Friday, December 31, 2010
John Lee at the Go-Go and In the Pen
"So I'm going to stay in Soulville for a little while..."
I once turned a career convict onto John Lee Hooker, and thence onto the blues, with this album. By the time I knew him, He
nry was an old-school badass and had already been in and out of state lock-up's, starting in California before ending up in New England. Reflecting on his West Coast time, he told me, "Vacaville could be nasty. Soledad was a fucking sewer."
I mentioned that I had a John Lee Hooker concert that was partly recorded at Soledad--and that's all it took to see his eyebrow cock. A couple days later, handing back the CD I'd loaned him, all he said was, "More. You got anything more by this guy?" I loaned him a couple more Hooker albums and threw in a Buddy & Junior for good measure.
I've refined my shtick through recent years and have taken to burning and handing out discs by the short-stack whenever folks tell me, as they still oddly do, "I'm really getting into the blues. Any suggestions?" If I'm trying to turn folks onto the blues, I have perhaps a half dozen titles/artists they get on the first pass.
This would be one of them.
John Lee Hooker's Live at the Cafe Au Go Go (and Soledad Prison) is the ungainly title for a stitched-together live album that smolders, burns, throws down and boogies. On paper it seems almost ridiculous: melding a pair of previously-released LP's of shows spaced six years apart, with John Lee backed by very different bands. And expect it to work. Live Hooker could be a gamble as it is, with some releases exponentially better than others. Hooker could be a tough cat to back and, as the old saw goes, if you were on his stage, you played by his rules. Gamble though it may have seemed, this one ends up "blackjack" all the way through.
The Cafe au Go Go segment of this album (tracks 1-8) was originally released on the Bluesway label in 1967. The 5 Soledad tracks make up the bulk of 1972's Live at Soledad Prison, when it was released on ABC, Bluesway's parent label. In 1996, when MCA reissued these performances, they trimmed the opening two cuts from the Soledad show (the John Lee Hooker Jr.-led Super Lover and I'm Your Crosscut Saw) and folded the remaining 5 cuts in with the Go-Go's 8.
Hooker could hardly have gone wrong with his backing bands here, most especially in New York. At the Cafe au Go-Go, he's backed by the Muddy Waters Band, a formidable outfit indeed which, at this gig featured Muddy, Otis Spann, Sammy Lawhorn, Luther Johnson, Francis Clay on the drums and George "Harmonica" Smith blowing harp. Like Hooker, Muddy had his own idiosyncratic sense of timing and his boys knew precisely how to back such a man and how to play tight without getting in each others way. Witness if you will, Spann's subtle phrasings in I'm Bad Like Jesse James or the Johnson & Lawhorn licks in Heartaches and Misery.
If any of those assembled behind John Lee that night deserve singling out, it is probably Spann. His playing throughout the Cafe au Go-Go tunes are trademark Otis, lushly understated and rich. The man could set a mood or a pace like nobody's business. Here, Hooker's performance of When My First Wife Left Me is haunting, deeply soulful and all the way into the pocket. He's in great voice, a fully emotive voice...and Spann's fills with the band's textured playing are a significant reason why this track packs such a punch. Music like this is why blues bands were formed.
Fact is, there isn't a weak cut on this album. Right out of the gate and into the growling strut of I'm Bad Like Jesse James, John Lee gives us gives us probably its most chilling version. Right behind that he's rompin
g through She's Long, She's Tall, revisiting a standard blues theme that rarely gets cited: singing praises for his lady (rather than lamenting her wayward ways). Whether we're talk
ing about this tune, Sonny Boy's Eyesight To the Blind, or the scores of songs cut for as long as the blues have been around, these guys are loving life and they ain't lamenting shit.
Cafe au Go-Go or Soledad Prison, this album's slow blues are its true selling points. Taking us through Hooker standards like When My First Wife Left Me, I'll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive or Serves Me Right To Suffer, John Lee's sly baritone brings it up from all the way down. This is blues with the hair still on its nuts.
I will always believe the blues to be at their best when they're played raw. So much of this album is a great example of why I hold this belief. Playing to a raucous and appreciative convict audience, the Soledad performances are looser and grittier, feeling like they just blew in on a cold Detroit wind. The free-form Boogie Everywhere I Go and the closing Bang Bang Bang Bang are front-end loaded to get some feet moving and blood pumping.
