time Shirley and Lee were one of the biggest acts in New Orleans, and everyone wanted to hear their material:

[Excerpt: Shirley and Lee, "Let the Good Times Roll"]

But Henry was the only singer with the bands he was in, and so he would sing both Shirley's vocal part and Lee's, and he developed ways to make his voice sound more feminine. He would also play around with his voice and try other unusual voices, including one that sounded like a bullfrog -- he used to imitate frogs and alligators in school to scare the girls.

And then one night, performing in a club at two o'clock in the morning, far past when he wanted to go to bed, he started wondering if the audience had no homes to go to, and improvised a song around that theme, "Ain't Got No Home", using his different voices.

[Excerpt: Clarence "Frogman" Henry, "Ain't Got No Home"]

The song was very loosely based on one he'd already written called "Lonely Tramp", but sped up and turned into a showcase for his vocal tricks.

The song became a regular in his sets, and he eventually came to the attention of Paul Gayten, a musician in New Orleans who also worked as an A&R man for Chess Records. Gayten signed Henry to Chess' new subsidiary Argo, and they went into Cosimo Matassa's studio to record a single. "Ain't Got No Home" was intended for the B-side -- the A-side was a Fats Domino style song called "Troubles, Troubles":

[Excerpt: Clarence "Frogman" Henry, "Troubles, Troubles"]

Leonard Chess initially didn't want to release the single at all, but then the New Orleans DJ known as "Poppa Stoppa" played an acetate of it. "Poppa Stoppa" was one of several white men who performed under that name, playing a character initially created by a black man and pretending to *be* black, and he was to New Orleans what Alan Freed was to Cleveland, Huggy Boy to LA, and Dewey Phillips to Memphis -- the white DJ who could make or break black music in the mass market.

"Poppa Stoppa" played both sides of the record, but it was the B-side that made listeners sit up and take note -- they kept calling in to hear "the song by the frog man". Poppa Stoppa turned to Henry, who was in the studio with him, and said "from now on you're Frogman".

The record went out with "Ain't Got No Home" on the A-side, and it became a big hit, going to number three on the R&B charts and hitting the top twenty in the pop charts. However, the follow-up, "Lonely Tramp", didn't chart:

[Excerpt: Clarence "Frogman" Henry, "Lonely Tramp"]

After a couple more failed attempts at follow-ups, Henry went back to just being a live performer, and didn't make a record for three years. But then in 1961 he teamed up with the songwriter Bobby Charles.

Charles was