Shorty Muggins and His Great Big Shovel

You would think that a record called "Got a Great Big Shovel"  would be perfect for my other blog, Big 10-Inch Record, but here it is on Buster's Swinging Singles.

This is actually a terrific record with a fun back story. Let me reveal first of all that "Shorty Muggins" is actually Sammy Davis, Jr.

Sam had begun recording for Capitol in early 1949, and after six months, his sides weren't selling. Davis, producer Dave Cavanaugh or someone else at the record company decided to try something different. So the songs that Sammy recorded on July 22 were issued under pseudonyms - this 78 of "Got a Great Big Shovel" and "We're Gonna Roll" as by "Shorty Muggins," and another 78 of "Dreamy Blues" and "What Can I Do" as by "Charlie Green."

'Shorty Muggins' in 1949

"Got a Great Big Shovel" is a wildly entertaining double-entendre blues that features Sammy doing his best imitation of Big Joe Turner. The flip side is hardly less successful. A young Gerald Wiggins plays superb piano on both numbers. The requisite honking tenor sax is by Cavanaugh, who at one point interrupts Davis by continuing his solo for a second chorus. The online Davis sessionography says that "members of the Woody Herman band" also participated. Presumably they were Joe Mondragon on bass and Shelly Manne on drums.

On the other 78 (not included here) Sammy did an imitation of another R&B icon, Charles Brown (Charles Brown/Charlie Green, get it?). Anyway, Sam's incognito records were no more popular that the ones under his own name, so for the next session he was back to being Sammy Davis, Jr. while leaving "Got a Great Big Shovel" behind for such fare as 1931's "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile." Sam was always known for his versatility.

Davis' Capitol contract would lapse at year end, but he would go on to achieve much more success at Decca. See my other blog for a recent post with 21 of his songs for that company. My friend Ernie hipped me to Shorty Muggins and Charlie Green in the comments to that post, so thanks once again to Ernie for his inspiration!