Long John Baldry

Long John Baldry, “Long” because he was 6′7″, had Rod Stewart as a featured vocalist in “The Steampacket” as did for a period piano player Reg Dwight and saxaphone player Elton Dean.

Reg was in awe of both Elton and John…..the rest they say is history.

“Baby Don’t You Do It” – The Steampacket

To buy the music of Long John Baldry click HERE

Mose Allison

I haven’t featured the great Mose Allison for a while, so here is a track which has been popping up on the old iPod frequently so who am I to ignore it.

“If You Live” – Mose Allison

If you live your time will come
I say if you live your time will come
So child don’t mess with that cotton sack
It will scratch your knees and bend your back
And if you live your time will come
If you live your day will come
If you live your day will come
So child don’t play with those pots an’ pans
The will soon enough ruin your pretty hands
And if you live your time will come
If you live a day will come
If you live a day will come
When the sun will shine
And the crops will grow
And you think you’re not gonna worry no more
But if you live, your time will come

“Creek Bank” was a 1994 compilation release of two 1958 sessions.

 

To buy the music of Mose Allison click HERE

Robert Johnson

New plans have emerged to turn the birthplace of blues legend Robert Johnson into a museum.

More than seventy years after his death, Robert Johnson remains an alluring enigma. The blues guitarist found little success in his own lifetime, dying relatively unknown at the age of just 27.

However the singer’s music has enjoyed a curious life of its own. Almost immediately recognised as a performer of great power and style, Robert Johnson’s music would become the cornerstone of the blues.

Later covered by both The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, the blues singer’s material hints at the mysterious life he led. Frequent references to the Devil gave rise to the legend that he sold his soul.

In the song ‘Crossroads Blues’ Robert Johnson claims that he went down to the crossroads at midnight, selling his soul in exchange for the ability to play guitar. The blues guitarist later died young, either re-claimed by the Devil or poisoned by a jealous husband whose spouse he had seduced.

Now the singer’s birthplace is to be turned into a museum. Robert Johnson was born in 1911 in a well-crafted home built by his stepfather in the Mississippi town of Hazlehurst. That house is now dilapidated, but could be set to be restored in the form of a museum to the singer’s life.

“It’s amazing that after all these years, people still talk about Robert Johnson on the level that they do,” said the bluesman’s grandson, Steven Johnson to Associated Press.

Grammy-winning pianist George Winston is set to headline a benefit concert for the museum. “Everything with Robert is mysterious, but the more we can demystify, we can get down to the truth,” said Winston.

“He was an inspired musician. He took a quantum leap.”

 

Source www.clashmusic.com

Here is perhaps his most famous song

“Cross Road Blues” - Robert Johnson

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord above “Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please”

Yeoo, standin’ at the crossroad, tried to flag a ride
Ooo eeee, I tried to flag a ride
Didn’t nobody seem to know me, babe, everybody pass me by

Standin’ at the crossroad, baby, risin’ sun goin’ down
Standin’ at the crossroad, baby, eee, eee, risin’ sun goin’ down
I believe to my soul, now, poor Bob is sinkin’ down

You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown
That I got the crossroad blues this mornin’, Lord, babe, I’m sinkin’ down

And I went to the crossroad, mama, I looked east and west
I went to the crossroad, baby, I looked east and west
Lord, I didn’t have no sweet woman, ooh well, babe, in my distress

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

Good old R&B is alive and kicking in 2009 despite the over produced bland stuff that often now carries the same name.

R&B should sound like this from the BRILLIANT Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

“Gunpowder” – Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

 

James Brown lives on!

Black Joe Lewis, formed in Austin, Texas in 2007 is a blues band influenced by Howlin’ Wolf and James Brown.

Their first full length album “Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is!” was released during July  2009. The album was produced by Spoon drummer Jim Eno.

In the credits listed on Black Joe Lewis’ debut CD, the 27-year-old Texan thanks “Mom, God. James Brown and Barack Obama”. We can only guess what his mother and the Almighty might make of raw’n’raunchy songs like Humpin and Big Booty Woman, but the US President has already endorsed Lewis and the Godfather of Soul would probably have tipped a wink – and maybe even an appreciative scream – in the direction of a man on a mission to keep alive the funk-punk, brass-blasting, “soul-shouting” style Brown and Wilson Pickett pioneered back in the Sixties.

