Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. So Long
2. Hey Pretty Baby [#]
3. I'll Get Along Somehow, Pt. 1
4. I'll Come Back Someday
5. Sentimental Journey
6. R.B. Blues
7. Teardrops From My Eyes
8. Standing on the Corner
9. I'll Wait for You
10. I Know
11. Don't Cry [#]
12. Shrine of St. Cecilia [#]
13. It's All for You [#]
14. Shine On
15. Be Anything (But Be Mine)
16. 5-10-15 Hours
17. Have a Good Time
18. Daddy Daddy
19. (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean
20. Wild, Wild Young Men

Disc 2:

1. Ever Since My Baby's Been Gone
2. Love Contest
3. Oh, What a Dream
4. Ol' Man River
5. Somebody Touched Me
6. Mambo Baby
7. I Can See Everybody's Baby
8. As Long as I'm Movin'
9. It's Love Baby (24 Hours a Day)
10. I Gotta Have You
11. Love Has Joined Us Together
12. I Wanna Do More
13. Lucky Lips
14. One More Time
15. This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'
16. Why Me
17. I Can't Hear a Word You Say
18. I Don't Know
19. Takin' Care of Business
20. Don't Deceive Me

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #108311 in Music
• Released on: 1989-01-01
• Number of discs: 2

Amazon.com
By the time she left Atlantic Records in 1963, Ruth Brown could look back on 24 R&B hits dating back to her first, "So Long," in 1949. Raised in the church, her chops honed in Lucky Millinder's Big Band, she could deliver technique and attitude to burn, breaking hearts with smoky ballads and raising the roof with brash jump-blues numbers. Over the years her reedy, delicate voice evolved into a deep, full-bodied instrument, more expressive in its varied colors than it was early on, and she used it to devastating effect, especially on her double-entendre workouts ("Wild Wild Young Men"). The 40 tracks on this 2 CD set chart all the early, towering entries, as well as some interesting non-hits (among these a scintillating foray into gospel-based pop, "I Can See Everybody's Baby") and three previously unreleased cuts. In recent years Brown has delivered exemplary work on the Fantasy and Bullseye Blues labels, but Miss Rhythm is the rock the legend is built on. --David McGee

From Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD
This exceptional two-CD set has forty songs recorded between 1949 and 1960 by a major R&B star: twenty-four hits, twelve obscurities, four previously unreleased tracks. Even at age twenty-two, when Brown's first hit, "Teardrops from My Eyes," brought her national prominence, she was an accomplished singer with a simon-pure feel for incipient rock 'n' roll. As the chronologically displayed material bears out, her voice becomes weightier and the "tear" at the end of lines more supercharged with accumulated life experience. Splitting hairs, maybe, but the jazz-oriented production of Atlantic's cofounder Herb Abramson on the earlier numbers seems to suit that semisophisticated voice even better than the R&B settings shaped years later by Jerry Wexler. Sessions heroes include pianist Harry Van Walls and guitarist Mickey Baker. -- © Frank John Hadley 1993

Customer Reviews

Atlantic Records' Queen Mother of Soul At Her Early Best
Ruth Brown was among a handful of performers (among them, Atlantic Records labelmates Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles, and LaVern Baker) who saw and led the 15-year shift where blues and jazz formed rhythm and blues, was renamed rock and roll, then was branched off into the beloved soul era that followed.

"Miss Rhythm," an exceptional collection of greatest hits and rare performances, captures the not always subtle changes black music underwent during the turbulent 1950s. Brown's voice was equal parts Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday (hear the ending of "I'll Get Along Somehow") and even Bessie Smith (the pleading roar of "Standing On The Corner," a song about domestic violence and helplessness).

Being among the first stars of the still-new Atlantic label meant songwriting and arrangement help from its bosses, Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, most notably on a swinging "Sentimental Journey" (with the Delta Rhythm Boys) and "Shrine of St. Cecilia" before climaxing with the #1 hits "Wild Wild Young Men" and "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean."

Disc two finds Brown becoming more a song stylist with less to style. Rock and roll was in full rush, leaving Brown copying the soul and style of hits by LaVern Baker ("Lucky Lips"), the Bobbettes (Bobby Darin's fun-but-silly "This Little Girl's Gone Rockin'") and the mambo and talking blues crazes. The final song, Chuck Willis' "Don't Deceive Me," recalls Clyde Otis' arrangements for Brook Benton and may have been her future had she stayed with the label.

