Podcast appearances and mentions of Charley Patton

In this kickoff episode for Black Music Month, Jack Dappa Blues Radio explores the Blues as Black folklore, not just as music, but as cultural testimony, survival strategy, and sonic memory. Through the voices of Tommy Johnson, Mance Lipscomb, Rube Lacy, Charley Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, we treat Blues lyrics as living archives, capturing addiction, emotional depth, environmental trauma, and coded cultural critique.We examine the Blues as testimony, as ecological witness, and as class commentary, diving into how metaphor, moan, and memory serve as vital tools for storytelling and resistance.This episode honors the spirit of Black Music Month by placing tradition bearers front and center, revealing how the Blues doesn't just recall history—it makes it.

Join host Lij Shaw as he dives into the sonic journey of audio engineering with Dave Glasser, founder of Airshow Mastering, revealing the secrets behind mastering timeless records like those of the Grateful Dead. In this episode of Recording Studio Rockstars, Dave shares his rich 35-year experience—from tape transfers using the Plangent Process to his days at NPR—while exploring the delicate balance of preserving the essence of live music and adapting to modern audio standards. Tune in for insights on the intricacies of mastering jazz records, the evolution of sound quality, and the magic of Phil Lesh's iconic bass. Whether you're a seasoned engineer or just starting out, Dave's passion and curiosity will inspire you to elevate your own audio projects. Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: https://MixMasterBundle.com My guest today is David Glasser, founder and chief engineer at Airshow Mastering. David has over 35 years of experience in audio engineering and has mastered thousands of records, including more than 80 GRAMMY nominees. He's a three-time nominee himself, earning two Grammys for mastering and restoration work on the Anthology of American Folk Music and Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton. David's career began with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, followed by eight years of recording and production for NPR. He founded Airshow in 1983 and transitioned to full-time mastering in 1990. In 1997, he expanded to Boulder, Colorado, and later built a new state-of-the-art facility in 2016, where he continues to lead a busy mastering practice. Special thanks to Matt Boudreau for the introduction! And this episode is dedicated to the memory of Phil Lesh. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! http://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com https://usa.sae.edu/ https://www.izotope.com Use code ROCK10 to get 10% off! https://www.native-instruments.com Use code ROCK10 to get 10% off! https://www.adam-audio.com/ https://stealthchair.com/ Use code ROCK10 to get 10% off! https://www.makebelievestudio.com/mbsi Get your MBSI plugin here! https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy  https://www.thetoyboxstudio.com/ Listen to the podcast theme song “Skadoosh!” https://solo.to/lijshawmusic Listen to this guest's discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0YqgLkpCEH5Toiybhl73S4?si=6ab393990ad44695 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: https://RSRockstars.com/500

There's an echo in the well of Americana and it reverberates from tradition and some of the early songsmiths and blues masters who delivered the blues proper through the depths of the past century of America's music. We'll be pulling some of the classic blues covers of songs composed by just a small collection of the great blues masters: Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake and beyond in this week's episode. There is seldom enough time to make a dent in only two hours but we'll do our best with covers from some of the inheritors like BB King, Carl Perkins, Bob Dylan, Jorma Kaukonen and a couple dozen others. We're excavating some deeper roots this week and then tilling the airwaves with freshly turned songs of the earth; a landscape of blues cutting a deep swath across the musical landscape of the past 100 years. Celebrating blues and those who brought it home this week on KOWS Community Radio. 