Growing up in the small town of Round Rock, Texas, Lewis was more interested in football than the old soul and blues music his father played. But aged 19 he took a job at a pawnshop in nearby Austin – and an awful lot of guitars moved through a shop like that in the “Live Music Capital of the World”. So one day the bored teenager picked one up, taught himself to play and soon acquired a reputation at local open-mic nights for his wild stage antics which reliably included hurling himself to his knees, Hendrix-style. He assembled the seven-piece Honeybears to support Little Richard in 2007 and created a Southern fried sound that’s three parts vintage Stax soul to two parts modern garage punk.

Horns and percussion squeeze as tight as James Brown’s trousers, while retaining the rackety spontaneity of a band you’d catch playing for beers down some honky tonk back alley. There’s a seriously Seventies groove to the organ that crawls the kerbs of the slower numbers like an old Dodge Sedan.

Meanwhile, Lewis has fun yelping out screwball tales of fleeing from the law into the arms of women whose names he’s forgotten, adding a new bag of self-aware, 21st-century humour to the ‘’sex machine’’ boasts of his hero. Apparently he makes up all his songs as he goes along, which accounts for both the reckless energy and the occasional drifts into formulaic retro pastiche. But it’s impossible to resist getting on up, laughing and dancing.

Telegraph rating: * * * *

Review from www.telegraph.co.uk

 

To buy the music of Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears click HERE

Friday 13th

“Friday The Thirteenth” – Atomic Rooster

Save Me, Save Me, Save Me, Save Me.

Wake Up In The Night, Stare Into The Dark.
You Can Feel Your Fear,Tearing At Your Heart.
Trying To Lock Your Door,There Is No Escape.
I’ll Be Watching You,Every Move You Make.

Someone Please, Please Save Me.
No One Will Save You – They Won’t Try.
Someone Please, Please Help Me.
Everyone’s Lonely When They Die,
Everyone’s Lonely When They Die.

No One In The World Will Want You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Need You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Love You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Miss You – Save Me!

Walking Down The Street, Footsteps Close Behind.
Dare Not Turn Your Head, Don’t Know What You’ll Find.
Trying To Shout For Help, Your Words Turn To Dust.
Looking For A Friend, No One You Can Trust.

Someone Please, Please Save Me.
No One Will Save You, They Won’t Try.
Someone Please, Please Help Me.
Everyone’s Lonely When They Die,
Everyone’s Lonely When They Die.

No One In The World Will Want You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Need You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Love You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Miss You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Love You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Miss You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Love You – Save Me!
No One In The World Will Miss You – Save Me!

 

To buy the music of Atomic Rooster click HERE

 

Too Much…….The Magic Fridge!!

“One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” – John Lee Hooker

 

To buy the music of John Lee Hooker click HERE

Davy Graham

October saw the release of the above which is perhaps the  first truely definitive Davy Graham compilation.

“When Davy Graham died last December, the British folk scene lost one of its most extraordinary and influential guitarists, for he was years ahead of his time. He was fascinated by traditional music, but also by blues, north African, Middle Eastern and Indian styles, and classical music.

It was impossible to guess what he would turn to next, and he brought a new experimental approach to the folk scene that persists today.

This new two-CD set concentrates on his most creative period, the 60s, and much comes from the Decca catalogue. It starts with the original 1963 version of his best-known guitar piece, Angi (later rerecorded as Anji).

There are also tracks from his influential 1965 album, Folk, Blues & Beyond,

which includes everything from Mingus to Dylan, and from the experimental Folk Roots, New Routes, recorded with singer Shirley Collins. Then there’s his treatment of a Bulgarian dance piece, a Purcell harpsichord work, and the extraordinary She Moved Thru’ the Bizarre, which switches from English folk song to a raga, and then back again. The man was a genius.”

www.guardian.co.uk

“I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” – Davy Graham

Graham was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England, to a Guyanese mother and a Scottish father. Although he never had any formal music lessons, he learnt to play the piano and harmonica as a child and then took up the guitar at the age of 12.

As a teenager, he was strongly influenced by the folk guitar player Steve Benbow, who had travelled widely with the army and played a guitar style influenced by Moroccan music.

At the age of 19, Graham wrote what was probably his most famous piece, at least for aspiring guitarists: the acoustic solo tune “Anji”. Colin Harper credits Graham with single-handledly inventing the concept of the folk guitar instrumental (whilst acknowledging that John Fahey was making a similar invention, simultaneously, in the U.S.).

