Podcasts about Brownie McGhee

Carolyn Wonderland and Shelly King perform live at the Intrepid Artists 30th Anniversary Celebration in Charlotte, North Carolina in November 2024 on Edition 694 of Blues Radio International, with Little Milton, Brownie McGhee, Eddie C. Campbell, and Jimmy Vivino.Sound by Michael Wolf.  Image courtesy of Carolyn Wonderland and Shelley King.Find more at BluesRadioInternational.net

In this episode I tell you about four interesting plants.  The first two are edible and medicinal.  The second two are medicinal... but one is very poisonous!  Also, I am back on Youtube Please subscribe to my channel: @judsoncarroll5902   Judson Carroll - YouTubeTune of the week: Stranger BluesThis is my version of "Stranger Blues", also known as "New Stranger Blues" or "Poor Stranger Blues". I believe the song was originally done by Tampa Red. I do it in somewhat of a Brownie McGhee style, with an alternating boogie baseline.https://youtu.be/Mw6Pu4T22tgNew today in my Woodcraft shop:Toasted Holly Cooking Spoonhttps://judsoncarrollwoodcraft.substack.com/p/toasted-holly-cooking-spoonEmail: judson@judsoncarroll.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/southern-appalachian-herbs--4697544/supportRead about The Spring Foraging Cookbook: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-spring-foraging-cookbook.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CRP63R54Medicinal Weeds and Grasses of the American Southeast, an Herbalist's Guidehttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2023/05/medicinal-weeds-and-grasses-of-american.htmlAvailable in paperback on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47LHTTHandConfirmation, an Autobiography of Faithhttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2023/05/confirmation-autobiography-of-faith.htmlAvailable in paperback on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C47Q1JNKVisit my Substack and sign up for my free newsletter:https://judsoncarroll.substack.com/Read about my new other books:Medicinal Ferns and Fern Allies, an Herbalist's Guide https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/11/medicinal-ferns-and-fern-allies.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BMSZSJPSThe Omnivore's Guide to Home Cooking for Preppers, Homesteaders, Permaculture People and Everyone Else: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-omnivores-guide-to-home-cooking-for.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGKX37Q2Medicinal Shrubs and Woody Vines of The American Southeast an Herbalist's Guidehttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/06/medicinal-shrubs-and-woody-vines-of.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B2T4Y5L6andGrowing Your Survival Herb Garden for Preppers, Homesteaders and Everyone Elsehttps://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-your-survival-herb-garden-for.htmlhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X4LYV9RThe Encyclopedia of Medicinal Bitter Herbs: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-encyclopedia-of-bitter-medicina.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5MYJ35RandChristian Medicine, History and Practice: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2022/01/christian-herbal-medicine-history-and.htmlAvailable for purchase on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B09P7RNCTBHerbal Medicine for Preppers, Homesteaders and Permaculture People: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/2021/10/herbal-medicine-for-preppers.htmlAlso available on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B09HMWXL25Podcast:  https://www.spreaker.com/show/southern-appalachian-herbsBlog: https://southernappalachianherbs.blogspot.com/Free Video Lessons: https://rumble.com/c/c-618325 Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/southern-appalachian-herbs--4697544/support.

Justin is joined by John Michael Heath from EAP Society for a thorough examination of the 2008 album "Christmas Duets" which paired Elvis' original vocal tracks from 1957 and 1971 with 1:1 re-creations of the backing tracks and some of the biggest female entertainers in the field of country music at the time: Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Wynonna Judd, Gretchen Wilson and others, as well as bringing in a couple entertainers Elvis himself had been a fan of in the 70s: Olivia Newton-John and Anne Murray.  Often written off as a mere cash-grab, the duo discuss the careers of the album's producers, the talented studio band brought in to replicate the original arrangements, and several other guests that reveal a more nuanced picture of a likely genuine tribute to Elvis that ended up trying to play things too safe and went awry in the process - and the guys ponder what makes artificial duets work or flop. They also discuss the exciting news about Peter Guralnick's upcoming book, now officially confirmed as "The Colonel and the King," releasing August 5, 2025.  For Song of the Week, John's selection of "I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago," the traditional folk song which Elvis used to link the 1970 concept album "Elvis Country," and the version by Brownie McGhee that Elvis is known to have taken inspiration from, suddenly opens doors that lead to the histories behind numerous other Elvis recordings that will blow you mind, including (but not limited to) our other Song of the Week, "Adam and Evil" from "Spinout." If you enjoy TCBCast, please consider supporting us with a donation at Patreon.com/TCBCast. Your support allows us to continue to provide thoughtful, provocative, challenging and well-researched perspectives on Elvis's career, his peers and influences, and his cultural impact and legacy.

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  | Dixieland Jug Blowers  | Boodle-Am-Shake  | A Richer Tradition - Country Blues & String Band Music, 1923-1935  | Joe Turner  | Christmas Date Boogie  | Arhoolie Records Christmas Time Blues  | Corey Harris* & Henry Butler  | King Cotton  | Vu-Du Menz  |   | Ramsey Lewis Trio  | Merry Christmas Baby  | Sound of Christmas  |   | Bukka White  | Black Train  | The Complete Sessions 1930-1940  | Seasick Steve & The Level Devils  | Xmas Prison Blues  | Cheap  |   |   | Alger ''Texas'' Alexander  | I am Calling Blues (1928)  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (1928 - 1930)  | Charley Jordan with Mary Harri  | No Christmas Blues  | Charley Jordan Vol 3 (1935-1937)  | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Hootin' the Blues - [ASH GROVE 1-21-1967 1ST SHOW]   | Michael Messer  | Rollin 'n' Tumblin  | King Guitar 2001  |   | Andres Roots Roundabout  | Miss Carmen James  | Three!  |   |   | Lead Belly  | The Christmas Song  | Rockin' Blues Christmas  | Pistol Pete Wearn  | Riverside Blues  | Live At Liège  |   | Jerry 'Boogie' McCain-  | I Want To Be Your Santa Claus  | I've Got The Blues All Over Me  1993  | MJQ  | God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen  | Germany (1956-1958 Lost Tapes)

Paul Lamb, Joe Filisko and Adam Sikora join me on episode 125, for a retrospective on one of the legends of the diatonic harmonica, Sonny Terry, whose real name was Saunders Terrell.Sonny was born in 1911 (or 1912), in Greensboro, Georgia (or it could have been North Carolina). Growing up on a farm in a rural community, Sonny was left blind by two accidents in his youth. Unable to work on the farm he turned to music, with his harmonica playing father giving him his early lessons.Sonny first rose to prominence playing with Blind Boy Fuller, and then made a splash by performing at Carnegie Hall in 1938 as part of the ‘From Spirituals To Swing' concert.A few years later he formed probably the most famous blues duo ever, with Brownie McGhee. Sonny and Brownie made their name in the New York Folk scene and went on to play together for forty years, travelling the world, with many festival appearances, on Broadway, in movies and countless albums together. Sonny also played solo and with many other notable musicians besides Brownie, including an album with Johnny Winter towards the end of his life.We look into Sonny's style of playing and talk about how his rhythmical work is essential study in getting your own harmonica chops together.Links:Sonny Terry Estate items for sale:https://bluemoonharmonicas.com/collections/sonny-terry-estate-llcPaul Lamb: http://paullamb.com/Joe Filisko: https://www.filiskostore.com/Adam Sikora: https://jukejointsmokers.com/http://www.the-archivist.co.uk/rare-early-blues-harp-recordings-by-singers-and-sidemen-introduced-by-joe-filisko/Videos:American Folk Blues Festival, Hootin' The Blues:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtO7cctW1uISonny and Woody Guthrie postage stamps playing Lost John:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4ldxb0iGHcSonny and Brownie in one of their last concerts, 1980:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzDNhA5irc8Sonny and Brownie playing on The Jerk, Steve Martin movie:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeDgOUoDTsYPodcast website:https://www.harmonicahappyhour.comDonations:If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GBSpotify Playlist: Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQPodcast sponsors:This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS--------------------------------Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.comSupport the show

Interview with Arlen Roth 2024 Arlen Roth is a true guitar legend; part of the list of who he's recorded and toured with contains folks like Simon & Garfunkel (together and individually), John Prine, Phoebe Snow, Bob Dylan, Bee Gees, Don McLean, Levon Helm, Ry Cooder, Duane Eddy, Danny Gatton, Janis Ian, Dusty Springfield, John Sebastian, Johnny Winter and countless more. He also appeared with Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Patti Smith in the Martin Scorcese Rolling Thunder film, created the guitar parts and was consultant and teacher to Ralph Macchio for the legendary blues film, Crossroads. In 2016, he wrote and performed an acoustic guitar piece with Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom, Jr. of Hamilton for ESPN. Arlen was voted in the Top 100 most Influential guitarists of all time by Vintage Guitar Magazine and top 50 all-time acoustic guitarists by Gibson.com. Now, on Arlen Roth's 20th solo album and his fifth all-acoustic offering, he's bringing rootsy acoustic music to new heights on Playing Out the String, set for release September 27 and distributed by MVD. The new album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Alex Salzman, who also contributes keyboards to the mix.  Arlen's previous album, Super Soul Session, with bass legend Jerry Jemmott, sat atop the Blues and Soul charts for 22 straight weeks, and was in the Top 5 for 55 straight weeks this past year. Arlen has also been at the forefront of guitar and music education, with 10 best-selling books, and he was the first-ever to offer video instruction with the giants of the music industry through his “Hot Licks” company, which he started in 1979, and has had millions of students worldwide. His column for Guitar Player magazine was voted #1 by the largest margin of readers from 1982 to 1992, and was also turned into a best-selling book, Hot Guitar. On Playing Out the String,  this all-acoustic, mostly solo album is very personal to Arlen and is really like getting an up-close "at home" concert in your living room. On it, he paints with broad strokes across several genres of music he loves. From "Old Timey" Norman Blake material to country blues from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Tampa Red; he even makes you feel at home with Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" and gives his 12-string guitar a workout on the archetypical, "Walk Right In." https://www.arlenroth.com  

Welcome to Glenn Robison's Rapidly Rotating Records, bringing you vintage music to which you can't not tap your toes, from rapidly rotating 78 RPM records of the 1920s and '30s. Do you know who this fellow is? He's blues guitarist Walter Brown McGhee, better known as Brownie McGhee. On last week's show you heard him […] The post A “Syncopated” Edition of RRR # 1,263 September 29, 2024 appeared first on Glenn Robison's Rapidly Rotating 78 RPM Records.

SELECCIÓN 12 2024 BLUES SYNDICATE 1- SAME OLD BLUES – POPA CHUBBY 2- THEY CALL ME THE SNAKE – LUTHER SNAKE BOY JOHNSON 3- POOR BOY – STAN WEBB & CHICKE SHAP 4- NEW COST OF PAINT – TOM WAITS 5- DIGGIN´ON MY POTATOES – BROWNIE MCGHEE & SONNY TERRY 6- INSOLATION BLUES – BEN REEL 7- GOOD TIME FEELING – DICKEY BETTS 8- DON´T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ME – LONNIE BROOKS 9- MEAN TOWN BLUES – JOHNNY WINTER 10- BAD BOY BOOGIE – AC/DC 11- LOST MY MIND – LEFT LANE CRUISER 12- CITY LIGHTS – RADIO MOSCOW 13- BARRACUDA 68 – SEASICK STEVE 14- TAKE FIVE – HOUND DOG TAYLOR 15- SOMEDAY BABY – R.L. BURSIDE

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |  | J.D. Harris  | The Grey Eagle  | The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of (disc 1)  | Lonnie Johnson  | Lonesome Road  | Lonnie Johnson Tomorrow Night 1970  | Tampa Red  | Through Train Blues  | Tampa Red Vol. 1 (1928-1929)  |   | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Mean Old Frisco  | The Blues of Lightnin' Hopkins (1967)  | Big Bill Broonzy  | Sad Letter Blues  | Chicago 1937-1938 (CD8)  1937-1940 Part 2  | Leecan and Cooksey  | Dirty Guitar Blues  | A Richer Tradition - Country Blues & String Band Music, 1923-1928  | Corey Harris  | Jack O' Diamonds  | Fish Ain't Bitin'  |   |   | Half Deaf Clatch  | Storm Brewin  | The Blues Continuum  |   | Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee  | Worried Life Blues (Recorded Live At The Free Trade Hall, Manchester  | Chris Barber Presents The Blues Legacy Lost & Found Series  | Jake Leg Jug Band  | I Love Me  | Break A leg  |   |   | Dik Banovich  | Pay Day  | Run to You  |   |   | Blind Blake  | Fancy Tricks  | All The Recorded Sides  |   | Tom Doughty  | Come Back Baby  | You Can't Teach An Old Dog  |   | Bluesblabber  | The Ballad of Mr. Wright  | Like It Raw  |   |   | Bessie Jones & with the Georgia Sea Island Singers  | That Suits Me  | Get In Union  | Alan Lomax Archives/Association For Cultural Equity  | Peg Leg Howell  | Coal Man Blues  | Country Southern Blues  | 

