Biography
Helen Baxter emerged in the 1920s as a classic blues vocalist whose studio activity extended well beyond her primary billing. She also committed material to disc under the aliases Ellen Coleman and Mamie Spencer. Her most notable work took shape during ensemble dates directed by pianist Lem Fowler, a keyboardist who had first built his reputation supplying dozens of piano rolls before cutting his own Columbia sides in the mid-1920s with groups billed as Lem Fowler’s Washboard Wonders and Fowler’s Favorites. Together, Baxter and Fowler produced blues sides distinguished by their dense, occasionally orchestral ensemble textures for Columbia, Okeh, Edison, and Banner. The first two of those companies issued the performances under the heading “Helen Baxter, accompanied by Lemuel Fowler,” whereas Edison released equivalent material credited to Ellen Coleman yet still featuring Fowler’s accompaniment without any protective pseudonym. On Banner, Fowler’s name was simply omitted, leaving the releases to appear solely under Helen Baxter. Separately, Baxter entered another studio for the Oriole label, this time as Mamie Spencer and without Fowler’s participation, recording an entirely different selection of songs.
Among the earliest examples of “race” records aimed at an Afro-American audience were tracks such as the foreboding “Cruel Back Bitin’ Blues (A Heart Aching Chant),” the suggestive “Daddy Ease It to Me,” and the crisply phrased “Scrubbin’ Blues.” In Baxter’s case, the pseudonyms served not only to circumvent contractual limits but also to position her simultaneously as both a “race” and a “non-race” artist. Contemporary promotional copy made the industry’s racial calculations explicit. When producer Joe Davis captured Baxter as Coleman in summer 1923, the advertisements declared “…another blues song sung by Ellen Coleman, only this time we accompanied her with our own orchestra instead of the colored orchestra.” That ensemble comprised harmonica-and-kazoo specialist Robert Cooksey, clarinetist Percy Glascoe, guitarist Bobby Leecan, and pianist Phil Worde. A surviving note from the Edison session files, later quoted in Bruce Bastin’s Never Sell a Copyright: Joe Davis and His Role in the New York Music Scene, 1916-1978, read: “Here’s what the coons say is the REAL stuff! Do you think we could sell it?” The material ultimately found renewed life on later blues anthologies and reissues, particularly those issued by the Document label. Baxter appears in collections devoted to female blues and vaudeville singers, while her recordings also figure in surveys of Fowler’s work and of the Leecan-Cooksey partnership.
Among the earliest examples of “race” records aimed at an Afro-American audience were tracks such as the foreboding “Cruel Back Bitin’ Blues (A Heart Aching Chant),” the suggestive “Daddy Ease It to Me,” and the crisply phrased “Scrubbin’ Blues.” In Baxter’s case, the pseudonyms served not only to circumvent contractual limits but also to position her simultaneously as both a “race” and a “non-race” artist. Contemporary promotional copy made the industry’s racial calculations explicit. When producer Joe Davis captured Baxter as Coleman in summer 1923, the advertisements declared “…another blues song sung by Ellen Coleman, only this time we accompanied her with our own orchestra instead of the colored orchestra.” That ensemble comprised harmonica-and-kazoo specialist Robert Cooksey, clarinetist Percy Glascoe, guitarist Bobby Leecan, and pianist Phil Worde. A surviving note from the Edison session files, later quoted in Bruce Bastin’s Never Sell a Copyright: Joe Davis and His Role in the New York Music Scene, 1916-1978, read: “Here’s what the coons say is the REAL stuff! Do you think we could sell it?” The material ultimately found renewed life on later blues anthologies and reissues, particularly those issued by the Document label. Baxter appears in collections devoted to female blues and vaudeville singers, while her recordings also figure in surveys of Fowler’s work and of the Leecan-Cooksey partnership.