At Soledad, here famously in the company of his son, the standout performer behind Hooker isn't John Jr., it's guitarist Charlie Grimes. Rarely mentioned when one sees discussions of this album, the obscure Grimes lays it down sharp and nasty from when end of that prison stage to the other, straight through the disc's last 5 tracks. His playing with Luther Tucker on It Serves Me Right to Suffer is so tasty it hurts.
The strengths of the Soledad outings go beyond mere performance. As a disc, the assembled albums build to a boogieing crescendo, completing the trajectory begun with the earlier tracks. As a whole, the album becomes more fully realized and rightfully asserts itself as classic.
This one's for you, Henry. May the new year bring you closer to the horizon beyond that wall.
Peace, Mudcatz
John Lee Hooker
Live at Cafe Au Go-Go (and Soledad Prison)
MCA 1996
1. Bad Like Jesse James
2. She's Long, She's Tall
3. When My First Wife Left Me
4. Heartaches and Misery
5. One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
6. I Don't Want No Trouble
7. I'll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive
8. Seven Days
9. What's the Matter Baby
10. Lucille
11. Boogie Everywhere I Go
12. It Serves Me Right To Suffer
13. Bang Bang Bang Bang
New Link
I once turned a career convict onto John Lee Hooker, and thence onto the blues, with this album. By the time I knew him, He
nry was an old-school badass and had already been in and out of state lock-up's, starting in California before ending up in New England. Reflecting on his West Coast time, he told me, "Vacaville could be nasty. Soledad was a fucking sewer."I mentioned that I had a John Lee Hooker concert that was partly recorded at Soledad--and that's all it took to see his eyebrow cock. A couple days later, handing back the CD I'd loaned him, all he said was, "More. You got anything more by this guy?" I loaned him a couple more Hooker albums and threw in a Buddy & Junior for good measure.
I've refined my shtick through recent years and have taken to burning and handing out discs by the short-stack whenever folks tell me, as they still oddly do, "I'm really getting into the blues. Any suggestions?" If I'm trying to turn folks onto the blues, I have perhaps a half dozen titles/artists they get on the first pass.
This would be one of them.
John Lee Hooker's Live at the Cafe Au Go Go (and Soledad Prison) is the ungainly title for a stitched-together live album that smolders, burns, throws down and boogies. On paper it seems almost ridiculous: melding a pair of previously-released LP's of shows spaced six years apart, with John Lee backed by very different bands. And expect it to work. Live Hooker could be a gamble as it is, with some releases exponentially better than others. Hooker could be a tough cat to back and, as the old saw goes, if you were on his stage, you played by his rules. Gamble though it may have seemed, this one ends up "blackjack" all the way through.
The Cafe au Go Go segment of this album (tracks 1-8) was originally released on the Bluesway label in 1967. The 5 Soledad tracks make up the bulk of 1972's Live at Soledad Prison, when it was released on ABC, Bluesway's parent label. In 1996, when MCA reissued these performances, they trimmed the opening two cuts from the Soledad show (the John Lee Hooker Jr.-led Super Lover and I'm Your Crosscut Saw) and folded the remaining 5 cuts in with the Go-Go's 8.
Hooker could hardly have gone wrong with his backing bands here, most especially in New York. At the Cafe au Go-Go, he's backed by the Muddy Waters Band, a formidable outfit indeed which, at this gig featured Muddy, Otis Spann, Sammy Lawhorn, Luther Johnson, Francis Clay on the drums and George "Harmonica" Smith blowing harp. Like Hooker, Muddy had his own idiosyncratic sense of timing and his boys knew precisely how to back such a man and how to play tight without getting in each others way. Witness if you will, Spann's subtle phrasings in I'm Bad Like Jesse James or the Johnson & Lawhorn licks in Heartaches and Misery.
If any of those assembled behind John Lee that night deserve singling out, it is probably Spann. His playing throughout the Cafe au Go-Go tunes are trademark Otis, lushly understated and rich. The man could set a mood or a pace like nobody's business. Here, Hooker's performance of When My First Wife Left Me is haunting, deeply soulful and all the way into the pocket. He's in great voice, a fully emotive voice...and Spann's fills with the band's textured playing are a significant reason why this track packs such a punch. Music like this is why blues bands were formed.
