Brother Bill

Here's an oddity: the Jubalaires, a gospel group from the 1940s, in an old soundie:

They've revamped an old Louis Armstrong number, Me and Brother Bill, about an unlikely hunting trip to Maine: shooting a grizzly bear which may or may not have been a grizzly bear. Louis later performed the song in a duet with Bing Crosby. It's all a bit weird - the bear turns white and off they run (talking about the KKK maybe?) - but those costumes with the deerstalkers are fabulous, and you can see a line from this straight through to doo-wop and beat-boxing.

Brother Bill seems to have been something of a popular motif, starting with a 1913 film about lonely mountain folk, through Satchmo, and on to the Animals with Brother Bill (The Last Clean Shirt) in 1977.

And now I know where Dylan got Brother Bill from, in Tombstone Blues:

Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after.

More bear fun from the Jubalaires with The Preacher and the Bear. Or try Noah, about the well-known ark chappie.

Comments

[Martin Adamson]

There were quite a lot of black vocal groups doing this back at that time. Even well-known groups like the Inkspots or the Golden Gate Quartet would throw the odd comedy skit song into their live & radio shows. Would be accused of minstrelsy nowadays

I’ve got an anthology LP of a group called the JuBILaires, don’t know if they’re the same. Mainly intricate 40s-type gospel harmonies; not the impassioned raw style of the later Blind Boy-type quartets.

[Mick H]

If you search for Jubilaires on YouTube you get the same clips. Must be the same group. Makes more sense spelled with an i.