Mustang Sally - Wilson Pickett

Wilson Pickett (March 18, 1941 – January 19, 2006) was an American R&B, soul and rock and roll singer and songwriter. A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, and frequently crossed over to the US Billboard Hot 100. Among his best known hits are "In the Midnight Hour" (which he co-wrote), "Land of 1,000 Dances", "Mustang Sally", and "Funky Broadway". The impact of Pickett's songwriting and recording led to his 1991 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Pickett was born March 18, 1941 in Prattville, Alabama, and grew up singing in Baptist church choirs. He was the fourth of 11 children and called his mother "the baddest woman in my book," telling historian Gerri Hirshey: "I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood — (one time I ran away and) cried for a week. Stayed in the woods, me and my little dog." Pickett eventually left to live with his father in Detroit in 1955 Pickett's forceful, passionate style of singing was developed in the church and on the streets of Detroit, under the influence of recording stars such as Little Richard, whom he later referred to as "the architect of rock and roll. In 1955, Pickett became part of a gospel music group called the Violinaires. The group accompanied The Soul Stirrers, The Swan Silvertones, and The Davis Sisters on church tours across the country.[citation needed] After singing for four years in the locally popular gospel-harmony group, Pickett, lured by the success of other gospel singers of the day, who left gospel music in the late 1950s for the more lucrative secular music market, joined the Falcons in 1959. The Falcons were one of the first vocal groups to bring gospel into a popular context, thus paving the way for soul music. The Falcons also featured some notable members who went on to become major solo artists; when Pickett joined the group, Eddie Floyd and Sir Mack Rice were also members of the group. Pickett's biggest success with The Falcons was "I Found a Love", co-authored by Pickett and featuring his lead vocals. A minor hit at the time for the Falcons (Pickett would later re-record it, and have a much bigger solo hit with the song), "I Found A Love" paved the way for Pickett to go solo. Soon after recording "I Found a Love", Pickett cut his first solo recordings, including "I'm Gonna Cry", his first collaboration with Don Covay. Around this time, Pickett also recorded a demo for a song he co-wrote, called "If You Need Me". A slow-burning soul ballad featuring a spoken sermon, Pickett sent the demo to Jerry Wexler, a producer at Atlantic Records. Wexler heard the demo and gave it to one of the label's own recording artists, Solomon Burke. Burke's recording of "If You Need Me" became one of his biggest hits (#2 R&B, #37 Pop) and is now considered a soul standard, but Pickett was crushed when he discovered that Atlantic had given away his song. However, when Pickett—holding a demo tape under his arm—returned to Wexler's personal studio, Wexler asked him whether he was angry about this loss, but denied it saying "It's over". "First time I ever cried in my life".[citation needed] Pickett's version of the song was released on Double L Records, and was a moderate hit, peaking at #30 R&B, #64 pop. Pickett's first significant success as a solo artist came with "It's Too Late," an original composition (not to be confused with the Chuck Willis standard of the same name). Entering the charts on July 27, 1963, it eventually peaked at number 7 on the R&B chart (number 49 Pop). This record's success convinced Wexler and Atlantic to buy Pickett's recording contract from Double L Records in 1964. Pickett's Atlantic career began with a self-produced single, "I'm Gonna Cry". Looking to boost Pickett's chart chances, Atlantic next paired him with record producer Bert Berns and established songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. With this team, Pickett recorded "Come Home Baby," a duet with singer Tami Lynn, but this single failed to chart. Pickett's breakthrough came at Stax Records' recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where he recorded his third Atlantic single, "In the Midnight Hour" (1965). This song became Pickett's first big hit, peaking at number 1 R&B, number 21 pop (US), and number 12 (UK). It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The genesis of "In the Midnight Hour" was a recording session on May 12, 1965, at which Wexler worked out a powerful rhythm track with studio musicians Steve Cropper and Al Jackson of the Stax Records house band, which also included bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn. (Stax keyboard player Booker T. Jones, who usually played with Dunn, Cropper and Jackson as Booker T. & the M.G.'s, did not play on any of the Pickett studio sessions.) Wexler said to Cropper and Jackson, "Why don't you pick up on this thing here?" He performed a dance step. Cropper later explained in an interview that Wexler told them that "this was the way the kids were dancing; they were putting the accent on two. Basically, we'd been one-beat-accenters with an afterbeat; it was like 'boom dah,' but here this was a thing that went 'um-chaw,' just the reverse as far as the accent goes Pickett recorded three sessions at Stax in May and October 1965, and was joined by keyboardist Isaac Hayes for the October sessions. In addition to "In the Midnight Hour," Pickett's 1965 recordings included the singles "Don't Fight It," (#4 R&B, #53 pop) "634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A,)" (#1 R&B, #13 pop) and "Ninety-Nine and A Half (Won't Do)" (#13 R&B, #53 pop). All but "634-5789" were original compositions Pickett co-wrote with Eddie Floyd and/or Steve Cropper; "634-5789" was credited to Cropper and Floyd alone. For his next sessions, Pickett would not return to Stax; the label's owner, Jim Stewart, banned all outside productions in December, 1965. As a result, Wexler took Pickett to Fame Studios, another recording studio with a closer association to Atlantic Records. Located in a converted tobacco warehouse in nearby Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Pickett recorded some of his biggest hits there. This included the highest charting version of "Land of 1,000 Dances", which became Pickett's third R&B #1, and his biggest ever pop hit, peaking at #6. it was another million selling disc. Other big hits from this era in Pickett's career included two other covers: Mack Rice's "Mustang Sally", (#6 R&B, #23 Pop), and Dyke & the Blazers' "Funky Broadway", (R&B #1, #8 Pop). Both tracks were million sellers. The band heard on almost all of Pickett's Fame recordings included keyboardist Spooner Oldham and drummer Roger Hawkins. Towards the end of 1967, Pickett began recording at American Studios in Memphis with producers Tom Dowd and Tommy Cogbill, and also began recording numerous songs by Bobby Womack. The songs "I'm In Love," "Jealous Love," "I've Come A Long Way," "I'm A Midnight Mover," (a Pickett/Womack co-write), and "I Found A True Love" were all Womack penned hits for Pickett in 1967 and 1968. Pickett also recorded work by other songwriters during this era; Rodger Collins' "She's Looking Good" and a cover of the traditional blues standard "Stagger Lee" were also Top 40 Pickett hits recorded at American. Womack was the guitarist on all these recordings. Pickett returned to Fame Studios in late 1968 and early 1969, where he worked with a band that featured guitarist Duane Allman, Hawkins, and bassist Jerry Jemmott. A #16 pop hit cover of The Beatles' "Hey Jude" came from these Fame sessions, as well as the minor hits "Mini-Skirt Minnie" and "Hey Joe". Late 1969 found Pickett at Criteria Studios in Miami. Hit covers of The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On" (#16 R&B, #92 Pop) and The Archies' "Sugar Sugar" (#4 R&B, #25 Pop), as well as the Pickett original "She Said Yes" (#20 R&B, #68 Pop) came from these sessions. Pickett then teamed up with established Philadelphia-based hitmakers Gamble and Huff for the 1970 album Wilson Pickett In Philadelphia, which featured his next two hit singles, "Engine No.9" and "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You", the latter selling one million copies. Following these two big hits, Pickett returned to Muscle Shoals and the band featuring David Hood, Hawkins and Tippy Armstrong. This line-up recorded Pickett's fifth and last R&B #1 hit, "Don't Knock My Love, Pt. 1".[1] It was another Pickett recording that clocked up sales in excess of one million copies. Two further hits followed in '71: "Call My Name, I'll Be There" (#10 R&B, #52 Pop) and "Fire and Water" (#2 R&B, #24 Pop), a cover of a song by Free. Pickett recorded several tracks in 1972 for a planned new album on Atlantic, but after the single "Funk Factory" reached #11 R&B and #58 pop in June 1972, he left Atlantic for RCA Records. His final Atlantic single, a cover of Randy Newman's "Mama Told Me Not To Come," was actually culled from Pickett's 1971 album Don't Knock My Love. In 2010, Rhino Handmade released a comprehensive compilation of these years titled "Funky Midnight Mover – The Studio Recordings (1962–1978)". The compilation included all originally issued recordings during Pickett's Atlantic years along with previously unreleased recordings. This collection was sold online only via Rhino.com. Pickett continued to record with some success on the R&B charts for RCA in 1973 and 1974, scoring four top 30 R&B hits with "Mr. Magic Man", "Take a Closer Look at the Woman You're With", "International Playboy" and "Soft Soul Boogie Woogie". However, he was no longer crossing over to the pop charts with any regularity, as none of these songs reached higher than #90 on the Hot 100. In 1975, with Pickett's once-prominent chart career on the wane, RCA dropped Pickett from the label. Pickett continued to record sporadically with several labels over the following decades, occasionally making the lower to mid-range of the R&B charts, however he never had another pop hit after 1974. His last record was issued in 1999, although he remained fairly active on the touring front until he became ill in 2004. Pickett appeared in the 1998 film Blues Brothers 2000, performing "634–5789" along with Eddie Floyd and Jonny Lang. He had been previously mentioned in the original Blues Brothers. Pickett died from a heart attack on January 19, 2006 in Reston, Virginia. He was 64.[15] He was laid to rest in a mausoleum in Louisville, Kentucky at Evergreen Cemetery on Preston Highway. Pickett spent many years in Louisville when his mother moved there from Alabama. The eulogy was delivered by Pastor Steve Owens of Decatur, Georgia. Little Richard, a long-time friend of Pickett's, also spoke about him and preached a message at the funeral. He was remembered on March 20, 2006, at New York's B.B. King Blues Club with performances by the Commitments, Ben E King, his long-term backing band the Midnight Movers, soul singer Bruce "Big Daddy" Wayne, and Southside Johnny in front of an audience that included members of his family, including two brothers.