Fact is, there isn't a weak cut on this album. Right out of the gate and into the growling strut of I'm Bad Like Jesse James, John Lee gives us gives us probably its most chilling version. Right behind that he's rompin
g through She's Long, She's Tall, revisiting a standard blues theme that rarely gets cited: singing praises for his lady (rather than lamenting her wayward ways). Whether we're talking about this tune, Sonny Boy's Eyesight To the Blind, or the scores of songs cut for as long as the blues have been around, these guys are loving life and they ain't lamenting shit.
Cafe au Go-Go or Soledad Prison, this album's slow blues are its true selling points. Taking us through Hooker standards like When My First Wife Left Me, I'll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive or Serves Me Right To Suffer, John Lee's sly baritone brings it up from all the way down. This is blues with the hair still on its nuts.
I will always believe the blues to be at their best when they're played raw. So much of this album is a great example of why I hold this belief. Playing to a raucous and appreciative convict audience, the Soledad performances are looser and grittier, feeling like they just blew in on a cold Detroit wind. The free-form Boogie Everywhere I Go and the closing Bang Bang Bang Bang are front-end loaded to get some feet moving and blood pumping.
At Soledad, here famously in the company of his son, the standout performer behind Hooker isn't John Jr., it's guitarist Charlie Grimes. Rarely mentioned when one sees discussions of this album, the obscure Grimes lays it down sharp and nasty from when end of that prison stage to the other, straight through the disc's last 5 tracks. His playing with Luther Tucker on It Serves Me Right to Suffer is so tasty it hurts.
The strengths of the Soledad outings go beyond mere performance. As a disc, the assembled albums build to a boogieing crescendo, completing the trajectory begun with the earlier tracks. As a whole, the album becomes more fully realized and rightfully asserts itself as classic.
This one's for you, Henry. May the new year bring you closer to the horizon beyond that wall.
Peace, Mudcatz
John Lee Hooker
Live at Cafe Au Go-Go (and Soledad Prison)
MCA 1996
1. Bad Like Jesse James
2. She's Long, She's Tall
3. When My First Wife Left Me
4. Heartaches and Misery
5. One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
6. I Don't Want No Trouble
7. I'll Never Get Out of These Blues Alive
8. Seven Days
9. What's the Matter Baby
10. Lucille
11. Boogie Everywhere I Go
12. It Serves Me Right To Suffer
13. Bang Bang Bang Bang
New Link
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Collins: Doubling Down
HighPing, Duncan, this one's for you...
Your comments had me getting on a Collins kick this last day or so--for that alone, I owe ya some thanks. I b
een going blind researching some of the posts that are coming right up and a heaping dose of Albert has always been one of the best reasons around to say "screw it," turn the volume up a notch or three, and get to loving life.
I don't know how these selections will do ya, most of the live Collins I've got here has been fairly well circulated and you may well have bumped into them before... They're definitely a pair to be had...
First up is some vintage Albert, circa 1969, treating the hippies of the Fillmore West to a roaring set, mixing Collins originals like Thaw Out and Backstroke with standards such as a grooving Mustang Sally and BB's How Blue Can You Get? I've seen several reviews whining about the sound quality of this performance...and I disagree. This show was a bootleg recording that, as many do, ended up "officially" released--just not by Collins. The obscure Red Lightnin label first issued this set in 1971, when Collins was still under contract to Imperial. Given its vintage, this
show has a decent sound indeed--and the Iceman's playing is hot.
The Japanese label, Pony Canyon, would be the first to reissue this set on disc, in 1999 under its original title, Alive & Cool. It would be released twice more in just the next 5 years, both on British labels, Catfish in 2000 and Snapper (as Thaw Out at the Fillmore) in 2004.
This is the Catfish issue...
Albert Collins
Live at the Fillmore
Catfish 2000
1. Instrumental
2. How Blue Can You Get?
3. Thaw Out
4. So Tired
5. Funky
6. Deep Freeze
7. Baby, What You Want Me To Do?
8. Mustang Sally
9. Backstroke
Link
Twenty-three years later, Collins had spent more than a decade having his career rejuvenated--and doing some of his best work--on the Alligator label. June of '92 found him at Grant Park's Petrillo Band Shell, headlining the Chicago Blues Festival. Wrapping up a weekend that had seen, among others, Honeyboy Edwards, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim and Jimmy Dawkins, Sunday night's performance was a thing of thunderous beauty, made all the more special by the guest appearance of fellow Texas blues legend, Lowell Fulson. Albert backs Fulson for a pair of tunes, including the souful Reconsider Baby. From a ripping Iceman to a strutting Black Cat Bone, a funky Do You Feel It? to his ringing, blistering instrumentals, we are are on the receiving end of a late career blast from a master showman.
