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to get them on the popular New York radio show "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." They lost to blind British pianist George Shearing, but the several hundred telephone calls the show received indicated that many listeners thought the wrong winner had been chose. Chessler took the Orioles to the New York label it's a Narutal where they recorded "It's Too Soon To Know." Two New York late-night rhythm 'n' blues disc jockeys pushed the song. It sold 30,000 copies its first week in release. It became one of the first rhythm 'n' blues hits by a vocal group and went to # 14 on the pop charts. He is:

It's Too Soon To Know 1. 34

One of the strains of southern blues music is Delta blues, and in November, 1948, a blues song - the first electrified Delta blues hit - went to # 1 on the R & B chart. Like so many other songs of this period, it was recorded by an independent in Detroit, but unlike most shythm 'n' blues records, this one did not feature the typical five - or seven - piece band - this was one man, John Lee Hooker, born a sharecropper near Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1920 or 1917. He worked in Memphis is the '30s and Chicago in the '40s. The success of this record inspired Sam Phillips in Memphis to open his record company a year later.

The producer explained how the record was made. "We put a mike in his guitar, and we put a speaker - this was a tiny, two-room studio, remember - we put it in a toliet bowl next door... Then we put a mike under that so the sound would bounce off the water - I wanted that echo effect. "With a plank under his feet so