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Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out - Clarence " Pinetop" Smith

Clarence Smith, better known as Pinetop Smith or Pine Top Smith (June 11, 1904 – March 15, 1929) was an American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. His hit tune, "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," featured rhythmic "breaks" that were an essential ingredient of ragtime music. He was a posthumous 1991 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Smith was born in Troy, Alabama and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his nickname as a child from his liking for climbing trees. In 1920 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the T. O. B. A. vaudeville circuit, performing as a singer and comedian as well as a pianist. For a time he worked as accompanist for blues singer Ma Rainey and Butterbeans and Susie. In the mid 1920s he was recommended by Cow Cow Davenport to J. Mayo Williams at Vocalion Records, and in 1928 he moved, with his wife and young son, to Chicago, Illinois to record. For a time he, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis lived in the same rooming house. On 29 December 1928 he recorded his influential "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," one of the first "boogie woogie" style recordings to make a hit, and which cemented the name for the style. Pine Top talks over the recording, telling how to dance to the number. He said he originated the number at a house-rent party in St. Louis, Missouri. Smith was the first ever to direct "the girl with the red dress on" to "not move a peg" until told to "shake that thing" and "mess around". Similar lyrics are heard in many later songs, including "Mess Around" and "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles. Smith was scheduled to make another recording session for Vocalion in 1929, but died from a gunshot wound in a dance-hall fight in Chicago the day before the session. Sources differ as to whether he was the intended recipient of the bullet. "I saw Pinetop spit blood" was the famous headline in Down Beat magazine. No photographs of Smith are known to exist.
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Eddie King and the Swamp Bees

Eddie King (April 21, 1938 – March 14, 2012) was an American Chicago blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Living Blues once stated "King is a potent singer and player with a raw, gospel-tinged voice and an aggressive, thick-toned guitar sound". He was noted as creating a "straightforward style, after Freddie King and Little Milton" King was born Edward Lewis Davis Milton in Talladega, Alabama, United States. His parents were both musical, with his father playing guitar and his mother a gospel singer. King learned basic guitar riffs from watching from outside the window of local blues clubs, and was inspired by the playing of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. He grew up playing alongside Luther Allison, Magic Sam, Junior Wells, Eddie C. Campbell, and Freddie King. He relocated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1954, and his diminutive stature and the influence of B.B. King led to him being referred to as 'Little Eddie King'. Given a break by Little Mack Simmons,[4] he first recorded under the tutelage of Willie Dixon and, in 1960, played on several tracks recorded by Sonny Boy Williamson II. He also recorded with Detroit Junior. Also in 1960, King had a single released by J.O.B. Records, "Shakin' Inside" / "Love You Baby". He then became the guitarist backing Koko Taylor, a role he undertook for two decades. Separately forming Eddie King & the Kingsmen in 1969, King moved to Peoria, Illinois, in the early 1980s. Since the early 1990s, King's backing ensemble were known as the Swamp Bees, and his output has incorporated Chicago blues, country blues, blues shouter, and soul. His debut album, The Blues Has Got Me (1987), was issued by the Netherlands based record label, Black Magic, and later re-released by Double Trouble. It featured one of his sisters, Mae Bee May, on vocals. In 1997, King recorded Another Cow's Dead, which got a Blues Music Award for 'Best Comeback Blues Album'. It was arranged by Lou Marini. His songwriting credits include "Kitty Kat", described by one journalist as "hilarious". King died in Peoria, Illinois, in March 2012, at the age of 73. In October 2012 the Killer Blues Headstone Project, a nonprofit organization, placed a headstone on King's unmarked grave at the Lutheran Cemetery in Peoria, IL.

