Tag Archives: Taj Mahal

Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan - The songs he didn't write

Bob Dylan: Matchbox (Carl Perkins) (Videos & Audio)

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bob dylan carl perkins

Well I’m sitting here wondering, will a matchbox hold my clothes
Yeah I’m sitting here wondering, will a matchbox hold my clothes
I ain’t got no matches, but I got a long way to go
I’m an ol’ poor boy and a long way from home
I’m an ol’ poor boy and a long way from home
Guess I’ll never be happy, eveything I do is wrong, yeah

He [Carl Perkins] really stood for freedom. That whole sound stood for all degrees of freedom. It would just jump off the turntable… we wanted to go where that was happening.
~Bob Dylan (note from Dylan @ Carl Perkins funeral)

Wikipedia:

Released 1957
Format 7″ Vinyl
Recorded December 4, 1956
Genre Rockabilly
Length 2:10
Label Sun Records
Writer(s) Carl Perkins
Producer Sam Phillips

carl-perkins-matchbox-sun-78

“Matchbox” is a rock and roll and rockabilly song written by Carl Perkins and first recorded by him at Sun Records in December 1956 and released on February 11, 1957 as a 45 single on Sun Records as Sun 261. It has become one of Perkins’ best-known recordings. Perkins’ “Matchbox” has been followed by many cover versions, notably by the Beatles.

com-carl-perkins-and-sam-phillipsCarl Perkins & Sam Phillips

 

After recording “Your True Love”, Carl Perkins’s father Buck suggested that he do “Match Box Blues”. Buck knew only a few lines from the song, either from a 1927 recording by Blind Lemon Jefferson, or from the version by country musicians The Shelton Brothers (who recorded the song twice in the 1930s, and again in 1947). As Perkins sang the few words his father had suggested, Jerry Lee Lewis, who was at that time a session piano player at Sun Studios, began a restrained boogie-woogie riff. Carl began picking out a melody on the guitar and improvised lyrics. On December 4, 1956 Carl Perkins recorded the song called “Matchbox”. Later that day, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and session pianist Jerry Lee Lewis were all in the Sun studio with Sam Phillips. The impromptu group formed at this jam session became known as the Million Dollar Quartet.

Perkins maintained that he had never heard Jefferson’s “Match Box Blues” when he recorded “Matchbox”. Jefferson’s song is about a mean spirited woman; Perkins’ was about a lovelorn “poor boy” with limited prospects.

Other notable versions

Carl Perkins – live TV Performance 1957:

Jerry Lee Lewis – live Star Club Hamburg 1964:

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Bob Dylan, Music Calendar, Patti Smith, Paul McCartney

May 17 in music history

Bob Dylan & The Hawks: Free Trade Hall, Manchester, England 17 May 1966 (read more)

Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert is a two-disc live album by Bob Dylan, released in 1998. It was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall during Dylan’s world tour in 1966. Extensively bootlegged for decades, it is an important document in the development of popular music during the 1960s.

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The Bob Dylan documentary, Dont look back premiered in 1967 (read more)


Dont Look Back  is a 1967 film by D.A. Pennebaker that covers Bob Dylan’s 1965 concert tour in the United Kingdom.In 1998, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. Wanting to make more than just a concert film, Pennebaker decided to seek out both the public and private Bob Dylan. With unobtrusive equipment and rare access to the elusive performer, he achieved a fly-on-the-wall glimpse of one of the most influential musicians of all time and redefined filmmaking along the way. …and it is funny!