This is an FM-sourced boot, broadcast by 91.5 Public Radio in Chicago and includes a brief interview segment with Collins shortly after he leaves the stage. Albert is tickled that the show had been broadcast nationally. He is in great humor, though he expresses some light regret that he was unable to get down into the audience, owing to time constraints for his set. Using a 175-foot cord, Collins was famous for walking through his crowds to the bar, the men's room, or out into the street, playing all the while. It was trademark Collins and Albert explains it this way:
"I like being around people when I play, you know...get close to 'em and feel like you know each other...feel like family..."
Albert Collins
Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park Chicago IL
June 7, 1992
1. Intro
2. Instrumental
3. Iceman
4. Lights Are On But Nobody's Home
5. Put the Shoe On the Other Foot
6. Black Cat Bone
7. Instrumental
8. Same Old Thing
9. Mr. Collins
10. Things I Used To Do
11. Lowell Fulson intro
12. Do You Feel It
13. Reconsider Baby
14. Instrumental
15. Radio Wrap-up
16. Interview
Link
Peace, Mudcatz
Your comments had me getting on a Collins kick this last day or so--for that alone, I owe ya some thanks. I b
een going blind researching some of the posts that are coming right up and a heaping dose of Albert has always been one of the best reasons around to say "screw it," turn the volume up a notch or three, and get to loving life.I don't know how these selections will do ya, most of the live Collins I've got here has been fairly well circulated and you may well have bumped into them before... They're definitely a pair to be had...
First up is some vintage Albert, circa 1969, treating the hippies of the Fillmore West to a roaring set, mixing Collins originals like Thaw Out and Backstroke with standards such as a grooving Mustang Sally and BB's How Blue Can You Get? I've seen several reviews whining about the sound quality of this performance...and I disagree. This show was a bootleg recording that, as many do, ended up "officially" released--just not by Collins. The obscure Red Lightnin label first issued this set in 1971, when Collins was still under contract to Imperial. Given its vintage, this
show has a decent sound indeed--and the Iceman's playing is hot.
The Japanese label, Pony Canyon, would be the first to reissue this set on disc, in 1999 under its original title, Alive & Cool. It would be released twice more in just the next 5 years, both on British labels, Catfish in 2000 and Snapper (as Thaw Out at the Fillmore) in 2004.
This is the Catfish issue...
Albert Collins
Live at the Fillmore
Catfish 2000
1. Instrumental
2. How Blue Can You Get?
3. Thaw Out
4. So Tired
5. Funky
6. Deep Freeze
7. Baby, What You Want Me To Do?
8. Mustang Sally
9. Backstroke
Link
Twenty-three years later, Collins had spent more than a decade having his career rejuvenated--and doing some of his best work--on the Alligator label. June of '92 found him at Grant Park's Petrillo Band Shell, headlining the Chicago Blues Festival. Wrapping up a weekend that had seen, among others, Honeyboy Edwards, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim and Jimmy Dawkins, Sunday night's performance was a thing of thunderous beauty, made all the more special by the guest appearance of fellow Texas blues legend, Lowell Fulson. Albert backs Fulson for a pair of tunes, including the souful Reconsider Baby. From a ripping Iceman to a strutting Black Cat Bone, a funky Do You Feel It? to his ringing, blistering instrumentals, we are are on the receiving end of a late career blast from a master showman.
This is an FM-sourced boot, broadcast by 91.5 Public Radio in Chicago and includes a brief interview segment with Collins shortly after he leaves the stage. Albert is tickled that the show had been broadcast nationally. He is in great humor, though he expresses some light regret that he was unable to get down into the audience, owing to time constraints for his set. Using a 175-foot cord, Collins was famous for walking through his crowds to the bar, the men's room, or out into the street, playing all the while. It was trademark Collins and Albert explains it this way:
"I like being around people when I play, you know...get close to 'em and feel like you know each other...feel like family..."