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Drinkin' Blues - Jo Jo Adams, Tom Archia

Jo Jo Adams (often billed as Doctor Jo Jo ) was born in rural Alabama in 1918. His first notices in the field of music was for his efforts in the gospel music field in the late nineteen thirties. One of the gospel groups he was part of was known as the Big Four Gospel Jubilee Singers. By his late twenties Adams had gone over into secular music and began to make performance appearances in clubs on Chicago's south side. He soon adopted a Cab Calloway like persona affecting flashy tuxedo jackets with very long tails that he swung out from him while whirling about the stage delivering a song. He hooked up with the band led by Freddie Williams and soon got a chance to record with Williams own record label called Melody Lane . Adams first recording for Melody Lane was in 1946 with the two part "Jo Jo Blues" on # 11. That was followed by "Please Don't Give It Away" and "Corine" on Melody Lane # 12. Soon Melody Lane Records had morphed into the Hy-Tone label. Both records were re-released on Hy-Tone with the same numbers. The next year saw Jo Jo Adams record with the Floyd Smith combo. "I'm Weak For You" with a vocal by Jo Jo was coupled with a re-recording of Smith's "Floyd's Guitar Blues" on # 29, which he had recorded with Andy Kirk a few years before with great success. Adams next record was "Around The Watch" parts one and two on Hy-Tone # 30, and "I Get The Blues Every Morning" and "Voodit" on # 31. For a time in 1946 and early 1947, Adams was on the West Coast and did some recording for the Aladdin label with the band of Maxwell Davis. "Disgusted" and "Thursday Evening Blues" was released on Aladdin # 142. This record was followed by "Jo Jo's Troubles" and "Upstairs" on # 143, and "When I'm In My Tea" and "Hard Hearted Woman" on # 144. In 1948, back in Chicago, Jo Jo Adams recorded with a combo under the direction of Tom Archia for the Aristocrat label ( forerunner of Chess ). The recordings were "Love Me" and "Drinking Blues" on Aristocrat # 801, followed by "If I Feel Like This Tomorrow" and "Crying By My Window" on # 802, and "Cabbage Head" parts one and two on # 803. In 1949 Adams had a part in the motion picture "Burlesque In Harlem", a musical variety film with an all Black cast in which he did a version of "The Hucklebuck". In 1950 during the summer, Jo Jo joins Memphis Slim's Houserockers and appears with the band and Terry Timmons in club dates in Chicago. At the end of the year Adams plays a big New Year's Eve show with Lester Young and others at the Giles Avenue Armory in that city. In 1952 Adams had a recording session for another Chicago independent label, Chance Records. He recorded with the Melvin Moore band and cut six songs of which two were released - "Didn't I Tell You" and "I've Got A Crazy Baby" on Chance # 1127. Jo Jo made a final record for the Parrot label in 1953. The songs were "Call My Baby" and "Rebecca" on # 788. When not recording during the year he headlined the "Jo Jo Show" which also sometimes featured vocalist Joe Williams (who would rise to great fame with Count Basie in the mid fifties and beyond), Willie Mabon, the Melvin Moore combo, Bill Pinkard, and Shirley Harvey. In the mid fifties Jo Jo was still at it appearing at a number of all star R & B shows headed by Al Benson at area theaters, halls, and clubs such as Budland on South Cottage Grove. By the ende of the decade of the nineteen fifties Dr. Jo Jo Adams disappeared from the field of music. He passed away in February of 1988 in relative obscurity. Surviving is his music wonderfully compiled by the French label Classics with the 2004 cd "Jo Jo Adams : 1946-1953" with twenty tracks of his very best recorded performances. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

What Am I Gonna Do? - Beulah Bryant

Claimed by the proud state of Alabama as one of their homegrown talents, Beulah Bryant was born Blooma Bryant and sang in local church groups. She left the state as a teenager, though, relocating to California in 1936 and more or less officially launching her professional career about a decade later by winning an amateur contest held by a network radio show. This victory inspired her to start up her own trio, which worked regularly in California. In the mid-'40s she moved to New York and by 1950 was part of a group of signings pulled off by Joe Davis wearing his hat as an MGM A&R man. The June, Billboard of that year announced that the label had "inked West Coast blues thrush Beulah Bryant." She made some excellent recordings with a group of musicians that had also backed up singers such as Irene Redfield and Millie Bosman, including the fine trombonist Will Bradley and trumpeter Taft Jordan. Bryant's style was tailored from the same type of musical suits worn by the so-called "blues shouters." She had a strong, authoritative delivery, a sense of rhythm that was like a bass drum pedal come to life, and the advantage of some first-class material created specifically for her by contributors such as singer and writer Irene Higginbotham If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

 

SHADY GROVE - LITTLE WHITT & BIG BO

Veterans of the Alabama blues scene for more than four decades, Little Whitt (born Jolly Wells, February 19, 1931) and Big Bo (born Bo McGee, October 9, 1928) reached out to an audience outside their home state for the first time in March 1995. Touring Europe for more than two months, the two bluesmen performed over 50 concerts in Ireland, Scotland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and England. Their debut album, Moody Swamp Blues, released the same year, was named "CD of the Year" by British blues magazine Blueprint. In early 2002, one year after McGee won an award from the Alabama Folk Heritage for his contributions to blues, he was killed and his stepson charged with the murder.


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Watcha Gonna Do"- Professor Alex Bradford

Professor Alex Bradford (January 23, 1927 – February 15, 1978) was a multi-talented gospel composer, singer, arranger and choir director, who was a great influence on artists such as Little Richard, Bob Marley and Ray Charles and who helped bring about the modern mass choir movement in gospel. Born in Bessemer, Alabama, USA, he first appeared on stage at the age of four, then joined a children's gospel group at thirteen, soon obtaining his own radio show. He organized another group after his mother sent him to New York City following a racial incident; he continued singing after returning to attend the Snow Hill Institute in Snow Hill, Alabama, where he acquired the title "Professor" while teaching as a student. He moved to Chicago in 1947, where he worked briefly with Roberta Martin and toured with Mahalia Jackson, then struck out on his own with his own group, the Bradford Singers, followed by another group, the Bradford Specials. He recorded his first hit record, "Too Close To Heaven" (1954), billed as Professor Alex Bradford and his singers, sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc, then followed it with a number of other successes in the rest of the decade. Artists such as Little Richard imitated Bradford's energetic style, ranging from a gravelly bass to a whooping falsetto, and his flamboyant stage presence. Ray Charles, for his part, not only borrowed some of Bradford's vocal mannerisms but based his Raelets on the Bradford Specials. His 1962 gospel song composition "Let the Lord Be Seen in Me", recorded for his One Step & Angel on Vacation album, was also recorded in 1964 by an emerging force in Jamaican music, Bob Marley & the Spiritual Sisters. Marley later adopted the Rastafarian faith, but along with his mother, at first he sung gospel in the local Shilo Apostolic Church. In 1961, when his recording career was in decline, Bradford joined the cast of the off-Broadway show Black Nativity, based on the writings of Langston Hughes, which toured Europe in 1962. A member of the Alex Bradford Singers at that time was Madeline Bell, who settled in England after the show ended. Bradford appeared in Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope, for which he won the Obie award, in 1972. He died in Newark, New Jersey, in 1978, as the musical Your Arms Too Short to Box with God was in production. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Mumbles Blues - Paul Bascomb

