Lester Melrose (December 14, 1891 - April, 1968) was one of the first producers of blues records. December 14 is the 348th day of the year (349th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1891 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... 1968 was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... In the music industry, record producer designates a person responsible for completing a master recording so that it is fit for release. ... For the emotional state, see Depression (mood). ...

He was a partner in his brother's record store in Chicago in 1923 when he met Jelly Roll Morton. Within a short time, he had sold his share of the store and become an A & R man, the old name for a record producer. His first big success was "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red and soon-to-be gospel music legend Thomas A. Dorsey, then still known as Georgia Tom. Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton (September 20, 1890 - July 10, 1941) was a virtuoso pianist, a bandleader, and a composer who some call the first true composer of Jazz music. ... Gospel music may refer either to the religious music that first came out of African-American churches in the 1930s or, more loosely, to both black gospel music and to the religious music composed and sung by white southern Christian artists. ... Thomas A. Dorsey (July 1, 1899 - January 23, 1993) is called the Father of Gospel Music. ...

He worked for several record companies simultaneously in the 1930s, including RCA Victor, Bluebird records, Columbia records, and Okeh Records. Among the artists he recorded were Joe "King" Oliver, Big Bill Broonzy, the first Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Minnie, Roosevelt Sykes, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Bukka White, Washboard Sam, Champion Jack Dupree, Jazz Gillum, Big Boy Crudup, Victoria Spivey and Leroy Carr. // Events and trends The 1930s were spent struggling for a solution to the global depression. ... Sony BMG Music Entertainment is the result of a 50/50 joint venture between Sony Music Entertainment (part of Sony) and BMG Entertainment (part of Bertelsmann AG) completed in August 2004. ... Columbia Records is the oldest continually used brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888. ... Okeh Records began as an independent record label based in the United States of America in 1918; from the late 1920s on was a subsidiary of Columbia Records. ... Joe King Oliver, (December 19, 1885 - April 8, 1938) was a bandleader and jazz musician. ... Big Bill Broonzy (1893 or 1898-1958) was a prolific United States composer, recorder and performer of blues songs. ... There were 2 popular blues harmonica players that went by the name Sonny Boy Williamson Sonny Boy Williamson I, also known as John Lee Williamson was an American blues harmonica player, born in Jackson, Tennessee, whose first record Good Morning, School Girl was a hit in 1937. ... Memphis Minnie McCoy (born June 3, 1897 - died August 6, 1973) was an American Blues musician. ... Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906 in Elmar, Arkansas - July 17, 1983 in New Orleans, Louisiana) was an American blues musician also known as Honeydripper. ... Alfonzo Lonnie Johnson (February 8, 1894 - June 6, 1970) was a pioneering blues and jazz musician born in New Orleans, Louisiana. ... Big Joe Williams (October 16, 1903 - December 17, 1982) was an American blues musician and songwriter, known for his characteristic style of guitar-playing, his nine-string guitar, and his bizarre, cantankerous personality. ... Bukka White album cover Bukka White (born Booker T. Washington White, November 12, 1909, near Houston, Mississippi) was a delta blues guitarist and singer. ... William Thomas Dupree, best known as Champion Jack Dupree, was an American blues pianist. ... Victoria Spivey (died 1976) was an American female blues singer. ...

In many ways he can be considered a founder of the Chicago blues, although he greatly favored acoustic over electric performances. Most of his recordings were made with a small group of session players and had a similar sound overall. Muddy Waters, who was rejected when he auditioned for Melrose, called it "sweet jazz". The Melrose sound dominated Chicago blues before World War II, but the arrival of large numbers of Southern African Americans in Chicago during and after the war brought Melrose's dominance to an end as a harder, deeper blues sound proved more popular with the new audience. The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago by adding electricity, drums, piano, bass guitar and sometimes saxophone to the basic string/harmonica Delta blues. ... McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1915 – April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician and is generally considered the father of Chicago blues. ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: Immense human sacrifice, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons - the atom bomb being the ultimate. ...

Melrose is a member of the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame.

As was the custom at the time (and not just in blues music), Melrose often assigned composer credit and performance rights of the artists' songs to himself, paying the artists only for the record session. Nonetheless, he unquestionably had great energy and excellent taste in seeking out performers and produced some foundation blues recordings. His name appears on "Reefer Head Blues", recorded by Jazz Gillum and Aerosmith, and "Me and My Chauffeur", recorded by Memphis Minnie and Jefferson Airplane. His name also appears on three Big Boy Crudup songs recorded by Elvis Presley. Aerosmith is a long-running hard rock band, originally forming in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1970s, and enjoying a later resurgence in popularity in the late 1980s. ... Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band from San Francisco, a pioneer of the LSD-influenced psychedelic rock movement. ... Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known as The King of Rock and Roll, or as just simply The King, was an American singer and actor. ...

His brother, Walter Melrose, was a music publisher who received songwriter credit for several songs identified with the Original Dixieland Jass Band, including the standards "High Society" and "Tin Roof Blues", both of which were hits as late as the 1950s. Shown are (left to right) Tony Sbarbaro (aka Tony Spargo) on drums; Edwin Daddy Edwards on trombone; D. James Nick LaRocca on cornet; Larry Shields on clarinet, and Henry Ragas on piano. ... // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the baby-boom from returning...

A third brother, Franklyn Melrose (November 26, 1907 - September, 1941), was a jazz pianist who appeared under the name of St. Louis Frank. He died in a gunfight. November 26 is the 330th day (331st on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1907 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... September is the ninth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four Gregorian months with the length of 30 days. ... 1941 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jazz is a musical art form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. ... A pianist is a person who plays the piano. ...