Jimmy Blakley w/ His Western Swing Band, Roswell

JIMMY BLAKLEY WITH HIS WESTERN SWING BAND - Island Paradise (D 1437)

Dorothy and steel-guitarist Jimmy Blakley were the big dogs in the small pond of Roswell, New Mexico moving to the area from Oklahoma in the 1950s. Not too long after moving to Roswell they took up a residency at one of the area's largest honky tonks, Scottys. Basing their operations from the club they worked the airwaves and television waves for KSWS.

It was at Scotty's Night Club that they began working with Lee Bell who had moved to Roswell specifically to work the honky tonk. Lee would cut a couple of 45s for RCA-Victor including the hip "Beating Out the Boogie", which will be featured later.

Jimmy and his bass-playing wife Dorothy had previously recorded for Starday, the Dixie cover series, and Starday-Mercury. One might assume that theywound up with Pappy Daily and the D label in the hotel room split with Don Pierce (Daily and co-owner Gabe Tucker seem to have wound up with most of the region's Starday artists including Jimmy's brother Cliff and Fred Crawford).

Hawaiian music and tiki culture was gaining popularity steadily throughout the 1950s as Americans became more affluent and were afforded opportunities to either travel to far off and exotic locales , or at least buy Les Baxter and Martin Denny platters to serve as the soundtrack for sipping weird tropical drinks in exotica themed home lounges. The fine folks of Roswell certainly needed some tiki time. Aliens on tap 24 hours a day certainly can't be all that grand.

Both sides of "Island Paradise" were produced in Clovis by Norman Petty. When Daily and and his hot commodity George Jones inked up with Mercury off-shoot United Artists many other D artists found themselves on a new label with greater resources, including Jimmy Blakley.

More Blakely info:
*Brief article at Hillbilly-Music.com
*Information about Lee Bell (w/ a photo of the Blakleys) at Hillbilly-Music.com and BigVJamboree.com.

Thanks to Michel Proost who directed me to an article in the Artesia, New Mexico paper about Curtis Haskins who ran Midas with Jimmy. It was this article, along with the the "D" project I have going on over at Country. & Western., that had me digging for this 45. I hope to have a bit on a nice doo wop record on Midas in July.