Graham’s acoustic guitar solo “Angie”, named after his then girlfriend, appeared on his debut EP 3/4 AD in April 1962. The tune spread like wildfire through a generation of aspiring guitarists, changing its spelling as it went. Before the record was released, Bert Jansch had learnt it from a tape which Graham had lent to his half-sister, Jill Doyle, who was a friend of Jansch. Jansch included it on his 1965 debut album as “Angie”. But the spelling Anji became the most popular after it appeared in this way on Simon & Garfunkel’s 1966 album Sounds of Silence, and it was as “Anji” that Chicken Shack recorded it for their 1969 100 Ton Chicken album.

“Anji” – Simon & Garfunkel

One way that Graham came to the attention of guitarists was through his appearance in a 1959 TV film produced by Ken Russell, entitled Hound Dogs and Bach Addicts: The Guitar Craze, in which he played an acoustic instrumental version of Cry Me a River.This was broadcast as part of the BBC TV arts series Monitor.

Graham introduced the DADGAD guitar tuning to British guitarists, though it is not clear if it originated with him. Its main attraction was that it allowed the guitarist more freedom to improvise in the treble while maintaining a solid underlying harmony and rhythm in the bass. While ‘non-standard’, or ‘non-classical’ tunings were widely practiced by guitarists before this (Open E and Open G tunings were in common use by blues and slide guitar players) his use of DADGAD introduced a second standard tuning to guitarists.

To buy the music of Davy Graham click HERE

To buy the music of Simon & Garfunkel click HERE

Friday Fun

 

Been there……seen it, done it and bought the t-shirt!!

 

“Drunken Nights In The City” – Frankie Miller

 

To buy the music of Frankie Miller click HERE

Here is a bonus, Frankie with Rory Gallagher

The Blind Boys Of Alabama

The Blind Boys Of Alabama popped un on my shuffle play last night thus giving me the idea to post about them.

The Blind Boys of Alabama are a gospel group from Alabama that first formed at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind at Talladega, Alabama in 1939. The three main vocalists of the group and their drummer/percussionist are all blind.

As of 2008, they continue to tour nationally and internationally, with Jimmy Carter singing lead vocals. In 2006, Clarence Fountain, the group’s former long-time lead vocalist and founding member limited his touring for health reasons. Another founding member, George Scott, died on March 9, 2005 at the age of 75.

Releases by the group in recent years have been favorites at the Grammy Awards—they won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album every year between 2002 to 2005. The Blind Boys of Alabama were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

It was their 2001 album “Spirit Of The Century” that was my gateway to their music.

From this album here is their take on a great Blind Willie Johnson song

“Nobody’s Fault But Mine” – The Blind Boys Of Alabama

To buy the music of The Blind Boys Of Alabama click HERE

Dr Feelgood

Pub rock is often derided as a movement that was in the thrall of rhythm and blues traditions and ‘proper’ musicianship, at best an unfashionable precursor to punk, devoid of the DIY attitude and the year-zero rhetoric. Yet both movements shared contempt for the mainstream, were reacting against the prog-rock sounds that dominated the era, and a number of punk’s prime movers were inspired by or graduated from the pub rock scene. Julien Temple’s latest conceptual rock documentary focuses on Dr Feelgood, who came from the ‘Thames Delta’, Canvey Island, and puts the case for Lee Brilleaux, Wilko Johnson, the Big Figure and Sparko as ‘four estuarine John-the-Baptists to Johnny Rotten’s anti-Christ’. What emerges is the great, and deeply moving, rock’n'roll history of one of Britain’s finest and unfairly overlooked bands, with Canvey, a reclaimed island in the Thames estuary just off the Essex coast, lying entirely below sea level and dominated by the petrochemical industry, central to it. Enlightening interviews with band members and contemporaries are complemented by some fantastic archive footage, which, at the very least, confirms Brilleaux and Johnson as two of rock’s great showmen, and justifies Dr Feelgood’s reputation as an incredible live act.

Michael Hayden

The new Dr Feelgood biopic debuts at The British Film Institute this week.

This is what all the fuss is about:-

Finally here is a staple from the mid 70’s discos at The Concord, you won’t believe it but all the girls did the slosh to this……………..

“Back In The Night” – Dr Feelgood

 

To buy the music of Dr Feelgood click HERE

 

Beware of imitations….the original is best