Lillian McMurray was a proper Southern white lady. Born Lillian Shedd in Purvis, MS to a fairly poor family that moved around a great deal, Lillian, as a young girl, taught herself to play piano, learned secretarial and accounting skills and eventually, in her early twenties, became executive secretary to the Governor of Mississippi. In 1945, she married Willard McMurray, a Jackson furniture salesman, and left her job to work with him in their family business.
In 1950, the McMurrays bought a building on Farish Street in Jackson, Mississippi that contained the contents of an out-of-business hardware store. Their intent was to clean out the building and open a furniture store that would cater to both white and black customers, Farish Street being more or less the border between the two segregated communities.
While cleaning out the building and disposing of the defunct store’s contents, Lillian came across a box of unsold 78 rpm records. Having no idea who any of the performers on the records were, her curiosity caused her to take one of the records and put it on a phonograph that had also been left in the shop.
Listening to the record, Lillian was, you might say, gobsmacked. The record was, in fact, Wynonie Harris’s recording of All She Wants to Do is Rock, on King Records, the Cincinnati based record label. For Lillian, it was a stunning epiphany. Later, she was quoted as saying, ''It was the most unusual, sincere and solid sound I'd ever heard, I'd never heard a black record before. I'd never heard anything with such rhythm and freedom.'' She never really explained, and maybe didn’t understand herself, how she could grow up in Mississippi, live in several areas throughout the state, and never have heard black music. Such was the culturally stilting effect of segregation.
Lillian decided almost immediately, that she wanted to be in the record business. With her husband Willard’s blessing and support, Lillian opened The Record Mart in an area inside her’s and Willard’s furniture store. The Record Mart was an instant success and the McMurrays added a radio show that broadcast from the Mart and featured the top selling blues records of the day. Lillian was a quick study in the record retail business. She met with, and developed relationships with distributors and radio stations, learned who the popular artists of the day were, and, in short, developed the skills she would need to succeed in the next endeavor she had in mind: starting her own record company.
In an interview in 1984, Lillian described her decision. “We had listening booths in the shop with the record player on the counter. Groups of black men would crowd into the booths and I found out they were singing spirituals along with the records. Some of them were really good. By the middle of 1950 I started thinking, ‘Why can’t I make a record?’ Gads, I didn’t know what I was getting into.”
In late 1950 The McMurrays formed a holding company, Diamond Records, which, in turn, owned their actual record production company, Trumpet Records.
The first records to come out on Trumpet were gospel records, by the Southern Sons Quartet and Andrews Gospelaires. The records sold fairly well, so she tried recording a local country band, Kay Kelllum’s Dixie Ramblers.
What Lillian really wanted to record was the blues. She’d heard about a popular harmonica player and singer who traveled about the area and set out to find him. This was Sonny Boy Williamson, the Sonny Boy Williamson II, really Aleck “Rice” Miller, who broadcast the King Biscuit Flour show out of Arkansas and who had, strangely enough, never recorded. Williamson II had been using the name for years despite that fact that it had originally belonged to John Lee Williams, the original Sonny Boy Williamson, who had been a popular Bluebird recording artist throughout the 1930s and ‘40s and who had recently been murdered during a robbery in Chicago.
Williamson II, who was actually older than the original Sonny Boy, jumped at the opportunity and in January of 1951 recorded eight tracks at the Scott Radio Service in Jackson. The session yielded one bona fide hit, Eyesight to the Blind, and Trumpet Records was on the map.
Sonny Boy returned for more sessions in March and July and when Lillian asked him to help her find other musicians to record, he offered up his current guitar player, Elmore James.
In August of 1951, James, backed up by Sonny Boy on harmonica and Leonard Ware on bass, recorded the now classic Dust My Broom, which would become Trumpet’s biggest selling recording and spawn dozens of copies and follow-ups, many by James himself. Strangely, Dust My Broom would be the only record James would record for Trumpet. Following the session James took off and Lillian didn’t even have another song to use as a “B” side. So, she took a recording by Bobo “Slim” Thomas called Catfish Blues, renamed him “Elmo James”, and put the song on the back of her soon-to-be a hit recording of Dust My Broom and released it like that.
Thomas caused Lillian even more problems when he asked to borrow the fledgling company’s brand-new guitar and amplifier to play a gig he had booked. The always generous Lillian said yes, and Thomas took off with the guitar and amp and didn’t return. Some time later, when Thomas turned up in Jail, the guitar and amp ruined, Lillian was the one he asked to bail him out. He cried and begged her forgiveness. She forgave him, but Bobo Thomas never recorded for Trumpet again.
Soon, a succession of older blues singers who had recorded in the 1920s and ‘30s like Tommy Johnson and Bo Carter came calling, looking for an opportunity to revive their careers. Lillian, for the most part, wasn’t interested in any of the older artists but she did take a liking to Big Joe Williams, the traveling hobo bluesman who wrote Baby Please Don’t Go, and recorded eight sides with him. Williams had recorded extensively for Bluebird and other labels in the ‘30s, and the tracks he recorded for Lillian, while selling only fairly, were as good as anything he had done before.
When Sonny Boy brought in his old friend Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, who had also recorded extensively in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Lillian took a liking to him as well and they recorded several sides together. Crudup, of course, was the author of That’s All Right Mama, which soon became a mega-hit for Elvis Presley.
