Tag Archives: John Lee Hooker

Blues, Jazz, Video

Newport Jazz Festival 1960 (Videos)

Newport 1960

The Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. It was established in 1954 by socialite Elaine Lorillard, who, together with husband Louis Lorillard, financed the festival for many years. The couple hired jazz impresario George Wein to organize the event to help them bring jazz to the resort town.
Most of the early festivals were broadcast on Voice Of America radio and many performances were recorded and have been issued by various record labels.The Newport Jazz Festival moved to New York City in 1972 and became a two-site festival in 1981 when it returned to Newport and also continued in New York. The festival was known as the JVC Jazz Festival from 1984 to 2008. During the economic downturn of 2009, JVC ceased its support of the festival and was replaced by CareFusion. As of 2012 the festival is sponsored by Natixis Global Asset Management. 
The festival is hosted in Newport at Fort Adams State Park, and is often held in the same month as its sister festival, the Newport Folk Festival.

In 1960 boisterous spectators created a major disturbance, and the National Guard was called to the scene. Word that the disturbances had meant the end of the festival, following the Sunday afternoon blues presentation headlined by Muddy Waters, reached poet Langston Hughes, who was in a meeting on the festival grounds. Hughes wrote an impromptu lyric, “Goodbye Newport Blues”, that he brought to the Muddy Waters band onstage, announcing their likewise impromptu musical performance of the piece himself, before pianist Otis Spann led the band and sang the Hughes poem.The 1960 event was notable also for the presence of a rival jazz festival that took place at the Cliff Walk Manor Hotel, just a few blocks away. This was organized by musicians Charles Mingus and Max Roach in protest against the lower pay that the Newport festival offered jazz innovators in comparison with more mainstream performers; the fact that the innovators were mostly black and the mainstream performers mostly white was also an aggravating factor.

Highlights included:

  • The Dave Brubeck Quartet
  • The Cannonball Adderley Quintet, featuring Nat Adderley
  • Nina Simone
    —
  • The Louis Armstrong All-Stars with Trummy Young and Barney Bigard
  • The Dizzy Gillespie Quintet
    —
  • Ray Charles
  • The Horace Silver Quintet
    —
  • Muddy Waters
  • John Lee Hooker
  • The Bill Evans Trio
  • The Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey

Videos from the festival:

Cannonball Adderley Quintet – Del Sasser:

Muddy Waters – Tiger In Your Tank:

Continue reading Newport Jazz Festival 1960 (Videos) →

Kinks, Music Calendar

Today: Ray Davies is 69 – Happy Birthday

Raydavies

“No one can penetrate me. They only see what’s in their own fancy, always.”
– Ray Davies

Raymond Douglas “Ray” Davies, CBE  was born 21 June 1944. He is  best known as lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.

Ray Davies is one of my favorite british songwriters, he really is up there with lennon/mccartney and jagger/richards. He is that good!

Ray+Davies

Ray Davies’ influence on british music is large and important. It really bacame vissible during the britpop period, but I can hear his way of talking about the english way of live in today’s pop and rap/hip-hop also. They might not know why they do it the way the do, but we do, it is the way Ray Davies thaught them through his songs .

While almost every other songwriter working in a rock band at the time was talking about altered states or sticking it to squares, Ray Davies developed a vocabulary of traditional English life, and even mocked Carnaby Street fashion on “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”. The Kinks were culture without the “counter” prefix, a rock band that anomalously acknowledged the dignity in the middle-aged woman who went out and bought a hat like the one Princess Marina wore, the one that adopted the mannerisms of music hall without pastiche or irony, the one that sang about tea and gooseberry tarts and favoring neighborhood life over new patterns of development.

– Pitchfork (Joe Tangari)

20 Century Man (Storytellers, vh1):

Awards

  • On 17 March 2004, Davies received the CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for “Services to Music.”
  • On 22 June 2004, Davies won the Mojo Songwriter Award, which recognises “an artist whose career has been defined by his ability to pen classic material on a consistent basis.”
  • Davies was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards. His contributions helped assist upcoming independent artists’ careers.
  • Davies and the Kinks were the third British band (along with The Who) to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, at which Davies was called “almost indisputably rock’s most literate, witty and insightful songwriter.” They were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
  • On 3 October 2006, Davies was awarded the BMI Icon Award for his “enduring influence on generations of music makers” at the 2006 annual BMI London Awards.
  • On 15 February 2009, The Mobius Best Off-West End Production in the UK for the musical Come Dancing.
  • On 7 September 2010, Davies was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award at the GQ Men of the Year Awards.
  • On 26 October 2010, Davies was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at his AVO Session concert in Basel; the concert was televised internationally.

