Tag Archives: Blues

Blues, Muddy Waters, Music Calendar

Today: Muddy Waters released – Rollin’ Stone: The Golden Anniversary Collection in 2000 – 13 years ago

Muddy Waters - Rollin' Stone - The Golden Anniversary Collection

This is powerful music and belongs in any serious music fan’s library. You can’t own too much Muddy Waters. And even if you bought the Chess Box Set, only a third of these tracks were included. ESSENTIAL
~Steve Vrana (amazon.com review)

Not just an essential historical record of an artist and genre, these are some of the most seminal and inspired blues performances ever recorded.
~Hal Horowitz (allmusic.com)

Down South Blues @ spotify:

Wikipedia:

Released June 27, 2000
Recorded 1947-September 17, 1952 Chicago
Genre Blues
Length 153:41
Label MCA/Chess
Producer Leonard & Phil Chess, Andy McKaie
Compiler Andy McKaie

Rollin’ Stone: The Golden Anniversary Collection is a compilation album collecting the first 50 master recordings of blues singer Muddy Waters for Chess Records. The collection spans Muddy’s debut with then named Aristocrat Records circa 1947, and traces his evolution as a songwriter and musician up to September 17th, 1952 on what became Chess Records after the company changed ownership. It is the first in a series of releases chronicling Muddy Waters’ complete recording career at Chess. The second release in the series is Hoochie Coochie Man: The Complete Chess Masters, Volume 2, 1952-1958 (2004) and the third release in the series is You Shook Me: The Complete Chess Masters, Volume 3, 1958 to 1963 (2012).

Muddy_Waters

Gypsy Woman @spotify:

Personnel:

  • Muddy Waters – vocals, guitar (all tracks)
  • Sunnyland Slim – piano
  • Ernest “Big” Crawford – bass
  • Alex Atkins – alto sax
  • Leroy Foster – guitar, drums
  • Johnny Jones – piano
  • Jimmy Rogers – guitar, vocals
  • Little Walter – harmonica, guitar, vocals
  • Leonard Chess – producer, bass drum
  • Elgin Evans – drums
  • Phil Chess – producer

Album of the day:

Other June 27:

Continue reading Today: Muddy Waters released – Rollin’ Stone: The Golden Anniversary Collection in 2000 – 13 years ago →

Blues, Music Calendar

Today: The late Big Bill Broonzy was born in 1893 – 120 years ago

big bill broonzy

I guess all songs is folk songs. I never heard no horse sing ’em.
~Big Bill Broonzy

Blues is a natural fact, is something that a fellow lives. If you don’t live it you don’t have it. Young people have forgotten to cry the blues. Now they talk and get lawyers and things.
~Big Bill Broonzy

“Worried Man Blues,” “Hey, Hey” and “How You Want It Done.” From the DVD “A Musical Journey”:

Wikipedia:

Birth name Lee Conley Bradley
Also known as Big Bill Broonzy, Big Bill Broomsley
Born June 26, 1893
Lake Dick, Arkansas, U.S.
Died August 14, 1958 (aged 65)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Genres Folk music, country blues, Chicago blues, spirituals, protest songs
Occupations Musician, songwriter, sharecropper, preacher
Instruments Vocals, guitar, fiddle
Years active 1927–1958
Labels Paramount, A.R.C., Bluebird, Vocalion, Folkways
Associated acts Papa Charlie Jackson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger

Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1893 – August 15, 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly African-American audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with working class African-American audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.

Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences.

big bill broonzy

When Did You Leave Heaven:
(no.2 on Keith Richards “top 10 reggae and roots songs” – Rollingstone magazine)

Styles & Influences:

Broonzy’s own influences included the folk music, spirituals, work songs, ragtime music, hokum and country blues he heard growing up, and the styles of his contemporaries, including Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Broonzy combined all these influences into his own style of the blues that foreshadowed the post-war Chicago blues sound, later refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.

  • In 1980, he was inducted into the first class of the Blues Hall of Fame along with 20 other of the world’s greatest blues legends.
  • In 2007, he was inducted into the first class of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame along with 11 other musical greats including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Gene Autry, Lawrence Welk and others.
  • Broonzy as an acoustic guitar player, inspired Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Ray Davies, John Renbourn, Rory Gallagher, Ben Taylor, and Steve Howe
  • In Q Magazine (September 2007) it is reported that Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones claims that Bill Broonzy’s track, “Guitar Shuffle”, is his favorite guitar music. Wood said, “It was one of the first tracks I learnt to play, but even to this day I can’t play it exactly right.”
  • Eric Clapton has cited Bill Broonzy as a major inspiration: Broonzy “became like a role model for me, in terms of how to play the acoustic guitar.”
  • During the benediction at the 2009 inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, the civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery paraphrased Broonzy’s song “Black, Brown and White Blues”.

big bill broonzy

 

Album of the day:

big bill broonzy good time tonight

Other June 26:

Continue reading Today: The late Big Bill Broonzy was born in 1893 – 120 years ago →

Blues, Music Calendar

Today: Sleepy John Estes passed away in 1977 – 36 years ago

sleepy_john_estes_robert_crumb

Artwork by the legendary Robert Crumb

It ain’t but the one thing,
That give a man the blues.
He ain’t got no bottom
In his last pair of shoes.
But someday baby,
You ain’t worry my mind any more.

