Rockin Pneumonia: And the Boogie Woogie Flu

I’m not entirely sure to what extent one of my favorite albums actually exists. Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns’ Rockin’ Pneumonia & The Boogie Woogie Flu is a CD of thirty songs by a New Orleans R&B group that had a couple of hits in 1957 and 1958. I picked it up somewhere in the early 1990s and still play it all the time. It has no liner notes, a slapdash design, and a label credit that simply reads “HRÖN RECORD CO, New Orleans, LA.” On the inside, there’s what appears to be a vintage ad: “It’s Sweeping the Country! And the only one that’s SELLING is on Hrön.” Another ad appears on the back cover, misspelling the name of one of Smith’s songs in bold type and announcing that it’s “S P R E A D I N G everywhere.”

The album is one long, ebullient party; it’s impossible to listen to it and be unhappy at the same time. The band generally sounds so drunk they can barely hold their instruments or keep from cracking up. Everything about them is a little bit vague: I’ve seen the same line from their hit “Don’t You Just Know It” transcribed as “high on a mountain, cool as a breeze” and “I don’t mind that culotte a bit,” both of which are reasonable approximations. The classic lineup of the Clowns only existed for a few years in the late ’50s, sometimes fronted by a ­female impersonator named Bobby Marchan, who went on to be one of the forces behind Cash Money Records four decades later.

A bunch of Smith’s Iron Curtain–era Ace Records singles appear on Rockin’ Pneumonia, alongside some otherwise unreleased tracks; one of them is a version of the old string-band tune “Little Liza Jane,” in which the saxophonist’s solo is a swinging two-step variation on Dvoˇrák’s Humoresque No. 7. Another one is, improbably, called “Blow Everybody Blow (Take 73).” There’s no information on any of the more unusual stuff online, and there’s no reliable documentation I’ve found of a Hrön Record Co.—there was a New Orleans label called Ron in the ’50s, but Hrön wasn’t one of their imprints.

Also, my copy of Rockin’ Pneumonia is the only one I’ve ever seen. When I put it into my computer a few years ago, the CD Database didn’t recognize it; I had to type in its metadata. For years, I found no trace of it on the Internet, other than a description I’d posted on my own blog. Amazon has a listing for something called Rockin’ Pneumonia & The Boogie Woogie Flue [sic...