DOB: March 13th 1933
Place of birth: Kenner, Louisiana, USA
Died: May 3rd 2021, aged 88
Place of death: New Rochelle, New York. USA
Cause: Diabetes complications.
Songs that made him an inductee of The Big Dog Hall of Fame:
Lawdy Miss Clawdy, 1952
Just because, 1957
Stagger Lee, 1958
Personality, 1959
The Ultimate Lloyd Price LP Created by The Big Dog:
A-SIDE
1 – Lawdy miss Clawdy (Lloyd Price)
2 – Just because (Lloyd Price)
3 – Stagger Lee (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
4 – Personality (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
5 – I'm gonna get married (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
6 – Never let me go (Luther Dixon)
7 – Question (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
B-SIDE
1 – Three little pigs (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
2 – Lady luck (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
3 – Natural sinner (Andy Fairweather-Low)
4 – Hooked on a feeling (Mark James)
5 – Have you ever had the blues (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan)
6 – Where were you (on our wedding day) (Lloyd Price/Harold Logan/John Patton)
7 – Feelin' good (Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newly)
Born in Kenner, Louisiana, Lloyd was one of 11 children (three girls and eight boys) of Beatrice and Louis Price, who ran a restaurant, Fish’n’Fry. The young Lloyd helped out in the family business, and developed his musical skills through singing with the gospel choir in the local church and learning to play the piano and trumpet. He liked to play along on the piano to songs he heard on the restaurant jukebox, not least Louis Jordan’s Saturday Night Fish Fry. After dropping out of high school he started a band with his brother Leo. They were given a slot on the WBOK radio station, where Price was struck by the catchphrase used by the deejay, Okey Dokey, to promote the station’s sponsor: “Lawdy Miss Clawdy, Mother’s homemade pies and Maxwell House Coffee!” Price recalled: “I took that and made a song out of it. And that rhythm, that slow rockin’ thing? … My brother Leo would bang on a pot and get his own rhythm going. ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’ took that rhythm worldwide.” With assistance from the New Orleans bandleader Dave Bartholomew, who introduced Price to Art Rupe of the Los Angeles-based Specialty Records, Price recorded Lawdy Miss Clawdy with a band including Fats Domino on piano and drummer Earl Palmer. The disc topped Billboard’s rhythm & blues chart and made history by crossing over on to white radio stations. Price followed it up with a quartet of Top 10 R&B hits, Oooh Oooh Oooh, Restless Heart, Ain’t It a Shame and Tell Me Pretty Baby. However, in segregated 50s America, Price’s popularity with both black and white listeners became a political issue. He recalled that the draft board told him in 1953 that he “had to go in the service because of what my music was doing, this Lawdy Miss Clawdy thing was causing integration”. He was shipped out to South Korea via Japan, and performed at military bases. Some army lawyers advised him about the desirability of controlling his own music publishing. Discharged from the military in 1956, he created his own label, KRC Records, on which he launched a new single, Just Because (inspired by a melody from Verdi’s Rigoletto). However, this did not become a hit until 1957, when it was bought up by ABC-Paramount, though Price made sure he kept the publishing. “I got 10% when Nat King Cole was only getting 5%,” he said. It reached No 3 on the R&B chart and 29 on the mainstream pop chart. In 1959 he scored his only No 1 hit on the mainstream chart (and another R&B No 1) with Stagger Lee, a version of the lurid traditional murder ballad also recorded by artists from Duke Ellington and Woody Guthrie to Ike and Tina Turner and Bob Dylan. To his exasperation, Price had to re-record the vocal with new, anodyne lyrics for Dick Clark’s American Bandstand TV show. Over the next couple of years Price released a string of hits, featuring elaborate vocal and instrumental arrangements, which included Where Were You (On Our Wedding Day?), Personality, Come Into My Heart and Lady Luck. In partnership with the concert promoter Harold Logan, Price formed the music