A TRIBUTE TO JAY D. MILLER

[Eric LeBlanc-CISTI]

Record producer, sound engineer & songwriter JAY D. (Joseph Denton) Miller
was born on May 05/1922, Iota, LA., and died on March 23/1996, Lafayette,
LA., at age 73.

"After hearing about Jay Miller I brought a demo tape to his studio ; you
shoulda seen that studio. It was like a radio repair shop and a studio
combined. So closely combined you couldn't hardly tell which was which."

~ LONESOME SUNDOWN, Blues Unlimited #80 (Feb-Mar'71)

"Jay Miller's studio was a perfect example of the sort of musical cross-
fertilization that has characterized much of the great roots music, blues
and otherwise, to come out of the American south. Miller himself got his
musical start in the '30s playing cowboy music on an eight-dollar guitar.
He would eventually accompany some of the best cajun musicians of the time,
including the great Harry Choates. After the war he went into business as
an electrical contractor, and began making records on the side. His first
recordings were made at Cosimo Matassa's legendary New Orleans studio, at
the time the only one in Louisiana. These cajun sides, released on Miller's
Fais-Do-Do label, sold so well that he decided to open his own studio in
Crowley. In 1947 he started the Feature label, recording mostly hillbilly
singers at first, along with cajun stars-to-be like Doug Kershaw and
Jimmy C. Newman. In the early 50s he made a few forays into blues,
recording among others Clarence "Bon Ton" Garlow. But it was not until he
ran into Otis Hicks (whom he would soon christen "Lightnin' Slim") at a
Baton Rouge radio station in 1954 that he got into blues recording in a
serious way. Impressed by Hicks' guitar playing and singing, Miller
scrounged up a band to back him and recorded a song called "Bad Luck". The
record was a fair-sized hit, and "swamp blues" was born. The success of
"Bad Luck" on Feature led to a distribution deal with Nashville-based
Excello records, an arrangement that assured a good regional and national
market for Miller's records. If Lightnin' Slim was the father of swamp
blues, Miller was certainly its midwife. The records he made with
Lightnin', Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Lonesome Sundown, Silas Hogan and many
others in the 50s and early 60s define the style and remain its finest
examples. And unlike many of his contemporaries in the recording business
who demanded songwriting credit from their artists as partial payment for
use of the studio, Miller actually wrote many of these great songs - for
example, Lonesome Sundown's big hit "My Home is a Prison". The consistently
high quality and creativity of his productions has earned Jay Miller a
place alongside the likes of Sam Phillips and the Chess Brothers as one of
the greatest record producers in the history of the blues."

~ Eliot Williams <ecwi...@macc.wisc.edu>

... to be followed by reviews of

MCA/Hip-O 40149 VARIOUS Excello Story V. 1 (1952-1955)
MCA/Hip-O 40150 VARIOUS Excello Story V. 2 (1955-1957)
MCA/Hip-O 40156 VARIOUS Excello Story V. 3 (1957-1961)
MCA/Hip-O 40157 VARIOUS Excello Story V. 4 (1961-1975)

[Cary Wolfson]

I seem to recall a Cajun musician friend telling me that Miller also
produced some incredibly nasty race-baiting records.

--
Cary Wolfson
Publisher
BLUES ACCESS Magazine
Online at: http://www.bluesaccess.com
"Nothin' but the best and later for the garbage." -- John Lee Hooker

[Ron Weinstock]

I believe some of the details might be in John broven's book SDoth to
Louisiana as well as printed in some old Blues Unlimited articles.

RonW

[Brian Calway]

In a message dated 5/21/99 2:08:06 PM, cwol...@earthlink.net writes:

<<I seem to recall a Cajun musician friend telling me that Miller also
produced some incredibly nasty race-baiting records.

>>
I have one on rebel records that is pretty damn hateful, unbelievably true.
HB

[Eliot C. Williams]

Miller did indeed produce some records in the early 60s on his Rebel label
that are by any standards racist. He was first and foremost a businessman,
and these records sold well to a public inflamed by the civil rights
controversies of the day. When asked about this by John Broven (quoted in
Broven's book "South to Louisiana") he said "Of course we had a lot of
fingers pointed at us, and I'm sure by a lot of people that are less
friendly to blacks than I am. I've always been friendly with blacks, and
we never did hide the fact that we were recording these records".

Still, not exactly a proud moment in musical history...