Extrait : « … Une alchimie improbable pour une île qui nous balance depuis trop longtemps une musique créole particulièrement insupportable. Cette fois, c'est comme si la Guadeloupe s'en était libérée, avait été transportée au milieu du Delta du Mississippi, et avait troqué son rhum pour du bourbon, ses champs de canne à sucre pour du coton, et le talent du trio pour celui des pères fondateurs du blues du Delta, les Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker et autres Muddy Waters … »Pour commenter les épisodes, tu peux le faire sur ton appli de podcasts habituelle, c'est toujours bon pour l'audience. Mais également sur le site web dédié, il y a une section Le Bar, ouverte 24/24, pour causer du podcast ou de musique en général, je t'y attends avec impatience. Enfin, si tu souhaites me soumettre une chanson, c'est aussi sur le site web que ça se passe. Pour soutenir Good Morning Music et Gros Naze :1. Abonne-toi2. Laisse-moi un avis et 5 étoiles sur Apple Podcasts, ou Spotify et Podcast Addict3. Partage ton épisode préféré à 3 personnes autour de toi. Ou 3.000 si tu connais plein de monde.Good Morning Music Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Exploring the Grateful Dead's LegacyIn this episode of the Deadhead Cannabis Show, Larry Mishkin takes listeners on a nostalgic journey through the Grateful Dead's music, focusing on a concert from September 30, 1993, at the Boston Garden. He discusses various songs, including 'Here Comes Sunshine' and 'Spoonful,' while also touching on the band's history and the contributions of key figures like Vince Wellnick and Candace Brightman. The episode also delves into current music news, including a review of Lake Street Dive's performance and updates on marijuana legislation in Ukraine and the U.S.Chapters00:00 Welcome to the Deadhead Cannabis Show03:39 Here Comes Sunshine: A Grateful Dead Classic09:47 Spoonful: The Blues Influence14:00 Music News: Rich Girl and Lake Street Dive24:09 Candace Brightman: The Unsung Hero of Lighting38:01 Broken Arrow: Phil Lesh's Moment to Shine42:19 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: A Beatles Classic48:26 Marijuana News: Ukraine's Medical Cannabis Legislation54:32 Bipartisan Support for Clean Slate Act01:00:11 Pennsylvania's Push for Marijuana Legalization01:04:25 CBD as a Natural Insecticide01:10:26 Wave to the Wind: A Phil Lesh Tune01:13:18 The Other One: A Grateful Dead Epic Boston GardenSeptember 30, 1993  (31 years ago)Grateful Dead Live at Boston Garden on 1993-09-30 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet ArchiveINTRO:                                 Here Comes Sunshine                                                Track #1                                                0:08 – 1:48 Released on Wake of the Flood, October 15, 1973, the first album on the band's own “Grateful Dead Records” label. The song was first performed by the Grateful Dead in February 1973. It was played about 30 times through to February 1974 and then dropped from the repertoire. The song returned to the repertoire in December 1992, at the instigation of Vince Welnick, and was then played a few times each year until 1995. Played:  66 timesFirst:  February 9, 1973 at Maples Pavilion, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USALast:  July 2, 1995 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN, USA But here's the thing:                         Played 32 times in 1973                        Played 1 time in 1974                        Not played again until December 6, 1992 at Compton Terrace in Chandler, AZ  - 18 years                        Then played a “few” more times in 1993, 94 and 95, never more than 11 times in any one year. I finally caught one in 1993 at the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago with good buddies Marc and Alex. My favorite version is Feb. 15, 1973 at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison, WI SHOW No. 1:                     Spoonful                                                Track #2                                                :50 – 2:35 "Spoonful" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon and first recorded in 1960 by Howlin' Wolf. Released in June, 1960 by Chess Records in Chicago.  Called "a stark and haunting work",[1] it is one of Dixon's best known and most interpreted songs.[2]Etta James and Harvey Fuqua had a pop and R&B record chart hit with their duet cover of "Spoonful" in 1961, and it was popularized in the late 1960s by the British rock group Cream. Dixon's "Spoonful" is loosely based on "A Spoonful Blues", a song recorded in 1929 by Charley Patton.[3] Earlier related songs include "All I Want Is a Spoonful" by Papa Charlie Jackson (1925) and "Cocaine Blues" by Luke Jordan (1927).The lyrics relate men's sometimes violent search to satisfy their cravings, with "a spoonful" used mostly as a metaphor for pleasures, which have been interpreted as sex, love, and drugs. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful" as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".[9] It is ranked number 154 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2021 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time",[10] up from number 221 on its 2004 list. In 2010, the song was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame "Classics of Blues Recordings" category.[12] In a statement by the foundation, it was noted that "Otis Rush has stated that Dixon presented 'Spoonful' to him, but the song didn't suit Rush's tastes and so it ended up with Wolf, and soon thereafter with Etta James".[12] James' recording with Harvey Fuqua as "Etta & Harvey" reached number 12 on Billboard magazine's Hot R&B Sides chart and number 78 on its Hot 100 singles chart.[13] However, Wolf's original "was the one that inspired so many blues and rock bands in the years to come". The British rock group Cream recorded "Spoonful" for their 1966 UK debut album, Fresh Cream. They were part of a trend in the mid-1960s by rock artists to record a Willie Dixon song for their debut albums. Sung by Bob Weir, normally followed Truckin' in the second set.  This version is rare because it is the second song of the show and does not have a lead in.  Ended Here Comes Sunshine, stopped, and then went into this.  When it follows Truckin', just flows right into Spoonful. Played:  52 timesFirst:  October 15, 1981 at Melkweg, Amsterdam, NetherlandsLast:  December 8, 1994 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USA  MUSIC NEWS:                              Lead In Music                                                Rich Girl                                                Lake Street Dive                                                Lake Street Dive: Rich Girl [4K] 2018-05-09 - College Street Music Hall; New Haven, CT (youtube.com)                                                0:00 – 1:13 "Rich Girl" is a song by Daryl Hall & John Oates. It debuted on the Billboard Top 40 on February 5, 1977, at number 38 and on March 26, 1977, it became their first of six number-one singles on the BillboardHot 100. The single originally appeared on the 1976 album Bigger Than Both of Us. At the end of 1977, Billboard ranked it as the 23rd biggest hit of the year. The song was rumored to be about the then-scandalous newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. In fact, the title character in the song is based on a spoiled heir to a fast-food chain who was an ex-boyfriend of Daryl Hall's girlfriend, Sara Allen. "But you can't write, 'You're a rich boy' in a song, so I changed it to a girl," Hall told Rolling Stone. Hall elaborated on the song in an interview with American Songwriter: "Rich Girl" was written about an old boyfriend of Sara [Allen]'s from college that she was still friends with at the time. His name is Victor Walker. He came to our apartment, and he was acting sort of strange. His father was quite rich. I think he was involved with some kind of a fast-food chain. I said, "This guy is out of his mind, but he doesn't have to worry about it because his father's gonna bail him out of any problems he gets in." So I sat down and wrote that chorus. [Sings] "He can rely on the old man's money/he can rely on the old man's money/he's a rich guy." I thought that didn't sound right, so I changed it to "Rich Girl". He knows the song was written about him.  Lake Street Dive at Salt Shed Lake Street Dive is an American multi-genre band that was formed in 2004 at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.[1] The band's founding members are Rachael Price, Mike "McDuck" Olson, Bridget Kearney, and Mike Calabrese. Keyboardist Akie Bermiss joined the band on tour in 2017 and was first credited on their 2018 album Free Yourself Up; guitarist James Cornelison joined in 2021 after Olson left the band. The band is based in Brooklyn and frequently tours in North America, Australia, and Europe. The group was formed in 2004 as a "free country band"; they intended to play country music in an improvised, avant-garde style.[3] This concept was abandoned in favor of something that "actually sounded good", according to Mike Olson.[4] The band's name was inspired by the Bryant Lake Bowl, a frequent hang out in the band's early years, located on Lake Street in Minneapolis. Great show last Thursday night my wife and I went with good friends JT and Marni and Rick and Ben. Sitting in the back near the top of the bleachers with a killer view of the Chicago Sky line looking west to southeast and right along the north branch of the Chicago River.  Beautiful weather and a great night overall.  My first time seeing the band although good buddies Alex, Andy and Mike had seen the at Redrocks in July and all spoke very highly of the band which is a good enough endorsement for me. I don't know any of their songs, but they were very good and one of their encores was Rich Girl which made me smile because that too is a song from my high school and college days, that's basically 40+ years ago.  Combined with Goose's cover of the 1970's hit “Hollywood Nights” by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band it was a trip down memory lane. I would recommend seeing this band to any fan of fun music.  They were all clearly having a great time. Katie Pruitt opened and came out to sing a song with LSD. In 2017, Pruitt was awarded the Buddy Holly Prize from the Songwriters Hall of Fame[4] and signed with Round Hill Records.[5] Her EP, OurVinyl Live Session EP was released in March 2018.[6] She was named by Rolling Stone as one of 10 new country artists you need to know[7] and by NPR as one of the 20 artists to watch, highlighting Pruitt as someone who "possesses a soaring, nuanced and expressive voice, and writes with devastating honesty".[8] On September 13, 2019, Pruitt released "Expectations", the title track from her full-length debut. Additional singles from this project were subsequently released: "Loving Her" on October 21, 2019,[9] and "Out of the Blue" on November 15, 2019.[10] On February 21, 2020, Pruitt's debut album, Expectations, was released by Rounder Records.[11][12] She earned a nomination for Emerging Act of the Year at the 2020 Americana Music Honors & Awards.[13] In the same year, she duetted with Canadian singer-songwriter Donovan Woods on "She Waits for Me to Come Back Down", a track from his album Without People.[14] In 2021 the artist was inter alia part of the Newport Folk Festival in July. Recommend her as well.  2.     Move Me Brightly: Grateful Dead Lighting Director Candace Brightman Candace Brightman (born 1944)[1] is an American lighting engineer, known for her longtime association with the Grateful Dead. She is the sister of author Carol Brightman. Brightman grew up in Illinois and studied set design at St John's College, Annapolis, Maryland.[1] She began working as a lighting technician in the Anderson Theater, New York City, and was recruited by Bill Graham to operate lighting at the Fillmore East.[3] In 1970, she operated the house lights at the Chicago Coliseum with Norol Tretiv.[4] She has also worked for Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker and Van Morrison. After serving as house lighting engineer for several Grateful Dead shows, including their 1971 residency at the Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, she was recruited by the band's Jerry Garcia to work for them full-time.[1] She started working regularly for the Dead on their 1972 tour of Europe (which was recorded and released as Europe 72), and remained their in-house lighting engineer for the remainder of their career.[1] One particular challenge that Brightman faced was having to alter lighting setups immediately in response to the Dead's improvisational style. By the band's final tours in the mid-1990s, she was operating a computer-controlled lighting system and managing a team of technicians.[5] Her work inspired Phish's resident lighting engineer Chris Kuroda, who regularly studied techniques in order to keep up with her standards. Brightman continued working in related spin-off projects until 2005.[1][7] She returned to direct the lighting for the Fare Thee Well concerts in 2015, where she used over 500 fixtures. Now facing significant financial and health related issues. 3.    Neil Young and New Band, The Chrome Hearts, Deliver 13-Minute “Down By The River” on Night One at The Capitol Theatre My buddies and I still can't believe Neil with Crazy Horse did not play their Chicago show back in May this year.  Thank god he's ok and still playing but we are bummed out at missing the shared experience opportunity that only comes along when seeing a rock legend like Neil and there aren't many.   SHOW No. 2:                     Broken Arrow                                                Track #5                                                1:10 – 3:00 Written by Robbie Robertson and released on his album Robbie Robertson released on October 27, 1987.  It reached number 29 on the RPM CanCon charts in 1988.[23]Rod Stewart recorded a version of "Broken Arrow" in 1991 for his album Vagabond Heart.[24] Stewart's version of the song was released as a single on August 26, 1991,[25] with an accompanying music video, reaching number 20 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and number two in Canada. This ballad is not to be confused either with Chuck Berry's 1959 single or Buffalo Springfield's 1967 song of the same name, written by Neil Young. "Broken Arrow" was also performed live by the Grateful Dead from 1993 to 1995 with Phil Lesh on vocals.[28] Grateful Dead spinoff groups The Dead, Phil Lesh and Friends, and The Other Ones have also performed the song, each time with Lesh on vocals.[29] Played:  35 timesFirst:  February 23, 1993 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 2, 1995 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN, USA  SHOW No. 3:         Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds                                    Track #9                                    2:46 – 4:13 "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their May, 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written primarily by John Lennon with assistance from Paul McCartney, and credited to the Lennon–McCartneysongwriting partnership.[2] Lennon's son Julian inspired the song with a nursery school drawing that he called "Lucy – in the sky with diamonds". Shortly before the album's release, speculation arose that the first letter of each of the nouns in the title intentionally spelled "LSD", the initialism commonly used for the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide.[3] Lennon repeatedly denied that he had intended it as a drug song,[3][4] and attributed the song's fantastical imagery to his reading of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books.[3] The Beatles recorded "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" in March 1967. Adding to the song's ethereal qualities, the musical arrangement includes a Lowrey organ part heavily treated with studio effects, and a drone provided by an Indian tambura. The song has been recognised as a key work in the psychedelic genre. Among its many cover versions, a 1974 recording by Elton John – with a guest appearance by Lennon – was a number 1 hit in the US and Canada. John Lennon said that his inspiration for the song came when his three-year-old son Julian showed him a nursery school drawing that he called "Lucy – in the Sky with Diamonds",[4] depicting his classmate Lucy O'Donnell.[5] Julian later recalled: "I don't know why I called it that or why it stood out from all my other drawings, but I obviously had an affection for Lucy at that age. I used to show Dad everything I'd built or painted at school, and this one sparked off the idea."[5][6][7]Ringo Starr witnessed the moment and said that Julian first uttered the song's title on returning home from nursery school.[4][8][9] Lennon later said, "I thought that's beautiful. I immediately wrote a song about it." According to Lennon, the lyrics were largely derived from the literary style of Lewis Carroll's novel Alice in Wonderland.[3][10] Lennon had read and admired Carroll's works, and the title of Julian's drawing reminded him of the "Which Dreamed It?" chapter of Through the Looking Glass, in which Alice floats in a "boat beneath a sunny sky".[11] Lennon recalled in a 1980 interview: It was Alice in the boat. She is buying an egg and it turns into Humpty-Dumpty. The woman serving in the shop turns into a sheep and the next minute they are rowing in a rowing boat somewhere and I was visualizing that.[3] Paul McCartney remembered of the song's composition, "We did the whole thing like an Alice in Wonderland idea, being in a boat on the river ... Every so often it broke off and you saw Lucy in the sky with diamonds all over the sky. This Lucy was God, the Big Figure, the White Rabbit."[10] He later recalled helping Lennon finish the song at Lennon's Kenwood home, specifically claiming he contributed the "newspaper taxis" and "cellophane flowers" lyrics.[8][12] Lennon's 1968 interview with Rolling Stone magazine confirmed McCartney's contribution.[13] Lucy O'Donnell Vodden, who lived in Surbiton, Surrey, died 28 September 2009 of complications of lupus at the age of 46. Julian had been informed of her illness and renewed their friendship before her death. Rumours of the connection between the title of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the initialism "LSD" began circulating shortly after the release of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP in June 1967.[24][25] McCartney gave two interviews in June admitting to having taken the drug.[26][27] Lennon later said he was surprised at the idea the title was a hidden reference to LSD,[3] countering that the song "wasn't about that at all,"[4] and it "was purely unconscious that it came out to be LSD. Until someone pointed it out, I never even thought of it. I mean, who would ever bother to look at initials of a title? ... It's not an acid song."[3] McCartney confirmed Lennon's claim on several occasions.[8][12] In 1968 he said: When you write a song and you mean it one way, and someone comes up and says something about it that you didn't think of – you can't deny it. Like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," people came up and said, cunningly, "Right, I get it. L-S-D," and it was when [news]papers were talking about LSD, but we never thought about it.[10] In a 2004 interview with Uncut magazine, McCartney confirmed it was "pretty obvious" drugs did influence some of the group's compositions at that time, including "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", though he tempered this statement by adding, "[I]t's easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles' music." In 2009 Julian with James Scott Cook and Todd Meagher released "Lucy", a song that is a quasi-follow-up to the Beatles song. The cover of the EP showed four-year-old Julian's original drawing, that now is owned by David Gilmour from Pink Floyd.[59] Lennon's original handwritten lyrics sold at auction in 2011 for $230,000. A lot of fun to see this tune live.  Love that Jerry does the singing even though his voice is very rough and he stumble through some of the lyrics.  It is a Beatles tune, a legendary rock tune, and Jerry sings it like he wrote it at his kitchen table. Phil and Friends with the Quintent cover the tune as well and I believe Warren Haynes does the primary singing on that version.  Warren, Jimmy Herring and Phil really rock that tune like the rock veterans they are. The version is fun because it opens the second set, a place of real prominence even after having played it for six months by this point.  Gotta keep the Deadheads guessing. Played:  19 timesFirst:  March 17, 1993 at Capital Centre, Landover, MD, USALast: June 28, 1995 at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills, MI, USA  MJ NEWS: Ukrainian Officials Approve List Of Medical Marijuana Qualifying Conditions Under Country's New Legalization Law2.      Federal Marijuana And Drug Convictions Would Be Automatically Sealed Under New Bipartisan Senate Bill3.      Pennsylvania Police Arrest An Average Of 32 People For Marijuana Possession Every Day, New Data Shows As Lawmakers Weigh Legalization4.      CBD-Rich Hemp Extract Is An Effective Natural Insecticide Against Mosquitoes, New Research Shows   SHOW No. 4:         Wave To The Wind                                    Track #10                                    5:00 – 6:40 Hunter/Lesh tune that was never released.  In fact, the Dead archives say that there is no studio recording of the song.  Not a great song.  I have no real memory of it other than it shows up in song lists for a couple of shows I attended.  Even this version of the tune is really kind of flat and uninspiring but there are not a lot of Phil tunes to feature and you can only discuss Box of Rain so many times.  Just something different to talk about. Played:  21 timesFirst:  February 22, 1992 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USALast:  December 9, 1993 at Los Angeles Sports Arena, Los Angeles, CA, USA  OUTRO:                   The Other One                                    Track #16                                    2:30 – 4:22 "That's It for the Other One" is a song by American band the Grateful Dead. Released on the band's second studio album Anthem of the Sun (released on July 18, 1968) it is made up of four sections—"Cryptical Envelopment", "Quadlibet for Tenderfeet", "The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get", and "We Leave the Castle". Like other tracks on the album, is a combination of studio and live performances mixed together to create the final product. While the "We Leave the Castle" portion of the song was never performed live by the band, the first three sections were all featured in concert to differing extents. "Cryptical Envelopment", written and sung by Jerry Garcia, was performed from 1967 to 1971, when it was then dropped aside from a select few performances in 1985. "The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get", written by Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir and sung by Weir, became one of the band's most frequently performed songs in concert (usually denoted as simply "The Other One"). One of the few Grateful Dead songs to have lyrics written by Weir, "The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get" became one of the Dead's most-played songs (being performed a known 586 times[2]) and most popular vehicles for improvisation, with some performances reaching 30+ minutes in length. The song's lyrics reference the influence of the Merry Pranksters and in particular Neal Cassady.[2] Additionally, the line "the heat came 'round and busted me for smilin' on a cloudy day"  - one of my favorite Grateful Dead lyrics  - refers to a time Weir was arrested for throwing a water balloon at a cop from the upstairs of 710 Ashbury, the Dead's communal home during the ‘60's and early ‘70's before the band moved its headquarters, and the band members moved, to Marin County just past the Golden Gate Bridge when driving out of the City. In my experience, almost always a second set tune.  Back in the late ‘60's and early ‘70's either a full That's It For The Other One suite or just The Other One, would be jammed out as long as Dark Star and sometimes longer.  During the Europe '72 tour, Dark Star and the full Other One Suite traded off every show as the second set psychedelic rock long jam piece.  Often preceded by a Phil bass bomb to bring the independent noodling into a full and tight jam with an energy all of its own. The Other One got its name because it was being written at the same time as Alligator, one of the Dead's very first tunes.  When discussing the tunes, there was Alligator and this other one. I always loved the Other One and was lucky enough to see the full That's It For The Other One suite twice in 1985 during its too brief comeback to celebrate the Dead's 20th anniversary. Played:  550 timesFirst:  October 31, 1967 at Winterland Arena, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field in Chicago Birthday shout out: Nephew, Jacob Mishkin, star collegiate baseball player, turns 21and all I can say is “no effing way!”  Happy birthday dude! And a Happy and healthy New Year to those celebrating Rosh Hashanah which begins this week. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Mean Ole FiremanMean Old Fireman, the musical brainchild of slide guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Ned Bollé, weaves ample doses of New Orleans grooves, southern rock and old school hard R&B onto a blues roots framework to create their own version of Americana. "Somewhere around age 11, I heard Derek and The Dominoes," Bollé explains, "and those first few notes Duane Allman plays on "Key To The Highway" galvanized me; I wanted to sound like that. That whetted my appetite, and then, like so many people do, I found my way back to the roots of it all - Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, those guys. The same thing happened with my love for New Orleans music, Robert Palmer led me to Lowell George, and that led me to the Meters, the Nevilles, Dr. John, and so on.” http://www.makingascene.org

