Ella Mae Morse: House of Blue Lights

It’s Radio Faux Show Flashback week, with each day presenting a song from an old post during the first 3 years of the Faux Show blog. Feel free to go back and check out the old Faux Show format (which was similar to an online music magazine format, with dozens of songs and information about them provided weekly with an overall theme) or simply listen to today’s song.

I’ve chosen “House of Blue Lights” by Ella Mae Morse to represent the music I discussed in Radio Faux Show Volume 2, Number 25 on July 17, 2022. The theme of the show was Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Snubs (Female Artists) and presented 31 women who deserve to be recognized alongside their male counterparts. Here is what I wrote back then.

Ella Mae Morse is one of the true unsung heroes of rock and roll, and one of the last rock and roll pioneers left who is not a member of the Rock Hall. Her recordings with Freddie Slack’s Orchestra in the ’40s and ’50s were a groundbreaking mix of jazz, R&B, and country music and helped lay the foundation for what would become rock and roll. Her recording of “Cow-Cow Boogie” in 1942 was the first gold record for Capitol Records, by any performer, male or female. Her 1943 single “Get On Board Little Chillun” was one of the first songs by a white artist to chart on the new R&B singles chart. She then hit #1 on those charts in 1943 with “Shoo Shoo Baby.” Her 1946 single “House of Blue Lights” is one of the first songs that can be considered rock and roll. Her 1952 single “Blacksmith Blues” was a million seller and foreshadows the sound of hundreds of Top 40 songs that would dominate the charts from the mid-50s on by artists such as Patti Page, Pat Boone, and Perry Como. Her 1952 single “Oakie Boogie” was rockabilly several years before Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis walked into the Sun Records studios. On top of all of this, Morse was popular with both black and white audiences, an extremely important shift for setting up the future of pop music. She presented a smooth sound mixed with raw sexuality, foreshadowing Elvis’ schtick years before he became the King of Rock and Roll. For all of these reasons, you can argue that Ella Mae Morse was the Queen of Rock and Roll before most people knew what rock and roll was.

To learn more about Ella Mae Morse, check out her Wikipedia page.

To listen to all of the songs of the day, check out the Radio Faux Show Song of the Day playlist.

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