Over the next four years Trumpet continued to expand its blues roster with artists like Tiny Kennedy, Sherman Robinson, Willie Love, and Lillian’s own discovery, Jerry McCain. Sonny Boy continued to record as well but Eyesight to the Blind and Dust My Broom remained the label’s biggest hits. Using her sharp eye for talent, she brought in young upstart musicians like BB King and Little Milton Campbell to play as sidemen on various Trumpet sessions.
Lillian often showed her own creativity as a producer and writer. She helped her artists with song lyrics, her piano skills enabled her to assist with arrangements, and she even composed whole songs for her artists. Sometimes these were accepted, but with changes. When she presented her song Warm, Warm Kisses to Sonny Boy, he objected, telling Lillian that the title wasn’t extreme enough for him, so they changed the name to Red Hot Kisses, and the song was released in 1954.
As a producer, Lillian could be creative in other ways as well. In 1951, at a Sonny Boy recording session, it became clear that the bass player they’d hired simply couldn’t cut it. Rather than scrap the session, and since no other bass players were around, Lillian called Cliff Givens, the bass singer for the Southern Sons Quartet and asked him if he could sing the bass part. Givens agreed and there are eight Sonny Boy Williamson records in which the bass part is not played but sung. Givens was such an accomplished vocalist that he pulled off the switch with aplomb, even imitating, to perfection, the sound of a bass fiddle played high up the fingerboard during an instrumental break.
Lillian had no interest in following any of the Southern segregationist “rules” when it came to her recordings. White musicians often played on black records, and she would frequently put a black musician, often an r&b sax player, on her country sessions. Occasionally, this brought on the wrath of the local Klan and White Citizen’s Council, who often made her the target of their harassment. Lillian stood up to them every time, and every time they backed off.
Musicians liked and respected Lillian McMurray because she treated them with respect. Lillian was absolutely scrupulous in her record keeping and was assiduous in paying artists every penny of royalties they were due. For the most part she generally recorded musicians she liked and they liked her back. This didn’t mean she was a pushover. She could be brutally honest if she felt she wasn’t getting 100 percent or if a performer wasn’t meeting his potential.
To Sherman Johnson she wrote: “You are the nicest guy and we do appreciate your attitude, but I feel like spanking you because you seem to have given up. I’m going to give you a swift kick in the pants the next time I see you .”
In a letter to one of her country artists, Joe Almond, she was even more direct: “The whole Diamond Record Company organization just finished listening to your tapes made in the recording session Sunday, and we are very disappointed in your slow tunes, Tanglewood Waltz and I’m Better Off Without You. Your voice is cracked all through; you blast and then drop your voice and the whole darn vocal comes out a mess. In the chorus of Tanglewood Waltz, you are especially bad. Instead of blasting so loud on the high notes, why don’t you soften up on your voice. Try singing your slow tunes soft, like your girl was standing right beside you, instead of shouting at her across the cow pasture.”
Sonny Boy Williamson, who had a notoriously foul mouth (check out the extended length recording of Little Villageand hear him cuss out Leonard Chess), was usually careful not to use four-letter words, or twelve letter contractions for that matter, around Lillian. In those days it was socially unacceptable to cuss in front of a lady. One day though, in the studio, liquor and his temper got the best of him and he ripped off a chain of epithets with Lillian right there in the control room. Lillian was outraged and ordered him to leave the studio. When he refused, Lillian grabbed the pistol she always required him to check with her before recording, and marched him into the street and down the block. A few weeks later, Sonny Boy returned to offer his apologies. Lillian, of course, forgave him.
By 1955, despite her honesty and business skill, Trumpet Records was in trouble. Musical tastes were changing, the Rock and Roll era was dawning, and Lillian’s stable of artists, both country and blues, seemed unable to keep up with the trends. While her gospel records sold lightly but steadily, none of her country records had been particularly successful, and her biggest blues sellers remained Eyesight to the Blind and Dust My Broom from 1951. Add to that, the fact that the record business, particularly the side of the business that catered to African-Americans, was not exactly genteel. The owners of these, small independent labels (Leonard Chess and the Bihari Brothers were often her nemeses) schemed and plotted against each other like characters in Game of Thrones. Sometimes this meant disrupting a competitors distribution channels, sometimes luring away successful artists, preventing a competitors records from getting airplay, or keeping records from being manufactured. Theft and outright arson were not unheard of. The record business was tough. In a later interview, Lillian refered to the business as being full of “snakes” and “skunks.”
By 1956 Trumpet Records was over. Lillian and the ever-supportive Willard continued to run their furniture stores and raise their daughter Vitrice. Lillian became a Girl Scout Leader, was active in her church, and took up antique furniture refinishing. After their retirement, she and Willard bought a motor home and spent much of their time touring the country and fishing, and, right up until her death in March of 1999, Lillian, who still owned the publishing rights to many of Trumpet’s songs, continued to make royalty payments to the musicians who had recorded for her. She stayed friendly and in touch with many of her former artists and they would often visit her at her furniture store in Jackson.
When Sonny Boy died in 1965, it was Willard and Lillian who paid for his tombstone.