Grammy Nominee, Blues Award Winner, Author, Harp Man Mark Hummel had a banner year in 2014. Grammy Nominated for his Remembering Little Walter CD he produced and performed on, Mark also won Best Blues CD and Best Traditional Blues CD at the Blues Music Awards in Memphis, TN. Mark's The Hustle Is Really On climbed to #2 and stayed in the top five for four months on the Living Blues Radio Charts. Hummel's book "BIG ROAD BLUES:12 Bars on I-80" garnered rave reviews and was nominated for best Independent Book release. Mark Hummel started playing harmonica in 1970 and is considered one of the premier blues harmonica players of his generation. Thanks to over thirty recordings since 1985, including the Grammy nominated 2013 release Blind Pig recording Remembering Little Walter (part of the Blues Harmonica Blowout CD series). Mark Hummel's Blues Harmonica Blowout™ started in 1991 and have featured every major legend (Mayall, Musselwhite, Cotton, etc.) on blues harp as well as almost every player of note on the instrument - a who's who of players. Hummel is a road warrior - a true Blues Survivor. Along the way, he has crafted his own trademark harmonica sound - a subtle combination of tone, phrasing and attack combined with a strong sense of swing. Mark has been with Electro Fi Records since 2000, releasing five CDs. Thanks to Mark's earlier albums, constant touring and appearances at the major blues festivals, he's firmly established his solid reputation around the US and Europe. Born in New Haven, CT but raised in Los Angeles. Mark moved to Berkeley at age 18 to pursue a career in blues music, where he felt the music was taken more seriously. Mark started the Blues Survivors in 1977 with Mississippi Johnny Waters. By 1984 Hummel began a life of non- stop touring of the US, Canada and overseas, which he still continues at least 130-150 days out of each year. Hummel has toured or recorded with blues legends Charles Brown, Charlie Musselwhite, Lowell Fulson, Billy Boy Arnold, Carey Bell, Lazy Lester, Brownie McGhee, Eddie Taylor, Luther Tucker and Jimmy Rogers. www.markhummel.com

Dennis Gruenling feat. Doug Deming and The Jewel Tones (Actin' Crazy); Kirris Riviere and The Delta du Bruit (Have Mercy Baby); King Solomon Hicks (Have Mercy On Me); Zataban (Good Luck Goes Away); The Diego Mongue Band (While You Were Gone); Albert Cummings (Let It Burn); Johnny Shines (Too Wet To Plow); Bill Abel (Gospel Plow); Jimmy Dawkins (Down, Down Baby); Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee with Lightnin' Hopkins and Big Joe Williams (Early Morning Blues); Honey Island Swamp Band (Till The Money's Gone); Johnny Young (All My Money Gone); Pinetop Perkins (4 O'Clock In The Morning); Bonnie Raitt (About To Make Me Leave Home); Vance Kelly and His Back Street Blues Band (How Can I Miss You, When You Won't Leave).

20. Clarence Carter / Snatch It Back 21. Five Blind Boys of Alabama / Just Wanna See His Face 22. Jeff Healy / Stuck in the Middle with You 23. Johnny Winter / Life is Hard 24. Rev Gary Davis / Cocaine Blues25. Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry  Livin' With the Blues 26. Stevie Wonder / Superstition 27. Susan Tedeschi / Loves in Need of Love Today 28. Bernard Allison / Midnight Creep29. Walter Wolfman Washington / Along About Midnight 30. Wild Magnolias / Old Time Indian 31. Neville Brothers / Fly Like an Eagle 32. Kenny Wayne Shepherd / Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting31. Prince / Purple House 32. Joe Bonamassa & Beth Hart / Black Coffee33. Gov't Mule / Thirty Days in the Hole 

We interview blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Santos Puertas. Originally from the Catalan town of Sant Just Desvern, he spent time in Texas, North Carolina and other parts of the US, absorbing the language of blues, country and folk music. He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of American roots music, and has gained the respect and admiration of top musicians in the genre. While he has collaborated with a number of well-known names, his main projects include his trio, Triple Santos, and The Suitcase Brothers: a duo with his brother Víctor Puertas, also a singer and a virtuoso harmonica player. The two have attracted international attention for their live performances as well as their songwriting; they composed the soundtrack for multiple Goya Award-winning documentary film El Bola by director Achero Mañas. They just released their fifth album, Love, Truth and Confidence, a tribute to the Piedmont Blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, to whom the brothers have often been compared.

Bruce Springsteen and Thurston Moore adore his work and rightly so...Wizz Jones is a lynchpin of the UK folk blues guitar scene and has been since the early 1960s. When London was an epicenter for artists from the USA such as Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Jackson C. Frank, and Bob Dylan - Wizz was right there. Wizz was also there to hear some of the first notes Davey Graham played in DADGAD tuning, to witness the impact of a young Bert Jansch on the UK guitar scene, and to run sessions at the legendary Les Cousins club in Soho's Greek Street. It's not there anymore, of course. That end of Soho is now a preponderance of private members clubs and bijoux eateries but back in the day things were a lot less salubrious and, judging from how Wizz tells it, a hell of a lot more fun. Wizz talks about the early days of his life on the fretboard: When he was a young bohemian, the influence of Jack Kerouac on his generation, London's Soho in the sixties when you could bump into everyone from Cat Stevens to Quentin Crisp, his travels around Morocco and France, and offers the benefit of his experience and wisdom with one important caveat. Now in his 80s, Wizz can still be seen playing around London with his trademark 1963 Epiphone Texan. I caught up with him at RMS recording studios in London where Wizz has made several albums in the past. He was in characteristically fine form (the conversation is somewhat peppered with adult language). To my everlasting disgrace, I may have joined in, too. But that can happen when you're hanging out with the cool kids. You can support this podcast here: https://michaelwattsguitar.com/tip-jars/4745 Donate to Maui Strong here: https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/maui-strong Thank you to my sponsors for this episode: Microtech Gefell Microphones https://www.microtechgefell.de and, you, the listener! 

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 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Emma Wilson feat. Don Bryant (from Album 'Memphis Calling')  | What Kind Of Love  |   |  | Corey Ledet  | Pendan Koronaj  | Médikamen  |  | Dee's Honeytones  | Out Of My Mind  | Wow Wow  |  | Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry  | Spread the News Around  | The Bluesville Years, Vol. 5 | Jimmy Regal & The Royals  | Empty Streets  | The First And Last Stop | Bob Angell  | Drinkin' Shoes  | Supernal Blues  |  | Muddy Waters  | My Captain  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD2 | Sam Myers  | What Have I Done  | Down Home In Mississippi | Ben Levin  | Mr. Stroger's Strut (feat. Bob Stroger)  | Take Your Time  |  | Arlen Roth And Jerry Jemmott  | Memphis Soul Stew  | Super Soul Session  |  | Parchman Prison Prayer  | You Did Not Leave Me, You Bless Me Still  | Some Mississippi Sunday Morning  | Glitter Beat/Proper | Fats Domino  | Walkin' To  New Orleans  |  | Jerry Lee Lewis  | No Honky Tonks In Heaven  | A Whole Lotta... Jerry Lee Lewis (CD3) | Ivy Gold  | No Ordinary Woman  | Broken Silence  |  | Emma Wilson feat. Don Bryant & (from Album 'Memphis Calling')  | What Kind Of Love  |   | 