Paul Bascomb (February 12, 1912, Birmingham, Alabama – December 2, 1986 (aged 74), Chicago) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, noted for his extended tenure with Erskine Hawkins. He is a 1979 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Bascomb was a founding member of the Bama State Collegians, which was led by Erskine Hawkins and eventually became his big band. Bascomb's brother Dud played in this ensemble as well. Bascomb remained in this ensemble until 1944, aside from a brief interval in 1938–39 where he played in Count Basie's orchestra after Herschel Evans's death. From 1944 to 1947 he and Dud co-led a septet which evolved into a big band. He recorded for States Records in 1952; these sides were reissued by Delmark Records in the 1970s. From 1953 to 1955 he recorded for Parrot. He was active as a performer nearly up until the time of his death. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

The Thrill Is Gone / Rocks In My Pillow - Big Joe Duskin

Big Joe Duskin (February 10, 1921 – May 6, 2007) was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist. He is best known for his debut album, Cincinnati Stomp (1978), and the tracks "Well, Well Baby" and "I Met a Girl Named Martha". Born Joseph L. Duskin in Birmingham, Alabama, by the age of seven he had started playing piano. He played in church, accompanying his preacher father, the Rev. Perry Duskin. His family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Duskin was raised near to the Union Terminal train station where his father worked. On his local radio station, WLW, Duskin heard his hero Fats Waller play. He was also inspired to play in a boogie-woogie style by Pete Johnson's, "627 Stomp". In his younger days Duskin performed in clubs in Cincinnati and across the river in Newport, Kentucky. While serving in the US Army in World War II, he continued to play and, in entertaining the US forces, met his idols Johnson, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. After his military service ended, Duskin's father made him promise to stop playing while the elder Duskin was still alive. However, Rev. Duskin lived to the age of 105, and Joe found alternative employment as a police officer and a postal worker. Therefore Duskin, effectively in the middle of his career, never played a keyboard for sixteen years. With the encouragement of a blues historian, Steven C. Tracy, by the early 1970s Duskin had began playing the piano at festivals in the US and across Europe. By 1978, and with the reputation for his concert playing now growing, his first recording, Cincinnati Stomp, was released on Arhoolie Records. The album contained Duskin's cover version of the track, "Down the Road a Piece". He subsequently toured both Austria and Germany, and in 1987 made his inaugural visit to the UK. The same year his part in John Jeremy's film, Boogie Woogie Special, recorded for The South Bank Show, increased Duskin's profile. In 1988, accompanied by the guitar-playing Dave Peabody, Duskin recorded his second album, Don't Mess with the Boogie Man. In the following decade, Duskin performed at both the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the Chicago Blues Festival. His touring in Europe continued before he recorded his final album at the Quai du Blues in Neuilly, France. Several Duskin albums were issued on European labels in the 1980s and 1990s. It was 2004 before Big Joe Jumps Again! (Yellow Dog Records) became his second US-based release, and his first studio recording for sixteen years. It featured Phillip Paul (drums), Ed Conley (bass), and Peter Frampton on guitar. Duskin was presented with a key to the city in 2004 by the Mayor of Cincinnati. The following year he was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the Ohio Arts Council. Suffering from the effects of diabetes, Duskin was on the eve of having legs amputated, when he died in May 2007, at the age of 86. The Ohio based Big Joe Duskin Music Education Foundation keeps his musical ideals alive by producing in-school music presentations for public school children. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies - Leon Bibb

Leon Bibb (born October 5, 1944, in Butler, Alabama) is an American news anchor for WEWS-TV in Cleveland, OH and was a member of the BGSU Board of Trustees. Leon Bibb was the first black primetime news anchor in Ohio. Raised in Cleveland's Glenville area, and a graduate of Glenville High School on the city's east side, Bibb’s broadcasting career began during his student days at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). Following graduation, he worked as a newspaper reporter at The Plain Dealer. After a year at WTOL-TV (Toledo), he accepted a news position at WCMH-TV in Columbus. Prior to joining WEWS-TV, Bibb worked at WKYC-TV as the weekend News Anchor and News Reporter. In 1986, he became Primary News Anchor for the Monday through Friday newscasts. Leon Bibb anchors the noon newscast at WEWS-TV, as well as hosting a Sunday morning show named Kalediscope which focuses on urban issues in Cleveland. In the early 2000s, Bibb did a series called "Our Hometown" where he focused on a historical sites in the Cleveland area. He is known to take a camera operator to talk about a story in his own perspective, and such stories are now featured on WEWS under the title of "My Ohio". If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