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Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942),who uses the stage nameTaj Mahal,is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music. A self-taught singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, banjo and harmonica (among many other instruments), Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50 year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific.  Taj_Mahal_(musician)
 Johnny “Guitar” Watson (February 3, 1935 – May 17, 1996)was an American blues and funk guitarist and singer.A flamboyant showman and guitar picker in the style of T-Bone Walker, Watson recorded throughout the 1950s and 1960s with some success. His raunchy reinvention in the 1970s with disco and funk overtones, saw Watson have hits with “Ain’t That a Bitch”, “I Need It” and “Superman Lover”. His successful recording career spanned forty years, with his biggest hit being the 1977 “A Real Mother For Ya”.  Johnny_Guitar_Watson
James Ridout “Jesse” Winchester (May 17, 1944 – April 11, 2014)was an American musician and songwriter who was born and raised in the southern United States. To avoid the Vietnam War draft he moved to Canada in 1967, where he began his career as a solo artist. His highest charting recordings were of his own tunes, “Yankee Lady” in 1970 and “Say What” in 1981. He became a Canadian citizen in 1973, gained amnesty in the U.S. in 1977 and resettled there in 2002.  Jesse_Winchester_Smile_JazzFest_2011
Wave is an album by the Patti Smith Group, released May 17, 1979The title track was a tribute to Pope John Paul I, whose brief papacy coincided with the recording sessions. The first single off the album was “Frederick”, a love song for her husband-to-be Fred “Sonic” Smith with a melody and structure bearing resemblance to “Because the Night”, the group’s biggest hit. The second single, “Dancing Barefoot”, has been covered by many art  Wave_-_Patti_Smith_Group
Ram is a studio album by recording artists Paul and Linda McCartney, released 17 May 1971 on Apple Records.The album was recorded amid Paul McCartney’s legal action in Britain’s High Court to dissolvethe Beatles‘ partnership, following their break-up the year before. The only album credited to the couple, Ram was the second of two albums that McCartney released between quitting the Beatles and forming his own band, Wings. He and Linda recorded it in New York with guitarists David Spinozza and Hugh McCracken, and future Wings drummer Denny Seiwell. Its release coincided with a period of bitter acrimony between McCartney and his former bandmate John Lennon, who perceived verbal slights in the lyrics to songs such as “Too Many People“.  RamMcCartneyalbumcover

Spotify Playlist –
Blues, Bob Dylan, Cover versions, Taj Mahal

Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal – Happy birthday bluesman Taj Mahal

taj mahal

Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal – Happy birthday bluesman Taj Mahal

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942),who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American Grammy Award winning blues musician. He incorporates elements of world music into his music. A self-taught singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, banjo and harmonica (among many other instruments), Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50 year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific.

He has done some Dylan songs, and he add his own signature to his interpretations. I have also included a short show with George Harrison, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty and Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal & The Phantom Blues Band – Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream (Audio from the Amnesty album, Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years Of Amnesty International):

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Blues, Robert Johnson, The Best Songs

The Best Songs: Come on in my kitchen by Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson Robert Crumb 2

Illustration by Robert Crumb

If I hadn’t heard the Robert Johnson record when I did, there probably would have been hundreds of lines of mine that would have been shut down—that I wouldn’t have felt free enough or upraised enough to write.

— Bob Dylan
Chronicles: Volume One

Wikipedia:

“Come On in My Kitchen” is a blues song by Robert Johnson. Johnson recorded the song on November 23, 1936 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas – his first recording session. The melody is based on the song cycle by the string band the Mississippi Sheiks, “Sitting on Top of the World” (1930)/Things About Coming My Way (1931)/I’ll Be Gone, Long Gone (1932)/Hitting The Numbers (1934).

Johnson’s arrangement on slide guitar (in open tuning, commonly thought to be open G) is based on Tampa Red’s recording of the same tune with the title “Things ‘Bout Coming My Way”. Tampa Red had recorded an instrumental version in 1936, and the song had been recorded earlier by him in 1931, and by Kokomo Arnold in 1935 (Tampa Red may in fact have been the first to use the melody with his song “You Got To Reap What You Sow” (1929) based on Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell’s version).

Johnson’s recording was released on the Vocalion label (no. 03563) as a “race record” – cheap records for the black consumer market. The song was among those compiled on the King of the Delta Blues Singers LP in the 1960s. (A slower alternate take was also later found and released on CD collections; this version also has ten extra lines of lyrics.)

Come on in my kitchen by Robert Johnson:

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Blues, The Best Songs

Skip James: Devil Got My Woman

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OLD post … You’re being redirected to a newer version……

skip james

I’d rather be the devil, to be that woman man
I’d rather be the devil, to be that woman man
Aw, nothin’ but the devil, changed my baby’s mind
Was nothin’ but the devil, changed my baby’s mind
~Skip James (Devil Got My Woman)

Coupling an oddball guitar tuning set against eerie, falsetto vocals, James’ early recordings could make the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
~Cub Koda (allmusic.com)

Skip James (June 9, 1902 – October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer. He is regarded by most blues writers as a very important artist.

He is one of 3 blues artists to featured in Wim Wenders great documentary film The Soul of a Man (2003). 

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