Episode 166 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Crossroads", Cream, the myth of Robert Johnson, and whether white men can sing the blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" by Tiny Tim. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I talk about an interview with Clapton from 1967, I meant 1968. I mention a Graham Bond live recording from 1953, and of course meant 1963. I say Paul Jones was on vocals in the Powerhouse sessions. Steve Winwood was on vocals, and Jones was on harmonica. Resources As I say at the end, the main resource you need to get if you enjoyed this episode is Brother Robert by Annye Anderson, Robert Johnson's stepsister. There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Cream, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, and Graham Bond excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here -- one, two, three. This article on Mack McCormick gives a fuller explanation of the problems with his research and behaviour. The other books I used for the Robert Johnson sections were McCormick's Biography of a Phantom; Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow; Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick; and Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. I can recommend all of these subject to the caveats at the end of the episode. The information on the history and prehistory of the Delta blues mostly comes from Before Elvis by Larry Birnbaum, with some coming from Charley Patton by John Fahey. The information on Cream comes mostly from Cream: How Eric Clapton Took the World by Storm by Dave Thompson. I also used Ginger Baker: Hellraiser by Ginger Baker and Ginette Baker, Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins, Motherless Child by Paul Scott, and  Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. The best collection of Cream's work is the four-CD set Those Were the Days, which contains every track the group ever released while they were together (though only the stereo mixes of the albums, and a couple of tracks are in slightly different edits from the originals). You can get Johnson's music on many budget compilation records, as it's in the public domain in the EU, but the double CD collection produced by Steve LaVere for Sony in 2011 is, despite the problems that come from it being associated with LaVere, far and away the best option -- the remasters have a clarity that's worlds ahead of even the 1990s CD version it replaced. And for a good single-CD introduction to the Delta blues musicians and songsters who were Johnson's peers and inspirations, Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson, compiled by Elijah Wald as a companion to his book on Johnson, can't be beaten, and contains many of the tracks excerpted in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick note that this episode contains discussion of racism, drug addiction, and early death. There's also a brief mention of death in childbirth and infant mortality. It's been a while since we looked at the British blues movement, and at the blues in general, so some of you may find some of what follows familiar, as we're going to look at some things we've talked about previously, but from a different angle. In 1968, the Bonzo Dog Band, a comedy musical band that have been described as the missing link between the Beatles and the Monty Python team, released a track called "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?": [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Band, "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"] That track was mocking a discussion that was very prominent in Britain's music magazines around that time. 1968 saw the rise of a *lot* of British bands who started out as blues bands, though many of them went on to different styles of music -- Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack and others were all becoming popular among the kind of people who read the music magazines, and so the question was being asked -- can white men sing the blues? Of course, the answer to that question was obvious. After all, white men *invented* the blues. Before we get any further at all, I have to make clear that I do *not* mean that white people created blues music. But "the blues" as a category, and particularly the idea of it as a music made largely by solo male performers playing guitar... that was created and shaped by the actions of white male record executives. There is no consensus as to when or how the blues as a genre started -- as we often say in this podcast "there is no first anything", but like every genre it seems to have come from multiple sources. In the case of the blues, there's probably some influence from African music by way of field chants sung by enslaved people, possibly some influence from Arabic music as well, definitely some influence from the Irish and British folk songs that by the late nineteenth century were developing into what we now call country music, a lot from ragtime, and a lot of influence from vaudeville and minstrel songs -- which in turn themselves were all very influenced by all those other things. Probably the first published composition to show any real influence of the blues is from 1904, a ragtime piano piece by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, "One O' Them Things": [Excerpt: "One O' Them Things"] That's not very recognisable as a blues piece yet, but it is more-or-less a twelve-bar blues. But the blues developed, and it developed as a result of a series of commercial waves. The first of these came in 1914, with the success of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", which when it was recorded by the Victor Military Band for a phonograph cylinder became what is generally considered the first blues record proper: [Excerpt: The Victor Military Band, "Memphis Blues"] The famous dancers Vernon and Irene Castle came up with a dance, the foxtrot -- which Vernon Castle later admitted was largely inspired by Black dancers -- to be danced to the "Memphis Blues", and the foxtrot soon overtook the tango, which the Castles had introduced to the US the previous year, to become the most popular dance in America for the best part of three decades. And with that came an explosion in blues in the Handy style, cranked out by every music publisher. While the blues was a style largely created by Black performers and writers, the segregated nature of the American music industry at the time meant that most vocal performances of these early blues that were captured on record were by white performers, Black vocalists at this time only rarely getting the chance to record. The first blues record with a Black vocalist is also technically the first British blues record. A group of Black musicians, apparently mostly American but led by a Jamaican pianist, played at Ciro's Club in London, and recorded many tracks in Britain, under a name which I'm not going to say in full -- it started with Ciro's Club, and continued alliteratively with another word starting with C, a slur for Black people. In 1917 they recorded a vocal version of "St. Louis Blues", another W.C. Handy composition: [Excerpt: Ciro's Club C**n Orchestra, "St. Louis Blues"] The first American Black blues vocal didn't come until two years later, when Bert Williams, a Black minstrel-show performer who like many Black performers of his era performed in blackface even though he was Black, recorded “I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,” [Excerpt: Bert Williams, "I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,”] But it wasn't until 1920 that the second, bigger, wave of popularity started for the blues, and this time it started with the first record of a Black *woman* singing the blues -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] You can hear the difference between that and anything we've heard up to that point -- that's the first record that anyone from our perspective, a hundred and three years later, would listen to and say that it bore any resemblance to what we think of as the blues -- so much so that many places still credit it as the first ever blues record. And there's a reason for that. "Crazy Blues" was one of those records that separates the music industry into before and after, like "Rock Around the Clock", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", Sgt Pepper, or "Rapper's Delight". It sold seventy-five thousand copies in its first month -- a massive number by the standards of 1920 -- and purportedly went on to sell over a million copies. Sales figures and market analysis weren't really a thing in the same way in 1920, but even so it became very obvious that "Crazy Blues" was a big hit, and that unlike pretty much any other previous records, it was a big hit among Black listeners, which meant that there was a market for music aimed at Black people that was going untapped. Soon all the major record labels were setting up subsidiaries devoted to what they called "race music", music made by and for Black people. And this sees the birth of what is now known as "classic blues", but at the time (and for decades after) was just what people thought of when they thought of "the blues" as a genre. This was music primarily sung by female vaudeville artists backed by jazz bands, people like Ma Rainey (whose earliest recordings featured Louis Armstrong in her backing band): [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider Blues"] And Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues", who had a massive career in the 1920s before the Great Depression caused many of these "race record" labels to fold, but who carried on performing well into the 1930s -- her last recording was in 1933, produced by John Hammond, with a backing band including Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Give Me a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"] It wouldn't be until several years after the boom started by Mamie Smith that any record companies turned to recording Black men singing the blues accompanied by guitar or banjo. The first record of this type is probably "Norfolk Blues" by Reese DuPree from 1924: [Excerpt: Reese DuPree, "Norfolk Blues"] And there were occasional other records of this type, like "Airy Man Blues" by Papa Charlie Jackson, who was advertised as the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for Blues records.” [Excerpt: Papa Charlie Jackson, "Airy Man Blues"] But contrary to the way these are seen today, at the time they weren't seen as being in some way "authentic", or "folk music". Indeed, there are many quotes from folk-music collectors of the time (sadly all of them using so many slurs that it's impossible for me to accurately quote them) saying that when people sang the blues, that wasn't authentic Black folk music at all but an adulteration from commercial music -- they'd clearly, according to these folk-music scholars, learned the blues style from records and sheet music rather than as part of an oral tradition. Most of these performers were people who recorded blues as part of a wider range of material, like Blind Blake, who recorded some blues music but whose best work was his ragtime guitar instrumentals: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Southern Rag"] But it was when Blind Lemon Jefferson started recording for Paramount records in 1926 that the image of the blues as we now think of it took shape. His first record, "Got the Blues", was a massive success: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Got the Blues"] And this resulted in many labels, especially Paramount, signing up pretty much every Black man with a guitar they could find in the hopes of finding another Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the thing is, this generation of people making blues records, and the generation that followed them, didn't think of themselves as "blues singers" or "bluesmen". They were songsters. Songsters were entertainers, and their job was to sing and play whatever the audiences would want to hear. That included the blues, of course, but it also included... well, every song anyone would want to hear.  They'd perform old folk songs, vaudeville songs, songs that they'd heard on the radio or the jukebox -- whatever the audience wanted. Robert Johnson, for example, was known to particularly love playing polka music, and also adored the records of Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music superstar. In 1941, when Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy Waters, he asked Waters what kind of songs he normally played in performances, and he was given a list that included "Home on the Range", Gene Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle", and Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". We have few recordings of these people performing this kind of song though. One of the few we have is Big Bill Broonzy, who was just about the only artist of this type not to get pigeonholed as just a blues singer, even though blues is what made him famous, and who later in his career managed to record songs like the Tin Pan Alley standard "The Glory of Love": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "The Glory of Love"] But for the most part, the image we have of the blues comes down to one man, Arthur Laibley, a sales manager for the Wisconsin Chair Company. The Wisconsin Chair Company was, as the name would suggest, a company that started out making wooden chairs, but it had branched out into other forms of wooden furniture -- including, for a brief time, large wooden phonographs. And, like several other manufacturers, like the Radio Corporation of America -- RCA -- and the Gramophone Company, which became EMI, they realised that if they were going to sell the hardware it made sense to sell the software as well, and had started up Paramount Records, which bought up a small label, Black Swan, and soon became the biggest manufacturer of records for the Black market, putting out roughly a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932. At first, most of these were produced by a Black talent scout, J. Mayo Williams, who had been the first person to record Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, but in 1927 Williams left Paramount, and the job of supervising sessions went to Arthur Laibley, though according to some sources a lot of the actual production work was done by Aletha Dickerson, Williams' former assistant, who was almost certainly the first Black woman to be what we would now think of as a record producer. Williams had been interested in recording all kinds of music by Black performers, but when Laibley got a solo Black man into the studio, what he wanted more than anything was for him to record the blues, ideally in a style as close as possible to that of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Laibley didn't have a very hands-on approach to recording -- indeed Paramount had very little concern about the quality of their product anyway, and Paramount's records are notorious for having been put out on poor-quality shellac and recorded badly -- and he only occasionally made actual suggestions as to what kind of songs his performers should write -- for example he asked Son House to write something that sounded like Blind Lemon Jefferson, which led to House writing and recording "Mississippi County Farm Blues", which steals the tune of Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean": [Excerpt: Son House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues"] When Skip James wanted to record a cover of James Wiggins' "Forty-Four Blues", Laibley suggested that instead he should do a song about a different gun, and so James recorded "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues"] And Laibley also suggested that James write a song about the Depression, which led to one of the greatest blues records ever, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"] These musicians knew that they were getting paid only for issued sides, and that Laibley wanted only blues from them, and so that's what they gave him. Even when it was a performer like Charlie Patton. (Incidentally, for those reading this as a transcript rather than listening to it, Patton's name is more usually spelled ending in ey, but as far as I can tell ie was his preferred spelling and that's what I'm using). Charlie Patton was best known as an entertainer, first and foremost -- someone who would do song-and-dance routines, joke around, play guitar behind his head. He was a clown on stage, so much so that when Son House finally heard some of Patton's records, in the mid-sixties, decades after the fact, he was astonished that Patton could actually play well. Even though House had been in the room when some of the records were made, his memory of Patton was of someone who acted the fool on stage. That's definitely not the impression you get from the Charlie Patton on record: [Excerpt: Charlie Patton, "Poor Me"] Patton is, as far as can be discerned, the person who was most influential in creating the music that became called the "Delta blues". Not a lot is known about Patton's life, but he was almost certainly the half-brother of the Chatmon brothers, who made hundreds of records, most notably as members of the Mississippi Sheiks: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Sheiks, "Sitting on Top of the World"] In the 1890s, Patton's family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and he lived in and around that county until his death in 1934. Patton learned to play guitar from a musician called Henry Sloan, and then Patton became a mentor figure to a *lot* of other musicians in and around the plantation on which his family lived. Some of the musicians who grew up in the immediate area around Patton included Tommy Johnson: [Excerpt: Tommy Johnson, "Big Road Blues"] Pops Staples: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"] Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads"] Willie Brown, a musician who didn't record much, but who played a lot with Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson and who we just heard Johnson sing about: [Excerpt: Willie Brown, "M&O Blues"] And Chester Burnett, who went on to become known as Howlin' Wolf, and whose vocal style was equally inspired by Patton and by the country star Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] Once Patton started his own recording career for Paramount, he also started working as a talent scout for them, and it was him who brought Son House to Paramount. Soon after the Depression hit, Paramount stopped recording, and so from 1930 through 1934 Patton didn't make any records. He was tracked down by an A&R man in January 1934 and recorded one final session: [Excerpt, Charlie Patton, "34 Blues"] But he died of heart failure two months later. But his influence spread through his proteges, and they themselves influenced other musicians from the area who came along a little after, like Robert Lockwood and Muddy Waters. This music -- or that portion of it that was considered worth recording by white record producers, only a tiny, unrepresentative, portion of their vast performing repertoires -- became known as the Delta Blues, and when some of these musicians moved to Chicago and started performing with electric instruments, it became Chicago Blues. And as far as people like John Mayall in Britain were concerned, Delta and Chicago Blues *were* the blues: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "It Ain't Right"] John Mayall was one of the first of the British blues obsessives, and for a long time thought of himself as the only one. While we've looked before at the growth of the London blues scene, Mayall wasn't from London -- he was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, both relatively well-off suburbs of Manchester, and after being conscripted and doing two years in the Army, he had become an art student at Manchester College of Art, what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Mayall had been a blues fan from the late 1940s, writing off to the US to order records that hadn't been released in the UK, and by most accounts by the late fifties he'd put together the biggest blues collection in Britain by quite some way. Not only that, but he had one of the earliest home tape recorders, and every night he would record radio stations from Continental Europe which were broadcasting for American service personnel, so he'd amassed mountains of recordings, often unlabelled, of obscure blues records that nobody else in the UK knew about. He was also an accomplished pianist and guitar player, and in 1956 he and his drummer friend Peter Ward had put together a band called the Powerhouse Four (the other two members rotated on a regular basis) mostly to play lunchtime jazz sessions at the art college. Mayall also started putting on jam sessions at a youth club in Wythenshawe, where he met another drummer named Hughie Flint. Over the late fifties and into the early sixties, Mayall more or less by himself built up a small blues scene in Manchester. The Manchester blues scene was so enthusiastic, in fact, that when the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual European tour which initially featured Willie Dixon, Memhis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker, first toured Europe, the only UK date it played was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and people like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page had to travel up from London to see it. But still, the number of blues fans in Manchester, while proportionally large, was objectively small enough that Mayall was captivated by an article in Melody Maker which talked about Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies' new band Blues Incorporated and how it was playing electric blues, the same music he was making in Manchester. He later talked about how the article had made him think that maybe now people would know what he was talking about. He started travelling down to London to play gigs for the London blues scene, and inviting Korner up to Manchester to play shows there. Soon Mayall had moved down to London. Korner introduced Mayall to Davey Graham, the great folk guitarist, with whom Korner had recently recorded as a duo: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] Mayall and Graham performed together as a duo for a while, but Graham was a natural solo artist if ever there was one. Slowly Mayall put a band together in London. On drums was his old friend Peter Ward, who'd moved down from Manchester with him. On bass was John McVie, who at the time knew nothing about blues -- he'd been playing in a Shadows-style instrumental group -- but Mayall gave him a stack of blues records to listen to to get the feeling. And on guitar was Bernie Watson, who had previously played with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. In late 1963, Mike Vernon, a blues fan who had previously published a Yardbirds fanzine, got a job working for Decca records, and immediately started signing his favourite acts from the London blues circuit. The first act he signed was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and they recorded a single, "Crawling up a Hill": [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "Crawling up a Hill (45 version)"] Mayall later called that a "clumsy, half-witted attempt at autobiographical comment", and it sold only five hundred copies. It would be the only record the Bluesbreakers would make with Watson, who soon left the band to be replaced by Roger Dean (not the same Roger Dean who later went on to design prog rock album covers). The second group to be signed by Mike Vernon to Decca was the Graham Bond Organisation. We've talked about the Graham Bond Organisation in passing several times, but not for a while and not in any great detail, so it's worth pulling everything we've said about them so far together and going through it in a little more detail. The Graham Bond Organisation, like the Rolling Stones, grew out of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. As we heard in the episode on "I Wanna Be Your Man" a couple of years ago, Blues Incorporated had been started by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and at the time we're joining them in 1962 featured a drummer called Charlie Watts, a pianist called Dave Stevens, and saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, as well as frequent guest performers like a singer who called himself Mike Jagger, and another one, Roderick Stewart. That group finally found themselves the perfect bass player when Dick Heckstall-Smith put together a one-off group of jazz players to play an event at Cambridge University. At the gig, a little Scottish man came up to the group and told them he played bass and asked if he could sit in. They told him to bring along his instrument to their second set, that night, and he did actually bring along a double bass. Their bluff having been called, they decided to play the most complicated, difficult, piece they knew in order to throw the kid off -- the drummer, a trad jazz player named Ginger Baker, didn't like performing with random sit-in guests -- but astonishingly he turned out to be really good. Heckstall-Smith took down the bass player's name and phone number and invited him to a jam session with Blues Incorporated. After that jam session, Jack Bruce quickly became the group's full-time bass player. Bruce had started out as a classical cellist, but had switched to the double bass inspired by Bach, who he referred to as "the guv'nor of all bass players". His playing up to this point had mostly been in trad jazz bands, and he knew nothing of the blues, but he quickly got the hang of the genre. Bruce's first show with Blues Incorporated was a BBC recording: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "Hoochie Coochie Man (BBC session)"] According to at least one source it was not being asked to take part in that session that made young Mike Jagger decide there was no future for him with Blues Incorporated and to spend more time with his other group, the Rollin' Stones. Soon after, Charlie Watts would join him, for almost the opposite reason -- Watts didn't want to be in a band that was getting as big as Blues Incorporated were. They were starting to do more BBC sessions and get more gigs, and having to join the Musicians' Union. That seemed like a lot of work. Far better to join a band like the Rollin' Stones that wasn't going anywhere. Because of Watts' decision to give up on potential stardom to become a Rollin' Stone, they needed a new drummer, and luckily the best drummer on the scene was available. But then the best drummer on the scene was *always* available. Ginger Baker had first played with Dick Heckstall-Smith several years earlier, in a trad group called the Storyville Jazzmen. There Baker had become obsessed with the New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds, who had played with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. Sadly because of 1920s recording technology, he hadn't been able to play a full kit on the recordings with Armstrong, being limited to percussion on just a woodblock, but you can hear his drumming style much better in this version of "At the Jazz Band Ball" from 1947, with Mugsy Spanier, Jack Teagarden, Cyrus St. Clair and Hank Duncan: [Excerpt: "At the Jazz Band Ball"] Baker had taken Dobbs' style and run with it, and had quickly become known as the single best player, bar none, on the London jazz scene -- he'd become an accomplished player in multiple styles, and was also fluent in reading music and arranging. He'd also, though, become known as the single person on the entire scene who was most difficult to get along with. He resigned from his first band onstage, shouting "You can stick your band up your arse", after the band's leader had had enough of him incorporating bebop influences into their trad style. Another time, when touring with Diz Disley's band, he was dumped in Germany with no money and no way to get home, because the band were so sick of him. Sometimes this was because of his temper and his unwillingness to suffer fools -- and he saw everyone else he ever met as a fool -- and sometimes it was because of his own rigorous musical ideas. He wanted to play music *his* way, and wouldn't listen to anyone who told him different. Both of these things got worse after he fell under the influence of a man named Phil Seaman, one of the only drummers that Baker respected at all. Seaman introduced Baker to African drumming, and Baker started incorporating complex polyrhythms into his playing as a result. Seaman also though introduced Baker to heroin, and while being a heroin addict in the UK in the 1960s was not as difficult as it later became -- both heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to registered addicts, and Baker got both, which meant that many of the problems that come from criminalisation of these drugs didn't affect addicts in the same way -- but it still did not, by all accounts, make him an easier person to get along with. But he *was* a fantastic drummer. As Dick Heckstall-Smith said "With the advent of Ginger, the classic Blues Incorporated line-up, one which I think could not be bettered, was set" But Alexis Korner decided that the group could be bettered, and he had some backers within the band. One of the other bands on the scene was the Don Rendell Quintet, a group that played soul jazz -- that style of jazz that bridged modern jazz and R&B, the kind of music that Ray Charles and Herbie Hancock played: [Excerpt: The Don Rendell Quintet, "Manumission"] The Don Rendell Quintet included a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, Graham Bond, who doubled on keyboards and saxophone, and Bond had been playing occasional experimental gigs with the Johnny Burch Octet -- a group led by another member of the Rendell Quartet featuring Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, Baker, and a few other musicians, doing wholly-improvised music. Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, and Baker all enjoyed playing with Bond, and when Korner decided to bring him into the band, they were all very keen. But Cyril Davies, the co-leader of the band with Korner, was furious at the idea. Davies wanted to play strict Chicago and Delta blues, and had no truck with other forms of music like R&B and jazz. To his mind it was bad enough that they had a sax player. But the idea that they would bring in Bond, who played sax and... *Hammond* organ? Well, that was practically blasphemy. Davies quit the group at the mere suggestion. Bond was soon in the band, and he, Bruce, and Baker were playing together a *lot*. As well as performing with Blues Incorporated, they continued playing in the Johnny Burch Octet, and they also started performing as the Graham Bond Trio. Sometimes the Graham Bond Trio would be Blues Incorporated's opening act, and on more than one occasion the Graham Bond Trio, Blues Incorporated, and the Johnny Burch Octet all had gigs in different parts of London on the same night and they'd have to frantically get from one to the other. The Graham Bond Trio also had fans in Manchester, thanks to the local blues scene there and their connection with Blues Incorporated, and one night in February 1963 the trio played a gig there. They realised afterwards that by playing as a trio they'd made £70, when they were lucky to make £20 from a gig with Blues Incorporated or the Octet, because there were so many members in those bands. Bond wanted to make real money, and at the next rehearsal of Blues Incorporated he announced to Korner that he, Bruce, and Baker were quitting the band -- which was news to Bruce and Baker, who he hadn't bothered consulting. Baker, indeed, was in the toilet when the announcement was made and came out to find it a done deal. He was going to kick up a fuss and say he hadn't been consulted, but Korner's reaction sealed the deal. As Baker later said "‘he said “it's really good you're doing this thing with Graham, and I wish you the best of luck” and all that. And it was a bit difficult to turn round and say, “Well, I don't really want to leave the band, you know.”'" The Graham Bond Trio struggled at first to get the gigs they were expecting, but that started to change when in April 1963 they became the Graham Bond Quartet, with the addition of virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. The Quartet soon became one of the hottest bands on the London R&B scene, and when Duffy Power, a Larry Parnes teen idol who wanted to move into R&B, asked his record label to get him a good R&B band to back him on a Beatles cover, it was the Graham Bond Quartet who obliged: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "I Saw Her Standing There"] The Quartet also backed Power on a package tour with other Parnes acts, but they were also still performing their own blend of hard jazz and blues, as can be heard in this recording of the group live in June 1953: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Quartet, "Ho Ho Country Kicking Blues (Live at Klooks Kleek)"] But that lineup of the group didn't last very long. According to the way Baker told the story, he fired McLaughlin from the group, after being irritated by McLaughlin complaining about something on a day when Baker was out of cocaine and in no mood to hear anyone else's complaints. As Baker said "We lost a great guitar player and I lost a good friend." But the Trio soon became a Quartet again, as Dick Heckstall-Smith, who Baker had wanted in the band from the start, joined on saxophone to replace McLaughlin's guitar. But they were no longer called the Graham Bond Quartet. Partly because Heckstall-Smith joining allowed Bond to concentrate just on his keyboard playing, but one suspects partly to protect against any future lineup changes, the group were now The Graham Bond ORGANisation -- emphasis on the organ. The new lineup of the group got signed to Decca by Vernon, and were soon recording their first single, "Long Tall Shorty": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Long Tall Shorty"] They recorded a few other songs which made their way onto an EP and an R&B compilation, and toured intensively in early 1964, as well as backing up Power on his follow-up to "I Saw Her Standing There", his version of "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Parchman Farm"] They also appeared in a film, just like the Beatles, though it was possibly not quite as artistically successful as "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat trailer] Gonks Go Beat is one of the most bizarre films of the sixties. It's a far-future remake of Romeo and Juliet. where the two star-crossed lovers are from opposing countries -- Beatland and Ballad Isle -- who only communicate once a year in an annual song contest which acts as their version of a war, and is overseen by "Mr. A&R", played by Frank Thornton, who would later star in Are You Being Served? Carry On star Kenneth Connor is sent by aliens to try to bring peace to the two warring countries, on pain of exile to Planet Gonk, a planet inhabited solely by Gonks (a kind of novelty toy for which there was a short-lived craze then). Along the way Connor encounters such luminaries of British light entertainment as Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, as well as musical performances by Lulu, the Nashville Teens, and of course the Graham Bond Organisation, whose performance gets them a telling-off from a teacher: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat!] The group as a group only performed one song in this cinematic masterpiece, but Baker also made an appearance in a "drum battle" sequence where eight drummers played together: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat drum battle] The other drummers in that scene included, as well as some lesser-known players, Andy White who had played on the single version of "Love Me Do", Bobby Graham, who played on hits by the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five, and Ronnie Verrell, who did the drumming for Animal in the Muppet Show. Also in summer 1964, the group performed at the Fourth National Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond -- the festival co-founded by Chris Barber that would evolve into the Reading Festival. The Yardbirds were on the bill, and at the end of their set they invited Bond, Baker, Bruce, Georgie Fame, and Mike Vernon onto the stage with them, making that the first time that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were all on stage together. Soon after that, the Graham Bond Organisation got a new manager, Robert Stigwood. Things hadn't been working out for them at Decca, and Stigwood soon got the group signed to EMI, and became their producer as well. Their first single under Stigwood's management was a cover version of the theme tune to the Debbie Reynolds film "Tammy". While that film had given Tamla records its name, the song was hardly an R&B classic: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Tammy"] That record didn't chart, but Stigwood put the group out on the road as part of the disastrous Chuck Berry tour we heard about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", which led to the bankruptcy of  Robert Stigwood Associates. The Organisation moved over to Stigwood's new company, the Robert Stigwood Organisation, and Stigwood continued to be the credited producer of their records, though after the "Tammy" disaster they decided they were going to take charge themselves of the actual music. Their first album, The Sound of 65, was recorded in a single three-hour session, and they mostly ran through their standard set -- a mixture of the same songs everyone else on the circuit was playing, like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Working", and "Wade in the Water", and originals like Bruce's "Train Time": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Train Time"] Through 1965 they kept working. They released a non-album single, "Lease on Love", which is generally considered to be the first pop record to feature a Mellotron: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Lease on Love"] and Bond and Baker also backed another Stigwood act, Winston G, on his debut single: [Excerpt: Winston G, "Please Don't Say"] But the group were developing severe tensions. Bruce and Baker had started out friendly, but by this time they hated each other. Bruce said he couldn't hear his own playing over Baker's loud drumming, Baker thought that Bruce was far too fussy a player and should try to play simpler lines. They'd both try to throw each other during performances, altering arrangements on the fly and playing things that would trip the other player up. And *neither* of them were particularly keen on Bond's new love of the Mellotron, which was all over their second album, giving it a distinctly proto-prog feel at times: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Baby Can it Be True?"] Eventually at a gig in Golders Green, Baker started throwing drumsticks at Bruce's head while Bruce was trying to play a bass solo. Bruce retaliated by throwing his bass at Baker, and then jumping on him and starting a fistfight which had to be broken up by the venue security. Baker fired Bruce from the band, but Bruce kept turning up to gigs anyway, arguing that Baker had no right to sack him as it was a democracy. Baker always claimed that in fact Bond had wanted to sack Bruce but hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, and insisted that Baker do it, but neither Bond nor Heckstall-Smith objected when Bruce turned up for the next couple of gigs. So Baker took matters into his own hands, He pulled out a knife and told Bruce "If you show up at one more gig, this is going in you." Within days, Bruce was playing with John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers had gone through some lineup changes by this point. Roger Dean had only played with the Bluesbreakers for a short time before Mayall had replaced him. Mayall had not been impressed with Eric Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds at first -- even though graffiti saying "Clapton is God" was already starting to appear around London -- but he had been *very* impressed with Clapton's playing on "Got to Hurry", the B-side to "For Your Love": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"] When he discovered that Clapton had quit the band, he sprang into action and quickly recruited him to replace Dean. Clapton knew he had made the right choice when a month after he'd joined, the group got the word that Bob Dylan had been so impressed with Mayall's single "Crawling up a Hill" -- the one that nobody liked, not even Mayall himself -- that he wanted to jam with Mayall and his band in the studio. Clapton of course went along: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] That was, of course, the session we've talked about in the Velvet Underground episode and elsewhere of which little other than that survives, and which Nico attended. At this point, Mayall didn't have a record contract, his experience recording with Mike Vernon having been no more successful than the Bond group's had been. But soon he got a one-off deal -- as a solo artist, not with the Bluesbreakers -- with Immediate Records. Clapton was the only member of the group to play on the single, which was produced by Immediate's house producer Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall, "I'm Your Witchdoctor"] Page was impressed enough with Clapton's playing that he invited him round to Page's house to jam together. But what Clapton didn't know was that Page was taping their jam sessions, and that he handed those tapes over to Immediate Records -- whether he was forced to by his contract with the label or whether that had been his plan all along depends on whose story you believe, but Clapton never truly forgave him. Page and Clapton's guitar-only jams had overdubs by Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and drummer Chris Winter, and have been endlessly repackaged on blues compilations ever since: [Excerpt: Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, "Draggin' My Tail"] But Mayall was having problems with John McVie, who had started to drink too much, and as soon as he found out that Jack Bruce was sacked by the Graham Bond Organisation, Mayall got in touch with Bruce and got him to join the band in McVie's place. Everyone was agreed that this lineup of the band -- Mayall, Clapton, Bruce, and Hughie Flint -- was going places: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Jack Bruce, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Unfortunately, it wasn't going to last long. Clapton, while he thought that Bruce was the greatest bass player he'd ever worked with, had other plans. He was going to leave the country and travel the world as a peripatetic busker. He was off on his travels, never to return. Luckily, Mayall had someone even better waiting in the wings. A young man had, according to Mayall, "kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him?” – referring to whichever guitarist was onstage that night – “I'm much better than he is. Why don't you let me play guitar for you?” He got really quite nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. And he was brilliant." Peter Green was probably the best blues guitarist in London at that time, but this lineup of the Bluesbreakers only lasted a handful of gigs -- Clapton discovered that busking in Greece wasn't as much fun as being called God in London, and came back very soon after he'd left. Mayall had told him that he could have his old job back when he got back, and so Green was out and Clapton was back in. And soon the Bluesbreakers' revolving door revolved again. Manfred Mann had just had a big hit with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", the same song we heard Dylan playing earlier: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] But their guitarist, Mike Vickers, had quit. Tom McGuinness, their bass player, had taken the opportunity to switch back to guitar -- the instrument he'd played in his first band with his friend Eric Clapton -- but that left them short a bass player. Manfred Mann were essentially the same kind of band as the Graham Bond Organisation -- a Hammond-led group of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who played everything from hardcore Delta blues to complex modern jazz -- but unlike the Bond group they also had a string of massive pop hits, and so made a lot more money. The combination was irresistible to Bruce, and he joined the band just before they recorded an EP of jazz instrumental versions of recent hits: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Bruce had also been encouraged by Robert Stigwood to do a solo project, and so at the same time as he joined Manfred Mann, he also put out a solo single, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'" [Excerpt: Jack Bruce, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'"] But of course, the reason Bruce had joined Manfred Mann was that they were having pop hits as well as playing jazz, and soon they did just that, with Bruce playing on their number one hit "Pretty Flamingo": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] So John McVie was back in the Bluesbreakers, promising to keep his drinking under control. Mike Vernon still thought that Mayall had potential, but the people at Decca didn't agree, so Vernon got Mayall and Clapton -- but not the other band members -- to record a single for a small indie label he ran as a side project: [Excerpt: John Mayall and Eric Clapton, "Bernard Jenkins"] That label normally only released records in print runs of ninety-nine copies, because once you hit a hundred copies you had to pay tax on them, but there was so much demand for that single that they ended up pressing up five hundred copies, making it the label's biggest seller ever. Vernon eventually convinced the heads at Decca that the Bluesbreakers could be truly big, and so he got the OK to record the album that would generally be considered the greatest British blues album of all time -- Blues Breakers, also known as the Beano album because of Clapton reading a copy of the British kids' comic The Beano in the group photo on the front. [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Ramblin' On My Mind"] The album was a mixture of originals by Mayall and the standard repertoire of every blues or R&B band on the circuit -- songs like "Parchman Farm" and "What'd I Say" -- but what made the album unique was Clapton's guitar tone. Much to the chagrin of Vernon, and of engineer Gus Dudgeon, Clapton insisted on playing at the same volume that he would on stage. Vernon later said of Dudgeon "I can remember seeing his face the very first time Clapton plugged into the Marshall stack and turned it up and started playing at the sort of volume he was going to play. You could almost see Gus's eyes meet over the middle of his nose, and it was almost like he was just going to fall over from the sheer power of it all. But after an enormous amount of fiddling around and moving amps around, we got a sound that worked." [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Hideaway"] But by the time the album cane out. Clapton was no longer with the Bluesbreakers. The Graham Bond Organisation had struggled on for a while after Bruce's departure. They brought in a trumpet player, Mike Falana, and even had a hit record -- or at least, the B-side of a hit record. The Who had just put out a hit single, "Substitute", on Robert Stigwood's record label, Reaction: [Excerpt: The Who, "Substitute"] But, as you'll hear in episode 183, they had moved to Reaction Records after a falling out with their previous label, and with Shel Talmy their previous producer. The problem was, when "Substitute" was released, it had as its B-side a song called "Circles" (also known as "Instant Party -- it's been released under both names). They'd recorded an earlier version of the song for Talmy, and just as "Substitute" was starting to chart, Talmy got an injunction against the record and it had to be pulled. Reaction couldn't afford to lose the big hit record they'd spent money promoting, so they needed to put it out with a new B-side. But the Who hadn't got any unreleased recordings. But the Graham Bond Organisation had, and indeed they had an unreleased *instrumental*. So "Waltz For a Pig" became the B-side to a top-five single, credited to The Who Orchestra: [Excerpt: The Who Orchestra, "Waltz For a Pig"] That record provided the catalyst for the formation of Cream, because Ginger Baker had written the song, and got £1,350 for it, which he used to buy a new car. Baker had, for some time, been wanting to get out of the Graham Bond Organisation. He was trying to get off heroin -- though he would make many efforts to get clean over the decades, with little success -- while Bond was starting to use it far more heavily, and was also using acid and getting heavily into mysticism, which Baker despised. Baker may have had the idea for what he did next from an article in one of the music papers. John Entwistle of the Who would often tell a story about an article in Melody Maker -- though I've not been able to track down the article itself to get the full details -- in which musicians were asked to name which of their peers they'd put into a "super-group". He didn't remember the full details, but he did remember that the consensus choice had had Eric Clapton on lead guitar, himself on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. As he said later "I don't remember who else was voted in, but a few months later, the Cream came along, and I did wonder if somebody was maybe believing too much of their own press". Incidentally, like The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd, Cream, the band we are about to meet, had releases both with and without the definite article, and Eric Clapton at least seems always to talk about them as "the Cream" even decades later, but they're primarily known as just Cream these days. Baker, having had enough of the Bond group, decided to drive up to Oxford to see Clapton playing with the Bluesbreakers. Clapton invited him to sit in for a couple of songs, and by all accounts the band sounded far better than they had previously. Clapton and Baker could obviously play well together, and Baker offered Clapton a lift back to London in his new car, and on the drive back asked Clapton if he wanted to form a new band. Clapton was as impressed by Baker's financial skills as he was by his musicianship. He said later "Musicians didn't have cars. You all got in a van." Clearly a musician who was *actually driving a new car he owned* was going places. He agreed to Baker's plan. But of course they needed a bass player, and Clapton thought he had the perfect solution -- "What about Jack?" Clapton knew that Bruce had been a member of the Graham Bond Organisation, but didn't know why he'd left the band -- he wasn't particularly clued in to what the wider music scene was doing, and all he knew was that Bruce had played with both him and Baker, and that he was the best bass player he'd ever played with. And Bruce *was* arguably the best bass player in London at that point, and he was starting to pick up session work as well as his work with Manfred Mann. For example it's him playing on the theme tune to "After The Fox" with Peter Sellers, the Hollies, and the song's composer Burt Bacharach: [Excerpt: The Hollies with Peter Sellers, "After the Fox"] Clapton was insistent. Baker's idea was that the band should be the best musicians around. That meant they needed the *best* musicians around, not the second best. If Jack Bruce wasn't joining, Eric Clapton wasn't joining either. Baker very reluctantly agreed, and went round to see Bruce the next day -- according to Baker it was in a spirit of generosity and giving Bruce one more chance, while according to Bruce he came round to eat humble pie and beg for forgiveness. Either way, Bruce agreed to join the band. The three met up for a rehearsal at Baker's home, and immediately Bruce and Baker started fighting, but also immediately they realised that they were great at playing together -- so great that they named themselves the Cream, as they were the cream of musicians on the scene. They knew they had something, but they didn't know what. At first they considered making their performances into Dada projects, inspired by the early-twentieth-century art movement. They liked a band that had just started to make waves, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band -- who had originally been called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band -- and they bought some props with the vague idea of using them on stage in the same way the Bonzos did. But as they played together they realised that they needed to do something different from that. At first, they thought they needed a fourth member -- a keyboard player. Graham Bond's name was brought up, but Clapton vetoed him. Clapton wanted Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist with the Spencer Davis Group. Indeed, Winwood was present at what was originally intended to be the first recording session the trio would play. Joe Boyd had asked Eric Clapton to round up a bunch of players to record some filler tracks for an Elektra blues compilation, and Clapton had asked Bruce and Baker to join him, Paul Jones on vocals, Winwood on Hammond and Clapton's friend Ben Palmer on piano for the session. Indeed, given that none of the original trio were keen on singing, that Paul Jones was just about to leave Manfred Mann, and that we know Clapton wanted Winwood in the band, one has to wonder if Clapton at least half-intended for this to be the eventual lineup of the band. If he did, that plan was foiled by Baker's refusal to take part in the session. Instead, this one-off band, named The Powerhouse, featured Pete York, the drummer from the Spencer Davis Group, on the session, which produced the first recording of Clapton playing on the Robert Johnson song originally titled "Cross Road Blues" but now generally better known just as "Crossroads": [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] We talked about Robert Johnson a little back in episode ninety-seven, but other than Bob Dylan, who was inspired by his lyrics, we had seen very little influence from Johnson up to this point, but he's going to be a major influence on rock guitar for the next few years, so we should talk about him a little here. It's often said that nobody knew anything about Robert Johnson, that he was almost a phantom other than his records which existed outside of any context as artefacts of their own. That's... not really the case. Johnson had died a little less than thirty years earlier, at only twenty-seven years old. Most of his half-siblings and step-siblings were alive, as were his son, his stepson, and dozens of musicians he'd played with over the years, women he'd had affairs with, and other assorted friends and relatives. What people mean is that information about Johnson's life was not yet known by people they consider important -- which is to say white blues scholars and musicians. Indeed, almost everything people like that -- people like *me* -- know of the facts of Johnson's life has only become known to us in the last four years. If, as some people had expected, I'd started this series with an episode on Johnson, I'd have had to redo the whole thing because of the information that's made its way to the public since then. But here's what was known -- or thought -- by white blues scholars in 1966. Johnson was, according to them, a field hand from somewhere in Mississippi, who played the guitar in between working on the cotton fields. He had done two recording sessions, in 1936 and 1937. One song from his first session, "Terraplane Blues", had been a very minor hit by blues standards: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"] That had sold well -- nobody knows how well, but maybe as many as ten thousand copies, and it was certainly a record people knew in 1937 if they liked the Delta blues, but ten thousand copies total is nowhere near the sales of really successful records, and none of the follow-ups had sold anything like that much -- many of them had sold in the hundreds rather than the thousands. As Elijah Wald, one of Johnson's biographers put it "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington was like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles" -- though *I* would add that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much bigger during the sixties than Johnson was during his lifetime. One of the few white people who had noticed Johnson's existence at all was John Hammond, and he'd written a brief review of Johnson's first two singles under a pseudonym in a Communist newspaper. I'm going to quote it here, but the word he used to talk about Black people was considered correct then but isn't now, so I'll substitute Black for that word: "Before closing we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest [Black] blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us and by the tunes "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Terraplane Blues", to name only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur" Hammond had tried to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts we talked about in the very first episodes of the podcast, but he'd discovered that he'd died shortly before. He got Big Bill Broonzy instead, and played a couple of Johnson's records from a record player on the stage. Hammond introduced those recordings with a speech: "It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player America ever knew, would still have been around to play obbligatos for her...dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi plantation. Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I know him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don't believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. We will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old "Walkin' Blues" and the new, unreleased, "Preachin' Blues", because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death." And that was, for the most part, the end of Robert Johnson's impact on the culture for a generation. The Lomaxes went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi a couple of years later -- reports vary as to whether this was to see if they could find Johnson, who they were unaware was dead, or to find information out about him, and they did end up recording a young singer named Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress, including Waters' rendition of "32-20 Blues", Johnson's reworking of Skip James' "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "32-20 Blues"] But Johnson's records remained unavailable after their initial release until 1959, when the blues scholar Samuel Charters published the book The Country Blues, which was the first book-length treatment ever of Delta blues. Sixteen years later Charters said "I shouldn't have written The Country Blues when I did; since I really didn't know enough, but I felt I couldn't afford to wait. So The Country Blues was two things. It was a romanticization of certain aspects of black life in an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help. I wanted hundreds of people to go out and interview the surviving blues artists. I wanted people to record them and document their lives, their environment, and their music, not only so that their story would be preserved but also so they'd get a little money and a little recognition in their last years." Charters talked about Johnson in the book, as one of the performers who played "minor roles in the story of the blues", and said that almost nothing was known about his life. He talked about how he had been poisoned by his common-law wife, about how his records were recorded in a pool hall, and said "The finest of Robert Johnson's blues have a brooding sense of torment and despair. The blues has become a personified figure of despondency." Along with Charters' book came a compilation album of the same name, and that included the first ever reissue of one of Johnson's tracks, "Preaching Blues": [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues"] Two years later, John Hammond, who had remained an ardent fan of Johnson, had Columbia put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album. At the time no white blues scholars knew what Johnson looked like and they had no photos of him, so a generic painting of a poor-looking Black man with a guitar was used for the cover. The liner note to King of the Delta Blues Singers talked about how Johnson was seventeen or eighteen when he made his recordings, how he was "dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend", how he had "seldom, if ever, been away from the plantation in Robinsville, Mississippi, where he was born and raised", and how he had had such stage fright that when he was asked to play in front of other musicians, he'd turned to face a wall so he couldn't see them. And that would be all that any of the members of the Powerhouse would know about Johnson. Maybe they'd also heard the rumours that were starting to spread that Johnson had got his guitar-playing skills by selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, but that would have been all they knew when they recorded their filler track for Elektra: [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] Either way, the Powerhouse lineup only lasted for that one session -- the group eventually decided that a simple trio would be best for the music they wanted to play. Clapton had seen Buddy Guy touring with just a bass player and drummer a year earlier, and had liked the idea of the freedom that gave him as a guitarist. The group soon took on Robert Stigwood as a manager, which caused more arguments between Bruce and Baker. Bruce was convinced that if they were doing an all-for-one one-for-all thing they should also manage themselves, but Baker pointed out that that was a daft idea when they could get one of the biggest managers in the country to look after them. A bigger argument, which almost killed the group before it started, happened when Baker told journalist Chris Welch of the Melody Maker about their plans. In an echo of the way that he and Bruce had been resigned from Blues Incorporated without being consulted, now with no discussion Manfred Mann and John Mayall were reading in the papers that their band members were quitting before those members had bothered to mention it. Mayall was furious, especially since the album Clapton had played on hadn't yet come out. Clapton was supposed to work a month's notice while Mayall found another guitarist, but Mayall spent two weeks begging Peter Green to rejoin the band. Green was less than eager -- after all, he'd been fired pretty much straight away earlier -- but Mayall eventually persuaded him. The second he did, Mayall turned round to Clapton and told him he didn't have to work the rest of his notice -- he'd found another guitar player and Clapton was fired: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Dust My Blues"] Manfred Mann meanwhile took on the Beatles' friend Klaus Voorman to replace Bruce. Voorman would remain with the band until the end, and like Green was for Mayall, Voorman was in some ways a better fit for Manfred Mann than Bruce was. In particular he could double on flute, as he did for example on their hit version of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann "The Mighty Quinn"] The new group, The Cream, were of course signed in the UK to Stigwood's Reaction label. Other than the Who, who only stuck around for one album, Reaction was not a very successful label. Its biggest signing was a former keyboard player for Screaming Lord Sutch, who recorded for them under the names Paul Dean and Oscar, but who later became known as Paul Nicholas and had a successful career in musical theatre and sitcom. Nicholas never had any hits for Reaction, but he did release one interesting record, in 1967: [Excerpt: Oscar, "Over the Wall We Go"] That was one of the earliest songwriting attempts by a young man who had recently named himself David Bowie. Now the group were public, they started inviting journalists to their rehearsals, which were mostly spent trying to combine their disparate musical influences --

