Air Week: May 12-18, 2025

Amos Milburn, Pt. 2 – 1950-56

Amos Milburn was the complete package. He could play boogie woogie piano with the best of ’em, having been influenced by the great Pete Johnson. He sang the smoky R&B ballad almost as well as his buddy Charles Brown and he could shout the blues alongside Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris. Milburn’s delivery was indeed a hit with the public as his Aladdin Records releases spawned 4 #1 R&B records and a total of 16 charting singles (3 of them double-sided hits). This week in part 2 of our 2 part series, Matt The Cat spins Milburn’s great Aladdin releases from 1950 to ’56. During those years, he scored his 4th and final #1 R&B hit, “Bad, Bad Whiskey” and launched a string of drinking songs, which included “Thinking and Drinking,” “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer,” “Let Me Go Home, Whiskey” and “Good, Good Whiskey.” Milburn still rocked the jukeboxes with the hits, “Walking Blues,” “Let’s Rock A While,” “Sax Shack Boogie” and “Tears, Tears, Tears,” but by the end of 1953, the hits had stopped. The music was changing and Amos Milburn would be another casualty of the incoming Rock n’ Roll movement. Here he was, one of the architects of the new music, but like so many others, he could not make the transition with the new, younger record-buyers. Heavy drinking, epilepsy and 2 strokes would shorten his life, but his legacy lives on. Don’t miss the conclusion of Amos Milburn, this week on the “Juke In The Back.” 

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