"Cannabis, COVID, and Concerts: A Grateful Dead Fan's Journey"Larry Mishkin is back from a break spent in South Carolina with his granddaughter he shares his experience of contracting a mild case of COVID, attributing his quick recovery to his cannabis use. He references studies suggesting that certain strains of sativa marijuana may mitigate COVID symptoms.The episode features a detailed discussion of a special Grateful Dead concert from July 15, 1989, at Deer Creek Music Theater in Noblesville, Indiana. Larry reminisces about the venue, the band's setlist, and the memorable experience shared with friends. He highlights key performances from the show, including "Bertha," "Greatest Story Ever Told," "Candyman," "Walkin' Blues," and others.Larry also covers recent music news, mentioning Melissa Etheridge's performance in Colorado and her upcoming summer tour. He shares updates on the String Cheese Incident's New Orleans-themed show at Red Rocks and Phish's recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where they performed "Evolve" from their new album. Grateful DeadDeer Creek Music Theater CenterNoblesville, INGrateful Dead Live at Deer Creek Music Center on 1989-07-15 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive With:  Judy, Andy K., Lary V., AWell and others First Dead show ever at Deer Creek which had just opened that year.  Became a regular stop on the Dead's summer tour thereafter and one of the favorite places for the Deadheads given its relatively small size as compared to the stadium venues that soon became the norm for summer tours.  Ironically, two days after this one-off Dead played their final 3 shows at Alpine Valley, switched to Tinley Park in 1990 and then starting in 1991 Chicago summer  tour shows were confined to Soldier Field with 60,000 attendees. INTRO:                                 Bertha                                                Track #2                                                1:20 – 3:00 Garcia/Hunter – first appeared on Grateful Dead (live) aka Skull and Roses or Skullfuck (1971)Played: 401First:  February 18, 1971 at Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, USALast:  June 27, 1995 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit, MI  SHOW No. 1:                    Walkin Blues                                                Track #5                                                1:38 – 3:20 "Walkin' Blues" or "Walking Blues" is a blues standard written and recorded by American Delta blues musician Son House in 1930. Although unissued at the time, it was part of House's repertoire and other musicians, including Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, adapted the song and recorded their own versions. "Walkin' Blues" was not a commercial success when it was issued as a "race record" marketed to black listeners.  However, the song was received with great enthusiasm by a small group of white jazz record collectors and critics. Producer John Hammond chose "Walkin' Blues" and "Preachin' Blues" as the records to be played at his 1938 From Spirituals to Swing concert, when Johnson himself could not appear (Johnson had died a few months earlier).[15] The 1961 Johnson compilation album King of the Delta Blues Singers was marketed to white enthusiasts. According to most sources, John Hammond was involved in the production and the selection of tracks. The album included the two House-style songs and a song with House-style guitar figures ("Cross Road Blues" and excluded songs in the commercial style of the late 1930s. Notable exclusions were Johnson's one commercial hit, "Terraplane Blues", and two songs which he passed on to the mainstream of blues recording, "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Dust My Broom". Dead first played it in 1966, once in 1982 and 4 times in 1985.  Then, beginning in 1987 it became a standard part of Dead song lists, peaking in 1988 when it was played 23 times.  Became one of Bobby's early first set blues numbers with Minglewood Blues, CC Rider and Little Red Rooster. Played: 141First:  October 7, 1966 at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 2, 1995 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN, USA   SHOW No. 2:                    Crazy Fingers                                                Track #12                                                4:30 – 6:12 Pretty standard second set song, usually pre-drums.  Fist played in 1975, a few times in 1976 and then dropped until 1982 at Ventura County Fairgrounds (day after my first show).  Played 7 times that year, dropped until 1985 (10 times), then dropped until 1987 and then played regularly until the end.  Great tune, Jerry often forgot the lyrics and this version is great because Bobby saves him on the lyrics when Jerry starts to go astray.  Good fun considering how many times Bobby would forget the words to his songs. But one of those things you remember if you see it happen Garcia/Hunter, released on Blues For Allah (Sept. 1, 1975)Played: 145 timesFirst:  June 17, 1975 at Winterland Arena, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 5, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, MO (St. Louis)  SHOW No. 3:                    Truckin                                                Track #13                                                7:00 – end Hunter/Garcia/Weir/Lesh/Kreutzman (Pigpen went inside to take a nap) by the side of a pool.Released on American Beauty (November, 1970) final tune on the albumPlayed: 532 timesFirst:  August 17, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 6, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, MO                                                  INTO                                                Smokestack Lightning                                                Track #14                                                0:00 – 0:36  "Smokestack Lightning" (also "Smoke Stack Lightning" or "Smokestack Lightnin'") is a blues song recorded by Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett) in 1956. It became one of his most popular and influential songs. It is based on earlier blues songs, and numerous artists later interpreted it.  Recorded at Chess Records in Chicago and released in March, 1956 with You Can't Be Beat on the B side. Wolf had performed "Smokestack Lightning" in one form or another at least by the early 1930s,[1] when he was performing with Charley Patton in small Delta communities.[1] The song, described as "a hypnotic one-chord drone piece",[2] draws on earlier blues, such as Tommy Johnson's "Big Road Blues",[3] the Mississippi Sheiks' "Stop and Listen Blues",[4] and Charley Patton's "Moon Going Down".[5][6] Wolf said the song was inspired by watching trains in the night: "We used to sit out in the country and see the trains go by, watch the sparks come out of the smokestack. That was smokestack lightning." In a song review for AllMusic, Bill Janovitz described "Smokestack Lightning" as "almost like a distillation of the essence of the blues... a pleasingly primitive and raw representation of the blues, pure and chant-like. Wolf truly sounds like a man in otherwise inexpressible agony, flailing for words."[8] In 1999, the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, honoring its lasting historical significance.[13]Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at number 291 in its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time"[7] and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it in its list of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".[14] In 1985, the song was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classics of Blues Recordings" category[15] and, in 2009, it was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress. Janovitz also identifies "Smokestack Lightning" as a blues standard "open to varied interpretation, covered by artists ranging from the Yardbirds to Soundgarden, all stamping their personal imprint on the song".[8] Clapton identifies the Yardbirds' performances of the song as the group's most popular live number.[17] They played it almost every show, and sometimes it could last up to 30 minutes. Dead often played it out of Truckin, would also play the blues tune Spoonful out of Truckin. Played:  63 timesFirst:  November 19, 1966 at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  October 18, 1994 at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, USA   SHOW No. 4:                    Space                                                Track #17                                                7:45 – 9:20  On November 28, 1973, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and drummer Mickey Hart staged a performance at San Francisco's Palace Of Fine Arts. At the time, Hart – whose 80th birthday is today – was on a sabbatical from the Dead, having last performed in public with Garcia and the band in February 1971. Hart would rejoin the Dead for good in October 1974.A poster promoting the concert shows a clean-shaven Garcia dressed in black beside an equally freshly shaven Hart wearing all white. At the bottom of the advertisement was printed “An Experiment in Quadrophonic Sound.”Hart recalled his experience at the duo concert with Garcia in 1973 that was not only a Seastones precursor but also planted the seeds for the band's mind-bending “Space” jams.“There were so many exciting that we've done together. Adventurous musical things. He was also into adventure and creating new spaces, so we had that in common. We got together many times out of the ring – where he first discovered synthesizers, being able to synthesize his guitar, which led to MIDI.“The first concert we did was in 1973. It was just a duo. He got an Arp [Odyssey], an electric instrument, a keyboard, and he plugged his guitar into it and that was the first time I had heard his guitar I had heard his guitar running through sophisticated synthesizers.“I just thought of that concert, which kind of was the beginning of ‘Space' – ‘Drums' and ‘Space' actually – it might have been the very beginning of it. And I think of that on his birthday, the seminal things we did together.” After the November 28, 1973 concert, the Grateful Dead began to occasionally incorporate elements of a “Space” jam into their shows. In January 1978, Dead shows almost always included a nightly “Drums” jam paired with a freeform “Space” jam, consistently showing up mid-second set throughout the rest of their career. Played:  1086First:  March 19, 1966 at Carthay Studios, Los Angeles, CA, USALast:  July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL   OUTRO:                               Brokedown Palace                                                Track #22                                                5:04 – 6:43  The lyric to “Brokedown Palace” was written by Robert Hunter as part of a suite of songs that arrived via his pen during a stay in London in 1970. He entitled it “Broke-Down Palace,” and now that it exists as a piece of writing, it seems to have always existed. It was composed on the same afternoon as “Ripple” and “To Lay Me Down,” with the aid of a half bottle of retsina.Its first performance was on August 18, 1970, at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, and became a staple of the live repertoire. After the 1975 hiatus, “Brokedown Palace” appeared almost exclusively as the closing song of the show, as an encore. It had the effect of sending us out of the show on a gentle pillow of sound, the band bidding us “Fare you well, fare you well…”Garcia/HunterReleased on American Beauty (Nov. 1970) Played: 219 timesFirst:  August 18, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  June 25, 1995 at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

In de vorige aflevering van deze podcast vertelde het verhaal van Eddie James Son House junior, de bluesartiest die halverwege de jaren twintig het geloof de rug toekeerde om zich toe te leggen op de slide gitaar en de deltablues. Son House ontmoette Charley Patton en samen met hem trok hij naar de studio's van Paramount waar hij zijn legendarische opnames maakte. Maar door economische de crisis van de jaren dertig verkochten de plaatjes niet goed, en Son House ging opnieuw aan het werk als landbouwer. Er volgden nog twee opnames met Alan Lomax in 1941 en 1941, maar die opnames verdwenen onder het stof in de archieven van de Library of Congress en Son House die verdween in de obscuriteit. Maar mijn verhaal over het leven van Son House was nog niet ten einde. In de jaren zestig kreeg de witte jeugd interesse in folkmuziek, en daarmee werd ook de blues herontdekt. En ook Son House zou daar mee de vruchten van plukken. In deze podcast vertel ik over de herontdekking van Eddie James "Son House" Junior, de Father of the Delta Blues! Nieuwsgierig naar meer? Volg me op Facebook, Instagram of Twitter. Of bezoek ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.souloftheblues.be --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bart-massaer/message

Today on the program we present the story of the father of North Mississippi Hill Country Blues, Mississippi Fred McDowell. From humble beginnings, Fred was inspired from the likes of Charley Patton, his neighbor Eli “Booster” Green and the sounds he gathered from guitarists in Memphis, Mississippi and the Delta, and defined the often overlooked nuances of the blues. Like many of the great Southern pre-war blues guitarists born around the turn of the century, Fred was “discovered” by Alan Lomax in 1959, and continues to inspire slide guitarists to this day, despite not being a household name in the blues realm. Watch the full documentary “Shake Em On Down” Support Educational Programming: Join the Patreon Community Send a one-time donation on Venmo or PayPal Follow American Songcatcher: Instagram | TikTok | Facebook Credits: Ryan Eastridge - Research, Writing  Nicholas Edward Williams - Production, research, editing, recording and distribution References: Shirley Collins Book | Alan Lomax Book | Laurence Cohn Book | UdiscoveredMusic |Allmusic| MS Blues Trail | KUNC | Mt. Zion Memorial Fund | John Szwed Book | Musicians Guide | Commercial Appeal | “Shake Em On Down” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/americansongcatcher/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/americansongcatcher/support

This episode includes two Black History Month sets recognizing some of gospel's foundational choirs (pictured: Thomas A. Dorsey and Pilgrim Baptist Church Gospel Chorus); birthday salutes to Paul Arnold and Loretta Oliver; Charley Patton doing a gospel hymn; and much more.

