blues | music clip of the day

2011

Monday, 1/17/11

Back in the ’70s, when I was at Alligator Records, I worked with this guy—coproducing albums, booking live performances, traveling to New York for a series of “showcase” performances (little pay, big exposure) at the Bottom Line (opening for Buddy Guy & Junior Wells). But I was a fan before that. In college I had a weekly radio show, where I often played his first album, released in 1973. Now, like so many others I worked with (Hound Dog Taylor, Big Walter Horton, Fenton Robinson, Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, et al.), he’s gone.

Son Seals, August 13, 1942-December 20, 2004

“I Think You’re Fooling Me,” live (TV broadcast), 1987

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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“Your Love Is Like A Cancer” (The Son Seals Blues Band, Alligator, 1973)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

reading table

for . . . Son Seals, who left to work a better room

—Andrew Vachss, Mask Market: A Burke Novel (2006)

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2010

Saturday, 12/25/10

Merry Christmas!

Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball” (1925)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II)” (1950)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (1951)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

radio: all Bach, all the time

WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is currently in the midst of their annual Bach Festival, which runs through the end of the year.

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reading table

Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.

—Mitzuta Masahide (trans. Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto), 1657-1723

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going forward

I won’t be here every day; but I’ll be here often.

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2010

Friday, 12/10/10

two voices

Some voices are so distinctive and indelible that, once heard, they occupy rooms all their own in your mind.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, “Hound Dog,” live (TV broadcast; Buddy Guy, guitar; Fred Below, drums), Europe, 1965 (originally recorded 1952)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Happy (180th) Birthday, Emily!

I’d subscribe to her Twitter feed in a heartbeat.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

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Escape is such a thankful Word

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Our lives are Swiss –

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

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My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

—Emily Dickinson (first lines)

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2010

Wednesday, 12/8/10

Some sounds never grow old.

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, “Find My Baby,” live

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

mail

In response to yesterday’s post, a reader writes:

No, you were right the first time, the movement to bebop was immense progress. . . . To deny progress in art or politics is bad politics, tho there are clearly eddies and flows as we know from being currently enmeshed in a backward eddy.

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reading table

They don’t live long
but you’d never know it—
the cicada’s cry.

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Awake at night—
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

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Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto.

—Matsuo Basho (trans. Robert Hass), 1644-1694

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2010

Thursday, 12/2/10

Memphis.

1953.

A little studio—Memphis Recording Service—over on Union Avenue.

Little Junior Parker, “Feel So Bad” (1953), “Sittin’ at the Bar” (1954), Sun Records, Memphis

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I’d like to dedicate this song to Little Junior Parker, a cousin of mine who’s gone on, but we’d like to kind of carry on in his name . . . .

Al Green, “Take Me To The River,” Hi Records, Memphis, 1974

Al wrote this, with guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, and recorded it first; Hi labelmate Syl Johnson had the hit.

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2010

Saturday, 11/27/10

This guy and the guy we heard Monday (Syl Johnson) are brothers.

Speaking of Syl, he’s getting a lot of attention right now: the cover story in this week’s Chicago Reader; a big new boxed set on the Numero label; and a concert tonight, in Chicago, with a top-flight band and guest Otis Clay (yeah, I’ll be there).

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replay: a clip too good for just one day

This take?

Or that?

Move the voice forward?

Back?

Make the guitar brighter?

Darker?

Enough bass?

Too much?

Enough room sound?

Mixing a record, as I learned when I worked at Alligator Records (back in the 1970s), involves a seemingly countless number of decisions. After a few hours, everyone starts to get a little punch-drunk. By the end of the night, for instance, this track had morphed—in the warped warble of engineer Freddie Breitberg (AKA, in his personal mythology, Eddie B. Flick)—into “Serve Me Rice For Supper.”

Jimmy Johnson, “Serves Me Right To Suffer” (Living Chicago Blues, Vol. 1, Alligator Records, 1977 [Grammy Nominee])

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reading table

The ’net’s filled with enough dreck for a thousand lifetimes; but then, as happened the other day (after hearing about it on the radio), you come across something that’s simply stunning—like the new, complete collection of the letters of Vincent van Gogh.

. . . Van Gogh’s letters are the best written by any artist . . . Their mixture of humble detail and heroic aspiration is quite simply life-affirming.—Andrew Motion, The Guardian (11/21/09)

(Originally posted a year ago [11/27/09].)

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2010

Friday, 11/26/10

Deep, wide, strong: the groove, with this guy at the drums, is like a river.

The Levon Helm Band with guest Jim Keltner (drums), “Deep Ellum Blues,” live, Los Angeles (Greek Theater), 8/15/10

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2010

Wednesday, 11/3/10

Once upon a time this music was all over Chicago. Going out to hear this guy, for instance, was about as hard as going out for a hamburger.

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replay: clips too good for just one day

The first time I stood before a judge at Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building at 26th and California—this was back in the ’70s (when I was working at Alligator Records)—it was to speak on behalf of this man, Hound Dog Taylor. The day before, during a drunken argument at his apartment, he’d shot his longtime guitarist Brewer Phillips (who survived). In his own way, Hound Dog was a pretty canny guy. When he told me about this incident over the phone, shortly after it happened, he put it this way: “Richard, they say I shot Phillip . . .”

(No, don’t touch that dial; these stills are way out of focus—which, for Hound Dog, seems just right.)

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Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, live, Ann Arbor Blues Festival, 1973

“Wild About You Baby”

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“Taylor’s Rock”

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“I Held My Baby”

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Hound Dog . . . . [would] play things that are technically wrong, and [he’d] . . . make people like it. . . . [He’d] just get up there and go for it.—Elvin Bishop

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When I saw Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers as a three-piece, I said, ‘There it is. There’s your future right there.’—George Thorogood

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Hound Dog Taylor is one of my favorites. He used this raw dog blues, you know.—Vernon Reid

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A Facebook page devoted to Hound Dog, who died over 30 years ago (1975), currently lists 434 “Fans” (now over 1,000) who come from, let’s see, Orlando and Indonesia and Cedar Rapids and Sweden and Austin and Australia and . . .

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When I die, they’ll say ‘he couldn’t play shit, but he sure made it sound good!’—Hound Dog Taylor

(Originally posted on 10/30/09.)

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2010

Friday, 10/22/10

two takes

“Driftin’ Blues”

Paul Butterfield Blues Band (including Elvin Bishop, guitar), live, California (Monterey), 1967

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Charles Brown, 1945

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mail

Thanks so much for sending me this link.

It was a thrill for me to be a part of the tribute concert for Albertina.

I really dig the Blackwell clips also!

—Juli Wood (responding to an email letting her know that her recent performance at the Albertina Walker Musical Tribute was featured here)