1- IT´S BEEN A LONG, LONG TIME – LES PAUL & MARY FORD 2- THAT´S LIFE – JAMES BROWN 3- THE PUSHER – NINA SIMONE 4- CALIFORNIA – JOHN MAYALL 5- VIBRAPHONE BLUES – LIONEL HAMPTON 6- BETTER DAY – BROWNIE MCGHEE & SONNY TERRY 7- BLACK SMOKE – BACON FAT LOUIS 8- PHONE ZOMBIES – ROOMFUL OF BLUES 9- ANOTHER BAD DAY – LARRY GARNER 10- KEY TO THE HIGHWAY – JOHNNIE JOHNSON 11- DROWN IN MY OWN TEARS – LACY GIBSON 12- HAPPY MAN BLUES – PHILLIP WALKER 13- BETTER DAY – A.J. CROSS 14- DOWN HOME BLUES – JAMES COTTON & BILLY BRANCH 15- DON´T MESS WITH MY WEEKEND – SHORTY LONG

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Arthur Montana Taylor  | Sweet Sue (rec Chicago 18/4/46)  | Montana Taylor  |  | Tampa Red  |  It's Red Hot  | Bottleneck Guitar 1928-1937 | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Wake Up Old Lady  | Goin' Away (1963)  |  | Half Deaf Clatch  | The Elysian Blues  | Simple Songs For These Complicated Times | Seasick Steve  | Purple Shadows  | Hubcap Music  |  | Blind Willie Johnson  | If I Had My Way I'd Tear The Building Down  | The Complete Blind Willie Johnson (1 of 2) | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Hey Baby Hey Baby You're So Sweet - [ASH GROVE 1-21-1967 1ST SH  | Ash Grove 01-21-1967 1st Show | Bill Abel  | Don't You Hurt (Instrumental)  | One-Man Band  |  | Tony Joe White  | Baby Please Don't Go  | Bad Mouthin' (2018) | Andres Roots  | Thanks For Bringing Me Down  | Winter  |   |  | Washboard Sam  | Phantom Black Snake  | Washboard Swing  |  | Paul Cowley  | Preaching Blues  | Stroll Out West  |  | R. L. Burnside  | Goin' Down South  | First Recordings  |  | Lonnie Johnson  | C.C. Rider (Traditional)  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD3 | John Hammond  | Sugar Mama  | Sooner Or Later (2002 reissue) - 2002 - 320 - FC | Mississippi Fred Mc Dowell  | Highway 61  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD5

