" on constant play right now. Man I don't really know where to start with this young lady. Love her guitar work, love her voice, and love her songs. She is new and fresh, and I'm sure she will have a long storied career because she is coming out of the gate smoking hot.I have been listening to Beth Hart's new album, it is really good. This song represents the album well. Check her out.
Very nice indeed. Sister Rosetta Tharpe did it before anybody else.
Gospel, blues, and jazz it is all in there. Not to mention smoking hot chops on the guitar.
Blind For Love
click image for info
Ana Popović (Serbian Cyrillic: Ана Поповић) (born Belgrade, Serbia in 1976) is a Blues-guitarist and singer.
According to Wikipedia;
Ana Popović's father first introduced her to the blues, through an extensive record collection and sessions hosted at the family home. Popović founded her first serious band at age nineteen. Within a year, she was playing outside of Yugoslavia and opening shows for American blues icons like Junior Wells. Her band Hush released their debut album, Hometown in 1998. The next year, Popović relocated to the Netherlands to study jazz guitar. She quickly became a fixture on the Dutch blues scene and soon ventured into neighboring Germany.Ana Popovic live at Sighisoara Blues Festival 2009
In 2003, she was nominated for a W. C. Handy Award in the United States.
I've been listening to Bonnie Raitt's new release Slipstream, and I like it. I've been waiting some years now to hear from her. Here are two of my favorite songs so far.
Slipstream
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Slipstream @ Amazon.com
Notes from YouTube: The author of this amazing song is the incredible, late Paul Pena . From the album : "wait for me" .
Susan Tedschi @ Amazon.com
Notes from YouTube: Marcia Ball at the Mobile Saenger Theater, January 20,2011
Notes from YouTube:
American blues singer and pianist, Marcia Ball, talks about the new record, Roadside Attractions.
Marcia was described in USA Today as "a sensation, saucy singer and superb pianist... where Texas stomp-rock and Louisiana blues-swamp meet." The Boston Globe described her music as "an irresistible celebratory blend of rollicking, two-fisted New Orleans piano, Louisiana swamp-rock and smoldering Texas blues from a contemporary storyteller."
Peace, Love & BBQ
March (born on March 20th 1949) is the birth month of Marcia Ball. I have posted here before how much I really like her sound and style. She was born in Texas (I don't hold that against her) but she was raised in Louisiana, and it shows. What with the way she handles a keyboard, is there any question?
Her recent album Peace, Love & BBQ was nominated for a Grammy Award. She wrote or co-wrote eight of the thirteen songs on the CD. It includes deep soul ballads and blusy stump your foot party songs to straight-from-the-heart storytelling. This album is delightful and if you are a long time fan you will love it. And if you are a newcomer this album will make you a believer.
The way Wikipedia describes her music;
Ball is known for her piano style, which shows elements of zydeco, swamp blues, Louisiana blues and boogie woogie. Most of her most well-known recordings were released on Rounder Records in the 1980s and early 1990s. She was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 1990.In the video below, I like the little talk she gives the audience.
It is my birthday this week so I have put this album on both my Birthday and Christmas lists. Worth posting again I hope you agree. Look at her tour dates (UK and US) here
"She plays with more attitude and flare than most. Massive potential here. Inspiring."
"..... I heard something I thought I would never hear... a British White Girl playing blues guitar so deep and passionately it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end!"
White Sugar
Ma Rainey singing "Booze And Blues"
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.
If, like me, you are a fan of female blues singers, bloggers, musicians and all things female and blues, then you will want to check out Twitters hash tag #WomeninBluesWednesday.
Click here to read the "Twitter Women in Blues Wednesday" stream.
It is a tag used by people on Twitter to identify Women who make a contribution to this great art form called Blues Music.
This post will be a work in progress, as I collect more info regarding Women in the Blues I will post it during the day, so please come back and check it out.
Some of my favorite female blues tweeters are;
Mary4Music
WomenInBlues
Mary Anne
BluesBrat
Mia Vermillion
Candye Kane Band
Scout66com
Karen Hanson
More like Women In Jazz, but worth a look;
ElementsOfJazz
Elli Fordyce
More like Women in Gospel, please check out;
HallelujahSing
Women in Blues Twitter List
Women in Blues List by Mary Anne
Los Angeles based Janiva Magness received the 2009 Blues Music Award for B.B King Entertainer Of The Year (she is only the second woman to ever win this award, the other being Koko Taylor) as well as for Contemporary Blues Female Artist Of The Year (she also won the 2006 and 2007 Blues Music Awards for Best Contemporary Female Artist Of The Year.
Billboard writes “Magness carves out a niche by singing the blues with maturity and sophistication."
A Powerful performance
Today is the birthday of Susan Tedeschi. I did a post on her new album Back To The River. I just could not resit posting her bio and another video of one of her songs that I love.
According to Wikipedia;
Susan Tedeschi (pronounced te-DES-ki) (November 9, 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American blues and soul artist, who has risen to fame with multiple Grammy Award nominations, powerful singing voice, and her marriage to Derek Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band and The Derek Trucks Band. She is also known for the "Soul Stew Revival", a conglomeration of both her band, that of The Derek Trucks Band, and assorted other personnel.
Bonnie Raitt was born November 8, 1949. She is blues singer-songwriter who was born in Burbank, California.
As I have said many times, the type of music that I want to hear at any given time is a function of my mood. Sometimes I get in the mood to hear a female sing the blues. And when that happens one of my favorite female bluse musicians is Bonnie Rait. She has the ability to communicate the blues through her excellent vocals and her guitar playing. I also like many of the songs that she has written.
Rory Block was born on this day back in 1949, in Princeton, New Jersey. As I mentioned, in another post, she is a female blues guitarist and singer.
