David Gasten & the City Kids
"The Deacon Don't Like It"
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Previously Unreleased. |
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David Gasten & the City Kids are group that specializes in an intensified, transitional Jump Blues sound that they call “Heavy Jump Blues.” David Gasten, the band’s entertainer frontman, is also the producer of the This is Vintage Now compilation series. David Gasten & the City Kids made their recording debut on This is Vintage Now Vol. 1 with the 2010 recording of a song called “The Deacon Don’t Like It”; right now it is the only commerically available track from this group.
David Gasten was mentored as a post-vaudeville entertainer for two years by a “Blatalian” (“Black” Italian) entertainer named Little Anthony. Little Anthony is best known for being the first white performer to headline the previously all-black, Harlem-based road show Charles Taylor’s Cotton Club Revue. Gasten also worked as a swing DJ for Dr. Miles Jones, a language and memory specialist by day and swing dance instructor by night, who taught a hard-jumping swing dance style he learned and mastered in Paris, France. It was the combination of these two experiences that began Gasten’s development of a sound he refers to as "Heavy Jump Blues."
This version of "The Deacon Don't Like It" is an adaptation of the 1953 Wynonie Harris song, which itself is an adaptation of a traditional gospel blues song called "God Don't Like It". "God Don't LIke It" had at the time been recorded by the Reverend Anderson Johnson, and was Johnson's version that Wynonie's "The Deacon Don't Like It" was inspired by.