We're checking off a BIG ONE this week -- Steve's Martin's cinematic debut THE JERK manages to be absent of cynicism, while biting in it's commentary about wealth. Satirical and charming, and stacked with comedic talents like Bernadette Peters, Jackie Mason, M. Emmet Walsh under the direction of Carl Reiner.Shop the Store: http://tee.pub/lic/bvHvK3HNFhkFollow us on Letterboxd!Victoria: https://letterboxd.com/vicrohar/Chelsea: https://letterboxd.com/chelseathepope/Theme Music "A Movie I'd Like to See"Arranged & Performed by Katrina EresmanWritten by Al HarleyShow Art: Cecily Brown Follow the Show @freshmoviepod YouTube Channel abreathoffreshmovie@gmail.com

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |   |  | Son House  | Clarksdale Moan  | When The Levee Breaks, Mississippi Blues (Rare Cuts CD A)  | 2007 JSP Records  |   |  | Roosevelt Sykes  | Come On Back Home  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD5 | Doc Watson & Rec Live Newport Folk Fest 1963/4  | Little Orphan Girl  | The Essential Doc Watson  |   |  | Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee  | John Henry (Recorded Live At The Free Trade Hall, Manchester, E  | Chris Barber Presents The Blues Legacy Lost & Found Series  | Lightnin' Hopkins  | 4. Stool Pigeon Blues  | Folk Blues Revival  |   |   |  | Snooks Eaglin  | Mailman Passed  | That's Alright  |   |   |  | John Hammond  | My Starter Won't Start  | You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover - 1993 | Half Deaf Clatch  | Waiting For The Storm to Pass  | The Album With No Name  |   |  | Blind Willie McTell  | Experience Blues  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2 (1931-1933) | Jelly Jaw Short  | Barefoot Blues  | When The Levee Breaks, Mississippi Blues (Rare Cuts CD C)  | 2007 JSP  Records  |   |  | Andres Roots Roundabout  | Miss Carmen James  | Three!  |   |   |   |  | Tony Joe White  | Heartbreak Hotel  | Bad Mouthin' (2018)  |   |  | Fiona Boyes  | Party at Red's  | Voodoo In The Shadows  |   |  | Seasick Steve & The Level Devils  | Cheap  | Cheap  |   |   |   |  | Seasick Steve  | Happy (To Have A Job)  | Man From Another Time  |   |  | David Evans  | Don't Leave Me Here  | Lonesome Midnight Dream  |   | 

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Taj Mahal  | Killer Joe  | Savoy  |   |  | Half Deaf Clatch  | Light Never Escapes  | Beyond The Horizon's Shadow | Nick Steed Five  | Just Singin' the Blues  | Feeling The Blues  |  | Gene 'Mighty' Flea' Conners  | I Wouldn't Give A Cripple Crab  | Coming Home  |  | Pete Rea  | Never Fade Away  | Zero Hour  |  | Errol Linton  | Love Is Strong  | Packing My Bags  |  | Canned Heat  | Nighthawk  | Songs From The Road | TBelly Live @ The Albert 2022  | Walk With Me (Live)  | TBelly Live @ The Albert 2022 | Charles -Cow Cow- Davenport  | We Gonna Rub It  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2  (1929-1945) | (Mike) Ziito & (Albert) Castiglia  | One Step Ahead of the Blues  | Blood Brothers  |  | Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee  | Glory-I'm Going To Walk And Talk with Jesus (Recorded Live from Chris Barber Presents The Blues Legacy Lost & Found Series | Bo Diddley  | I'm A Man - ALT  | Down Home Blues Chicago Volume 2 CD4 | Little Richard  | Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On  | Little Richard and Friends:  Good Golly Miss Molly | Ron Kraemer Trio With The Nashville Cats  | Who's Knockin'  | Sarasota Swing  | 

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Catfish Keith [Fishtail Records]  | It Can't Be Undone  | Put On A Buzz  |  | Mississippi Fred McDowell & Annie Mae McDowell  | Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed  | My Home Is In The Delta | Blind Willie McTell  | Atlanta Strut  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 (1927-1931) | Duwayne Burnside  | Stay All Night.mp3  | Acoustic Burnside  |  | John Hammond  | Shake For Me  | You Can't Judge A Book By The Cover - 1993 - Vbr - FC | Jake Leg Jugband  | I Never Knew I Had A Wonderful Wife (Until The Town Went Dry)  | Goodbye Booze  |  | Charles -Cow Cow- Davenport  | Alabama Mistreater  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1 | Furry Lewis  | Mistreatin' Mama  | In His Prime 1927-1928 | Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes  | Leave In the Morning  | Get Old Someday  |  | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Kansas City Blues  | American Folk Blues Festival Live In Manchester 1962 | Papa Charlie Jackson  | Hot Papa Blues No. 2  | Classic Blues Artwork From  the 1920's | Amos Milburn  | Bow-Wow!  | Complete Aladdin Recordings 1994 CD3 | Stompin' Dave  | Still Some Wonder  | Acoustic Blues  |  | Pink Anderson  | Try Some Of That  | Blues Legend  |  | The Curse of K.K. Hammond  | 10 Memento Mori  | Death Roll Blues  |  | Jimmy Yancey  | P. L. K. Special (Remastered)  | Yancey's Getaway  | 

City Limits drives circles around Chris and Charlotte as they talk about Kim Cattrall, James Earl Jones, Rae Dawn Chong, Robbie Benson, and Morrissey.SHOW NOTES.City Limits: IMDb. MST3K Wiki. Trailer.Fiasco Family Movie Night.Our patreon has some new features!The Greatest Story Ever Told. (And yes, Charlotte did join us!)Kim Cattrall and Pierre Trudeau.Mannequin.Big Trouble in Little China.Today's Special.This is CNN.Beastmaster or Conan the Barbarian?Commando.John Stockwell and Andy Warhol.John Stockwell and Bianca Jagger (taken by Andy Warhol).Breast Men.Beauty and the Beast.Gaston's song.Grim Fandango.Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.The Smiths: Shiela Take a Bow.Austin City Limits.Khruangbin on Austin City Limits.Guns by state.Our episode on Pod People.Gerry Rafferty: Baker's Street.Hūsker Dū.Paul Revere and the Raiders: Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian).Billy Preston: Nothing from Nothing.Roger Ramjet and his PEP Pills.Support us on Patreon and you can hear us talk about The Greatest Story Ever Told!

Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder “Get On Board” (The Songs Of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee): ”Deep Sea Diver” ”Pick A Bale Of Cotton” ”Cornbread, Peas, Black Molasses” Van Morrison “What’s It Gonna Take?”: “Dangerous” ”Fodder For The Masses” ”Not Seeking Approval” Leyla McCalla “Breaking The Thermometer”: ”Fort Dimanche” ”Dodinin” ”You Don’t Know Me” The Waterboys “All Souls Hill”: ”The Liar” “Hollywood Blues” ”Once Were Brothers” Escuchar audio

Christmas songs abound right now, but how about a tune for the downtrodden holiday shopper, the weary wielder of the maxed-out debit card?Well, your friends in The Flood can't pick up the tab, but we can at least give you a blues to suit your mood, brought to you from a recent gig. After a day of rushing around spending money you don't have to buy things people don't want, just take our advice: If you lose your money, please don't lose your mind!Sonny and BrownieNobody ever did the blues better than Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Back in the late 1950s they recorded an incredible album for Smithsonian Folkways called "Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry Sing," which offered a number of original compositions, including this song. It was from that album that we took our inspiration for this blues with which we often open or close a rehearsal, just because it's so much fun to play. Folk ProcessNow, we don't do the tune exactly the way Sonny and Brownie did it. The whole “folk process” idea invites us to bring our own style and attitude to all the music we play. And that was something that Sonny and Brownie knew well, because they too were building on some blues they had heard from their own heroes. The evidence is in the fact that the song's provocative key line — “If you lose your money, please don't lose your mind” — didn't originate with them.Back in 1936, Blind Boy Fuller used exactly the same line in his recording of “Keep Away From My Woman.” But, hey, it didn't start with Fuller either.Seven years earlier, in 1929, Blind Joe Reynolds used the same line to open his tune, “Outside Woman Blues,” a song, incidentally, that would be covered 40 years later by Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce's classic rock group, Cream. The bottom line is we're in good company in offering our take on the tune. Real Christmas TunesBut for Christmas? Seriously? Okay, okay, it is a cheap trick for us to co-op this great old blues and try to sneak it into a Christmas rotation, so we're prepared to make amends. If you're looking for a real holiday playlist, take a listen to the “La Flood Navidad” special blend over in our free Radio Floodango music streaming service. Just click here to whisked away to The Flood web site. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

First broadcast on January 28, 1970. Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry discuss their careers as blues musicians and longtime collaborators. The close relationship between Terry and McGhee is apparent as they perform a number of original and traditional songs during the interview. Songs have been removed due to copyright.

