The E-Discographer #2 October, 2000
12th Street Rumination
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 9, 1887 Euday Louis Bowman is most identified with Kansas City, where 12th Street was immortalized by his composition "12th St. Rag." [1914] It seems that Bowman sold the copyright and saw little in the way of profits from his masterpiece. He made a personal recording of it for Gennett in 1924 (mx. 11748) and there was an unreleased session for the American Record Corp. in Dallas in 1938. At that time he was probably still appearing at Billy Rose's Casa Manaņa in nearby Fort Worth.
Our subject is the post WWII "Baby Is You Mad at Me?" (mx. A 8140) with a vocal presumed to be self-accompanied Bowman and side No. 2 being a solo piano recording of the venerable "12th Street" (mx. A 8139). It is certainly not a dub of the 1938 session. Though marred by severe flutter the recording is reasonably wide range and the sound is consistant between the two sides. The vocal is a rather vaudevillian blues, Mr. Bowman (assuming for the moment that it is he) probably had not changed his style much with the passage of time. He died of pneumonia while on a business trip to New York City May 26, 1949 and is buried in Fort Worth.
While there is certainly doubt that this actually is a previously undocumented Bowman and not an imitator, it is also certainly not a tribute performed by a white trad revivalist. Given the paucity of Bowman recordings extant it would seem that this disc merits further research.
For further information see University of Missouri-Kansas City's club kaycee
Please address all correspondence to ddiehlusa@netscape.net
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