publishing company Lloyd & Logan Music, and in 1963 they launched the Double L record label, which released Wilson Pickett’s debut album It’s Too Late and delivered Price’s Top 30 hit Misty (1963). In 1968 the duo opened Lloyd Price’s Turntable Club on the site of the old Birdland jazz club on Broadway, but after they had received numerous threats Logan was shot dead in their office in 1969. Price decided he needed a change of scene and, after a brief sojourn in Philadelphia, headed for Nigeria. A friend of both King and Ali, Price joined with King in promoting the 1974 Ali/George Foreman heavyweight fight in Zaire dubbed the Rumble in the Jungle, as well as the accompanying concert featuring James Brown, Miriam Makeba and BB King. For an encore, King and Price organised 1975’s Thrilla in Manila, where Ali fought Joe Frazier. In the TV biopic Don King: Only in America (1997) Price was played by Vondie Curtis-Hall opposite Ving Rhames as King. Price recorded a hip-hop version of Personality as the film’s closing theme. Returning from Nigeria in 1983 after the government was ousted in a coup, Price exhibited further entrepreneurial flair by forming two construction companies and moving into real-estate development. He also built a recording studio near his home in Westchester County, New York, and launched his food products range under the Global Icon Brands umbrella. In 1993 he toured Europe with Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and joined the Four Kings of Rhythm and Blues tour in 2005 alongside Jerry Butler, Ben E King and Gene Chandler. He received the Rhythm and Blues Foundation’s Pioneer award in 1994, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. He was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2010, and in 2019 he was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. In 2009 he published the autobiography Lawdy Miss Clawdy: The True King of the ’50s, and in 2015 a collection of essays, sumdumhonky. His 1952 hit Lawdy Miss Clawdy, which was covered by a huge array of artists, from Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney to The Hollies, Solomon Burke and Joe Cocker, was a trailblazer for rock’n’roll and one of the first records to break down barriers between black and white audiences. “I revolutionised the South!” Price enthused. “Before Lawdy Miss Clawdy white kids were not really interested in this music.” After a streak of hits in the early 1950s, many of them reaching the top end of the US R&B chart, Price was drafted into the US army. On demob, he enjoyed his biggest hit in 1959 with Stagger Lee, which topped the US pop chart. His other major hits included I’m Gonna Get Married, Lady Luck, Question and Misty. But he also enjoyed a parallel career as a music business trailblazer, setting up one of the first black-owned music publishing companies, Lloyd & Logan Music, and a pioneering black-owned record label, KRC. Following an abortive stint as a club-owner on Broadway, New York, in the 1970s he made a dramatic career change by partnering with Don King to promote Muhammad Ali’s fabled heavyweight bouts, the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila. He subsequently became a successful property developer in New York, and launched a range of southern-themed food products.
Discography:
Singles
1952 – Lawdy miss Clawdy/Mailman blues
1952 – Oooh-oooh-oooh/Restless heart
1953 – Ain't it a shame/Tell me pretty baby
1953 – What's the matter now?/So long
1953 – Where you at?/Baby don't turn your back on me
1953 – I wish your picture was you/Frog legs
1954 – Too late for tears/Let me come home baby
1954 – Jimmie Lee/Wakin' the track
1954 – Chee-ko baby/Oo-ee- baby
1955 – Lord, Lord, Amen/Tryin' to find someone to love
1956 – Just because/Why?
1956 – I Yi Yi Gomen-A-Sai (I'm sorry)/Woe Ho ho
1956 – Country boy rock/Rock 'n' roll dance
1956 – Forgive me Clawdy/I'm glad, glad
1957 – Baby please come home/Breaking my heart (All over again)
1957 – Lonely chair/The chicken and the bop
1957 – Georgianna/Hello little girl
1957 – Mailman blues/Oooh-oooh-oooh
1958 – To love and be loved/Ho many times
1958 – No limit to love/Such a mess
1958 – Stagger Lee/You need love
1959 - Where were you (on our wedding day)/Is it really love?
1959 – Personality/Have you ever had the blues?