Time For A Change - Jody Williams

photo credit: Dan Machnik

Joseph Leon Williams (born February 3, 1935), better known as Jody Williams, is an American blues guitarist and singer. His singular guitar playing, marked by flamboyant string-bending, imaginative chord changes and a distinctive tone, was influential in the Chicago blues scene of the 1950s. In the mid 1950s, Williams was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Chicago, yet he was little known outside the music industry since his name rarely appeared on discs. His acclaimed comeback in 2000 led to a resurgence of interest in Williams’ early work, and his reappraisal as one of the great blues guitarists Born in Mobile, Alabama, United States, Williams moved to Chicago at the age of five. His first instrument was the harmonica, which he swapped for the guitar after hearing Bo Diddley play at a talent show where they were both performing. Diddley, seven years his senior, took Williams under his wing and taught him the rudiments of guitar. By 1951 Williams and Diddley were playing on the street together, with Williams providing backing to Diddley's vocals, accompanied by Roosevelt Jackson on washtub bass. Williams cut his teeth gigging with a string of blues musicians, notably Memphis Minnie, Elmore James and Otis Spann. After touring with West Coast piano player Charles Brown, Williams established himself as a session player with Chess Records. At Chess, Williams met Howlin’ Wolf, recently arrived in Chicago from Memphis, Tennessee, and was hired by Wolf as the first guitarist in his new Chicago-based band. A year later Hubert Sumlin moved to Chicago to join Wolf's band, and the dual guitars of Williams and Sumlin are featured on Howlin’ Wolf’s 1954 singles, "Evil Is Going On", and "Forty Four", and on the 1955 releases, "Who Will Be Next" and "Come To Me Baby." Williams also provided backing on Otis Spann’s 1954 release, "It Must Have Been The Devil", that features lead guitar work from B. B. King, one of Williams’ early heroes and a big influence on his playing. Williams’ solo career began in December 1955 with the upbeat saxophone-driven "Lookin' For My Baby", released under the name Little Papa Joe on the Blue Lake label. The label closed a few months later, leaving his slide guitar performance on "Groaning My Blues Away" unreleased. By this time, Williams was highly sought after as a session guitarist, and his virtuosity in this capacity is well illustrated by his blistering lead guitar work on Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?", a hit for Checker Records in 1956. (Rock musician Marshall Crenshaw listed Williams' guitar solo on "Who Do You Love" as one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded.) Other notable session work from the 1950s include lead guitar parts on Billy Boy Arnold's "I Ain't Got You" and "I Wish You Would", Jimmy Rogers’ "One Kiss", Jimmy Witherspoon’s "Ain't Nobody's Business" and Otis Rush’s "Three Times A Fool". In 1957, Williams released "You May" on Argo Records, with the inventive b-side instrumental "Lucky Lou", the extraordinary opening riff of which Otis Rush copied on his 1958 Cobra Records side "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)". Further evidence of Williams’ influence on Rush (they played on a number of sessions together) is Rush’s solo on Buddy Guy’s 1958 debut, "Sit And Cry (The Blues)", copied almost exactly from Williams’ "You May" Only after his retirement did he consider picking up his guitar again, which had laid untouched under his bed all the while. "One day my wife said if I started playing again I might feel better about life in general," he told Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times. In March 2000, he went to see his old friend Robert Lockwood, Jr. play, and grew nostalgic for his music days. Back at home, an old tape of himself playing moved him to tears and inspired him to pick up his guitar again. He returned to playing in public in June 2000, when he was featured at a club gig during the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival. He gained much encouragement in this period from Dick Shurman, who eventually produced his comeback album, Return of a Legend (2002), on which his bold playing belies his thirty-year break from music. "He plays with a verve and vigor that sound as good today as it did on the classic records," wrote Vintage Guitar magazine. Williams continues to perform around the world, mainly at large blues festivals, and can often be seen sitting in with blues guitarist Billy Flynn at Chicago club appearances. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Wet it - Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon

Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon (February 3, 1895 – 1944?) was an African American vaudeville singer, female impersonator, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, Illinois, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver and Freddie Keppard among others. He also performed and recorded with the pianists Cow Cow Davenport, Tampa Red and "Georgia Tom" Dorsey, recording with the latter pair under the name of The Black Hillbillies. He also recorded with the Harlem Hamfats. In the 1930s he was often on radio in the Chicago area, and led his own band, Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon and his Quarts Of Joy. Jaxon appeared with Duke Ellington in a film short called Black and Tan Fantasy (1929). Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher" (1931) is based both musically and lyrically on Jaxon's "Willie the Weeper" (1927). His recordings, such as "Fan It" (later recorded by Red Nichols and Woody Herman), are mostly filled with bawdy comedy, double entendres and hokum. Blues fans reserve a special place in their hearts for his orgasmic parodies of "How Long How Long Blues" and "It's Tight Like That", louche collaborations with Tampa Red, Georgia Tom and assorted jugbandsmen. In 1941 he retired from show business and worked at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He was transferred to Los Angeles, California, in 1944 where, according to most sources, he died in the veterans hospital, although according to Allmusic he lived in Los Angeles until 1970. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Smoked Like Lightning - Horace Sprott

Alabama songster and harmonica player Horace Sprott was born February 2, 1890, the son of former slave Bessie Ford, and his surname was taken from the Sprott Plantation where he was born. He took up guitar and harmonica and was soon playing a mix of blues, work songs, spirituals, and old slave songs at local functions and parties in the area. Sprott reportedly got himself into some trouble, however, and ended up spending a stretch at a prison work farm in Montgomery. Folkways researcher Frederic Ramsey encountered Sprott in Marion, AL, in 1954, and impressed with the musician's varied repertoire, which included several a cappella set pieces, recorded him in seven sessions held in April and May of that year. These field recordings were edited down to form an LP, which was released in 1954 by Folkways Records. The album caused a brief stir in the folk world, and Sprott even ended up making an appearance on television for CBS in 1956, but a substantive career as a performer never really took shape, and Sprott drifted away into the haze of blues history, reportedly passing away in the early '90s. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Top Frog Music artist:George Kilby Jr. - Six Pack - New Release Review

I just received a new release, Six Pack, by George Kilby Jr. Joining Kilby on this set of 6 tracks is Neil Thomas (keys, accordion), Eric Halvorson (drums), Arturo Baguer (bass)and Jono Manson (guitar and backing vocals). This release has a strong contemporary pop country flavor. The first track, When The People Sang, has a lighthearted feel not a lot unlike Jimmy Buffet. This track could easily get strong airplay. I Love You In Brooklyn, another strongly earthy track has nice vocal harmonies and again a strong melody line. Something I Can't Find steps up the tempo a little and actually puts me in mind a little of Arlo Guthrie but still remaining true to Kilby's own sound. A surprise track on this release is Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love. Kilby gives this track a bluegrass like makeover with acoustic guitars, dobro and banjo. Interesting take on a traditional rock track. Another heavy hitting pop track, Cro- Magnon Man, has a strong hook that could easily be out of the Pretenders songbook but again not straying far from the roots of country. The final track, You Never See The Hand Throw The Stone, has a bit more of a blues twist but of course with a country delivery. This is a cool little track with sweet harp work by Phil Wiggins and harmony vocal sounding a lot like Ry Cooder recordings. Overall this recording should do very well commercially.