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Blind Lemon Jefferson  | Easy Rider Blues  | Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Kansas City - [ASH GROVE 1-21-1967 1ST SHOW]  | Ash Grove 01-21-1967 1st Show | Bukka White  | Please, Ma'am  | Furry Lewis, Bukka White & Friends Party! at Home - 1968 | Jake Leg Jugband  | I'll See You In C-U-B-A  | Goodbye Booze  |  | John Hammond  | Key To The Highway  | The Best Of John Hammond - 1970 | Stompin Dave Allen and Sam Kelly  | Please Don't Shoot Me Down  | Live At The Bulfrog Blues Club | Big Joe Turner  | Rebecca  | Rocks In My Bed  |  | Memphis Minnie  | Hoodoo Lady  | Blues, Blues Hoodoo Halloween | Pete Johnson  | Some Day Blues - Original  | Pete Johnson Selected Hits Vol4 [Charley] | Seasick Steve  | Salem Blues  | Dog House Music  |  | Adam Franklin  | Terraplane Blues  | Outside Man  |  | Michael Messer  | 17 Moonbeat  | King Guitar 2001  |  | Pistol Pete Wearn  | Police High Sheriff  | Service Station Coffee | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Green Onion  | The Swarthmore Concert (1964)

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |  | Jerry Reed  | Tupelo Mississippi Flash  |   |  | Chris Barber Featuring Ottilie Patterson  | Jail House Blues  | Jazz Masters Beale Street Blues | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Black Cadillac  | In The Key Of Lightnin  |  | Bukka White  | Bukka's Jitterbug Swing  | The Complete Sessions 1930-1940 | Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee  | Cornbread, Peas And Black Molasses (Recorded Live At The Free T  | Chris Barber Presents The Blues Legacy Lost & Found Series | Rev Gary Davis  | Cincinnati Flow Rag 1  | The Ernie Hawkins Session CD 3 | Scrapper Blackwell  | Blues Before Sunrise  | Mr Scrapper's Blues  |   |  | Snooks Eaglin  | High Society  | New Orleans Street Singer  |  | Big Bill Broonzy  | Key To The Highway  | Four Classic Albums Plus - CD One | Corey Harris  | High Fever Blues (solo version)  | Fish Ain't Bitin'  |   |  | Skip James  | Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues  | The Complete Early Recordings of Skip James - 1930 | Grey Ghost  | Sheik of Araby  | Grey Ghost  |   |  | Lonnie Johnson  | Four Hands Are Better Than Two  | Jazz Legends  |   |  | Blind Lemon Jefferson  | Match Box Blues  | Complete Recorded Works In Chronological Order | Mound City Blue Blowers  | Arkansas Blues [Chicago 2.23.24]  | Vibraphonic #3  |   |  | Sidney Bechet  | Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Larry Groce's career is quite an interesting and intriguing story. He attended high school with future recording artists Michael Martin Murphey, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and BW Stevenson. He became a regular performer at an NYC Upper West Side restaurant owned by Melissa Manchester's husband, and went on to record 9 albums and 36 tunes for Disney featuring children's songs including, when in 1976 he wrote “Pooh for President” for Disney to be released at Sears Stores. In 1976, his satiric novelty song "Junk Food Junkie" became a Billboard top-ten hit, and led to appearances on The Tonight Show, The Merv Griffin Show, American Bandstand, The Midnight Special, The Rich Little Show, Nashville Now, The Disney Channel, Dr. Demento, and A Prairie Home Companion. In 1983, Groce co-founded Mountain Stage, a two-hour live music program produced by West Virginia Public Radio and distributed nationally and internationally by NPR and Voice of America's satellite radio service to over 200 stations. He is its host, producer and artistic director. His musical tastes have been instrumental in defining the sound of the show. Mountain Stage was the first nationally broadcast radio or television program to feature live performances by Lyle Lovett, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sheryl Crow, Barenaked Ladies, Alison Krauss, Ani DiFranco, Phish, Counting Crows, Ben Harper, Ryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Ben Harper, Lucinda Williams, David Gray, and The Avett Brothers. The show has also featured musical pioneers such as Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, Pops Staples, and Brownie McGhee as well as modern superstars R.E.M., Martina McBride and Norah Jones. Groce retired from hosting Mountain Stage in 2021 with his successor being hit singer songwriter, and West Virginia native Kathy Mattea. Joining us on the show as co-host is John Adams from Money Concepts. We talk a bit about how Larry saved the money he earned during his career, and we even delve into how the Chuck Berry Hit “Johnny Be Good” came about. The Business Side of Music ™ © 2022 Lotta Dogs Productions LLC Showrunner and Executive Producer Emeritus: Tom Sabella Producer and Host (the guy who has a face for podcasting): Bob Bender Co-Producer - Audio/Video Editor (the man behind the curtain): Mark Sabella Director of Video and Continuity (the brains of the entire operation): Deborah Halle Marketing and Social Media (all knowing): Sarah Fleshner for 362 Entertainment All Around Problem Solver (and Mental Health Therapist for us): Connie Ribas Recorded inside an old beat up Airstream Trailer located somewhere on what's left of Music Row in Nashville TN (except during pandemics, then it's pretty much been accomplished VIA Zoom or over the phone, with the exception for those fearless enough to come to Bob Bender's dining room… and there have been a few that have survived). Mixed and Mastered at Music Dog Studios in Nashville, TN Editing and Post at Midnight Express Studio located in Olian, NY Production Sound Design: Keith Stark Voice Over and Promo: Lisa Fuson Special Thanks to the creator and founder of the podcast, Tom Sabella, along with Traci Snow for producing and hosting over 100 episodes of the original "Business Side of Music" podcast and trusting us to carry on their legacy.  Website: If you would like to be a guest on the show, please submit a request to: musicpodcast@mail.com If you're interested in becoming a sponsor for the show, let us know and we'll send you a media / sponsorship kit to you. Contact us at musicpodcast@mail.com

Taj Mahal y Ry Cooder, dos leyendas vivientes de la música, nos regalan esta joya del blues en un trabajo pra Nonesuch Records en este 2022. Un 2 de uno imperdible.

Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder “Get On Board” (The Songs Of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee): ”My Baby Done Changed The Lock On The Door” ”The Midnight Special” ”Hooray Hooray” ”Deep Sea Diver” ”Pick A Bale Of Cotton” ”Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” ”What A Beautiful City” ”Pawn Shop Blues” ”Cornbread, Peas, Black Molasses” ”Packing Up Getting Ready To Go” feat. The Ton3s ”I Shall Not Be Moved” Van Morrison “What’s It Gonna Take?”: “Dangerous” Escuchar audio

Brendan Power is famous internationally as a phenomenal harmonica player in many genres and also as an instrument innovator. He's invented many unique harmonicas to increase the expressiveness and range possibilities of the instrument family, and is constantly experimenting. Brendan also has a fascinating personal story in that he discovered the harmonica in his university years, and changed his life in order to master it. He is completely self-taught and you may have heard his playing on albums with Sting, Kate Bush, Van Morrison, movies like Shanghai Noon and Atonement, or over 20 of his solo albums. I was thrilled to have this opportunity to speak with him!  During the episode Brendan demonstrates a few of his harmonicas in different styles, and I've added timestamps below.  The video version (transcript will be added soon) is: https://www.leahroseman.com/episodes/brendan-power-harmonica-player-and-inventor Brendan Power's website is: https://www.brendan-power.com/ Help me out? https://ko-fi.com/leahroseman Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:12) Amazing Grace on the AsiaBend harmonica (03:15) Discussion of the AsiaBend harmonica and different musical traditions, including Indianization of different instruments (07:58) Bulgarian music (10:10) How Brendan started developing different tunings (10:58) Brendan's start in music, hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (12:56) Brendan's family influences, early playing opportunities in New Zealand (15:27) how Brendan learned by ear, understanding of harmony (18:32) Brendan early years in England, winning the All-Ireland (21:39) getting hired by Sting for the Ten Summoner's Tales videos, playing with David Sanchez, Vinnie Colaiuta (24:04) Internet history: a CD of Ten Summoner's Tales sold in 1994 was the first secure transaction on the internet (24:59) Lucy Randall (25:26) Irish music Corner House jig into a reel (28:01) retuning harmonicas, developing different harmonicas (29:45) History of the harmonica (31:27) using iPad for music effects, MIDI, Akai EWI, SWAM Audio Modeling (35:43) Richter tuning, development of bending notes in the Blues, Paddy Richter tuning (38:10) the number of harmonicas most serious players have (41:38) pros and cons of the chromatic harmonica (43:46) how to alter a chromatic harmonica for more expressive possibilities (45:54) discussion of the SlipSlider and new innovations (49:07) pros and cons of MIDI harmonicas (51:21) Brendan's early years learning on his own --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leah-roseman/message

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Jake Leg Jug Band  | Stove Pipe Blues  | LIve At Audley Theatre | Big Bill Broonzy  | Stump Blues  | Four Classic Albums Plus - CD Two | Ken Tucker Band  | Aint No Good Time  | Acoustic Tendencies  |  | Mill Billy Blues  | Don't Let Your Mouth Write A Check That Your Butt Can't Cover  | Mill Billy Blues  |  | Stomping Dave & Lucy Piper  | Depth of Your Macinations  | Nothing But Trouble  |  | Ramblin' Jack Elliott  | San Francisco Bay Blues  | Catch Me A Freight Train | Big Maybelle  | Tell Me Who  | Total Blues - 100 Essential Songs | Blind Willie Johnson  | You_re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond  | Praise God I'm Satisfied | Kalamazoo Junction  | Outskirts Blues  | Old Tunes New Blues | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Backwater Blues - [ASH GROVE 1-21-1967 1ST SHOW]  | Ash Grove 01-21-1967 1st Show | Champion Jack Dupree  | County Jail Special  | The Blues - 200 Blues Classics | Moonshine Society  | The One Who Got Away (Acoustic-Bonus)  | Sweet Thing (Special Edition) | Blind Blake  | Come On Boys Let's Do That Mess Around  | All The Recorded Sides | Pete Seeger  | Talking Atom (Old Man Atom)  | Dylan's Talking Blues - The Roots of Bob's Rythmic Rhyming | Sam Chatmon  | God Don't Like Ugly  | Sam Chatmon's Advice | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Automobile Blues  | Lightnin' Hopkns: Blues Master

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Anthony Geraci  | Song For Planet Earth  | Blues Called My Name | Big Jack Johnson with Kim Wilson  | Alcohol  | Stripped Down In Memphis | Jason Lee McKinney Band  | Voice For The Voiceless  | One Last Thing  |  | The Lucky Ones  | Goodbye Train  | Slow Dance, Square Dance, Barn Dance | Dom Martin  | Echoes  | A Savage Life  |  | Michael Rubin  | Can We Break Up Again  | I'll Worry If I Wanna  |  | Delbert McClinton  | I Want A Little Girl  | Outdated Emotion  |  | Gina Sicilia  | There's A Bright Side Somewhere  | Unchange  |  | Charlie Spand  | Big Fat Mama Blues  | Piano Blues  |  | The Ragged Roses  | Hoodoo Voodoo  | Do Me Right  |  | Bessie Jones & with the Georgia Sea Island Singers  | One of These Days  | Get In Union  | Alan Lomax Archives/Association For Cultural Equity | Howlin' Wolf  | Houserockin' Boogie  | Roots of Rock N' Roll Vol 7 1951 | Mike Zito & Friends  | Thirty Days  | Rock 'N' Roll; A Tribute To Chuck Berry | Ian Siegal  | Monday Saw  | Stone By Stone  |  | Jim Dan Dee  | The Things That I Used To Do  | Real Blues  |  | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | White Boy Lost In The Blues  | Sonny & Brownie  | 