Someday Baby Blues (trad) first recorded by Sleepy John Estes

John Adam Estes (January 25, 1899 – June 5, 1977), is best known as Sleepy John Estes or Sleepy John, he was a blues guitarist, songwriter and vocalist, born in Ripley, Lauderdale County, Tennessee.

From allmusic.com:

Despite the fact that he performed for mixed black and white audiences in string band, jug band, and medicine show formats, his music retains a distinct ethnicity and has a particularly plaintive sound. Astonishingly, he recorded during six decades for Victor, Decca, Bluebird, Ora Nelle, Sun, Delmark, and others. Over the course of his career, his music remained simple yet powerful, and despite his sojourns to Memphis and Chicago he retained a traditional down-home sound. Some of his songs are deeply personal statements about his community and life, such as “Lawyer Clark” and “Floating Bridge.” Other compositions have universal appeal (“Drop Down Mama” and “Someday Baby”) and went on to become mainstays in the repertoires of countless musicians. One of the true masters of his idiom, he lived in poverty, yet was somehow capable of turning his experiences and the conditions of his life into compelling art.
—  Barry Lee Pearson

Mailman blues:

Estes made his debut as a recording artist in Memphis, Tennessee in 1929 for Victor Records.  He later recorded for the Decca and Bluebird labels, with his last pre-war recording session taking place in 1941. He made a brief return to recording at Sun Studio in Memphis in 1952, recording “Runnin’ Around” and “Rats in My Kitchen”, but otherwise was largely out of the public eye for two decades.

Someday Baby Blues (audio):

Sleepy John Estes had a crying singing style and sounded so much like an old man even on his early records, that blues revivalists reportedly delayed looking for him because they assumed he would have to be long dead.

Sleepy John Estes talks about his life and career (from the album Goin’ to Brownsville):

By the time he was tracked down, by Bob Koester and Samuel Charters in 1962, he had become completely blind and was living in poverty. He resumed touring and recording, reunited with Nixon and toured Europe several times and Japan, with a clutch of albums released on the Delmark Records label.

Album of the day @ JV is this compilation from 1929 to 1941 covering his golden period,  The Man Who Cried The Blues:

Other June-05:

Continue reading Today: Sleepy John Estes passed away in 1977 – 36 years ago →

Blues, List, Rock'n Roll

Rock and Roll: 100 Best Singles – according to Paul Williams – Part 1

2 Comments

paul williams 100 best singles

There’s a scream inside everyone of us at every moment. And every one of us has had the experience of listening to a record and feeling that scream take over. Release. Abandon. Let it all out. Rock and Roll for me is about Eros, not Logos, which is paradoxical since my job is putting the experience in words.
~Paul Williams (Author’s note)

One of our favorite authors here at JV is Paul Williams, and…. he did write about other stuff than Bob Dylan.

We all love lists, so I’ll try out a new series of posts honoring one of his lesser known books:

Rock And Roll: The 100 Best Singles

..the list is chronological, starting back before the beginning and going through the 50’s and the 60’s and the 70’s and the 80’s, and ending for the sake of convenience in 1991. So #1 is not supposed to be ‘better’ than #100. It just got in the line first.

My criteria are simple: the song has to have been released as a seven-inch 45 rpm single in the United States or Great Britain (Robert Johnson’s 78 rpm ten-inch is the exception that proved the rule), and it has be “rock and roll” according to my subjective evaluation…
~Paul Williams (Author’s note)

All quotes are from the book.

Here is #1 – 10:

Continue reading Rock and Roll: 100 Best Singles – according to Paul Williams – Part 1 →

Blues, Music Calendar

Today: The late Big Joe Turner was born in 1911 – 102 years ago

Big Joe Turner

The premier blues shouter of the postwar era, Big Joe Turner’s roar could rattle the very foundation of any gin joint he sang within — and that’s without a microphone. Turner was a resilient figure in the history of blues — he effortlessly spanned boogie-woogie, jump blues, even the first wave of rock & roll, enjoying great success in each genre.
~Bill Dahl (allmusic.com)

Shake, Rattle & Roll:

Wikipedia:

Birth name Joseph Vernon Turner Jr
Also known as The Boss of the Blues
Born May 18, 1911
Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Died November 24, 1985 (aged 74)
Inglewood, California, United States
Genres Jump blues, rock and roll, swing music
Instruments Vocals
Years active 1920s – 1980s
Labels Atlantic, National, Vocalion,Decca, Pablo
Associated acts Pete Johnson, Count Basie Orchestra

Big Joe Turner (born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr., May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985) was an American “blues shouter” (a blues-music singer capable of singing unamplified with a band) from Kansas City, Missouri. According to the songwriter Doc Pomus, “Rock and roll would have never happened without him.” Although he had his greatest fame during the 1950s with his rock and roll recordings, particularly “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, Turner’s career as a performer endured from the 1920s into the 1980s. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Big_Joe_Turner,_Hamburg_1974

Oh Well, Oh Well:

Tributes:

  • The late The New York Times music critic Robert Palmer, said: “…his voice, pushing like a Count Basie solo, rich and grainy as a section of saxophones, which dominated the room with the sheer sumptuousness of its sound.”
  • In announcing Turner’s death in their December 1985 edition, the British music magazine, NME, described Turner as “the grandfather of rock and roll.”
  • Songwriter Dave Alvin wrote a song about an evening that he spent with Turner titled “Boss Of The Blues”. It was on his 2009 release, Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women.

Dave Alvin – Boss Of The Blues (live):

Playlist of the day:

Other May-18:

Continue reading Today: The late Big Joe Turner was born in 1911 – 102 years ago →