 If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

 

I'm Sober Now - Pine Top Smith

Clarence Smith, better known as Pinetop Smith or Pine Top Smith (June 11, 1904 – March 15, 1929) was an American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. His hit tune, "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," featured rhythmic "breaks" that were an essential ingredient of ragtime music. He was a posthumous 1991 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Smith was born in Troy, Alabama and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his nickname as a child from his liking for climbing trees. In 1920 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the T. O. B. A. vaudeville circuit, performing as a singer and comedian as well as a pianist. For a time he worked as accompanist for blues singer Ma Rainey and Butterbeans and Susie. In the mid 1920s he was recommended by Cow Cow Davenport to J. Mayo Williams at Vocalion Records, and in 1928 he moved, with his wife and young son, to Chicago, Illinois to record. For a time he, Albert Ammons, and Meade Lux Lewis lived in the same rooming house. On 29 December 1928 he recorded his influential "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," one of the first "boogie woogie" style recordings to make a hit, and which cemented the name for the style. Pine Top talks over the recording, telling how to dance to the number. He said he originated the number at a house-rent party in St. Louis, Missouri. Smith was the first ever to direct "the girl with the red dress on" to "not move a peg" until told to "shake that thing" and "mess around". Smith was scheduled to make another recording session for Vocalion in 1929, but died from a gunshot wound in a dance-hall fight in Chicago the day before the session. Sources differ as to whether he was the intended recipient of the bullet. "I saw Pinetop spit blood" was the famous headline in Down Beat magazine. No photographs of Smith are known to exist. Smith was acknowledged by other boogie woogie pianists such as Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson as a key influence, and he gained posthumous fame when "Boogie Woogie" was arranged for big band and recorded by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra in 1938. Although not immediately successful, "Boogie Woogie" was so popular during and after World War II that it became Dorsey's best selling record, with over five million copies sold. Bing Crosby also recorded his version of the song. From the 1950s, Joe Willie Perkins became universally known as "Pinetop Perkins" for his recording of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie". Perkins later became Muddy Waters' pianist and later, when in his nineties, recorded a song on his 2004 Ladies' Man album, which played on the by-then-common misconception that Perkins had himself written "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie". Ray Charles adapted "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" for his song "Mess Around", for which the authorship was credited to "A. Nugetre", Ahmet Ertegun. In 1975 the Bob Thiele Orchestra recorded a modern jazz album called I Saw Pinetop Spit Blood that included a treatment of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" as well as the title song. Gene Taylor recorded a version of "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" on his eponymous 2003 album. Claes Oldenburg, the pop artist, proposed a Pinetop Smith Monument in his book, Proposals for Monuments and Buildings 1965-69. Oldenburg described the monument as "a wire extending the length of North Avenue, west from Clark Street, along which at intervals runs an electric impulse colored blue so that there’s one blue line as far as the eye can see. Pinetop Smith invented boogie woogie blues at the corner of North and Larrabee, where he finally was murdered: the electric wire is “blue”and dangerous." If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

Sea Sick And Water Bound - Bobo Jenkins

Bobo Jenkins (January 7, 1916 – August 14, 1984) was an American Detroit blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He also built and set up his own recording studio and record label in Detroit. Jenkins is best known for his recordings of "Democrat Blues" and "Tell Me Where You Stayed Last Night" He was born John Pickens Jenkins in Forkland, Alabama, but when less than a year old his father, a sharecropper, died and Jenkins grew up with his mother and uncle. However, he left home before the age of 12, and arrived in Memphis, Tennessee. He had a wife at the age of 14, the first of ten marriages. Jenkins took casual work in the Mississippi Delta for several years and then enrolled in the United States Army. Following his 1944 military discharge, he relocated to Detroit, working for Packard and managing a garage, before spending twenty seven years working for Chrysler. In the late 1940s Jenkins learned the guitar and starting writing songs. He penned the politically motivated "Democrat Blues" on US Election Day in 1952. Therein Jenkins expressed his disquiet about Dwight D. Eisenhower becoming the first Republican in the White House for almost twenty years. With assistance from John Lee Hooker, Jenkins recorded "Democrat Blues" in Chicago in 1954, which was released by Chess Records. A further issue appeared on Chicago's Boxer Records, and then "Ten Below Zero" (1957) on Detroit's Fortune Records. In 1959 he set up his own record label, Big Star Records, whose first release was Jenkin's single "You"ll Never Understand" and "Tell Me Where You Stayed Last Night." He met and played alongside Sonny Boy Williamson II, before self-constructing his own recording studio. He recorded mainly local musicians including James "Little Daddy" Walton, Little Junior Cannady, Chubby Martin and Syl Foreman. Jenkins went on to promote the first Detroit Blues Festival in 1972, and the same year issued his first album, The Life of Bobo Jenkins. The album became known as the "red album", due to the color of the record sleeve. It included a photograph of a younger Jenkins- who was 56 years old- within a star shape. This was a tie-in with the Big Star Records name. Jenkins was one of the headline acts in the Detroit blues review part of the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. Recordings from the festival were released by Schoolkids Records in 1995, which included two tracks by Jenkins. In 1974, Jenkins penned another song with political overtones, "Watergate Blues," which appeared on his next album Here I Am a Fool in Love Again. It boasted the same cover design as the previous release, but with a change in color was alternatively dubbed the "green album". Session musicians used included Ann Arbor based artists such as Sarah Brown, Fran Christina and Steve Nardella. In 1976 Jenkins performed at the Smithsonian Institution, as part of the celebrations marking the US Bicentennial. Detroit All Purpose Blues was issued in 1977, his so-called "yellow album", which utilised other Detroit based blues musicians such as Buddy Folks and Willie D. Warren. In 1982, he went to Europe with the American Living Blues Festival tour, but due to poor health he returned home after his first concert. Bobo Jenkins died in Detroit after a long illness in August 1984, at the age of 68. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

Slip Away - Clarence Carter

Clarence Carter (born January 14, 1936) is an American soul singer and musician. Born in Montgomery, Alabama on January 14, 1936, Carter attended the Alabama School for the Blind in Talladega, Alabama, and Alabama State College in Montgomery, graduating in August 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in music. His professional music career began with friend Calvin Scott, signing to the Fairlane Records label to release "I Wanna Dance But I Don't Know How" the following year. After the 1962 release of "I Don't Know (School Girl)," Carter and Scott left Fairlane Records for Duke Records, renaming themselves the CL Boys for their label debut, Hey. In all, the duo cut four Duke singles, none of them generating more than a shrug at radio.. In 1965, they traveled to Rick Hall's FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals to record "Step by Step" and its flip side, "Rooster Knees and Rice." Atlantic Records took notice and released "Step by Step" on its Atco Records subsidiary, but it flopped. Carter continued as a solo act, signing to the Fame Records label for 1967's Tell Daddy. Several more solid singles followed, until Carter released "Slip Away," which hit number 6 on the Pop Charts. "Too Weak to Fight" hit number 13. Several more soul singles followed, like "Snatching It Back," "Making Love (At the Dark End of the Street)", "The Feeling Is Right," "Doing Our Thing" and "Patches." "Patches" (first recorded by Chairmen of the Board) was a UK number 2 and a U.S. number 4 in 1970, and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song in 1971. This disc sold over one million copies, and received a gold disc awarded by the R.I.A.A. in September 1970, just two months after its release. Following "Slip Away" and "Too Weak to Fight", it was Carter's third million-seller. That same year Carter married former Fame labelmate Candi Staton (divorced in 1973), with the marriage producing one son, Clarence Carter Jr. With the advent of disco in the mid 1970s, Carter's career suffered, before he found a new audience with songs such as "Strokin'" and "Dr. C.C." in the 1980s and 1990s, which appealed (and still appeal) to a primarily African-American working-class audience that was also interested in contemporary blues and soul artists such as Denise LaSalle, Bobby Rush, Marvin Sease and Sir Charles Jones. "Strokin'" was given further acclaim when it was used in the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor. It was most recently used in William Friedkin's film Killer Joe. Carter's soul sound also found an audience within the then-nascent hip-hop community. Most notably, the horn break from Carter's song "Back Door Santa", is sampled in the Run-D.M.C. Christmas song "Christmas in Hollis". If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