My fav Kinks song – Waterloo Sunset (live):

Here’s a great documentary about Ray Davies, The World From My Window (2003): 

 

Album of the day:

Other June-21:

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Blues, Music Calendar

Today: The late John Lee Hooker was born in 1917 – 95 years ago

One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer
Hey mister bartender come here
I want another drink and I want it now

From Wikipedia:

Born August 22, 1917
Coahoma County, Mississippi, United States
Died June 21, 2001 (aged 83)
Los Altos, California, United States
Genres Blues, talking blues, country blues
Occupations Singer-songwriter, Musician, Songwriter
Instruments Guitar, vocals
Years active 1943–2001[2]
Labels Vee-Jay, Chess, Bluesway, ++
Associated acts Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King,Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Canned Heat

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001) was a highly influential American blues singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Hooker began his life as the son of a sharecropper, William Hooker, and rose to prominence performing his own unique style of what was originally a unique brand of country blues. He developed a ‘talking blues’ style that was his trademark. Though similar to the early Delta blues, his music was metrically free. John Lee Hooker could be said to embody his own unique genre of the blues, often incorporating the boogie-woogie piano style and a driving rhythm into his blues guitar playing and singing. His best known songs include “Boogie Chillen’” (1948), “I’m in the Mood” (1951) and “Boom Boom” (1962), the first two reaching R&B #1 in the Billboard charts.

From Allmusic (Bill Dahl):

He was beloved worldwide as the king of the endless boogie, a genuine blues superstar whose droning, hypnotic one-chord grooves were at once both ultra-primitive and timeless. But John Lee Hooker recorded in a great many more styles than that over a career that stretched across more than half a century.

Read more -> allmusic.com

Awards and recognition

  • A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
  • Inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980
  • Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991
  • Two of his songs, “Boogie Chillen” and “Boom Boom” were named to the list of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
  • “Boogie Chillen” was included as one of the Songs of the Century.

Grammy Awards:

  • Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1990 for I’m in the Mood (with Bonnie Raitt)
  • Best Traditional Blues Recording, 1998 for Don’t Look Back
  • Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, 1998, “Don’t Look Back” (with Van Morrison)
  • Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000

Hobo Blues – 1965:

One Bourbon, one Scotch, one Beer:

Album of the day – John Lee Hooker Plays & Sings The Blues (1961):

Other August-22:

Continue reading Today: The late John Lee Hooker was born in 1917 – 95 years ago →

Music Calendar, The Kinks

Today: Ray Davis is 68

From Wikipedia:

Raymond Douglas “Ray” Davies, CBE born 21 June 1944) is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.

Awards

  • On 17 March 2004, Davies received the CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for “Services to Music.”
  • On 22 June 2004, Davies won the Mojo Songwriter Award, which recognises “an artist whose career has been defined by his ability to pen classic material on a consistent basis.”
  • Davies was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards. His contributions helped assist upcoming independent artists’ careers.
  • Davies and the Kinks were the third British band (along with The Who) to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, at which Davies was called “almost indisputably rock’s most literate, witty and insightful songwriter.” They were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
  • On 3 October 2006, Davies was awarded the BMI Icon Award for his “enduring influence on generations of music makers” at the 2006 annual BMI London Awards.
  • On 15 February 2009, The Mobius Best Off-West End Production in the UK for the musical Come Dancing.
  • On 7 September 2010, Davies was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award at the GQ Men of the Year Awards.
  • On 26 October 2010, Davies was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at his AVO Session concert in Basel; the concert was televised internationally.

My fav Kinks song – Waterloo Sunset (live):

and another great live version:

Album of the day:

Other June-21:

Continue reading Today: Ray Davis is 68 →