Tuesday, January 31, 2012

How High The Moon

Originally from a 1940s musical this is an established jazz standard with some wonderful performances Any favourites out there?


Monday, January 30, 2012

Ella Fitzgerald and Manhattan Transfer

I can never have too much Ella


Muddy Waters plays Manish Boy

Notes from YouTube: In this clip from a 1971 performance, Muddy Waters and his band perform "Manish Boy." From the DVD "Muddy Waters In Concert 1971.


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Bo Carter

Carter is often known for his bawdy songs such as "Banana in Your Fruit Basket", "Pin in Your Cushion", "Your Biscuits Are Big Enough for Me", "Please Warm My Wiener" and "My Pencil Won't Write No More". He had more depth in Blues - in 1928, he recorded the original version of "Corrine, Corrina", which later became a hit for Big Joe Turner.


Jesus Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened to me - James Cleavland


Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains The Same

This is a movie that I really can not tell you how man times I have seen. Back in the early eighties me and my Navy buddies used to go see this at the mid-night movies.

Good times with good friends and good music.



Led Zeppelin - The Song Remains the Same [Blu-ray]


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

For Led Zeppelin fanatics, this 1976 feature The Song Remains the Same is a treasure of searing live performances, particularly welcome in light of the sad scarcity of such visual material from the band's great decade. Despite the group's road weariness after a long tour, their final, three-night stand at Madison Square Garden in 1973 was full of the old power. Performances of "No Quarter," "Whole Lotta Love," "Black Dog," "Dazed and Confused," and "Stairway to Heaven" underscore Zep's charisma. Trouble is, you don't get an unbroken performance here. Viewers have to wade through a mishmash of documentary insight into the lives of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, as well as fantasy sequences supposedly inspired by the thoughts and fantasies of the band's individual members. It's mostly garish and silly, but there are some nice elements, especially insights into the late Bonham's life. The DVD doesn't offer much in the way of add-ons (a theatrical trailer is about it), but there is also enhanced viewing for 16 x 9 televisions. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

The line forms here for the world’s greatest and possibly most influential band – Led Zeppelin! With Dazed and Confused, Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love and more signature performances, this mesmerizing movie built around Zep’s famed ’73 NYC concerts is convincing proof why. Band members supervised the Re-mastering and Dolby 5.1 Re-mixing of the film’s image and sound.

In addition to their performances, fantasy sequences and at-home glimpses of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and the late John Bonham, this 2-disc Special Edition has over 40 minutes of newly-added extra features including: Two (2) never-before-released songs in rare performance footage: Celebration and Over the Hills and Far Away; Vintage TV Footage: Drake Hotel Robbery during the New York Concert Stand; Robert Plant BBC Interview and Tampa Concert Band Arrival. Also available in Hi-Def and Blu Ray!


Saturday, January 28, 2012

Ren Harvieu - new face for 2012

Not really bluesy but sometimes I just feel the need to pass on good news.  Her web site is Here.

Guardian
... these massive strings-drenched ballads that pay lip service to the mid-60s era of those solo artists with single names like Dusty, Lulu, Cilla and Sandie and the sort of epic tunes they would have blasted out on Sunday Night at the London Palladium or during a royal command performance.
BBC
Harvieu looks likely to become one of the most talked about singing voices of the next few years.





Any comments guys?


Friday, January 27, 2012

Ana Popovic - Unconditional

A great blues guitarist







Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Joe Louis Walker – While my guitar gently weeps

Wow!


They're Red Hot - Robert Johnson

some pretty good versions - any preferences?








Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Chris Isaak - Beyond The Sun

Just saw him publicising his new album (in UK)- sounds good It is a collection of songs recorded by Sun Records artists Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Most of the songs were originally released on Sun Records.
"Ring of Fire" (Johnny Cash 1963)
"Trying to Get To You" (Elvis Presley 1955)
"I Forgot to Remember to Forget" (Elvis Presley 1955)
"Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis 1957)
"Can't Help Falling in Love" (Elvis Presley 1961)
"Dixie Fried" (Carl Perkins 1956)
"How's the World Treating You" (Elvis Presley 1956)
"It's Now or Never" (Elvis Presley 1960)
"Miss Pearl" (Jimmy Wages 1957)
"Live It Up" (Chris Isaak original)
"I Walk the Line" (Johnny Cash 1956)
"So Long I'm Gone" (Warren Smith 1957)
"She's Not You" (Elvis Presley 1962)
"My Happiness" (Elvis Presley 1953)


Monday, January 23, 2012

Blues Books: Delta Blues Life and Times of Mississippi Masters

Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music

Paperback: 449 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 2, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393337502
ISBN-13: 978-0393337501
Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches

“The essential history of this distinctly American genre.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In this “expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history” (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us “the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). From the field hollers of nineteenth-century plantations to Muddy Waters and B.B. King, Delta Blues delves into the uneasy mix of race and money at the point where traditional music became commercial and bluesmen found new audiences of thousands. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, interviews with living musicians, and first-person accounts with “his own calm, argument-closing incantations to draw a line through a century of Delta blues” (New York Times), this engrossing narrative is flavored with insightful and vivid musical descriptions that ensure “an understanding of not only the musicians, but the music itself” (Boston Sunday Globe). Rooted in the thick-as-tar Delta soil, Delta Blues is already “a contemporary classic in its field” (Jazz Review). 38 illustrations


Watermelon Slim

Bill Homans aka Watermelon Slim has been performing since the 70s - he often plays his dobro guitar lap-style, lefthanded and backwards, with a slide.


Saturday, January 21, 2012

Crosscut Saw (song)

"Crosscut Saw", or "Cross Cut Saw Blues" as it was first called, is a bawdy blues song - it became an early R&B chart hit for Albert King, "who made it one of the necessary pieces of modern blues"

The lyrics are rife with double-entendre
:
Now, I'm a cross cut saw, drag me 'cross yo' log I'm a cross cut saw, and drag me across yo' log Babe, I'll cut yo' wood so easy, you can't help say "hot dog"


Thursday, January 19, 2012

Dinah Washington

One of my favourite voices


Wednesday, January 18, 2012

jump blues

Jump Blues is a jazz influenced Blues very popular in the 1940s and perhaps the precursor of Rock and Roll. Jump blues was revived in the 1980s by artists such as Joe Jackson and Brian Setzer Bands who perform it today include Roomful of Blues, MoPac and The Blue Suburbans, Ray Collins' Hot Club and Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88s. In the 1990s The Mighty Blue Kings also played jump blues.


Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The Black Keys - Lonely Boy (First Listen)

This video makes me get up and dance everytime!


Lucille Bogan - one of the big 3?

Wikipedia Lucille Bogan was an American blues singer, among the first to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. The sexologist and music critic, Ernest Borneman, stated that Bogan along with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, was in "the big three of the blues" So quite explicit


Monday, January 16, 2012

Blues Books: The B.B. King Treasures



Book Details

  • Hardcover: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Bulfinch (September 8, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0821257242
  • ISBN-13: 978-0821257241
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 1.3 x 11.2 inches

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While true blues lovers may scoff at the opulence of such a coffee-table volume, they may change their minds when they discover the treat this work has tucked under its front cover: an hour-long audio CD of conversations with the "Chairman of the Board" of blues, B.B. King (b. 1925). The book itself is a stylishly packaged retelling of King's life from Mississippi sharecropping cabin dweller to White House honoree, with King's reminiscences intercut with comments from his friends. In addition to pages of gorgeously reproduced photos, eight parchment sleeves hold facsimiles of King memorabilia: first, his sharecropping account from 1940, and then mostly tickets, programs and posters for his shows. Still, the real "treasure" is the CD: 16 tracks of King talking about how and why he makes music, sometimes accompanied by riffs on Lucille (his guitar), plus two previously unreleased recordings. King gives a bluesman's take on race relations in the 20th century: how white radio stations started playing black music and how British stars (the Beatles, the Stones, Clapton, etc.) revived the careers of black bluesmen and then how white "folkies" picked up on the music, too. This will be a tasty gift for any blues fan. 116 illus. (Sept. 16)Correction: The agent for Robert Oxnam's A Fractured Mind (Reviews, Aug. 8) is Wendy Strothman.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The King of the Blues turns 80 on September 16: cause for celebration, indeed. Already, on February 15, 2005, Mississippi honored its world-famous son in a ceremony at the state capitol. Now comes this spectacular oral-history-cum-scrapbook that should draw browsers as if it were the cure for the common cold. It is certainly good for what ails you, what with its scads of great photos and blues-biz paraphernalia (posters, record labels, etc.) reproductions, its immaculately proofread text, its high production values (heavy stock, visually textured pages in several colors, clean layout), and its--libraries, beware!--removable bonus attractions (CD of interview outtakes and previously unreleased old recordings, eight translucent envelopes containing excellent reproductions of such memorabilia as a portrait-postcard a teenage King sent a girlfriend, backstage passes, business cards, booking sheets, concert handouts, etc.). On top of all that, it's an interesting read, especially about King's early life and pre-stardom career. If there are a few tangential errors (blues organist Mark Naftalin's father was mayor of Minneapolis, not Milwaukee), who cares? Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Sixty Minute Man - The Dominoes

Wikipedia

Sixty Minute Man" is a rhythm and blues (R&B) record released in 1951 by The Dominoes. It was written by Billy Ward and Rose Marks and was one of the first R&B hit records to cross over to become a pop hit on the pop charts. It is regarded as one of the most important of the recordings which helped generate and shape rock and roll


Saturday, January 14, 2012

Zora Young - Princess of the Blues?