Aretha Franklin "Don't Play That Song"Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (with Lightin' Hopkins) "Everybody's Blues"Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee "Trouble In Mind"Cat Power "Do the Romp"Paul Westerberg "Knockin on Mine"Justin Townes Earle "Far From Me"Nina Simone "Revolution (Pts. 1 and 2)"Cory Branan "You Make Me"The Handsome Family "The Bottomless Hole"Songs: Ohia "Farewell Transmission"Bob Dylan "Meet Me In the Morning"Bob Dylan "Gotta Serve Somebody"George Jones & Ernest Tubb "Half a Mind"Woody Guthrie "Going Down the Road"Etta James "Almost Persuaded"Margo Price "Twinkle Twinkle"Millie Jackson "If Loving You Is Wrong I Don't Want to Be Right"Arthur Conley "Shake, Rattle & Roll"Wilson Pickett "Mini-Skirt Minnie"Gladys Knight & The Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia"Bonnie Raitt "I Thank You"Ted Hawkins "There Stands The Glass"Vic Chesnutt "Guilty By Association"Candi Staton "I'm Just a Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin')"Solomon Burke "Proud Mary"Patterson Hood "Heat Lighting Rumbles In the Distance"Centro-matic "Iso-Residue"Counting Crows "Omaha"Pedro The Lion "First Drum Set"Mos Def "Close Edge"M. Ward "Never Had Nobody Like You"Bettye Swann "Stand By Your Man"Craig Finn "This is What It Looks Like"Widespread Panic "Contentment Blues"Buddy Guy "She's Got The Devil In Her"Waylon Jennings "Midnight Rider"Mildred Anderson "Cool Kind of Poppa (Good Kind Daddy)"Lucinda Williams "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine"Grateful Dead "Cold Rain and Snow"Little Milton "That's What Love Will Make You Do"Steve Earle "Feel Alright"Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens "What Have You Done?"Jason Isbell "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades"David Ramirez "That Ain't Love"

When they first collaborated almost sixty years ago, Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder came together over a shared love of the music of blues legends Sonny Terry and Brownie Mcghee. Now with the help of Joachim Cooder, the two friends have reunited to make sure that the music of the past isn't forgotten and Get On Board, a recreation of the classic Folkways release is the result. PLUS! Music we love from The Bogie Band's debut album The Prophets in the City and Washington, D.C.'s Rosie Cima & What She Dreamed!Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/discologist. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Aquesta setmana comencem amb el disc que Ry Cooder i Taj Mahal dediquen al cançoner de dos pioners del blues Sonny Terry i Brownie McGhee, descobrim Black Mango el projecte de Phillipe Sanmiguel que viu a Bamako i ha gravat entre altres amb Samba Touré i acabem parlant del proper festival Ciutat Flamenco del Taller de Músics amb Naike Ponce, Chicuelo...

This week on the program we'll hear some great acoustic blues. We have classics from Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Frank Hovington and new releases from Grammy winner Cedric Burnside, and Bonnie Raitt. We'll feature three selections and a review of the new CD Get On Board from old friends Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, focused on the music of Sonny & Brownie. Acoustic blues, old and new … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian FolkwaysWoody Mann / “The Rev's Music” / Road Trip / Acoustic SessionsGrant Dermody & Frank Fotusky / “Peach Tree Blues” / Digging in John's Backyard / Self ProducedFrank Hovington / “Mean Old Frisco” / Lonesome Road Blues / RounderMaria Muldaur w/ Tuba Skinny / “I Like You Best of All” / Let's Get Happy Together / Stony PlainWillie Dixon / “88 Boogie” / The Big Three Trio / ColumbiaSon House / “Preachin' Blues” / Forever on My Mind / Easy Eye SoundBonnie Raitt / “Down the Hall” / Just Like That... / RedwingBlind Willie Johnson / “Dark Was the Night-Cold Was the Ground” / Praise God I'm Satisfied / YazooWoody Mann / “Aflenz” / Road Trip/ Acoustic SessionsTaj Mahal & Ry Cooder / “Hooray Hooray” / Get on Board / NonesuchTaj Mahal & Ry Cooder / “What a Beautiful City” / Get on Board / NonesuchTaj Mahal & Ry Cooder / “I Shall Not Be Moved” / Get on Board / NonesuchCedric Burnside / “The World Can Be So Cold” / I Be Trying / Single LockSonny Terry & Brownie McGhee / “Walk On” / Blues Cafe / PutumayoPete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Half Deaf Clatch  | Soul Of A Man  | Modern and Primitive | Catfish Keith  | Red Night Gown | Land of the Sky  |  | Mat Walklate & Alex Haynes  | New Rocking Chair  | Bopflix Session  |  | Mamie Smith & and her Jazz Hounds  | Crazy Blues  | The Blues - 200 Blues Classics | Maria Muldaur with Tuba Skinny  | Patience and Fortitude  | Let's Get Happy Together [Stoney Plain] | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Backwater Blues - | Ash Grove 01-21-1967 1st Show | Frankie 'Half-Pint' Jaxon & His Hot Shots  | Banker's Blues:  A Study In The Effects Of Fiscal Mischief | Dean Haitani  | Sometimes I Wonder  | RED DUST  |  | Cedric Burnside  | I Be Trying  | I Be Trying  |  | Prakash Slim  | Villager's Blues  | Country Blues From Nepal | The Jake Leg Jug Band  | Who Rolled The Stone Away  | EVERYTHIN'S JAKE  |  | Doug MacLeod, & Dave Smith, Rick Steff, Steve Potts  | Grease The Wheel  | A Soul to Claim | E. Mullaney & P. Stack  | Maid In A Cherry Tree  | The Return Of The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of | Bunk Johnson  | Minstral Man  | The Last Testament  |  | Sidney Bechet  | Preachin' Blues  | The Copulatin' Blues

The harmonica master and singer with Canned Heat and Poncho Sanchez grew up in the musical hotbed of Downey, California, with Phil and Dave Alvin. Influenced early on by the Louis Jordan records of his trumpet-playing mother, he caught the blues bug hearing artists like the Paul Butterfield Band, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee at the Ash Grove and the Golden Bear in L.A. Comfortable in a variety of musical settings, tonight Dale tests his tolerance level in a session with the Troubled Men. Topics include baths vs. showers, the impending 200th episode, a borrowed book, Michael Tisserand, a student worker, a Bob Dylan show, tainted cupcakes, sailing from Pongo-Pongo, Bud Ferillo, the Coach House, the Vietnam draft, evading the FBI, going country, Lon Price, Duke Burrell, a Jazz Fest gig, moving to New Orleans, meeting Fito De La Parra, Larry Taylor, a music cruise, psychedelics, and much more. Intro music: Styler/Coman Break music: “You’re The One” by The Little Elmore Reed Blues Band featuring Dale Spalding Outro music: “Early In The Mornin’” from “Latin Spirits” by Poncho Sanchez Support the podcast: Paypal or Venmo Join the Patreon page here. Shop for Troubled Men’s Wear here. Subscribe, review, and rate (5 stars) on Apple Podcasts or any podcast source. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Troubled Men Podcast Facebook Troubled Men Podcast Instagram Big Island Jazz and Blues Festival Iguanas Tour Dates René Coman Facebook Canned Heat Homepage Dale Spalding Facebook

Durham, North Carolina - a city that blossomed out of the tobacco industry and was originally fueled by manufacturing - has gone through many phases. Today its factories house performing arts centers and bougie lofts, but this place has just as long and varied a musical history going back a century or more. Then and now, it's been a center for jazz, hip-hop, Americana country-rock and most of all, Piedmont blues.Back when Durham was becoming known as the Bull City, its soundtrack was Piedmont blues as played by giants like Blind Boy Fuller, Reverend Gary Davis, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. In the 1920s and ‘30s, factory workers made up the audience for blues and other developing styles of music. Now, tech workers and college students flock to the city's many venues.It's a long way from the city's early days, but also still rife with change; battles over segregation have evolved into disputes over gentrification. But what hasn't changed is that it remains a great music town, one that draws both artists and fans alike.In this episode, we explore the phases of Durham's past, present and future with guests who call it home, like Bluegrass Hall of Famer Alice Gerrard, country singer Rissi Palmer, Hiss Golden Messenger's M.C. Taylor, Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon, and more.Subscribe to Carolina Calling to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Wilmington, Greensboro, Shelby, Asheville, and more. Brought to you by The Bluegrass Situation and Come Hear NCCove photo courtesy of Discover DurhamAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Shawn Pittman  | Lightnin's Stomp  | Stompin' Solo  |  | Ed Bell  | Hambone Blues  | The Paramount Masters - CD 4/4 | Hans Theessink and Big Daddy Wilson  | Virus Blues  | Pay Day  |   |  | Prakash Slim  | Crossroad Blues  | Country Blues From Nepal | Piano Kid Edwards  | Give Us Another Jug  | The Paramount Masters - CD 4/4 | Duke Ellington  | Mood Indigo  | Rockin' In Rhythm  |  | Little G Weevil  | On My Way To Memphis  | Live Acoustic Session | Sawmill Roots Orchestra  | Build Me A Statue  | Sawmill Roots Orchestra | Lightnin' Hopkins  | My Babe  | Double Blues (1972)  |  | Blind Lemon Jefferson  | Bed Spring Blues  | The Best Of Blind Lemon Jefferson | Meade Lux Lewis  | Honky Tonk Train Blues  | The Paramount Masters - CD 1/4 | Otis Rush  | Three Times A Fool  | Total Blues - 100 Essential Songs | John Hammond  | Cryin' For My Baby  | Southern Fried  |  | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Backwater Blues  | Ash Grove 01-21-1967 1st Show | John Lee Hooker  | Worried Life Blues  | Total Blues - 100 Essential Songs

We all have people in our lives who inspire us, encourage us, and who push us to dream, hope and create. For musicians Guy Davis and Fabrizio Poggi, two of those inspirations where the great bluesmen, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Earlier in 2017, Davis and Poggi released a tribute album, 'Sonny and Brownie's Last Train' and stopped by Folk Alley for an exclusive in-studio performance and to talk more about two of their musical heroes.

From New York City's High School of Music and Art, to Sundays in Washington Square Park and Woodstock, Happy Traum has been the heart and soul of the American folk music scene. He's cold-called guitar legend Brownie McGhee, hit the big time with his brother Artie, played with dozens of folk music luminaries, and taught hundreds of thousands how to play through Homespun Music. He even designed his own signature guitar to rave reviews! Now hear him tell Cheryl his 60 year story in under an hour! Plus, he even plays a previously unreleased song just for our FolkPod fans! 

Mark tells his story of arriving in Northern California and his journey into the San Francisco Bay Area Blues scene. Mark talks about the musicians, clubs and colorful characters that populated the area and how a young harmonica player from Southern California was able to enter and thrive in this vibrant scene. Mark's new CD is culled from his extensive collection of recordings from 1976-1988. With contributions from Brownie McGhee, Sonny Rhodes, Boogie Jake, JJ Malone, Cool Papa, Mississippi Johnny Waters and many more. Now Available from Mark Hummel  & Electro-Fi Records Please SUBSCRIBE on Youtube and on your favorite podcast platform. Join us on Patreon

If you thought last week's movie was an odd one, wait until you feast your eyes on 1987's Angel Heart. Somehow simultaneously boring as sin and yet fascinatingly weird, this one's got plenty to talk about - and we'll do just that. So hop on the elevator that's only going down as we discuss Dustin's Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa stories, Chekov's gumbo, the best part of every diner, and a hell (pun intended) of a lot more.Angel Heart stars Mickey Rourke, Stocker Fontelieu, Lisa Bonet, Robert De Niro, Brownie McGhee, and Charlotte Rampling. Directed by Alan Parker.If you enjoy what we do, please subscribe to our show, and leave us a rating and some feedback as well!Like us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterCatch up with us on InstagramJoin the discussion on our subredditBrought to you by HOLY Propaganda

Show 22 – Recorded 12-30-18 This podcast provides 14 performances of blues songs performed by 14 musical artists or groups who's tremendous talent is highlighted here. Performances range from the 1941 up to 2008.  These artists are: Big Joe Williams and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Lightnin Hopkins, Memphis Minnie, Bo Diddley, BB King […]

Show 17 – Recorded 9-30-18 This podcast provides 14 performances of blues songs performed by 14 musical artists who's tremendous talent is highlighted here. Performances range from the 1940's up to 2012.  These artists are: Howlin Wolf, Lightnin Hopkins, Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry, Snooky Pryor, Precious Bryant, PeeWee Crayton, Paul Oscher, Otis Spann, Mavis […]

Show 11 – Recorded 8-12-18 This podcast provides 13 performances of blues songs performed by 13 artists ranging from the 1940's up to 2016.  Blues artists are: Taj Mahal, The Staples Singers, Otis Redding, Rolling Stones, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Petway, Brownie McGhee, Robert Balfour, Jerry Lee Lewis, John Oates, Albert King, Junior Wells, […]