Son House staat voor rauwe deltablues, voor een krachtige zang en donkere, meeslepende slidegitaar. Hij was een tijdje de compaan van blueslegende Charley Patton en Willie Brown, hij was een mentor van de legendarische bluesman Robert Johnson en hij was bevriend met bluesgigant Howlin Wolf. Son House maakte zijn eerste opnames aan het eind van de jaren twintig, maar door de economische recessie van de jaren dertig vonden zijn plaatjes geen afzetmarkt. Het geloof van Son House was zijn houvast, maar de blues was te verleidelijk. Drank, vrouwen en nicotine speelden een belangrijke rol in zijn bestaan en hij belandde twee keer in de gevangenis omwille van doodslag. Na de tweede wereldoorlog verbande hij de blues uit zijn leven, uit angst voor het devote.  Son House verdween helemaal in de obscuriteit tot hij in de jaren zestig weer werd opgevist en vereerd door de aanhangers van folkmuziek. En plots bracht Son House vol ongeloof zijn oude muziek ten berde voor een devoot publiek van witte jongeren. Zijn leven staat bol van intriges, twijfels en ellende.  Hij werd 86 jaar oud en op zijn grafsteen staat zijn eretitel gegraveerd: Eddie Son House Junior, father of the Blues. Nieuwsgierig naar meer? Volg me op Facebook, Instagram of Twitter. Of bezoek ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.souloftheblues.be --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bart-massaer/message

1931, Grafton. Son House sort des studios, fier d'avoir enregistré ses morceaux pour la première fois sur disque. Fier d'avoir accompagné l'immense Charley Patton dans cette aventure. Son talent, le son unique et métallique de sa guitare, cela devrait le mené au succès. Sauf que … non… La crise de 1929 est passée par là et les disques ne se vendent pas. Son House reprend son travail de conducteur de tracteur, joue avec ses copains, la vie suit son cours… Jusqu'à ce qu'à l'été 1941, un été d'une terrible chaleur, un musicologue bien connu des amoureux du blues, Alan Lomax, se rende dans la région avec son enregistreur. Alan Lomax n'a jamais entendu parler de Son House mais cela va bientôt changer . Sujets traités : Son House , Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, Muddy Waters, Mississippi,musicien,blues, Charley Patton , guitare, Alan Lomax Merci pour votre écoute Un Jour dans l'Histoire, c'est également en direct tous les jours de la semaine de 13h15 à 15h sur www.rtbf.be/lapremiere Retrouvez tous les épisodes d'Un Jour dans l'Histoire sur notre plateforme Auvio.be : https://auvio.rtbf.be/emission/5936 Et si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement.

What are Art and Music Activism?Art activism refers to the use of artistic expression and creative endeavors to advocate for and educate others on social, political, environmental, or cultural issues. This form of activism employs the creative power of art as a medium to move us emotionally, raise awareness of certain issues, and provoke thought. At its core, art activism brings audiences through an emotionally resonant experience that empowers audiences to change the way they think and behave to enhance an audience's sense of urgency and leave them feeling inspired to engage in civic activism. This innovative strategy of activism encompasses a wide range of artistic forms, including visual arts, performance art, literature, music, and more.Music activism specifically refers to the use of music and musical performances to advocate for change. Throughout history, music has played a significant role in numerous social and political movements, including the civil rights movement, anti-war protests, and environmental activism. Music's impact on society and individuals is far-reaching. Musicians leverage the emotional and communicative power of music to raise consciousness and encourage listeners to become involved with social and political causes. Melodies and lyrics are able to capture listeners' imagination, inspire people, and guide their actions. In addition to inspiring action, music activism can foster solidarity and a sense of community that is essential in the face of tackling societal issues. Genres like Blues, Folk, Hip Hop, and Reggae, among others, have been particularly associated with music activism, given their historical connection to expressing dissent and addressing societal issues. Undoubtedly, music activism serves as a form of cultural expression that has the ability to transcend boundaries and connect people with shared aspirations for change. Raising Societal Consciousness Through Hip HopEnvironmental activism in music has become very prominent in the contemporary music scene, with artists directly urging audiences to take action against climate injustices. Their lyrics illuminate environmental concerns bringing attention to pollution, deforestation, climate change, and call attention to the disproportionate impacts of these issues on marginalized communities. We can recall Joni Mitchell's environmentalist anthem that critiques urban development and environmental destruction, “Big Yellow Taxi.” While White musicians such as Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon are often credited for their music activism, Black artists, while often given less credit, have played a crucial role in environmentalism and for much longer. Charley Patton's “Dry Well Blues,” a 1930s song about the impact of droughts on communities in Georgia, incorporates Blues to highlight environmental racism. In the 1990s, grassroots and poetic rappers continued to enhance the public's environmental consciousness. For example, Mos Def's 1999 song, “New World Water,” brought light to New York's lack of access to clean water. Artists incorporate Hip Hop culture to advocate for environmental justice and for all marginalized communities. Through thought-provoking and socially conscious lyrics, Hip Hop artists have utilized their platforms to engage in advocacy work and mobilize listeners. While Hip Hop has been co-opted and criticized for promoting hyper-violence, sexism, criminality, toxic masculinity, and materialism, it is also home to social and environmental consciousness. Artists from inner-city neighborhoods originally created Hip Hop as an outlet for oppressed groups to address socio-economic injustices and validate their experiences. Overtime, socially conscious Hip Hop continued to evolve as a powerful tool to uplift communities of color and demand social justice. Music activism through the genre of Hip Hop exemplifies how art can move us powerfully towards civic activism.  The Power of Youth in Music Activism  Youth engagement is at the heart of environmental action, and music is a key part of that engagement. As discussed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), youth continue to exhibit immense strength, leadership, and resilience that is necessary for environmental action. Through environmentally conscious Hip Hop and other forms of music activism, youth are able to leverage their creativity, knowledge, and innovative power. Youth can channel their creative energy to crafting educational messages that inspire environmental action. Creating environmentally conscious music not only showcases the unique talents and perspectives of youth, but also offers hands-on experiences for youth to foster a more proactive mindset on a societal scale. In this process, young people engage in research and gain a profound awareness of environmental issues at hand. Youth strengthen their skills to analyze environmental challenges and effectively communicate them through musical narratives in an accessible and compelling manner. Moreover, producing music often requires interdisciplinary and collaborative thinking that enhances youths' sense of solidarity and community in the face of environmental issues. By leveraging the capacity of youth to foster change through music activism, we uplift the active role of youth in shaping environmental discourse, advocating for a heightened societal consciousness, and encouraging environmental action. Who is our Guest?Khafre Jay is the founder and executive director of Hip Hop For Change, a nonprofit organization that reclaims Hip Hop culture as a vehicle for education, empowerment, and cultural innovation. Working with local partners, Hip Hop For Change implements grassroots organizing, arts programming, and educational events to advance their missions and promote socially conscious Hip Hop that more accurately depicts the beauty and diversity of POC communities. Khafre is a community organizer, educator, and activist that is dedicated to fighting for socioeconomic justice and empowering his community's voices. Further ReadingThe Guardian: “Art can move us powerfully towards civic activism on climate”TIME: “How the Universal Language of Music Can Help Us Solve Our Planetary Problem”Vox: The evolution of American protest musicCharley Patton's “Dry Well Blues” (1930)Joni Mitchell's “Big Yellow Taxi” (1970) Mos Def's “New World Water” (1999)ATMOS: “Composing Climate Change: The Radical Legacy of Black Musicians”UNDP: “Placing meaningful youth engagement at the heart of environmental action”Hip Hop For Change For a transcript of this episode, please visit https://climatebreak.org/hip-hop-4-change-using-art-activism-to-combat-climate-change/

Jay Stulo isn't just one of the most talented blues guitarists you'll hear today, he's also a student of the genre. One of the reasons Jay is able to play with the passion and heart that he does goes back to learning the history of the blues and a plethora of its most storied players. It becomes an understanding of the foundations of blues music and its traditions (Delta, Chicago, Texas, British, etc.). Whether any number of guitarists (T-bone Walker to Jeff Beck to Derek Trucks) or other instrumentalists (harmonica players like Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Paul Butterfield), the rich traditions of the blues continue to grow and flourish. Join us as we take a deep dive into the blues and even take in a couple tracks by Jay."Red Dress Boogie"  and "Watching You" written and performed by Jay Stulo℗ 2020 Jay Stulo. Used with permission of Jay Stulo.(Photo by Jennifer Stulo Photography)Support the showSupport the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/intothemusic E-mail us at intothemusic@newprojectx.com YouTube Facebook Instagram INTO THE MUSIC is a production of Project X Productions, Appleton, WI.Producer: Rob MarnochaRecording, engineering, and post production: Rob MarnochaOpening theme: "Aerostar" by Los Straitjackets* (℗2013 Yep Roc Records)Closing theme: "Close to Champaign" by Los Straitjackets* (℗1999 Yep Roc Records)*Used with permission of Eddie AngelThis podcast copyright ©2024 by Project X Productions. All rights reserved.

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Scotty Barnhart, Director, The Count Basie Orchestra About Harvey's guest: Today's special guest, Scotty Barnhart, is an internationally acclaimed music artist, especially in the world of jazz.   He's an iconic trumpet player, composer, arranger, educator and author.  For over 30 years, he's been a featured trumpet soloist with the legendary Count Basie Orchestra, AND for the past 10 years, he's been the Orchestra's Director.    He's a 2-time Grammy Award winner, and he's worked with some of the greatest music artists in the world, including Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Tito Puente, Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Diana Krall and dozens more.  In 2009, he released his highly acclaimed first solo album, entitled, “Say It Plain”, which reached #3 on the Jazz Charts.   Our guest is widely considered to be THE leading authority on the history of Jazz trumpet.   In 2005 he published his groundbreaking book, “The World of Jazz Trumpet – A Comprehensive History and Practical Philosophy”, which is THE definitive text on the subject.  He's a Professor at Florida State University, and he gives keynote lectures and seminars around the world.  He's also  profiled in Scott Yanow's groundbreaking book “Trumpet Kings:  The Players Who Shaped the Sound of Jazz”, which places him right up there with the most important Jazz trumpeters in history, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis and others.   AND NOW, he's here to discuss his monumental brand new album entitled, “The Count Basie Orchestra Swings the Blues”.   This is an exceptional and unprecedented collection of collaborations with some of the greatest living blues and jazz artists, including George Benson, Shemekia Copeland, Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, Bettye LaVette, Bobby Rush and many more.  The album features spectacular versions of blues classics like “Stormy Monday,” “The Midnight Hour”, “Look What You've Done”, “Just for a Thrill” and “I'm A Woman” along side new instant classics like Mr. Sipp's “Let's Have A Good Time”, and our guest's inspired fusion of Charley Patton meets Count Basie, in “The Patton Basie Shuffle.”   The new album celebrates the deep-rooted connection between jazz and blues, and illuminates shared roots and reciprocal influence, reminding us that the boundaries between these genres are fluid and heartfelt.  The fabulous Count Basie Orchestra continues to carry on the rich musical legacy of Count Basie through their dynamic performances and dedication to the swing jazz tradition.  Our guest, as the orchestra's musical director, preserves Count Basie's unmistakable style, and ensures that his pioneering contributions to jazz, continue to be celebrated and enjoyed by audiences worldwide. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To see more about Scotty Barnhart, go to:http://www.scottybarnhart.com/https://www.facebook.com/scotty.barnhart/https://www.instagram.com/scottybarnhart/ https://twitter.com/ScottyBarnharthttps://www.youtube.com/scottybarnharthttps://www.thecountbasieorchestra.com/ #ScottyBarnhart   #TheCountBasieOrchestra   #harveybrownstoneinterviews

Milwaukee singer-songwriter Buffalo Nichols returns to Basic Folk today to talk about his new album, ‘The Fatalist,' out September 15 from Fat Possum Records. We picked up where Nichols' debut album left off, traveling the world hot on the heels of the blues. Following a profound tradition can be just as frustrating as it is romantic. In his years on the road promoting his self-titled debut album, Carl aka Buffalo has witnessed how the blues can be a home base for listeners' nostalgic, back-in-the-good-old days, artistically stagnant, patriarchal tendencies. He wants none of it. ‘The Fatalist' is an offering to the gods of change, of self-awareness, of integrity.One of the major achievements of this collection of eight songs is the seemingly effortless sonic collage that comes second nature to hip hop but is less discussed in roots and americana. From a Charley Patton sample to “Ali Farka” Touré-influenced fingerpicking to tasty 808s to contemporary songwriting that wrestles with what it means to be a good man in 2023, ‘The Fatalist' tells a story about the present, while keeping the past close and eschewing sentimentality. This sense of being in conversation with storytellers of the past is a pillar of what I would call the Black Art Tradition, and it is part of what makes Buffalo Nichols one of the most exciting artists in blues music right now.Follow Basic Folk on social media: https://basicfolk.bio.link/ Sign up for Basic Folk's newsletter: https://bit.ly/basicfolknews Help produce Basic Folk by contributing: https://basicfolk.com/donate/ Donate to #FreeBlackMamas: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/freeblackmamasDonate to Abortion Care Tennessee: https://www.abortioncaretn.org/Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Show 31 - Charley Patton. Broadcast on Otago Access Radio www.oar.org.nz

This week, a titanic trio of certified country blues guitar masters recorded live at Ozark Folk Center State Park. Also, commentary from these blues maestros. Country blues, also known as folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues or down home blues, is one of the earliest forms of blues music. It's performed primarily as a solo vocal with acoustic finger style guitar accompaniment. Country blues was developed in the rural Southern United States in the early 20th century and stands in contrast primarily to the urban blues style, especially in the pre-world war two era. Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Blind Willie McTell were among the first to record blues songs in the 1920s. Country blues ran parallel to urban blues, which was popular in cities. Featured on this episode of Ozark Highlands Radio are renowned old-time singer and multi-instrumentalist Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops veteran Hubby Jenkins, and celebrated bluesicologist & Reverend Gary Davis protege' Roy Bookbinder. Jerron "Blind Boy" Paxton is an American musician from Los Angeles. A vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Paxton's style draws from blues and jazz music before World War II and was influenced by Fats Waller and "Blind" Lemon Jefferson. According to Will Friedwald in the Wall Street Journal, Paxton is "virtually the only music-maker of his generation—playing guitar, banjo, piano and violin, among other implements—to fully assimilate the blues idiom of the 1920s and '30s, the blues of Bessie Smith and Lonnie Johnson.” Hubby Jenkins is a talented multi-instrumentalist, who endeavors to share his love and knowledge of old-time American music. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he delved into his Southern roots, following the thread of African American history that wove itself through country blues, ragtime, fiddle and banjo, and traditional jazz. After years of busking around the country and making a name for himself, Hubby became acquainted with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Since 2010 he has been an integral part of the Grammy award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops and continues to make solo performances. Guitarist Roy Book Binder has traveled the world as a solo performer for nearly 50 years. Roy's career and playing style is heavily influenced by the late Reverend Gary Davis, who specialized in a unique style of guitar finger picking. Roy's performances are as much a story of his life and experiences as they are a musical endeavor. In this week's “From the Vault” segment, OHR producer Jeff Glover offers a 1981 archival recording of Ozark original Kenneth Rorie performing the tune “The Devil and the Farmers Wife,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives. In his segment “Back in the Hills,” writer, professor, and historian Dr. Brooks Blevins tells the story of Enoch Wolf, an adventitiously fortunate Arkansas Confederate Civil War officer whom, at the very end of the war, was spared an undeserved execution at the hands of his Union captors.

