OT Records !

Virgel Bozman 
OT Records (Oklahoma Tornado) # 109 - 1950
Blues For Oklahoma / Don't Let It Grieve Your Little Heart

Sparse instrumentation is what you get here on the A side, this is pure rural hick bop ! you get some cool Steel and even a mandolin interjects every now and then ! So when you get to the second break you get a full dose of some rasping guitar, just wonderful and is the sort of stuff I just love ! The B side is just as cool but at a much more relaxing country slow to mid tempo pace with lashings of Steel sweeping through the whole song and some nice piano plinking away in the back ground ! 

This O.T. label was originally based in Westlake, a small town on Highway 10 in the Southwestern corner of Louisiana. The initials O.T. stood for Oklahoma Tornadoes, a group run by Virgel that had recorded for Bill Quinn’s Gold Star label. Among the members of this short lived, but important band, were Bennie Hess, and Cajun fiddler extraordinaire Floyd Le Blanc. . His brother, Harmon recorded Rockabilly on the Texas Sarg label. Another Bozman O.T. release, when the label was relocated to San Antonio, is the fine, more Western Swing in style, « Troubles, Troubles » (# 113), backed by the Circle C Boys. It’s driven along by a bass player who enjoys himself enormously.

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Cleo Harves with Lightning Guitar.

OT # 105 - 1949

Side A - Skinny Woman Boogie.

Side B - Crazy With The Blues

This is a great record but at the same time kinda strange because Cleo sounds like two different singers on the the two tunes. On the B side he sounds just like all Black blues singers of the period, vocals, guitar all fit typically in the Blues A-Z of how to make a Blues record, don't get me wrong he does it very well and is a class tune of it's style. But the A side is just bizarre, out of time, great and truly brilliant Country Blues thing with Cleo sounding like a Country White Blues singer. This side is right up my alley! it's clumsy, superb, wrong but right and at the end the whole thing just about falls apart with all members stopping at different times (you can imagine them all looking at each other nodding as if to say 'right stop now' .......it's a thing and sound of beauty and the wrong bits sound just perfect to me!