House of the Rising Sun - Odetta

Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. Time included her song "Take This Hammer" on its list of the All-Time 100 Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music. Odetta was born in Birmingham, Alabama, grew up in Los Angeles, California, attended Belmont High School, and studied music at Los Angeles City College while employed as a domestic worker. She had operatic training from the age of 13. Her mother hoped she would follow Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl would ever perform at the Metropolitan Opera. Her first professional experience was in musical theater in 1944, as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester; she later joined the national touring company of the musical Finian's Rainbow in 1949. While on tour with Finian's Rainbow, Odetta "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco", and after 1950 concentrated on folksinging. She made her name by playing around the United States: at the Blue Angel nightclub (New York City), the hungry i (San Francisco), and Tin Angel (San Francisco), where she and Larry Mohr recorded Odetta and Larry in 1954, for Fantasy Records. A solo career followed, with Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues (1956) and At the Gate of Horn (1957). Odetta Sings Folk Songs was one of 1963's best-selling folk albums. In 1959 she appeared on Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special. Odetta sang Water Boy and a duet with Belafonte, There's a Hole in My Bucket. In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. anointed her "The Queen of American folk music".Also in 1961 the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta made #32 in the UK Singles Chart with the song There's a Hole in My Bucket. Many Americans remember her performance at the 1963 civil rights movement's March on Washington where she sang "O Freedom." She considered her involvement in the Civil Rights movement as being "one of the privates in a very big army." Odetta (Burg Waldeck-Festival 1968, Germany) Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone, and released music of a more "jazz" style music on albums like Odetta and the Blues (1962) and Odetta (1967). She gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert. Odetta also acted in several films during this period, including Cinerama Holiday (1955), the film of William Faulkner's Sanctuary (1961) and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). Her marriages to Dan Gordon and Gary Shead ended in divorce. Singer-guitarist Louisiana Red was a former companion In May 1975 she appeared on public television's Say Brother program, performing "Give Me Your Hand" in the studio, in addition to speaking about her spirituality, the music tradition from which she drew, and her involvement in civil rights struggles. In 1976, Odetta performed in the U.S. Bicentennial opera "Be Glad Then America" by John LaMontaigne, as the Muse for America; with Donald Gramm, Richard Lewis and the Penn State University Choir and the Pittsburgh Symphony. The production was directed by Sarah Caldwell who was the director of the Opera Company of Boston at the time. Odetta released two albums in the 20-year period from 1977-1997: Movin' It On, in 1987 and a new version of Christmas Spirituals, produced by Rachel Faro, in 1988. Beginning in 1998, she began recording and touring. The new CD To Ella (recorded live and dedicated to her friend Ella Fitzgerald upon hearing of her death before walking on stage}[citation needed], was released in 1998 on Silverwolf Records, followed by three releases on M.C. Records in partnership with pianist/arranger/producer Seth Farber and record producer Mark Carpentieri. These included Blues Everywhere I Go, a 2000 Grammy Nominated blues/jazz band tribute album to the great lady blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s; Looking for a Home, a 2002 W.C. Handy Award nominated band tribute to Lead Belly; and the 2007 Grammy Nominated Gonna Let It Shine, a live album of gospel and spiritual songs supported by Seth Farber and The Holmes Brothers. These recordings and active touring led to guest appearance on fourteen new albums by other artists between 1999 and 2006 and the re-release of forty-five old Odetta albums and compilation appearances. On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts. In 2004, Odetta was honored at the Kennedy Center with the "Visionary Award" along with a tribute performance by Tracy Chapman. In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its "Living Legend Award". In mid-September 2001, Odetta performed with the Boys' Choir of Harlem on the Late Show with David Letterman, appearing on the first show after Letterman resumed broadcasting, having been off the air for several nights following the events of September 11th; they performed "This Little Light of Mine". The 2005 documentary film No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese, highlights her musical influence on Bob Dylan, the subject of the documentary. The film contains an archive clip of Odetta performing "Waterboy" on TV in 1959, and we also hear Odetta's songs "Mule Skinner Blues" and "No More Auction Block for Me". In 2006, Odetta opened shows for jazz vocalist Madeleine Peyroux, and in 2006 she toured the US, Canada, and Europe accompanied by her pianist, which included being presented by the US Embassy in Latvia as the keynote speaker at a Human Rights conference, and also in a concert in Riga's historic 1,000 year old Maza Guild Hall. In December, 2006, the Winnipeg Folk Festival honored Odetta with their "Lifetime Achievement Award." In February, 2007, The International Folk Alliance awarded Odetta as "Traditional Folk Artist of the Year." On March 24, 2007 a tribute concert to Odetta was presented at the Rachel Schlesinger Theatre by the World Folk Music Association with live performance and video tributes by Pete Seeger, Madeleine Peyroux, Harry Belafonte, Janis Ian, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Josh White, Jr., (Josh White#Posthumous honors) Peter, Paul and Mary, Oscar Brand, Tom Rush, Jesse Winchester, Eric Andersen, Wavy Gravy, David Amram, Roger McGuinn, Robert Sims, Carolyn Hester, Donal Leace, Marie Knight, Side by Side, and Laura McGhee (from Scotland). In 2007, her album Gonna Let It Shine was nominated for a Grammy, and she completed a major Fall Concert Tour in the "Songs of Spirit" show, which included artists from all over the world. She toured around North America in late 2006 and early 2007 to support this CD On January 21, 2008, Odetta was the keynote speaker at San Diego's Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration, followed by concert performances in San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica, and Mill Valley, in addition to being the sole guest for the evening on PBS-TV's The Tavis Smiley Show. Odetta was honored on May 8, 2008 at a historic tribute night, hosted by Wavy Gravy, held at Banjo Jim's in the East Village. In summer 2008, at the age of 77, she launched a North American tour, where she sang from a wheelchair. Her set in recent years included "This Little Light of Mine (I'm Gonna Let It Shine)", Lead Belly's "The Bourgeois Blues", (Something Inside) So Strong", "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" and "House of the Rising Sun". She made an appearance on June 30, 2008 at The Bitter End on Bleecker Street, New York City for a Liam Clancy tribute concert. Her last big concert, before thousands of people, was in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on October 4, 2008, for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. She last performed at Hugh's Room in Toronto on October 25. In November 2008, Odetta's health began to decline and she began receiving treatment at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009 On December 2, 2008, Odetta died from heart disease in New York City. At her memorial service in February 2009 at Riverside Church in New York City, participants included Maya Angelou, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Geoffrey Holder, Steve Earle, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Peter Yarrow, Tom Chapin, Josh White, Jr. (son of Josh White), Emory Joseph, Rattlesnake Annie, the Brooklyn Technical High School Chamber Chorus, and videotaped tributes from Tavis Smiley and Joan Baez If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

