What Do You Know About Singer Pha Terrell "Until the real thing comes along"

So what do you know about singer Pha Terrell best known in some circles for "Until The Real Thing Comes along" with the great Andy Kirk band of the 1930s. Also he was a young Billie Holidays boyfriend and had a beautiful voice....can you say obscure? hes definately obscure today
My mother remembered this singer and her remark was No one ever sang that song like Pha and he was a cute cat



Best known as a vocalist for Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy, the unusual first name of this artist would become an item on a Vietnamese restaurant menu if the proper vowel were switched. Pha Terrell, sometimes known to his friends as Elmer, was discovered by Kirk in the early '30s while toiling as a combination of dancer, singer, and semi-hustler at a Kansas City club. Terrell sang with the Kirk band between 1933 and 1941, after which he headed for Indianapolis, at that time a thriving jazz center. He worked there in smoochy Clarence Love's Orchestra, often tying knots in whatever strings of one-nighters were available to this type of territory band. Like just about any standup singer, Terrell eventually decided to go it alone, a career move that in his case he made out on the West Coast. A kidney ailment took him down when he was just getting started.

Available recordings by this singer can basically be evenly split between Kirk collections and various compilations based on themes such as early R&B and the Kansas City scene. His biggest hit with the Kirk outfit was the patient "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" in 1936. "All the Jive Is Gone" is another of Terrell's finest moments -- hippies will say it is "Pha Out!" -- yet listeners who find the singer's high tenor voice eerie and/or obnoxious may think the song's title best describes Terrell's departure from the Kirk band

Until the Real Thing Comes Along
(Cahn, Chaplin, Freeman, Holiner, Nichols)


Transcribed from Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, vocal by Ben Thigpen, recorded March 11, 1936.
From Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, 1936-1937, Chronological Classics vol. 573.

I would work for you, slave for you,
Work my body to a grave for you;
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

I would moan for you, groan for you,
Work my fingers to the bones for you,
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

Maybe someday, I'll go far away,
I should leave, you know I won't stay;
I need you now more than ever, somehow,
If you should leave, you know we'd both grieve.

I would rob, steal, beg, borrow, and I'd lie for you,
Lay my body down and die for you,
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.

Maybe someday, I'll go far away,
I should leave, you know I won't stay,
I need you now more than ever, somehow,
If you should leave, you know we'd both grieve.

I would rob, steal, beg, borrow, and I'd lie for you,
Lay my body down and die for you,
If that ain't love, it's got to do,
Until the real thing comes along.



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what little is on the internet about this man:Elmer "Pha" Terrell (May 25, 1910, Kansas City, Missouri - October 14, 1945, Los Angeles) was an American jazz singer.

Terrell was working in nightclubs locally in Kansas City in the early 1930s as a singer, dancer, and emcee when he was discovered by Andy Kirk, who hired him to be the vocalist for his group the Twelve Clouds of Joy. Terrell sang with Kirk for eight years, from 1933 to 1941, and recorded with him extensively for Decca Records, singing hits such as 1936's "Until the Real Thing Comes Along".

After 1941 Terrell moved to Indianapolis to play with Clarence Love's territory band, then moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a soloist. Terrell died of kidney failure in 1945.

LITTLE MISS. CORNSHUCKS AKA MILDRED CUMMINGS

As a kid the music was always pumping in our house even though it was the 80s it always sounded like it was the 1940's or 50's that was when my parents were young and "Hip". However their was one song " How Long" by Mildred Cummings AKA Cornshucks...Obscure today but Id like to share her story with you!

LITTLE MISS CORNSHUCKS (By Dave Penny)

Born Mildred Cummings, 26 May 1923, Dayton, Ohio
Died 11 November 1999, Indianapolis, Indiana

"In 1943, when I was 19 or so years old, I went to a nightclub in the northeast black ghetto section of Washington and heard a singer whose name was Little Miss Cornshucks and I thought, "My God!!!" She was better than anything I'd ever heard. She would come out like a country girl with a bandana around her head, a basket in her hand, and so forth, which she'd set aside fairly early on into the show. She could sing the blues better than anybody I've ever heard to this day. I asked her that night if she would mind if I made a record of her for myself. We cut "Kansas City" along with some other blues and she also sang a song called "So Long". She had such a wonderful sound and I remember just thinking, "My God! My God!" And I didn't have a record company, I just made those records for myself."

Ahmet Ertegun, from What'd I Say: The Atlantic Story (page 15).

Born Mildred Cummings in Dayton, Ohio, on 26th May 1923, Little Miss Cornshucks - with her cute "rural maid" routine - became a major attraction at Chicago's Club De Lisa by the time she was 18, and began appearing at the Rhumboogie Club from its opening in 1942. By the following year she was touring nationwide and being recorded privately by Ahmet Ertegun; which not only germinated the seed of Ahmet owning his own record company, but also provided him with one of his first major successes with Russ Morgan's 1940 hit "So Long", recorded by Ruth Brown in 1949.

A multi-talented vaudeville performer, whose act incorporated comedy and novelty vocals as much as "serious singing", Little Miss Cornshucks' own commercial recording career began in late 1946 with and for bandleader Marl Young's Chicago-based Sunbeam Records. Young was a highly-regarded jazz pianist from Virginia who had co-owned The Sunbeam Recording Studio since 1941. Five years later he inaugurated the Sunbeam label to showcase his own band and various unrecorded vocalists, including and especially, Little Miss Cornshucks. After her releases for the label, Sunbeam stumbled on for a few more releases but ceased around late 1947, although two of her sides - "So Long" and "For Old Time's Sake" - were acquired by Al Benson's Old Swing-Master Records and reissued in September 1949. By that time Cornshucks had made more recordings on the West Coast during the 1948 AFM recording ban for Roy Milton's Miltone Records with Maxwell Davis and The Blenders, including standards such as "He's Funny That Way" and "Why Was I Born?" as well as more original work and more contemporary covers like Lloyd Glen's "True (You Don't Love Me)", made into a recent hit by both Paul Gayten and Camille Howard.

In 1949 she recorded a one-off session for Aladdin Records, covering Frank Sinatra's 1946 hit "Time After Time" and the Jay McShann/Crown Prince Waterford wailer "You Turned Your Back On Me", while a version of Leroy Carr's "How Long" remains unissued. Aladdin also purchased her Miltone masters, but released just one, the dramatic "Keep Your Hand On Your Heart", while most were also reissued on DeLuxe for the mid-western market. The Decca Records subsidiary, Coral, recorded and issued three releases by Cornshucks between 1950 and 1952, including a reprise of her career song "So Long", after which the releases dried up until she was brought out of retirement for an LP on Chess produced by Sonny Thompson in late 1960.

Although she died in obscurity at her home in Indianapolis on 11th November 1999, her valuable recordings issued between 1947 and 1952 prove the tremendous influence this artist exerted over her peers, and her records would go on to inspire later performers like Billy Wright, Ruth Brown, Johnny Ray, Wynona Carr, and LaVern Baker who would start her career in the late 1940s as Little Miss Sharecropper in emulation of her idol.

Recommended listening: The Chronological Little Miss Cornshucks 1947-1951 - Classics 5059
Chess Blues: Global Roots - Spectrum 5445402 (contains one 1960 Chess recording "It Do Me So Good")


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