Dive into the heart of the Mississippi Delta in episode 2 of 'The Blues Legacy: Foundations of Modern Music.' This episode transports you to the birthplace of Delta Blues, exploring the genre's roots and showcasing pioneers like Charley Patton, Son House, and the legendary Robert Johnson. Discover how this gritty, soulful sound emerged from the cotton fields to influence the course of modern music. From haunting slide guitar to evocative storytelling, learn how Delta Blues continues to reverberate through time. Click the link to show your support for the show via Patreon or Ko-fi https://lnk.bio/TheBluesLegacy --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theblueslegacy/message

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 --

Embark on a sonic journey with 'The Blues Legacy - Foundations of Modern Music'. In our premiere episode, 'From the Roots: The Birth and Origins of Blues Music', we trace the birth of the blues back to its African roots and chart its evolution through the hardships of slavery and segregation. With a deep dive into the historical context and cultural conditions, we explore how early African musical traditions gave birth to blues. Highlighting the influences of work songs, spirituals, and field hollers, we examine how these elements intertwined to form the distinct characteristics of early blues. Get introduced to the masterful strains of blues pioneers Charley Patton and Ma Rainey, with detailed analysis of their seminal contributions to the genre. Your journey through the rich tapestry of blues and its far-reaching impact on modern music begins here. Tune in now, share, subscribe, and join me as I uncover the foundations of modern music. Support me via Patreon or Ko-fi for more in-depth explorations into the blues legacy. https://lnk.bio/TheBluesLegacy --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theblueslegacy/message

Listen to the Sat. June 17, 2023 edition of the Pan-African Journal: Worldwide Radio Broadcast hosted by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire. The program features our PANW report with dispatches on the African leaders peace mission to Ukraine and Russia; critical shortages are plaguing the Republic of Sudan as fighting continues resulting in part in the assassination of the governor of West Darfur province; rebel attacks in Uganda have left dozens dead; and the Mali foreign ministry has ordered all United Nations personnel to leave the West African state. In the second and third hours we present the latest installment in our recognition of Black Music Month. We look back on the life, times and contributions of Tshala Muana, Charley Patton, Ike & Tina Turner.

Think you know the blues? Think you know acoustic blues? Chances are you haven't heard these insanely good blues guitars. It's time to get inspired. In this episode, we'll be exploring 11 phenomenal acoustic blues artists who will not only inspire you but also help you play better. I've handpicked these legends from all corners of the U.S. and spanning the last 100 years, to give you a true taste of acoustic blues history.  Featuring breathtaking concert footage and unforgettable recordings, you'll experience the incredible artistry of these musicians up close and personal. Some of the notable names we'll be discussing include the likes of Robert Belfour, Barbecue Bob, Charley Patton, and Mississippi John Hurt — just to name a few.  So grab your guitar, sit back, and get ready to be inspired by the captivating sounds of these acoustic blues masters. Whether you're an experienced player or just starting out, you'll walk away with new insights and a fresh perspective on your own playing. Featured in this episode... - PPLDTV   - Old Town School of Folk Music   - Fretboard Journal   - Andy Hall - Mule Resophonic Guitars - Pisgah Banjo Company - Rhiannon Giddens   - Wondrium  

“There's an old adage ‘He who forgets history is condemned to repeat it.' But what's missing in that phrase is that there are the people who are in charge of keeping your history. And they can make you forget it. They can keep it from you. And then you're doomed to repeat something that they want you to repeat.” — Samuel JamesSamuel James is a musician and storyteller from Portland, Maine, who specializes in blues and roots music. Samuel has a deep knowledge of American musical history and recently wrote a column in the Mainer magazine about the origins of the phrase “stay woke,” first heard on a Lead Belly record about the Scottsboro Boys. He shows that when we see attacks on “wokeness” like Ron DeSantis' “Stop WOKE Act,” we should remember that it's “an old, Black phrase being weaponized against the very people who created it.”Today, Samuel joins to explain how listening to the words of early 20th century Black songs provides critical context for understanding America today. From commentary on the prison system in the words of “Midnight Special” to Mississippi John Hurt's unique twist on the “John Henry” legend, Samuel James offers a course in how to listen closely to appreciate both the rich diversity of the music lumped together as folk blues, and how to hear the warnings that the early singers passed down to Black Americans today. It's a very special hour featuring some of the greatest music ever written, played live by one of its most talented contemporary interpreters.Nathan's article on Charles Murray is here, and one on Joe Rogan is here. A Current Affairs article about John Henry songs is here. Beyond Mississippi John Hurt and Lead Belly, artists mentioned by Samuel James include Gus Cannon, the Mississippi Sheiks, Charley Patton, Skip James, and Furry Lewis. More information about the St. Louis chemical spraying is here. Follow Samuel James on Twitter here. His 99 Years podcast is here. Nathan mentions the “Voyager Golden Record” that went into space, which did in fact include a classic blues song.“This is the hammer that killed John HenryBut it won't kill me, but it won't kill me, but it won't kill me”— Mississippi John HurtNOTE: The n-word is heard several times in this episode, spoken by Samuel James, and in recordings by Lead Belly and Ice Cube.Subscribe to Current Affairs on Patreon to unlock all of our bonus episodes and get early access to new releases.

Rock Around The Blogin Sami Ruokangas ja Juha Kakkuri käyvät läpi rockuutisia, levyjä ja nykybluesin aateliin kuuluvan keikkaelämyksen. Jakson soittolista: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ydnuTP2LvQOYLVBKqCp4e?si=d6f200908eac4aaf Bruce Springsteenin parhaat Mojo-lehden mukaan: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1QGY2G2WWJwGOSaFKPYdzy?si=d98f5e072a7940ad Menossa ovat mukana Rolling Stones, Martin Popoff, Blue Öyster Cult, Aerosmith, Black Crowes, Dee Purple, Ray Charles, Judas Priest, Les Binks, Les Binks´ Priesthood, Roger Glover, Helloween, Masterplan, Roland Grapow, Hanoi Rocks, Nasty Suicide, Jan Stenfors, Megasnake, Sentenced, Sami Lopakka, Jari Kainulainen, Sampsa Astala, Marko Syrjälä, Record Store Day, Flying Burrito Brothers, Eric Burdon & War, Jefferson Airplane, Keith Richards, Humble Pie, Steve Marriott, Uriah Heep, Accept, Big Country, Sauna Open Air, Avantasia, Skid Row, Iron Maiden, WASP, Rose Tattoo, Angry Anderson, Larkin Poe, Blackberry Smoke, Teppo Nättilä, Bad Company, Rival Sons, Charley Patton, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blackfoot, Gary Clark Jr, Joe Bonamassa, Marilyn Monroe, Lenny Kravitz, Sarah Tomek, Matt Wade, Ronald Johnson, GA-20, Aki Blomberg, Led Zeppelin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Teddy & The Tigers, Jack White, Jim Keltner, Steve Cropper, Ian Gillan, David Coverdale, Lemmy Kilmister, Whitesnake, Nazareth, Dan McCafferty, Carl Sentance, Pete Agnew ja Little Feat.

Day 19 “The first time I met the blues The Address: 229 Highway 8, Cleveland, Mississippi. The Story: It's called Dockery Farms. “Farms” is a rebrand. It was a back-breaking plantation in a small town in Mississippi. It's walking distance from where Fannie Lou Hamer picked cotton. It's a stone's throw from “the crossroads,” where a young Robert Johnson was rumored to have sold his soul for an unearthly cool. There, as the sun kissed the dusty sky goodbye, guitars played, feet stomped, and hips swayed. The long days of work were made magic by the masters of a new American art form called the Blues. Just one generation after Dockery Farms, hundreds of blues men and women amplified the stories of our people and became the soundtrack of struggle. That real pain was carried in the Great Migration to the blighted streets of the industrial north. Today, let's shine a light on the founders of the Blues. Many of them met on this very plantation: Charley Patton, Howlin' Wolf, and even “Pops” Staples of The Staple Singers worked there. But this is Black history, and it didn't just start on this farm. The truth is that the Blues was born in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Blues is their story and rhythms as they were brought to Mississippi. The Blues was therapy for their children on Beale Street in Memphis, and it brought laughter and reprieve to the hike joints of Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. The Blues brought truth to the world. This episode will be electrifying as we walk and talk about the function of Blues music for Black people.

Again, Dr David Evans joins us on this podcast as we focus for the second time on early major Blues Legend, Mr Charley Patton.

Again, Dr David Evans joins us on this podcast as we focus for the second time on early major Blues Legend, Mr Charley Patton.

Simon, Jonas, Christian P, Carl and Johan managed to get together for an hour-long chat about one of the most recurring themes and events in many role-playing games; COMBAT. And a lot of other stuff, namely: Having an agenda and immediately breaking it / Print proofs, pleasant and horrific / Healthy constant disappointment / What is the opposite of space? / UK Games Expo report / EXTRA: Print Effects ASMR / Combat as sport vs Combat as war / Environment as weapon / Systems or improvised rulings / Losing HP isn't getting hit / Playing with miniatures in a pool / Designing dungeons to encourage fun combats / "Dying is a pretty big step in someone's life" / Music tips: U2: Songs Of Innocense, Totalt Jävla Mörker: Totalt Jävla Mörker, Primitive Man: Insurmountable, Scorn: The Only Place, Charley Patton, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Konvent: Call Down The Sun / Closing words --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/kartellian-clamor/message

「The Blues is the roots and everything else is the fruits.」蓝调音乐作为几乎最有影响力的及种音乐风格的「母亲」，存在已经有超过 100 年的时间。但鲜少有人知道蓝调的起源究竟是什么样的？它如何出现？为何出现？有什么特点？这期节目，将会从历史的角度来和你聊聊，蓝调音乐的起源是什么，因此，你将会听到一些原始的录音，以及最古老的蓝调。欢迎你的收听 :)

Mistä aloittaa tuotantoon tututustuminen kun artistilla tai bändillä on kymmeniä levyjä, kymmenien vuosien ajalta? Tämän hyvän kysymyksen esitti Rock Around The Blogille Bob Dylanin ja Rolling Stonesin osalta Janne Greus. Kiitos Janne! Tässä jaksossa Sami Ruokangas ja Juha Kakkuri vastaavat siihen mistä Bob Dylanin kuuntelun voisi aloittaa. Jakson soittolista: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3cowgEkqN3RR97hDKlrsLH?si=b5cdca0c27d947c1 Jaksossa ovat mukana Rolling Stones, Jacques Levy, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Earle, Robert Plant, J.B. Lenoir, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Howlin´ Wolf, Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Beatles, The Byrds, Mott The Hoople, Procol Harum, Son House, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Johnny Winter, Jessica Lange, Wanda Jackson, Jack White, Jack Frost, Frank Sinatra, The Rat Pack, Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor, John Lee Hooker, The Clash, U2, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler, Slash, Grateful Dead, Ian McLagan, Carlos Santana, Netflix, Sharon Stone, KISS, Mick Ronson, David Bowie, Ian Hunter, Daniel Lanois, Dr. John, Neville Brothers, The Band, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Puistoblues, Kari Pyrhönen ja Ritchie Blackmore.

