I recently acquired a couple of records by B. Bumble & the Stingers. I mainly bought them because of the band's catchy name. I wasn't familiar with neither their story nor their music and for years, I had assumed them to be some kind of a mid-west rock'n'roll band. Little did I know! I was surprised when I found out B. Bumble & the Stingers was the name of an ever-changing line-up of California studio musicians.
B. Bumble & the Stingers was the brainchild of black studio musicians Rene Hall, Earl Palmer, and Plas Johnson. All of them hailed from Louisiana but had relocated to California by then and were busy studio musicians of the early 1960s. Due to their hectic studio schedule, they weren't able to tour but nevertheless opted to release recordings to earn make some money along the way. Their first studio project was a rocked up version of the Glenn Miller classic "In the Mood", which was released as by the Ernie Fields Orchestra on Rendezvous Records in 1959, hitting the #4 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 and it also charted in the R&B field.
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| Billboard May 1, 1961 |
As it became obvious, a touring band was needed to handle gigs and promotional appearances. As none of the studio musicians were available, a teenage band from Ada, Oklahoma was engaged to go on tour. This group comprised Fred Richards, Don Orr on drums and R.C. Gamble, who acted as B. "Billy" Bumble on piano. Later incarnations also included Terry Anderson and Jimmy King on guitars.
Their follow-ups to "Bumble Boogie", again recorded with the same group of session musicians, failed to repeat the success. "Boogie Woogie" b/w "Near You" (Rendezvous #151, June 1961), barely made it to the Hot 100, reaching #89 for just one week. Subsequent releases failed to chart altogether and Rendezvous Records started to lose interest in the project.
Producer Kim Fowley had worked out a rock'n'roll arrangement on Tchaikovsky's "March of the Wooden Soldiers" from the Nutcracker Suite, which he copyrighted. Due to Rendezvous' owner Rod Pierce's lack of interest, Fowley took the piece to H.B. Barnum, a pianist who recorded it with his band on Del Rio Records as "Nut Rocker", credited to "Jack B. Nimble and the Quicks". Rod Pierce got word of that release, thought the "original" B. Bumble & the Stingers could do better, and sensed a hit. The group was called back into the studio (with Ernie Freeman being unavailable due to a hangover and spontaneously replaced by Al Hazan).
Released with "Nautilus" on the flip side in early 1962 (Rendezvous #166), the song became a #23 hit for B. Bumble & the Stingers. It became even more popular in the UK, reaching the top of the charts there on the Stateside label. In the wake of this success, Del Rio re-released the original version through Dot as "The Original Nut Rocker". The touring version of the band flew over to the UK for a tour to promote "Nut Rocker" as well as one of its follow-ups, "Apple Knocker", which went nowhere, however.
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| Billboard July 14, 1962, spotlight review |
Of course, the difference between the studio take and live performances were recognizable due to the different line-ups. The studio musicians were professionals, playing on hundreds of recordings a year, while the live members were not (though they probably weren't bad either). It was, in most cases, Rene Hall, who taught them the arrangements of the songs. Though, a difference was there. B. Bumble & the Stingers played the Cavern Club in Liverpool on October 19, 1962, during their UK tour. Spencer Leigh cited David Boyce, an eyewitness to the group's appearance there, in his book "The Cavern Club": "I remember standing in Frank Hessy's the night B. Bumble & the Stingers were on at the Cavern as they wanted to borrow a double-bass. They were travelling around on trains and they had no equipment with them. The drummer had a snare drum and the pianist played the Cavern piano." Leigh further cited Billy Hatton, another witness: "The most disappointing band I ever saw at the Cavern was B. Bumble & the Stingers, but it wasn't all their fault. They featured a piano on 'Nut Rocker'. There was an old upright piano against the wall at the Cavern and no one had tuned it. It wasn't even miked up. The sound wasn't right and you could tell that they weren't into it. I said to the guitarist: 'Do you want someone to stand by the piano with a microphone?' and he said 'No, he's got such a strong left hand, he'll be all right.' They didn't even have a bass player. [...]"
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| Billboard May 22, 1961 This was a fake bio of the band, likely made up by Rendezvous Records for better promotion |
A few more recordings were made and released on Rendezvous but none of them reached the charts. The band's last disc was released in November 1962, comprising "Baby Mash" b/w "Night Time Madness" (Rendezvous #192). R.C. Gamble, the "live" B. Bumble, to continued to tour under this name for some time and a few more records appeared, produced by Rod Pierce and Kim Fowley, on such labels as Dymo, Wax, and Triad. It is likely that these recordings were made by studio musicians, although the line-up might have differed from the original studio band. Gamble stopped touring as B. Bumble at some point and eventually worked with bands like Spiro and Cornbread in the eastern Oklahoma area.
"Nut Rocker" unexpectedly had a second career in 1972, when Stateside re-released it and the song went straight to the Top 20 again. UK Ace Records released a CD with the complete output plus unreleased recordings of the band in 1995, entitled "Nut Rockers, Bumble Boogie, Apple Knocker, and all the classics". Some of the original touring equipment, donated by Gamble's family, is now in the possession of the Fort Smith Museum of History in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Recommended reading:
Sources
• Spencer Leigh: The Cavern Club: "The Rise of the Beatles and Merseybeat" (McNidder and Grace), 2015
2 comments:
You have several things wrong on your biographies. RC chambers is RC Gamble. And more. If you want the real story let me know and I’ll sent it to you. I’m the daughter of B Bumble.
Thank you for the correction, I have changed the name. Please point out to me what's wrong and I will change it, of course!
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