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Cheatin’ and Lyin’ Blues:
Continue reading November 30: The late Robert Nighthawk was born in 1909 105 years ago years ago
Tag Archives: Blues
November 24: The late Donald Duck Dunn was born in 1941
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A 2 minute history of Donald “Duck” Dunn:“We were recording almost a hit a day for a while there. But I never knew how popular that music was until I came to England with Otis Redding in 1967.” – Donald Dunn (about the Stax period) |
Continue reading November 24: The late Donald Duck Dunn was born in 1941
November 23: The late R. L. Burnside was born in 1926
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Continue reading November 23: The late R. L. Burnside was born in 1926
November 11: Dave Alvin is 59 – Happy Birthday
I started writing poetry before I started writing songs. In my checkered college past I was a creative writing major at Long Beach State University, which had a great writing program, and that’s where I learned all the nuts and bolts that helped me out in songwriting. They forced us to write in traditional forms — sonnets, iambic pentameter — just so we could understand that writing wasn’t just splaying free verse all over the page. But then the more songs I wrote using all those poetic forms, the more my poetry become like prose, almost to the point of journalism…~Dave Alvin (Interview by Jim Catalano)
Continue reading November 11: Dave Alvin is 59 – Happy Birthday
Chicago Blues 1972 documentary
This is a very fine “time capsule” directed by Harley Cokeliss, an American director, producer, writer and actor born February 11, 1945 in San Diego. The cinematography is by master cameraman Tak Fujimoto.
CHICAGO BLUES explores the hard lives of bluesmen in Chicago narrated by an insightful and incendiary commentary from comedian turned political activist Dick Gregory. CHICAGO BLUES is a an interesting document of a generation of great musicians trying to make a living in a racially divided America.
‘‘CHICAGO BLUES” is an angry film. To document Chicago blues at its source, the British director Harley Cokliss went to South Side clubs, storefront churches and homes. He wound up with both a performance film and an anti-travelogue on ghetto life. It is a stark, forceful combination.
– Jon Pareles (NYT, 1983)