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |  | Doug MacLeod  | There Is Always Love  | A Soul to Claim | Big Bill Broonzy  | Moppers Blues  |   All the Recorded Sides|   |  | Manny Fizzotti  | Dodgy Dudes  | Nobody Understands  |  | Catfish Keith  | Dirty Mother For You| Land of the Sky  |   |  | Hans Theessink and Big Daddy Wilson  | Little Nora Maj  | Pay Day  |   |   |  | Andres Roots & Red Mouth  | Minor Gripes [feat. Jantso Jokelin]  | Minor Gripes  |   |  | Tomislav Goluban  | Jerry Ricks On My Mind  | Chicago Rambler  | Spona 203  |  | Kelly's Lot  | Ship  | Where And When  |   |  | Doug MacLeod, & Dave Smith, Rick Steff, Steve Potts  | Smokey Nights And Faded Blues  | Doug MacLeod~A Soul to Claim | Bob Margolin  | Steady Rollin' On  | Steady Rollin single  |   |  | Papa Charlie Jackson  | I'm Going Where The Chilly Winds Don't Blow  | Papa Charlie Jackson Vol 1 (1924-1926) | Donna Herula Trio  | Who's Been Cookin' In My Kitchen  | LIve at the Old Town School of Folk Music 2021 | Ramblin' Jack Elliott  | Me & Bobby McGee  | Catch Me A Freight Train  |  | Half Deaf Clatch  | Pea Vine Blues  | A Tribute To Charley Patton  |  | Sleepy John Estes  | Need More Blues  | Newport Blues  |   |  | Charley Patton  | Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues  | Total Blues - 100 Essential Songs

This episode covers early delta blues musicians, early Black radio and the influence of electric technology. Topics covered Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, Jack L Cooper, Electric Recording Technology, Electric Guitar, Black Radio, Urban Theater Circuit https://www.bluelineage.com

My guest today is Canadian based singer and songwriter Pura Fé. Pura Fé, whose name means "Pure Faith," was born in New York City and an heir to the Tuscarora Indian Nation. She is an artist, an activist, and much more. Her musical journey, running the gamut from folk to mainstream through an artful use of the blues, reflects the concerns of an artist who grew up in the Motown era, while citing Buffy Sainte-Marie, Charley Patton and Joni Mitchell as her true mentors. And, more widely, “traditional music from all over the world, wherever the spirit is connected to our roots.” Pura Fé has studied and performed with The American Ballet Theatre Company, and has been in several Broadway musicals and TV commercials. She has sung for countless jazz, R&B, and rock bands, and has stamped her distinct vocals on many recordings, demos, jingles, music videos and movie sound tracks/trailers throughout her career. She is a founding member of the internationally renowned native woman's a capella trio, Ulali, and is recognized for creating a new genre, bringing Native contemporary music to the forefront of the mainstream music industry. Pura Fé won a Nammy (Native American Music Award) for Best Female Artist for ‘Follow Your Hearts Desire'. She also won an L'académie Charles Cros Award (French Grammy) for Best World Album for "Tuscarora Nation Blues". (above bio copied from Pura Fé's website) If you enjoy the podcast, please let others know, subscribe or write a review. 5 star ratings and reviews on Apple Music as well as subscribing to my YouTube Channel help me out the most!! IF YOU'D LIKE TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST IN A MONETARY WAY, I'M NOW ON PATREON! www.patreon.com/andysydow You can support my artist career and this podcast for as little as $3 per month. The price of one cup of coffee helps keep this podcast on its feet. Any and every contribution is greatly appreciated! Guest Links: Pura Fé Website: https://www.purafe.com Ulali on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2e3DNErHr0z83LSzfhSRPx?si=UC0yFNkqTk2ex3z-g0cC3g Episode Music: **All original music by Andy Sydow Sponsors: A huge thanks to our sponsors, PQ Mastering and Narrator RF. For any sponsorship inquiries, shoot me an email at middleclassrockstar@gmail.com pqmastering.com narratorrf.com

Part 2 of the Blue Lineage Timeline to Womanist Epistemological Research. Examples include Mamie Smith, Little Richard, Champion Jack Dupree, Jack L Cooper, Lavern Baker, Charley Patton, Tommy McClennan, Jack the Rapper, and Sylvia Robinson. For more information on this subject see this previous video: https://youtu.be/NBHpPEhx1Q4 Find out more about the timeline at https://www.bluelineage.com

We have a lot to celebrate! Christina & Tara congratulate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class of 2021: Carole King, LL Cool J, Randy Rhoads, Billy Preston, Tina Turner, Todd Rundgren, Charley Patton, Kraftwerk, The Go-Go's, JAY-Z, & the Foo Fighters. We also close out the end of the year with a holiday gift exchange sprinkled with a little ASMR.

Stevie Salas is one of the most respected guitarists in the world today. He has played with the who's who of music royalty including: George Clinton Justin Timberlake Buddy Miles T.I. Mick Jagger Rod Stewart and so many others. Stevie has sold well over 2 million solo records while contributing to well over 70 different albums. Stevie also brought to the screen the documentary, RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World. This profound documentary tells the story of the essential, and, until now, missing chapter in the history of American music: the Indigenous influence. Featuring music icons CHARLEY PATTON, MILDRED BAILEY, LINK WRAY, BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE, JIMI HENDRIX, JESSE ED DAVIS, ROBBIE ROBERTSON, REDBONE, RANDY CASTILLO, TABOO and others. RUMBLE shows how these talented Native musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives. Image from Billboard

Jason Hanley Vice President of Education and Visitor Engagement at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio starts our coverage of the 2021 Induction week. We talk with Jason about the presenters which include Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, Drew Barrymore and more. We also chat about what people can expect from the event, surprises and more. 2021 inductees include: Carole King, The Foo Fighters, The Go-Go's, Jay Z, Tine Turner, Todd Rundgren, Kraftwerk, Charley Patton, Gil-Scott Heron, LL Cool J, Billy Preston, Randy Rhoads and Clarence Avant. Stay tuned across the jrodconcert media channels for more. The Ceremony will on November 20 on HBO and stream on HBO Max alongside a radio simulcast on SiriusXM Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Radio (310) and Volume (106).

Dr Downhome's Blues Podcast #7 – Otis Rush, Rubin Lacey, Sleepy John Estes, Kid Bailey, Blind Joe Reynolds, Bo Weavil Jackson, Sonny Boy Williamson 1, Sonny Boy Williamson 2, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ramblin' Thomas, Peg Leg Howell, Memphis Willie B Borum, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Freddie Spruell, Tommy McClennan

Dr Downhome's Blues Podcast #7 – Otis Rush, Rubin Lacey, Sleepy John Estes, Kid Bailey, Blind Joe Reynolds, Bo Weavil Jackson, Sonny Boy Williamson 1, Sonny Boy Williamson 2, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ramblin' Thomas, Peg Leg Howell, Memphis Willie B Borum, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Freddie Spruell, Tommy McClennan

