Music: Bukka White - Aberdeen Blues
The great Bukka White (Born Booker T. Washington White, November 12, 1909, died February 26, 1977.) "Master of the National Steel Guitar" doin' his signature tune, "Aberdeen Blues." Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Legend has it that in 1947 Bukka gave a young cousin, Riley King, a red Stella Guitar. Riley went on to be known as The Beale St. Blues Boy, B.B. King. Also check out these videos of Bukka doin "Jelly Roll Blues" and "Poor Boy Long Way from Home."
Posted in Music
Comments (0) [Posted by Rooster] Print Email This
Music: Happy Birthday Muddy Waters
The above clip is Muddy Waters circa 1966 performing Got My Mojo Workin'.
According to Wikipedia, McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 – April 30, 1983), better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician and is generally considered "the Father of Chicago blues". He is also the actual father of blues musicians Big Bill Morganfield and Larry 'Muddy Junior' Williams.
Waters was born in Issaquena County, Mississippi in 1913. His grandmother Della Grant raised him after his mother died in 1918. His fondness for playing in mud earned him his nickname at an early age. Waters started out on harmonica but by age seventeen he was playing the guitar at parties and fish fries, emulating two blues artists who were extremely popular in the south, Son House and Robert Johnson. "His thick heavy voice, the dark coloration of his tone and his firm almost solid personality were all clearly derived from House," wrote Peter Guralnick in Feel Like Going Home, "but the embellishments which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson."
In 1940 Waters moved to St. Louis before playing with Silas Green a year later and returning back to Mississippi. In the early part of the decade he ran a juke joint, complete with gambling, moonshine, a jukebox and live music courtesy of Muddy himself. In the Summer of 1941 Alan Lomax came to Stovall, Mississippi, on behalf of the Library of Congress to record various country blues musicians. "He brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house," Waters recalled in Rolling Stone, "and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybody's records. Man, you don't know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice. Later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox. Just played it and played it and said, `I can do it, I can do it.'"
Continue Reading...
Check this out:
Muddy Waters - Got My Mojo Working: Rare Performances 1968-1978 (2000) DVD
Posted in Music
Comments (0) [Posted by Pinetop] Print Email This
Music: North Mississippi AllStars
This is a clip of the North Mississippi Allstars, pedal steel player Robert Randolph and keyboard player John Medeski (their collaboration: The Word) on some gospel blues. The North Mississsippi Allstars' new record "Hernando" comes out on January 22nd. It's their first studio album released on their own label, Sounds of the South Records.
Here's a bit about NMA from their myspace page.
The North Mississippi Allstars were founded in 1996; a product of a very special time for modern Mississippi country blues. RL Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, Otha Turner and their musical families were at their peak touring the world, making classic records, and doing the all-night boogie at Jr's Juke Joint and Otha's BBQ Goat picnics -- the music and the culture rich as the black Mississippi dirt.
We used to drive down wide-eyed and open-eared to watch and listen to these giants among men, the kings of the hills playing their music with their people for their people. The musical traditions passing from generation to generation. Down at Otha's we used to boogie in the dirt, dust, and gravel. Old ladies teachin' the young girls how to shake 'em on down. The sweaty walls of Jr's Juke Joint used to vibrate and amplify the all night long moonshine madness. The corn liquor inspired a very unique psychedelic trance blues. The multi-generational musical families gave the old-field hollers a very aggressive, loud edge, modern, electric, country blues. Young, outsider musicians couldn't just hang out and hide in the corner, you had to play. It felt like it was an insult not to. The elder's requesting you to play their own songs. You had to come on with the come on.
For us, the experience goes back another generation. In the middle 60s, at the Memphis Country Blues Festivals, Mudboy and the Neutrons, our father Jim Dickinson, Lee Baker, Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait experienced the cultural collision of wise blues men and crazy white kids with Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes and Hill Country master Mississippi Fred McDowell. This is the World Boogie.
Check this out:
Hill Country Review: Live At Bonnaroo
Posted in Music
Comments (0) [Posted by Jimbo] Print Email This
Music: Death Letter - Son House
Some footage of seminal Delta bluesman Son House layin' it down. Here's his story from wikipedia:
Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. (March 21, 1902 – October 19, 1988) was an American blues singer and guitarist. The middle of seventeen brothers, House was born in Riverton, two miles from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Around age seven or eight, he was brought by his mother to Tallulah, Louisiana after his parents separated. The young Son House was determined to become a Baptist preacher, and at age 15 began his preaching career. Despite the church's firm stand against blues music and the sinful world which revolved around it, House became attracted to it and taught himself guitar in his mid-20s, after moving back to the Clarksdale area, inspired by the work of Willie Wilson. He began playing alongside Charley Patton, Willie Brown, Robert Johnson, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams, around Robinsonville, Mississippi and north to Memphis, Tennessee until 1942. After killing a man, allegedly in self-defense, he spent time at Parchman Farm in 1928 and 1929. The official story on the killing is that sometime around 1927 or 28, he was playing in a juke joint when a man went on a shooting spree. Son was wounded in the leg, and shot the man dead. He received a 15-year sentence at Parchman Farm prison. Continue Reading...
Check this out:
The Original Delta Blues - Son House (CD)
Posted in Music
Comments (0) [Posted by Pinetop] Print Email This
Music/Film: Last Of The Hill Country Bluesmen
In a great scene from You See Me Laughin - Last Of The Hill Country Bluesmen, R.L. Burnside and Kenny Brown talk about how they started playin' together. If ya haven't already, you gotta see this doc. It's very interestin' and the music's smokin'.
Check this out:
You See Me Laughin' - Last of the Hillcountry Bluesmen (DVD)
Comments (0) [Posted by Pinetop] Print Email This