Albert Collins
Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park Chicago IL
June 7, 1992
1. Intro
2. Instrumental
3. Iceman
4. Lights Are On But Nobody's Home
5. Put the Shoe On the Other Foot
6. Black Cat Bone
7. Instrumental
8. Same Old Thing
9. Mr. Collins
10. Things I Used To Do
11. Lowell Fulson intro
12. Do You Feel It
13. Reconsider Baby
14. Instrumental
15. Radio Wrap-up
16. Interview
Link
Peace, Mudcatz
Monday, December 27, 2010
Blue Monday: Freddie @ Cain's Ballroom, '75
Some boots have just had more miles on 'em than others. Freddie King has usually had a fair brace of concert tapes in circulation since before he left us, tragically too soon, in December of '76. King's l
egacy and impact on both blues and rock is still being assessed even now. When turned loose, the Texas Cannonball was close to an intuitive genius, playing from the guts and flying when the spirit told him to soar.
Unlike many of King's early '70's boots, which have been in tape circulation almost as long, his April, '75 show at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma seems to have bobbed to the surface somewhat more recently. As far as I can tell, it first started popping up in trading circles only about 6 years ago, having been cleaned up and sound adjusted along the way. The end result is a crisp-sounding, high-octaned show that just rips.
Playing the ballroom circuit, as opposed to festival or televised slots, usually meant Freddie had the time and space to stretch out, as he treats us to here, producing a two-disc beast of a show that comes on strong and keeps on swinging.
Freddie King
Cain's Ballroom
Tulsa OK
April 15, 1975
1. Big Legged Woman
2. Hey Baby (Part 1)
3. TV Mama
4. Look On Yonder Wall
5. Woman Across The River
6. San-Ho-Zay
7. Have You Ever Loved A Woman>
8. Rock Me Baby>
9. Have You Ever Loved A Woman
10. Goin' Down //
1. Sweet Home Chicago>Hey Baby (Part 2)>Palace of The King
2. Please Accept My Love
3. Shake Your Booty
4. Mojo Boogie
Link
Peace, Mudcatz
egacy and impact on both blues and rock is still being assessed even now. When turned loose, the Texas Cannonball was close to an intuitive genius, playing from the guts and flying when the spirit told him to soar.Unlike many of King's early '70's boots, which have been in tape circulation almost as long, his April, '75 show at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma seems to have bobbed to the surface somewhat more recently. As far as I can tell, it first started popping up in trading circles only about 6 years ago, having been cleaned up and sound adjusted along the way. The end result is a crisp-sounding, high-octaned show that just rips.
Playing the ballroom circuit, as opposed to festival or televised slots, usually meant Freddie had the time and space to stretch out, as he treats us to here, producing a two-disc beast of a show that comes on strong and keeps on swinging.
Freddie King
Cain's Ballroom
Tulsa OK
April 15, 1975
1. Big Legged Woman
2. Hey Baby (Part 1)
3. TV Mama
4. Look On Yonder Wall
5. Woman Across The River
6. San-Ho-Zay
7. Have You Ever Loved A Woman>
8. Rock Me Baby>
9. Have You Ever Loved A Woman
10. Goin' Down //
1. Sweet Home Chicago>Hey Baby (Part 2)>Palace of The King
2. Please Accept My Love
3. Shake Your Booty
4. Mojo Boogie
Link
Peace, Mudcatz
Blue Monday: Collins @ Monterrey, '78
Those of you folks anywhere near the north-eastern U.S. hardly need any reminder of the blizzard that's frolicking about out there. It's been coming down for more than 24 hours now and there ain't a whole lot of point to be poking my head out of the cabin.It seems more than appropriate to bring on the Iceman...
1978 would prove to be a key year for Collins, the year he would sign with the still-fledgling Alligator Records and not only rejuvenate his lagging career but also vault his career into his most successful period.
That September, Albert took the stage at the Monterrey Jazz Festival and delivered a short, if incendiary set. None of the material Collins covered at Monterrey that afternoon would be among the songs released that year on Ice Pickin'. It is an on-time dose of under-exposed Collins, backed by a tight band that includes the swinging, venerable A.C. Reed.
