Another bluesman who celebrated his birthday in January is Tampa Red. He was born on January 8 in 1904 and passed away on March 19, 1981.
T-Bone Walker was born on May 28, 1910 and he passed away due to a stroke on March 15, 1975. He was an American blues guitarist, singer, pianist and songwriter who according to Wikipedia;
was one of the most important pioneers of the electric guitar. His electric guitar solos were among the first heard on modern blues recordings and helped set a standard that is still followed. He was ranked #47 in Rolling Stone Magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.
Another bluesman who celebrated his birthday in January is Tampa Red. He was born on January 8 in 1904 and passed away on March 19, 1981.
Tragedy is part and parcel of the blues, of life and everything really. And I have said it many times, you have to live the blues to play the blues, consider one Hip Linkchain
Cancer took, the guitarist and song writer, Hip Linkchain's life before he got to be big on the blues scene, that is why I say "you probably don't know" him. His best album Airbusters was released before he passed away in 1989. It might have made all the difference, and brought him fame and fortune. But that was not to be.
He was born in Mississippi, like many other bluesmen, named Willie Richard at birth, he got his odd stage name because the white residents of the area called his seven-foot-tall dad, Linkchain. His dad got that name because he wore logging chains around his neck. The son was called "Hipstick" which led to Hip Linkchain. He learned to play the blues from his father and brother. During his time in the Delta he got to hear Elmore James, Little Milton, and Sonny Boy Williamson before he made that migration up to Chicago in the early 1950s.
During the 1950s and 1960s he played with harpists Dusty Brown, Willie Foster, and Lester Davenport, trying to make a name for himself in Chicago. In 1959 he played with Tyrone Davis in a band called the Chicago Twisters. Around 1981 he debuted with his album Change My Blues.
was released by Black Magic records in the late 1980's, and for my money is his best album. There were two recording sessions using two different bands, but still it is a very good showing all told. I think this album shows all of Hip Linkchain's talents, his singing, guitar work and his song writing are all on showcase here. The songs are executed with a craft that blues fans will appreciate and because most of the songs are Hip Linkchain originals, you may hear some blues that you never heard before.Yesterday I posted a Memphis Minnie video clip and it dawned on me that I have not posted anything about her, or any other of my favorite female blues musicians, in a while. A couple of years to be exact, in the case of Memphis Minnie.
Well I thought, I better do something about that.
I've been meaning to post these forever. I could write a few words about this, but as you know I like to let the bluesmen speak for themselves. Enjoy!
I've read in Gerard Herzhaft's Encyclopedia of The Blues and other places that the guitar, became popular and cheap just as the first bluesmen began to develop their sound. At the time among white rural musicians the banjo and the fiddle were just as important as the guitar if not more popular.
The guitar was more flexible and allowed for making blue notes and the creation of a true blues scale. Because the guitar was a cheap instrument and it could produce a wide range of effects it dominated the playing of the early black musicians. The early bluesmen, did not play the guitar the way it was played by classically trained musicians, just as they also played the harmonica in a different way then in classical music. Most black musicians were not trained in classical music at the time anyway.
The early bluesmen, such as Blind Blake and Blind Lemon Jefferson adapted fingerpicking, in which the melody is interwoven among the alternating bass notes and flatpicking, which helps to create the idea of a lead guitar. In flatpicking, the musician plays the melody line, note by note, with a pick. This allows the guitar to accompany a singer in a call and response technique which is familiar to almost every fan of the blues. Where the singer sings a line, and then the guitar repeats that line or vice versa.
It is reported that Lonnie Johnson probably invented this technique thus forever codifying the guitar's place in both blues and later rock and roll. The idea of flat picking lead to the electric guitar, which really allowed the bluesmen and women to express themselves. Thus you get guitars crying and displaying emotions as seen in the playing styles of musicians like B.B. King, T. Bone Walker and later Stevie Ray Vaughn.
To read more about the many blues guitarist check this out Blues Guitarists @ wikipedia.
A little guitar trivia; The guitar has come to be called many different colloquial names over time such as:
axe,
box,
guit-box,
guit-fiddle,
guit-box-fiddle,
guit-axe,
bread-box,
bread-winner,
bread-box-winner,
bread-box-fiddle.
