SqueezeMyLemon

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Blind Boy Fuller Sonny Terry Pistol Slapper Blues

"Pistol Slapper Blues" written by Blind Boy Fuller was recorded in New York City on April 05 1938 with Blind Boy Fuller doing the vocals and Sonny Terry on harmonica.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Ma Rainey: Booze And Blues

Ma Rainey singing "Booze And Blues"

Ma Rainey singing "See See Rider Blues" in 1925.

Ma Rainey Mp3s @Amazon.com

Notes from YouTube;

Recorded: New York , October 15 1924
'Ma' Rainey And Her Georgia Band
Ma Rainey (vcl), Howard Scott (cn), Charlie Green (tb), Don Redman (c), Fletcher Henderson (p), Kaiser Marshall (d)

Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey (April 26, 1886 -- December 22, 1939), was one of the earliest known American professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. She was billed as The Mother of the Blues. She did much to develop and popularize the form and was an important influence on younger blues women, such as Bessie Smith, and their careers.

Rainey was born in Columbus, Georgia. She first appeared on stage in Columbus in "A Bunch of Blackberries" at fourteen. She then joined a traveling vaudeville troupe, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. After hearing a blues song at a theater in St. Louis, Missouri, sung by a local girl in 1902, she started performing in a blues style. She claimed at that time that she was the one who coined the name "blues" for the style that she specialized in.

In the one known interview she did, Rainey told the following story, In 1902 "a girl from town... came to the tent one morning and began to sing about the "man" who left her. The song was so strange and poignant that it attracted much attention,and Rainey learned the song fron the visitor, and used it soon afterwards in her "act"." Audiences reacted strongly to the song.

She married fellow vaudeville singer William "Pa" Rainey in 1904, billing herself from that point as "Ma" Rainey. The pair toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels as "Rainey & Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues", singing a mix of blues and popular songs. In 1912, she took the young Bessie Smith into the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, trained her, and worked with her until Smith left in 1915.

Also known, though less discussed, is the fact that she was bisexual. She was arrested in Chicago in 1925 for hosting an 'indecent party' with a room full of semi-naked women. Rainey celebrated the lesbian lifestyle in "Prove It On Me Blues", but hid behind a cross-dressing man-hating persona that was quite distinct from her regular public image:

In most of her songs, Ma projected herself as a passionate and often mistreated lover of men. In private, her preference was for young men. The poet Sterling Brown tells of approaching her as a fan with the musicologist John Work. She immediately propositioned them as she was having trouble with her young musicians. Brown wrote a moving poem about Ma Rainey and her huge popularity with Southern audiences.

Ma Rainey was already a veteran performer with decades of touring in African-American shows in the U.S. Southern States when she made her first recordings in 1923. Rainey signed with Paramount Records and, between 1923 and 1928, she recorded 100 songs, including the classics "C.C. Rider" (aka "See See Rider") and "Jelly Bean Blues", the humorous "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", and the deep blues "Bo Weavil Blues". In her career, Rainey was backed by such noted jazz musicians as cornet players Louis Armstrong and Tommy Ladnier, pianists Fletcher Henderson and Lovie Austin, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, and clarinetist Buster Bailey. Rainey recorded two vocal duets with Papa Charlie Jackson in 1928, which proved to be her last recordings; Paramount terminated her contract soon afterwards, claiming that her material had gone out of fashion.

Rainey's career dried up in the 1930s--as did the career of just about every other classic female blues singers of the previous decade. But her earnings were enough that she was able to retire from performing in 1933.

Ma Rainey @SqueezeMyLemon

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Cassandra Wilson: Jazz Grammy Winner

Cassandra Wilson is an American jazz singer-songwriter and two-time Grammy Award winner from Jackson, Mississippi. Two of her albums, Blue Skies (1988) and New Moon Daughter (1996), have topped the US jazz charts, and the latter also won her a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance in 1997. More recently, Wilson’s latest album Loverly (2008) also won the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album

I love this version of Neil Young's Harvest Moon including the couple of minutes orchestral at the beginning

and Fragile