Web Site an excellent review and potted bio on blogcritics - she has one of those voices that linger for a long time and she has a wow factor.


Friday, January 13, 2012

Stevie Wonder + Prince + Sheila E " superstition" @ Paris Bercy July 1 2010

Just glorious - life enhancing just to listen to.


Julia Lee

Wikipedia

Julia Lee was an American blues and dirty blues musician - she became best known for her trademark double entendre songs


Thursday, January 12, 2012

Cinqui I'm A Train

A real good feeling on listening to this I think - if anyone knows anything about them please tell.


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Magic Slim & The Teardrops

Wikipedia entry In 2003 Magic Slim and the Teardrops won the W.C. Handy Award as 'Blues Band Of The Year' for the sixth time.


Monday, January 09, 2012

"Is It Because I'm Black" Lucky Peterson


Blues Books: The Hero and the Blues by Albert Murray




Book Details

Paperback: 112 pages
Publisher: Vintage (January 16, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679762205
ISBN-13: 978-0679762201
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Murray's 1973 book analyzes the connection between blues, literature, and the African American's place in society.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reviews

"[Albert Murray] is possessed of the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's Imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling."

-- The New Yorker

In this visionary book, the author of the legendary Stomping the Blues takes an audacious new look at black music and, in the process, succeeds in changing the way we read all literature. Albert Murray's subject is the previously unacknowledged kinship between fiction and the blues. Both, he argues, are virtuoso performances that impart information, wisdom, and moral guidance to their audiences. Both place a high value on improvisation. And both fiction and the blues create a delicate balance between the holy and the obscene, essential human values and cosmic absurdity.

Encompassing artists from Ernest Hemingway to Duke Ellington, and from Thomas Mann to Richard Wright, The Hero and the Blues is at once an homage and a manifesto for a new black aesthetic. Erudite, eloquent, appreciative, and iconoclastic, it is further evidence of Murray's ability to turn the essay into a kind of poetry -- as enchanting as it is instructive.

"The size of his reputation is incommensurate with his quality .... Murray is as close to a classic nineteenth-century man of letters as one might find in this country today."

-- Boston Globe


Sunday, January 08, 2012

He Calls That Religion - Acoustic Hats

Notes From YouTube:

Acoustic hats at work: Laura Williams ( vocals and kazoo) and Luca Menti ( harps) came some time ago to visit me and we did this little jam singing and playing on the spot this old song composed by the Chatmon brothers alias the "Mississippi Sheiks".

I play my ringing National Triolian in standard tuning, key of C, with the help of my feet stomping a footdrum board crafted here in Italy by Herrmann Guitars (http://www.weissenbornguitar.com/ ).



Saturday, January 07, 2012

Friday, January 06, 2012

B. B. King - Happy Birthday Blues

This song "B.B. King - Happy Birthday Blues" was left for me by my online friends.

My online friends Lawrence & Toni who run the Martial Arts website Tan Dao Martial Arts. They run their site in the spirit of the journey. Warrior, Scholar, Monk. And they ask the question, "Are you an Evolving Martial Artist?"

I have heard most of B.B. King's music, but this song is a new one for me. Thanks to my friends for turning me on to it, and I just wanted to share it with those who read my blog.


Hokum Blueskum Blues

Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music - a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos
A late one
one from the '50's
from the '30's


Thursday, January 05, 2012

John Mayer - Battle Studies 2009

Hum - not my taste really but fits the genre?


Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to Kelvin today - have a good day my friend!


Robert Lockwood Jr

Robert Lockwood, Jr., also known as Robert Junior Lockwood, was an American Delta blues guitarist, who recorded for Chess Records among other Chicago labels in the 1950s and 1960s. He is best known as a longtime collaborator with Sonny Boy Williamson II and for his work in the mid-1950s with Little Walter.


Eric Clapton and B.B. King Everday I Have the Blues


Monday, January 02, 2012

(Opportunity Knocks But Once) Snatch and Grab It


Blues Books: Playtime Jazz & Blues




Paperback: 24 pages
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation (May 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1616770449
ISBN-13: 978-1616770440
Product Dimensions: 11.6 x 8.9 x 0.2 inches

Here is a great book that will help you learn to play Jazz and blues piano.