Ruth Brown's late-80s renaissance was welcome. Her appearance on a PBS "American Masters" special, her role in "Hairspray," and this set reminded many of the brave steps a new style, label, and artist took during one of music's most turbulent eras. Atlantic and R&B in general had a queen before Aretha, and Ruth Brown's "Miss Rhythm" is highly recommended.

The Young Ruth Brown
I first heard Ruth Brown's Wild Wild Young Men on a local blues show. I bought the CD to get that song. I listened to samples of the rest of the CD and thought it would be nice in my collection. Wow was I pleasantly surprised. I think just about every song on both CD's is a winner. I like Ruth's new stuff, she still can belt it out. The energy and quality of her "young" voice of the fifties really sends me. If you like the post war era and roots of rock and roll then this is I believe a good choice to add to your collection. As for me I love the slight naughtiness in songs of this period. I could name them all but a few good examples on this CD would be... Lucky Lips, This Girl's Gone Rockin', Love Contest, 5-10-15 Hours and of course Wild Wild Young Men. I am certainly not learned like many other reviewers, I just like this one and play it alot. Like they used to say "it's got a great beat and you can certainly dance to it."

Atlantic - The House That Ruth Built
Once fired from Lucky Millinder's band, it was the great Duke Ellington who recommended her to Herb Abramson and his fledgling Atlantic Records in 1949. Good thing, too, because it was Ruth Brown who put Atlantic on the map, make no mistake.

She did that with 24 R&B hit singles from 1949 to 1960, five of which crossed over to the Billboard Pop charts. In this 2-CD set you get all but four, which is kind of disappointing when you see that they include four previously unreleased tracks [Hey Pretty Baby, Don't Cry, The Shrine Of St. Cecilia, and It's All For You].

The missing hits are: Mend Your Ways, the flipside of Wild Wild Young Men, which reached # 7 R&B in July 1953; Bye Bye Young Men [# 13 R&B in January 1955 - but they DO include the uncharted B-side, Ever Since My Baby's Been Gone]; Sweet Baby Of Mine [# 10 R&B in May 1956]; and Jack O'Diamonds [# 23 R&B/# 96 Billboard Pop Hot 100 in July 1959, but again they DO include the uncharted flipside, I Can't Hear A Word You Say]. For that reason, as a completist collector, I had to reluctantly deduct one star in my assessment. I simply do not understand this all-too-repeated practice by CD producers.

What is here, however, more than adequately illustrates why, in 1956, a dee-jay Cash Box poll found her to be "the most programmed female vocalist in the R&B field." An Alan Freed favourite, her other cross-over hits besides Jack O'Diamonds were Lucky Lips [# 6 R&B/# 25 Top 100 in 1957], This Little Girl's Gone Rockin' [# 7 R&B/# 24 Top 100 in 1958], I Don't Know [# 5 R&B/# 64 Hot 100 in late 1959], and Don't Deceive Me [# 10 R&B# 62 Hot 100 in 1960 and her last with Atlantic].

In 1962 Ruth was back on the pop charts with the Philips label when the old Faye Adams hit, Shake A Hand, made it to # 97, and a re-make of Mama (He Treats Your Daughter Mean) just made the Top 100 at # 99 backed by The Milestone Singers. These remain two of the hardest-to-find Ruth Brown hits.

The accompanying booklet includes a session record showing the musicians who participated in each selection, and when each was recorded, as well as six pages of background information written in 1989 by Chip Deffaa, then the Jazz/blues critic for The New York Post. There are, however, no other photos of Miss Rhythm.

One final note. I notice that my copy of this set has a different picture of Ruth on the cover - a head shot that looks like someone cropped it with a rusty razor blade. Clearly the same CD set judging from the songs listed, the one advertised above has a much more appealing photograph of this great R&B songstress who, unlike some members, was justifiably inducted into the R&R Hall Of Fame in 1993, and the Blues Hall Of Fame in 2002.

Highly recommended in spite of the missing Atlantic hits.