1959 – Gonna let you come back home/Down by the river
1959 - I'm gonna get married/Three little pigs
1960 – Come into my heart/Won't cha come home
1960 – Lady luck/Never let me go
1960 – No If's-No And's/For love
1960 – Question/If I look a little blue
1960 – Just call me (And I'll understand)/Who coulda' told you (They lied)
1961 – You better know what you're doin'/That's why my tears come and go
1961 – Boo hoo/Made you cry
1961 – One hundred percent/Say I'm the one
1961 – String of pearls/Chantilly lace
1961 – Mary and Man-O/I ain't givin' up
1961 – Talk to me/Cover the waterfront
1962 – Be a leader/Nother fairy tale
1962 – Twistin' the blues/Popeye's irresistable you
1962 – Your picture/Counterfeit friends
1962 – Under your spell again/Happy birthday mama
1963 – Who's sorry now?/Hello Bill
1963 – Pistol' packin' mama/Tennessee Walts
1963 – Misty/Cry on
1963 – Auld Lang Syne/Merry Christmas Mama
1964 – Billie baby/Try a little bit of tenderness
1964 – You're nobody till somebody loves you/I'll be a fool for you
1964 – I love you, I just love you/Don't cry
1964 – Amen/I'd fight the world
1965 – Woman/Oh lady luck
1965 – If I had my life to live over/Two for love
1965 – You're reading me/Go on little girl
1966 – Misty/Saturday night
1966 – Peeping and hiding/Every night
1966 – The man who took the valise off the floor of Grand Central Station at noon/I won't cry anymore
1967 – Cupid's bandwagon/Feelin' good
1968 – Send me some lovin'/Somewhere along the way
1968 – Take all/Luv, luv, luv
1968 – The truth/Dont'stop now
1969 – The grass will sing for you/I understand
1969 – Bad conditions/The truth
1970 – Little volcano/Lawdy miss Clawdy
1971 – Hooked on a feeling /If you really love him
1971 – Natural sinner/Mr. And Mrs. Untrue
1972 – Sing a song/In the eyes of God
1972 – In the eyes of God/The legend of nigger Charley
1973 – Love music/Just for baby
1973 – Trying to slip away/They get down
1974 – Glittler graphics/Glittler queen
1976 – What did you do with my love?/Love music
LP's
1959 – The exciting Lloyd Price
A1 – Stagger Lee
A2 – I wish your picture was you
A3 – Talking about love
A4 – What do you do to my heart?
A5 – You need love
A6 – Mailman blues
B1 – Where were you (On our wedding day)?
B2 – Why?
B3 – Lawdy miss Clawdy
B4 – Oooh, oooh, oooh
B5 - A foggy day
B6 – Just because
1959 – Mr. Personality
A1 – Personality
A2 – Mary Anne
A3 – Time after time
A4 – Have you ever had the blues?
A5 – Yakety-Yak-Bing Bang
A6 – I only have eyes for you
B1 – I'm gonna get married
B2 – Dinner for me
B3 – Is it really love?
B4 – Poppa-shun
B5 – All for me
B6 – I want you to know
1959 – Mr. Personality sings the blues
A1 – Ain't nobody's business
A2 – Please send me someone to love
A3 – Kidney stew
A4 – I cover the waterfront
A5 – Talk to me
A6 – I've got the blues and the blues got me
B1 – Just to hold your hand
B2 – Sittin' here and rockin'
B3 – I don't need nobody
B4 – Feeling lowdown
B5 – I'm a lonely man
B6 – Down for the count
1960 – The fantastic Lloyd Price
A1 – What is this thing called love?
A2 – Blue skies
A3 – Because of you
A4 – Undecided
A5 – Let's fall in love
A6 – Don't blame me
B1 – In a shanty in Old Shanty Town
B2 – Mean to me
B3 – Don't take your love from me
B4 – Jeepers creepers
B5 – Little volcano
B6 – Five foot two
1961 – Cookin'
A1 – Deed I do
A2 – Since I fell for you
A3 – Summertime
A4 – Blues in the night
A5 – Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
A6 – Straighten up and fly right
B1 – I cried for you
B2 – That's why tears come and go
B3 – I'll always be in love with you
B4 – It's only a paper moon
B5 – Rainbow Joe
B6 – Frim Fram sauce
1961 – Sings the million-Sellers
A1 – Ain't that just like a woman
A2 – Will you love me tomorrow?