Episode 129 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, and how they went from being a moderately successful beat group to being the only serious rivals to the Beatles. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eleven-minute bonus episode available, on "I'll Never Find Another You" by the Seekers. 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/ Resources As usual I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Two resources that I've used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. When in doubt, the version of the narrative I've chosen to use is the one from Davis' book. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards' Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. Sympathy for the Devil: The Birth of the Rolling Stones and the Death of Brian Jones by Paul Trynka is, as the title might suggest, essentially special pleading for Jones. It's as well-researched and well-written as a pro-Jones book can be, and is worth reading for balance, though I find it unconvincing. This web page seems to have the most accurate details of the precise dates of sessions and gigs. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones' singles up to 1971, including every Stones track I excerpt in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we're going to look at one of the most important riffs in rock and roll history -- the record that turned the distorted guitar riff into the defining feature of the genre, even though the man who played that riff never liked it. We're going to look at a record that took the social protest of the folk-rock movement, aligned it with the misogyny its singer had found in many blues songs, and turned it into the most powerful expression of male adolescent frustration ever recorded to that point. We're going to look at "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction"] A note before we start this -- this episode deals with violence against women, and with rape. If you're likely to be upset hearing about those things, you might want to either skip this episode, or read the transcript on the website first. The relevant section comes right at the end of the episode, so you can also listen through to the point where I give another warning, without missing any of the rest of the episode. Another point I should make here -- most of the great sixties groups have very accurate biographies written about them. The Stones, even more than the Beatles, have kept a surprising amount of control over their public image, with the result that the only sources about them are either rather sanitised things made with their co-operation, or rather tabloidy things whose information mostly comes from people who are holding a grudge or have a particular agenda. I believe that everything in this episode is the most likely of the various competing narratives, but if you check out the books I used, which are listed on the blog post associated with this episode, you'll see that there are several different tellings of almost every bit of this story. So bear that in mind as you're listening. I've done my best. Anyway, on with the episode.  When we left the Rolling Stones, they were at the very start of their recording career, having just released their first big hit single, a version of "I Wanna Be Your Man", which had been written for them by Lennon and McCartney.  The day after they first appeared on Top of the Pops, they were back in the recording studio, but not to record for themselves. The five Stones, plus Ian Stewart, were being paid two pounds a head by their manager/producer Andrew Oldham to be someone else's backing group. Oldham was producing a version of "To Know Him is to Love Him", the first hit by his idol Phil Spector, for a new singer he was managing named Cleo Sylvester: [Excerpt: Cleo, "To Know Him is to Love Him"] In a further emulation of Spector, the B-side was a throwaway instrumental. Credited to "the Andrew Oldham Orchestra", and with Mike Leander supervising, the song's title, "There Are But Five Rolling Stones", gave away who the performers actually were: [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "There Are But Five Rolling Stones"] At this point, the Stones were still not writing their own material, but Oldham had already seen the writing on the wall -- there was going to be no place in the new world opened up by the Beatles for bands that couldn't generate their own hits, and he had already decided who was going to be doing that for his group.  It would have been natural for him to turn to Brian Jones, still at this point the undisputed leader of the group, and someone who had a marvellous musical mind. But possibly in order to strengthen the group's identity as a group rather than a leader and his followers -- Oldham has made different statements about this at different points -- or possibly just because they were living in the same flat as him at the time, while Jones was living elsewhere, he decided that the Rolling Stones' equivalent of Lennon and McCartney was going to be Jagger and Richards. There are several inconsistencies in the stories of how Jagger and Richards started writing together -- and things like what the actual first song they wrote together was, or when they wrote it, will probably always be lost to the combination of self-aggrandisement and drug-fuelled memory loss that makes it difficult to say anything definitive about much of their career. But we do know that one of the earliest songs they wrote together was "As Tears Go By", a song that wasn't considered suitable for the group -- though they did later record a version of it -- and was given instead to Marianne Faithfull, a young singer with whom Jagger was about to enter into a relationship: [Excerpt: Marianne Faithfull, "As Tears Go By"] It's not entirely clear who wrote what on that song -- it's usually referred to as a Jagger/Richards collaboration, but it's credited to Jagger, Richards, and Oldham, and at least one source claims it was actually written by Jagger and the session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan -- and if so, this would be the first time of many that a song written by Jagger or Richards in collaboration with someone else would be credited to Jagger and Richards without any credit going to their co-writer. But the consensus story, as far as there is a consensus, seems to be that Oldham locked Jagger and Richards into a kitchen, and told them they weren't coming out until they had a song written. And it had to be a proper song, not a pastiche of something else, and it had to be the kind of song you could release as a single, not a blues song. After spending all night in the kitchen, Richards eventually got bored of being stuck in there, and started strumming his guitar and singing "it is the evening of the day", and the two of them quickly came up with the rest of the song. After "As Tears Go By", they wrote a lot of songs that they didn't feel were right for the group, but gave them away to other people, like Gene Pitney, who recorded "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday": [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday"] Pitney, and his former record producer Phil Spector, had visited the Stones during the sessions for their first album, which started the day after that Cleo session, and had added a little piano and percussion to a blues jam called "Little by Little", which also featured Allan Clarke and Graham Nash of the Hollies on backing vocals. The songwriting on that track was credited to Spector and Nanker Phelge, a group pseudonym that was used for jam sessions and instrumentals. It was one of two Nanker Phelge songs on the album, and there was also an early Jagger and Richards song, "Tell Me", an unoriginal Merseybeat pastiche: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Tell Me"] But the bulk of the album was made up of cover versions of songs by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Rufus Thomas, Marvin Gaye, and other Black American musicians. The album went to number one in the UK album charts, which is a much more impressive achievement than it might sound. At this point, albums sold primarily to adults with spending money, and the album charts changed very slowly. Between May 1963 and February 1968, the *only* artists to have number one albums in the UK were the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, the Monkees, the cast of The Sound of Music, and Val Doonican. And between May 63 and April 65 it was *only* the Beatles and the Stones. But while they'd had a number one album, they'd still not had a number one single, or even a top ten one. "I Wanna Be Your Man" had been written for them and had hit number twelve, but they were still not writing songs that they thought were suited for release as singles, and they couldn't keep asking the Beatles to help them out, so while Jagger and Richards kept improving as songwriters, for their next single they chose a Buddy Holly B-side: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Not Fade Away"] The group had latched on to the Bo Diddley rhythm in that song, along with its machismo -- many of the cover versions they chose in this period seem to have not just a sexual subtext but to be overtly bragging, and if Little Richard is to be believed on the subject, Holly's line "My love is bigger than a Cadillac" isn't that much of an exaggeration. It's often claimed that the Stones exaggerated and emphasised the Bo Diddley sound, and made their version more of an R&B number than Holly's, but if anything their version owes more to someone else.  The Stones' first real UK tour had been on a bill with Mickie Most, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers, and Keith Richards in particular had been amazed by the Everlys. He said later "The best rhythm guitar playing I ever heard was from Don Everly. Nobody ever thinks about that, but their rhythm guitar playing is perfect". Don Everly, of course, was himself very influenced by Bo Diddley, and learned to play in open-G tuning from Diddley -- and several years later, Keith Richards would make that tuning his own, after being inspired by Everly and Ry Cooder.  The Stones' version of "Not Fade Away" owes at least as much to Don Everly's rhythm guitar style as to that of Holly or Diddley. Compare, say, the opening of "Wake Up Little Suzie": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Wake Up Little Suzie"] The rhythm guitar on the Stones version of "Not Fade Away" is definitely Keith Richards doing Don Everly doing Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] That was recorded during the sessions for their first album, and was, depending on whose story you believe, another track that featured Phil Spector and Gene Pitney on percussion, recorded at the same session as "Little by Little", which became its B-side. Bill Wyman, who kept copious notes of the group's activities, has always said that the idea that it was recorded at that session was nonsense, and that it was recorded weeks later, and Oldham merely claimed Spector was on the record for publicity purposes. On the other hand, Gene Pitney had a very strong memory of being at that session. Spector had been in the country because the Ronettes had been touring the UK with the Stones as one of their support acts, along with the Swinging Blue Jeans and Marty Wilde, and Spector was worried that Ronnie might end up with one of the British musicians. He wasn't wrong to worry -- according to Ronnie's autobiography, there were several occasions when she came very close to sleeping with John Lennon, though they never ended up doing anything and remained just friends, while according to Keith Richards' autobiography he and Ronnie had a chaste affair on that tour which became less chaste when the Stones later hit America. But Spector had flown over to the UK to make sure that he remained in control of the young woman who he considered his property. Pitney, meanwhile, according to his recollection, turned up to the session at the request of Oldham, as the group were fighting in the studio and not getting the track recorded. Pitney arrived with cognac, telling the group that it was his birthday and that they all needed to get drunk with him. They did, they stopped fighting, and they recorded the track: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] "Not Fade Away" made number three on the UK charts, and also became the first Stones record to chart in the US at all, though it only scraped its way to number forty-eight, not any higher. But in itself that was a lot -- it meant that the Stones had a record doing well enough to justify them going to the US for their first American tour.  But before that, they had to go through yet another UK tour -- though this isn't counted as an official tour in the listings of their tours, it's just a bunch of shows, in different places, that happened to be almost every night for a couple of months. By this time, the audience response was getting overwhelming, and shows often had to be cut short to keep the group safe. At one show, in Birkenhead, the show had to be stopped after the band played *three bars*, with the group running off stage after that as the audience invaded the stage. And then it was off to the US, where they were nowhere near as big, though while they were over there, "Tell Me" was also released as a single to tie in with the tour, and that did surprisingly well, making number twenty-four. The group's first experience of the US wasn't an entirely positive one -- there was a disastrous appearance on the Dean Martin Show on TV, with Martin mocking the group both before and after their performance, to the extent that Bob Dylan felt moved to write in the liner notes to his next album “Dean Martin should apologise t'the Rolling Stones”. But on the other hand, there were some good experiences. They got to see James Brown at the Apollo, and Jagger started taking notes -- though Richards also noted *what* Jagger was noting, saying "James wanted to show off to these English folk. He's got the Famous Flames, and he's sending one out for a hamburger, he's ordering another to polish his shoes and he's humiliating his own band. To me, it was the Famous Flames, and James Brown happened to be the lead singer. But the way he lorded it over his minions, his minders and the actual band, to Mick was fascinating" They also met up with Murray the K, the DJ who had started the career of the Ronettes among others. Murray had unilaterally declared himself "the fifth Beatle", and was making much of his supposed connections with British pop stars, most of whom either had no idea who he was or actively disliked him (Richards, when talking about him, would often replace the K with a four-letter word usually spelled with a "c"). The Stones didn't like him any more than any of the other groups did, but Murray played them a record he thought they'd be interested in -- "It's All Over Now" by the Valentinos, the song that Bobby Womack had written and which was on Sam Cooke's record label: [Excerpt: The Valentinos, "It's All Over Now"] They decided that they were going to record that, and handily Oldham had already arranged some studio time for them. As Giorgio Gomelsky would soon find with the Yardbirds, Oldham was convinced that British studios were simply unsuitable for recording loud blues-based rock and roll music, and Phil Spector had suggested to him that if the Stones loved Chess records so much, they might as well record at Chess studios.  So while the group were in Chicago, they were booked in for a couple of days in the studio at Chess, where they were horrified to discover that their musical idol Muddy Waters was earning a little extra cash painting the studio ceiling and acting as a roadie, helping them in with their equipment.  (It should be noted here that Marshall Chess, Leonard Chess' son who worked with the Stones in the seventies, has denied this happened. Keith Richards insists it did.) But after that shock, they found working at Chess a great experience. Not only did various of their musical idols, like Willie Dixon and Chuck Berry, as well as Waters, pop in to encourage them, and not only were they working with the same engineer who had recorded many of those people's records, but they were working in a recording studio with an actual multi-track system rather than a shoddy two-track tape recorder. From this point on, while they would still record in the UK on occasion, they increasingly chose to use American studios.  The version of "It's All Over Now" they recorded there was released as their next single. It only made the top thirty in the US -- they had still not properly broken through there -- but it became their first British number one: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "It's All Over Now"] Bobby Womack was furious that the Stones had recorded his song while his version was still new, but Sam Cooke talked him down, explaining that if Womack played his cards right he could have a lot of success through his connection with these British musicians. Once the first royalty cheques came in, Womack wasn't too upset any more. When they returned to the UK, they had another busy schedule of touring and recording -- and not all of it just for Rolling Stones work. There was, for example, an Andrew Oldham Orchestra session, featuring many people from the British session world who we've noted before -- Joe Moretti from Vince Taylor's band, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Andy White, Mike Leander, and more. Mick Jagger added vocals to their version of "I Get Around": [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "I Get Around"] It's possible that Oldham had multiple motives for recording that -- Oldham was always a fan of Beach Boys style pop music more than he was of R&B, but he also was in the process of setting up his own publishing company, and knew that the Beach Boys' publishers didn't operate in the UK. In 1965, Oldham's company would become the Beach Boys' UK publishers, and he would get a chunk of every cover version of their songs, including his own. There were also a lot of demo sessions for Jagger/Richards songs intended for other artists, with Mick and Keith working with those same session musicians -- like this song that they wrote for the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, demoed by Jagger and Richards with Moretti, Page, Jones, John McLaughlin, Big Jim Sullivan, and Andy White: [Excerpt: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "We're Wastin' Time"] But of course there were also sessions for Rolling Stones records, like their next UK number one single, "Little Red Rooster": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] "Little Red Rooster" is a song that is credited to Willie Dixon, but which actually combines several elements from earlier blues songs, including a riff inspired by the one from Son House's "Death Letter Blues": [Excerpt: Son House, "Death Letter Blues"] A melody line and some lines of lyric from Memphis Minnie's "If You See My Rooster": [Excerpt: Memphis Minnie, "If You See My Rooster"] And some lines from Charley Patton's "Banty Rooster Blues": [Excerpt: Charley Patton, "Banty Rooster Blues"] Dixon's resulting song had been recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1961: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Little Red Rooster"] That hadn't been a hit, but Sam Cooke had recorded a cover version, in a very different style, that made the US top twenty and proved the song had chart potential: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Little Red Rooster"] The Rolling Stones version followed Howlin' Wolf's version very closely, except that Jagger states that he *is* a cock -- I'm sorry, a rooster -- rather than that he merely has one. And this would normally be something that would please Brian Jones immensely -- that the group he had formed to promote Delta and Chicago blues had managed to get a song like that to number one in the UK charts, especially as it was dominated by his slide playing. But in fact the record just symbolised the growing estrangement between Jones and the rest of his band. When he turned up at the session to record "Little Red Rooster", he was dismayed to find out that the rest of the group had deliberately told him the wrong date. They'd recorded the track the day before, without him, and just left a note from Jagger to tell him where to put his slide fills. They spent the next few months ping-ponging between the UK and the US. In late 1964 they made another US tour, during which at one point Brian Jones collapsed with what has been variously reported as stress and alcohol poisoning, and had to miss several shows, leaving the group to carry on without him. There was much discussion at this point of just kicking him out of the band, but they decided against it -- he was still perceived as the group's leader and most popular member. They also appeared on the TAMI show, which we've mentioned before, and which we'll look at in more detail when we next look at James Brown, but which is notable here for two things. The first is that they once again saw how good James Brown was, and at this point Jagger decided that he was going to do his best to emulate Brown's performance -- to the extent that he asked a choreographer to figure out what Brown was doing and teach it to him, but the choreographer told Jagger that Brown moved too fast to figure out all his steps. The other is that the musical director for the TAMI Show was Jack Nitzsche, and this would be the start of a professional relationship that would last for many years. We've seen Nitzsche before in various roles -- he was the co-writer of "Needles and Pins", and he was also the arranger on almost all of Phil Spector's hits. He was so important to Spector's sound that Keith Richards has said “Jack was the Genius, not Phil. Rather, Phil took on Jack's eccentric persona and sucked his insides out.” Nitzsche guested on piano when the Stones went into the studio in LA to record a chunk of their next album, including the ballad "Heart of Stone", which would become a single in the US. From that point on, whenever the Stones recorded in LA, Nitzsche would be there, adding keyboards and percussion and acting as an uncredited co-producer and arranger. He was apparently unpaid for this work, which he did just because he enjoyed being around the band. Nitzsche would also play on the group's next UK single, recorded a couple of months later. This would be their third UK number one, and the first one credited to Jagger and Richards as songwriters, though the credit is a rather misleading one in this case, as the chorus is taken directly from a gospel song by Pops Staples, recorded by the Staple Singers: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "This May Be The Last Time"] Jagger and Richards took that chorus and reworked it into a snarling song whose lyrics were based around Jagger's then favourite theme -- how annoying it is when women want to do things other than whatever their man wants them to do: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "The Last Time"] There is a deep, deep misogyny in the Stones' lyrics in the mid sixties, partly inspired by the personas taken on by some blues men (though there are very few blues singers who stuck so unrelentingly to a single theme), and partly inspired by Jagger's own relationship with Chrissie Shrimpton, who he regarded as his inferior, even though she was his superior in terms of the British class system. That's even more noticeable on "Play With Fire", the B-side to "The Last Time". "The Last Time" had been recorded in such a long session that Jones, Watts, and Wyman went off to bed, exhausted. But Jagger and Richards wanted to record a demo of another song, which definitely seems to have been inspired by Shrimpton, so they got Jack Nitzsche to play harpsichord and Phil Spector to play (depending on which source you believe) either a bass or a detuned electric guitar: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Play With Fire"] The demo was considered good enough to release, and put out as the B-side without any contribution from the other three Stones. Other songs Chrissie Shrimpton would inspire over the next couple of years would include "Under My Thumb", "19th Nervous Breakdown", and "Stupid Girl". It's safe to say that Mick Jagger wasn't going to win any boyfriend of the year awards. "The Last Time" was a big hit, but the follow-up was the song that turned the Stones from being one of several British bands who were very successful to being the only real challengers to the Beatles for commercial success. And it was a song whose main riff came to Keith Richards in a dream: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction)"] Richards apparently had a tape recorder by the side of his bed, and when the riff came to him he woke up enough to quickly record it before falling back to sleep with the tape running. When he woke up, he'd forgotten the riff, but found it at the beginning of a recording that was otherwise just snoring. For a while Richards was worried he'd ripped the riff off from something else, and he's later said that he thinks that it was inspired by "Dancing in the Street". In fact, it's much closer to the horn line from another Vandellas record, "Nowhere to Run", which also has a similar stomping rhythm: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] You can see how similar the two songs are by overlaying the riff from “Satisfaction” on the chorus to “Nowhere to Run”: [Excerpt “Nowhere to Run”/”Satisfaction”] "Nowhere to Run" also has a similar breakdown. Compare the Vandellas: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] to the Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] So it's fairly clear where the song's inspiration came from, but it's also clear that unlike a song like "The Last Time" this *was* just inspiration, rather than plagiarism.  The recorded version of "Satisfaction" was never one that its main composer was happy with. The group, apart from Brian Jones, who may have added a harmonica part that was later wiped, depending on what sources you read, but is otherwise absent from the track, recorded the basic track at Chess studios, and at this point it was mostly acoustic. Richards thought it had come out sounding too folk-rock, and didn't work at all. At this point Richards was still thinking of the track as a demo -- though by this point he was already aware of Andrew Oldham's tendency to take things that Richards thought were demos and release them. When Richards had come up with the riff, he had imagined it as a horn line, something like the version that Otis Redding eventually recorded: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] So when they went into the studio in LA with Jack Nitzsche to work on some tracks there including some more work on the demo for “Satisfaction”, as well as Nitzsche adding some piano, Richards also wanted to do something to sketch out what the horn part would be. He tried playing it on his guitar, and it didn't sound right, and so Ian Stewart had an idea, went to a music shop, and got one of the first ever fuzz pedals, to see if Richards' guitar could sound like a horn. Now, people have, over the years, said that "Satisfaction" was the first record ever to use a fuzz tone. This is nonsense. We saw *way* back in the episode on “Rocket '88” a use of a damaged amp as an inspired accident, getting a fuzzy tone, though nobody picked up on that and it was just a one-off thing. Paul Burlison, the guitarist with the Rock 'n' Roll Trio, had a similar accident a few years later, as we also saw, and went with it, deliberately loosening tubes in his amp to get the sound audible on their version of "Train Kept A-Rollin'": [Excerpt: Johnny Burnette and the Rock 'n' Roll Trio, "Train Kept A-Rollin'"] A few years later, Grady Martin, the Nashville session player who was the other guitarist on that track, got a similar effect on his six-string bass solo on Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry", possibly partly inspired by Burlison's sound: [Excerpt: Marty Robbins, "Don't Worry"] That tends to be considered the real birth of fuzz, because that time it was picked up by the whole industry. Martin recorded an instrumental showing off the technique: [Excerpt: Grady Martin, "The Fuzz"] And more or less simultaneously, Wrecking Crew guitarist Al Casey used an early fuzz tone on a country record by Sanford Clark: [Excerpt: Sanford Clark, "Go On Home"] And the pedal steel player Red Rhodes had invented his own fuzz box, which he gave to another Wrecking Crew player, Billy Strange, who used it on records like Ann-Margret's "I Just Don't Understand": [Excerpt: Ann-Margret, "I Just Don't Understand"] All those last four tracks, and many more, were from 1960 or 1961. So far from being something unprecedented in recording history, as all too many rock histories will tell you, fuzz guitar was somewhat passe by 1965 -- it had been the big thing on records made by the Nashville A-Team and the Wrecking Crew four or five years earlier, and everyone had moved on to the next gimmick long ago. But it was good enough to use to impersonate a horn to sketch out a line for a demo. Except, of course, that while Jagger and Richards disliked the track as recorded, the other members of the band, and Ian Stewart (who still had a vote even though he was no longer a full member) and Andrew Oldham all thought it was a hit single as it was. They overruled Jagger and Richards and released it complete with fuzz guitar riff, which became one of the most well-known examples of the sound in rock history. To this day, though, when Richards plays the song live, he plays it without the fuzztone effect. Lyrically, the song sees Mick Jagger reaching for the influence of Bob Dylan and trying to write a piece of social commentary. The title line seems, appropriately for a song partly recorded at Chess studios, to have come from a line in a Chuck Berry record, "Thirty Days": [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Thirty Days"] But the sentiment also owes more than a little to another record by a Chess star, one recorded so early that it was originally released when Chess was still called Aristocrat Records -- Muddy Waters'  "I Can't Be Satisfied": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Can't Be Satisfied"] “Satisfaction” is the ultimate exercise in adolescent male frustration. I once read something, and I can't for the life of me remember where or who the author was, that struck me as the most insightful critique of the sixties British blues bands I've ever heard. That person said that by taking the blues out of the context in which the music had been created, they fundamentally changed the meaning of it -- that when Bo Diddley sang "I'm a Man", the subtext was "so don't call me 'boy', cracker". Meanwhile, when some British white teenagers from Essex sang the same words, in complete ignorance of the world in which Diddley lived, what they were singing was "I'm a man now, mummy, so you can't make me tidy my room if I don't want to". But the thing is, there are a lot of teenagers out there who don't want to tidy their rooms, and that kind of message does resonate. And here, Jagger is expressing the kind of aggressive sulk that pretty much every teenager, especially every frustrated male teenager will relate to. The protagonist is dissatisfied with everything in his life, so criticism of the vapidity of advertising is mixed in with sexual frustration because women won't sleep with the protagonist when they're menstruating: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] It is the most adolescent lyric imaginable, but pop music is an adolescent medium. The song went to number one in the UK, and also became the group's first American number one. But Brian Jones resented it, so much so that when they performed the song live, he'd often start playing “I'm Popeye the Sailor Man”. This was partly because it wasn't the blues he loved, but also because it was the first Stones single he wasn't on (again, at least according to most sources. Some say he played acoustic rhythm guitar, but most say he's not on it and that Richards plays all the guitar parts). And to explain why, I have to get into the unpleasant details I talked about at the start. If you're likely to be upset by discussion of rape or domestic violence, stop the episode now. Now, there are a number of different versions of this story. This is the one that seems most plausible to me, based on what else I know about the Stones, and the different accounts, but some of the details might be wrong, so I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying that this is absolutely exactly what happened. But if it isn't, it's the *kind* of thing that happened many times, and something very like it definitely happened. You see, Brian Jones was a sadist, and not in a good way. There are people who engage in consensual BDSM, in which everyone involved is having a good time, and those people include some of my closest friends. This will never be a podcast that engages in kink-shaming of consensual kinks, and I want to make clear that what I have to say about Jones has nothing to do with that. Because Jones was not into consent. He was into physically injuring non-consenting young women, and he got his sexual kicks from things like beating them with chains. Again, if everyone is involved is consenting, this is perfectly fine, but Jones didn't care about anyone other than himself. At a hotel in Clearwater, Florida, on the sixth of May 1965, the same day that Jagger and Richards finished writing "Satisfaction", a girl that Bill Wyman had slept with the night before came to him in tears. She'd been with a friend the day before, and the friend had gone off with Jones while she'd gone off with Wyman. Jones had raped her friend, and had beaten her up -- he'd blackened both her eyes and done other damage. Jones had hurt this girl so badly that even the other Stones, who as we have seen were very far from winning any awards for being feminists of the year, were horrified. There was some discussion of calling the police on him, but eventually they decided to take matters into their own hands, or at least into one of their employees' hands. They got their roadie Mike Dorsey to teach him a lesson, though Oldham was insistent that Dorsey not mess up Jones' face. Dorsey dangled Jones by his collar and belt out of an upstairs window and told Jones that if he ever did anything like that again, he'd drop him. He also beat him up, cracking two of Jones' ribs. And so Jones was not in any state to play on the group's first US number one, or to play much at all at the session, because of the painkillers he was on for the cracked ribs.  Jones would remain in the band for the next few years, but he had gone from being the group's leader to someone they disliked and were disgusted by. And as we'll see the next couple of times we look at the Stones, he would only get worse.