My Destination - Johnnie Mae Matthews

Johnnie Mae Matthews (December 31, 1922 – January 6, 2002) was an American blues and R&B singer, songwriter, and record producer from Bessemer, Alabama. Known as the “Godmother of Detroit Soul” and as the first African American female to own and operate her own record label (Northern Recording Company) she was an early influence on the careers of many of the now-famous recording stars who began their careers in Detroit, Michigan such as Otis Williams, David Ruffin, and Richard Street of the Temptations, Jimmy Ruffin, Joe Hunter of the Funk Brothers Band, Richard Wylie, Norman Whitfield, Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, Timmy Shaw, Barbara Lewis, Bettye LaVette and many more. Johnnie Mae Matthews was born December 31, 1922, in Bessemer, Alabama. She learned to sing in her church choir, and also performed with her mother at military bases throughout the Deep South. When she was twelve years old, the family relocated to New Jersey, and in 1947 Matthews left her parents home and moved to Detroit, Michigan where she married and started her own family. In 1957 she joined a local quintet called the Five Dapps, assuming lead vocals on "You're So Unfaithful," which was the B-side of their 1958 debut single, "Do Wop a Do". The Instrumental backing on the record was done by pianist Joe Hunter, who would frequently collaborate with Matthews in the years to follow, and later led Motown's famed studio band, the Funk Brothers. In 1958, Matthews formed her own record label, dubbed the “Northern Recording Company”. Headquartered in an office at 2608 Blaine in Detroit, just a few blocks from her home, she used $85 borrowed from her husband's paycheck to become the first African-American woman to own and operate her own label. With sessions typically recorded at either nearby “Special Studio” or at radio station WCHB, Northern Recording Company was largely used as a vehicle to launch her own solo recording career. Her first release, "Dreamer", in 1959, was credited to “Johnnie Mae Matthews & the Daps”. Her follow-up single, "Mr. Fine", featured on its B-side, a song named "Someday", which was a solo tune by local singer Chet Oliver. Motown Records founder, Berry Gordy has often credited Matthews with teaching him the ropes of the recording industry. He acknowledged her assistance in helping land a distribution deal with “Chess Records” for “The Miracles” 1959 hit "Bad Girl". Matthews also fostered the early careers of such future Motown stars as David and Jimmy Ruffin. Some say that she is the un-credited author of Mary Wells’ breakthrough hit, "Bye Bye Baby." It's impossible to know how differently Matthews' own recording career might have turned out had she accepted any of invitations of Berry Gordy to record for Motown, particularly during the mid-'60s, when she was delivering some of her finest material, most notably "Lonely You'll Be" and "Cut Me Loose," in 1967, the latter of which was subsequently licensed for national distribution on the Atco Records label In her 1960 tune, "So Lonely," Matthews dropped the Dapps altogether. She then, quickly followed up with her second solo, "Ooh Wee Baby." On both of these recordings she was backed by a band called the “Groovers”, a group that was led by Joe Hunter, and also included bassist James Jamerson, guitarist Eddie Willis, saxophonist Eli Fontaine, and drummer Uriel Jones, all of who would become staples of Motown's greatest sessions as members of the, now famous, Funk Brothers Band. Northern also nurtured the early career of Richard Wylie whose backup group, the Mohawks, included Norman Whitfield who later became one of Motown's most visionary songwriters and producers. Also in 1960 the label issued "Come On," the debut single by “The Distants” who were later renamed “The Temptations”. In time, Northern spun off a series of sister labels, most notably “Reel”, which was the label of several of Ms. Matthews’ singles, such as "Oh, Baby", "No One Can Love Me the Way You Do", "The Headshrinker", and "Come Home", all of which were released in 1961. In 1963 Reel issued "I Don't Want Your Love", a duet that paired Matthews and Timmy Shaw, her longtime songwriting collaborator who is best known for his 1964 solo effort "Gonna Send You Back to walking", a song which was later recorded by “The Animals” and a few other artists. However, Matthews' biggest hit, "My Special Angel", in 1962, appeared, not on her own labels, but rather, on the New York-based “Sue Records” label. In 1963 she hired manager Ollie McLaughlin, who had previously launched the career of “Barbara Lewis”. McLaughlin brought Matthews to the attention of Mercury Records’ new Blue Rock subsidiary, where he eventually produced both of her singles for that label, "Baby, What's Wrong", and "My Man (The Sweetest Man in the World)". He also produced her lone “Spokane” label effort, "Worried About You".During the late '60s Matthews also cut a series of excellent singles for her “Big Hit” label, including "I Have No Choice", "My Momma Didn't Lie", and "Don't Be Discouraged" However, as the decade of the sixties came to a close, so did Northern Recording Company and all of her subsidiaries, and as the 1970s were being ushered in, Matthews turned her attention to “Black Nasty” an up and coming funk group that featured two of her children, Artwell and Aubrey. In 1973, Matthews produced the band's only album, “Talking to the People”, which was released on the “Stax” record label. “Black Nasty” was later renamed “The ADC Band” and the group resurfaced in 1978 with the R&B smash "Long Stroke". Encouraged by their success, Matthews revived Northern Recording Company around this time, with the ADC Band supplying the musical backing on the disco-inspired tune "It's Good", which was later re-issued on the “Cotillion Records” label for national distribution. After one final Northern effort, 1980s "I Can Feel It," she closed the label for good, effectively ending her recording career. Matthews died after a long bout with cancer on January 6, 2002. She was 79 years old. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Every Night and Every Day - Big Mojo Elem,Wayne Bennett,Fred Below,Willie James Lyons

Willie James Lyons b. 5 December 1938, Alabama, USA, d. 26 December 1980, Chicago, Illinois, USA. A west side Chicago blues guitarist in the 50s, Lyons worked as an accompanist with many artists, including Luther Allison, Jimmy Dawkins and Bobby Rush. Unaccountably ignored by Chicago record companies, he was taken up by French blues enthusiasts in the 70s. He recorded as an accompanist, made a disappointing half album, and in 1979 visited Europe, where he recorded his only full album. This proved to be the work of a fine singer and guitarist, influenced by B.B. King and Freddie King, ‘ T-Bone’ Walker and Lowell Fulson. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!