A3 – Save the last dance for me
A4 – Shop around
A5 – At last
A6 – Corrina, corrina
A7 – Question
B1 – The hoochie coochie coo
B2 – He will break your heart
B3 – I count the tears
B4 – Spanish Harlem
B5 – Once in a while
B6 – C'est si bon
B7 - For love
1963 – This is my band
A1 – Trouble part 1
A2 – Trouble part 2
A3 – Number four
A4 – Tommy Dorsey Boogie Woogie
A5 – Oh pee day
A6 – Soulful Waltz
B1 – Pan Setta
B2 – Cool blue
B3 – Go straight ahead
B4 – No limit
B5 – Brother Elijah
B6 – Sweetie
1963 – Misty
A1 – Great
A2 – On the sunny side of the street
A3 – When I fall in love
A4 – Trouble
A5 – The lucky old sun
B1 – Misty
B2 – You're nobody 'til someone loves you
B3 – Tennesse Waltz
B4 – The best in Trinidad
B5 – Pistol packin' mama
B6 – Cry on
1965 – Lloyd swings for Sammy
A1 – Woman
A2 – Fly me to the moon
A3 – Come home
A4 – Don't cry
A5 – Nice and easy
A6 - Oh lady luck
B1 – Baby please don't go
B2 – Gone (You're gone)
B3 – Ebb tide
B4 – Meet in the bottom
B5 – I love you
B6 – Amen
1969 – Now!
A1 – Bad conditions
A2 – Light my fire
A3 – The grass will sing for you
A4 – Feeling good
A5 – Hey Jude
B1 – For once in my life
B2 – I understand
B3 – By the time I get to Phoenix
B4 – Don't do to me
B5 – Little green apples
1972 – To the roots and back
A1 – Sing a song
A2 – Thet get doen
A3 – I want you to know
A4 – It ain't easy
A5 – Electric lover
A6 – Lawdy miss Clawdy
B1 – Lady luck
B2 – Stagger Lee
B3 – Have you ever had the blues
B4 – Personality
B5 – Where were you on our wedding day
1976 – To the roots and back
A1 – What did you do with my love
A2 – Music-Music
A3 – Love music
A4 – Mr. & Mrs. Untrue
B1 – Street love
B2 – You brought it on yourself
B3 – Uphill peace of mind
B4 – N'sele
1978 – The nominee
A1 – The nominee
A2 – You're the love of my life
A3 – Hooked on a feeling
A4 – Special part of me
B1 – (You were the) Missing link
B2 – For no reason at all
B3 – I found love in you
B4 – What did you do with my love
1998 – ABWNB (...Body with no body...)
A1 – ABWNB
A2 – Don't say (Love is over)
A3 – Can't depend on love
A4 – Lied again
A5 – This ain't right
A6 – It would be now
A7 – No more you
B1 – My best friend
B2 – Didn't I tell you
B3 – I've got feelings
B4 – Stagger Lee
B5 – Personality
B6 – Remix of Stagger Lee (XX Rated)
B7 – Remix of Personality (From the Don King Movie – Only in America) (XX Rated)
2002 – Christmas classics
A1 – Medley of winter wonderland: White Christmas/Rudolph, the red nose-rei
A2 – The Christmas song
A3 – Not it's Christmas time
A4 – The little boy that Santa Claus forgot
A5 – Walking in the air
A6 – Medley of swing into Christmas: Rockin' around the Christmas tree
B1 – Carol of the drum
B2 – In the bleak midwinter
B3 – Little donkey
B4 – Medley of hooked on Carols: Ding dong, Merrily on high, O little town O
B5 – Have yourself a merry little Christmas
2012 – I'm feeling good
A1 – EBB Tide
A2 – Fly me to the moon
A3 – There goes that song again
A4 – I'm feeling good
A5 – Misty
A6 – Summer wind
B1 – What a difference a day makes
B2 – I'll buy a star
B3 – Will you love me tomorrow?
B4 – Goodbye lover
B5 – You're nobody till'
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