In this episode, join Ray and Marc as they break down the 2021 Rock Hall class inductees. The performers include Tina Turner, Carole King, The Go-Gos, JAY-Z, Foo Fighters, and Todd Rundgren. This year's early influencers include Kraftwerk, Charley Patton, and Gil Scott-Heron while the Musical Excellence Award goes to LL Cool J, Billy Preston, and Randy Rhoads. Last but not least, the Ahmet Ertegun Award goes to poetic jazz pioneer Clarence Avant. Listen to this week's podcast to find out the cultural impact this The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame class had on the world of music. https://www.rockhall.com/rock-roll-hall-fame-announces-2021-inductees

Musician Rev. Peyton (Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band) joins Joe & Kristen to gush about his hero and 2021 Early Influence Rock Hall inductee, "Father of the Delta Blues" Charley Patton. It's Week 2 of Early Inf-JUNE-lence! This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Musician Rev. Peyton (Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band) joins Joe & Kristen to gush about his hero and 2021 Early Influence Rock Hall inductee, "Father of the Delta Blues" Charley Patton. It's Week 2 of Early Inf-JUNE-lence! This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

Musician Rev. Peyton (Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band) joins Joe & Kristen to gush about his hero and 2021 Early Influence Rock Hall inductee, "Father of the Delta Blues" Charley Patton. It's Week 2 of Early Inf-JUNE-lence! This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

The legendary guitarist Charlie Hunter discusses his approach to combining bass and guitar on his hybrid guitar and his roots in early blues, and even remembers how to play one of his songs live on the show!  Featuring a couple of cool listening examples of Charlie back-to-back with influences like Joe Pass and Charley Patton.     Craft Brewed Music® The app that streams better music for serious listeners. Available at the App Store and Google Play http://www.craftbrewedmusic.com   The Craft Brewed Music Podcast Conversations with those who make better music for serious listeners. Available on all major podcast platforms. https://www.podlink.to/CBMPodcast  

This episode covers early delta blues musicians, early Black radio and the influence of electric technology. Topics covered Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton, Jack L Cooper, Electric Recording Technology, Electric Guitar, Black Radio, Urban Theater Circuit.

This week on the Green Room, Dominic talks the blues, the blacks and the whites with Grammy-winning blues artist Chris Thomas King. Earlier this week, King wrote for Spectator USA a scathing criticism of the policies of the Grammys' Blues category. King is an African American from Louisiana. He is the son of a blues musician, and grew up in his father's juke joint. He was one of the last blues musicians to be ‘discovered' by anthropologists from the North. He has won two Grammy awards, in 2001 for the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, in which he starred as a blues singer who has sold his soul to the devil, and in 2002 in the category of Best Historical Album, for his tribute to Charley Patton, Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues. Yet he now finds his latest album, Hotel Voodoo, ineligible for Grammy nomination as a blues artist. So why won't the Blues Grammy recognise African American artists? Presented by Dominic Green.

Moe Clark nous propose un saut dans le temps, à la rencontre de Charley Patton, considéré comme le «père du delta blues».

The Blues Foundation Podcast - Season 1: Blues Hall of Fame    Charley Patton was the very first bluesman to record and popularize the blues. Born in 1891 in Bolton, MS (in the southern part of the state), Charley and his family relocated to Dockery Farms around 1900, looking for opportunity and a better way of life. The towns in the northern delta were less established and in need of labor - as a result, black workers were treated better on the northern plantations than those in the southern, more established part of the state. At Dockery, his family worked hard and achieved success - his father was named foreman of the plantation. But farm work was never much in the plan for Charley Patton - he was born to entertain. While he lived on or around Dockery his entire life, he never bought in to the farming lifestyle. But he did play the blues far and wide. He became the first in-demand blues artist. He was a regional superstar. A celebrity. His recorded works became hit records found on phonographs throughout the Delta. Charlye recorded 57 songs between 1929 and 1934, which left a legacy that has impacted musicians from Led Zepplin to Bob Dylan to the White Stripes. His most famous songs include Pony Blues, Spoonful Blues, and High Water Everywhere. Unfortunately, like many bluesmen, Patton's life was short - he died in 1934 at age 43. We can only guess what we would have accomplished in his life. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980. This is his story.    Charley Patton inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980.