Albert Collins
Monterrey Jazz Festival
September 16, 1978
sbd @320/kbs
1. Somebody's Got to Go
2. I'm Ready
3. Instrumental/Collins intro
4. Have Mercy
5. Don't Lose Your Cool
6. Do What You Wanna Do
7. The Things I Used To Do
8. Frosty
Link
Peace, Mudcatz
Sunday, December 26, 2010
From Christmas, into Sunday
Wrapped up last evening & a long Christmas week dozing off with my lady to Mahalia Jackson's Silent Night album. If I had been aware of Mahalia's Christmas albums before, I'd long since forgotten. Some of the finest holiday gospel I've ever heard. I've got Azzul, over at OnMuddySava to thank for turning me--and us--onto these recordings. His post is here:Azzul's Mahalia Jackson post
Definitely go over & check it out...
...And when you get back, I invite you to spend a little time at Jackson's rain-soaked, powerhouse set from 1958's Newport Jazz Festival. Sifting through the wreckage of the cabin's holiday week, Sunday's sounding a whole lot like Mahalia at the moment...
It has been said that Mahalia Jackson was the "finest gospel singer this country ever produced." While I believe such statements are all ultimately subjective, I personally find this one hard to dispute. We are given ample and consistent evidence of this throughout Jackson's Newport set, from her moving Evening Prayer opening, through Didn't It Rain, a deeply soulful Keep Your Hands on the Plow, on to her pair of stirring encores, Jesus Met the Woman at the Well and His Eye Is On the Sparrow.
At the time of this performance, after years of well-profiled concert and television performances, Jackson's career was reaching its zenith when she took the stage at Newport. Always singing through chronic and debilitating pain, this woman channeled it all, singing to her God, delivering vocal performances that remain some of the finest gospel has ever produced.
Mahalia Jackson
Live at Newport 1958
Sony 1994
1. Introduction
2. An Evening Prayer
3. A City Called Heaven
4. I'm On My Way
5. It Didn't Cost Very Much
6. Didn't It Rain
7. He's Got the Whole World In His Hands
8. When The Saints Go Marching In
9. I'm Going To Live The Life I Sing About In My Song
10. Keep Your Hand On the Plow
11. The Lord's Prayer
12. Walk Over God's Heaven
13. Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
14. Jesus Met the Woman at the Well
15. His Eye on the Sparrow
Link
Peace, Mudcatz
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry Christmas!
At the end of a crazy week and just now finding the space to draw a breath, I can only think of how remiss I'd be if I did not thank you folks. Whatever your beliefs, however you observe, I hope this Christmas season has found you & your families warm and safe. May the new year ahead be rich in its blessings for you.
Peace, Mudcatz
Have a Merry Christmas!
Peace, Mudcatz
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Repackaging Johnny
If you're an adult male on this planet with a lady under your roof, you live beneath the shadow of the Honey-Do List. For me, poking about on retired hard drives doesn't appear anywhere on that list. It is just a whole lot more gratifying. Outside the snow's coming down. Inside it's feeling a whole lot more like a private concert in a hot Delta front porch. Just you and Johnny Shines.
I have often found it intriguing that a blues album can assert itself as essential listening and yet remain a comparative obscurity. When faced with a catalog as expansive as Johnny Shines' has become, it's been too easy to glance past Black & Blue's 2002 re-release, Takin' the Blues Back South as part of its Blues Reference series. Personally, the first time I spotted it, in a vendor's stall at North Atlantic Blues festival a few years back, I slid right on by, taking it for a repackaging of released and re-released Shines material. I'd obviously not spent much time reading the liner notes.
To be clear, Takin' the Blues Back South is a repackaging of a Shines album, 1973's Chicago Blues Festival 1972. The original title itself was a bit confusing--and would have proved an infuriating turn were the material it did provide not such a banquet. At first glance, that title implied a live Shines outing, which this album is not. It was an assemblage of tunes Shines cut on a pair of dates in France, (Gan on November 14 and in Bordeaux 3 weeks later). The Gan cuts feature Luther Johnson on second guitar.
Though re-released only a couple years later as Nobody's Fault But Mine, the album remained an obscurity from the outset. Being a French label, what distribution arrangements Black & Blue did have in the 1970's didn't translate well for this album. Imported Shines just didn't compete with Homegrown Johnny and as the decade that gave us punk rock, emasculated singer/songwriters and disco wore on, the blues market was beginning to dry up again. Europe, at least, remained a more receptive environment. Shines was hardly unique in cutting material overseas; bluesmen had been cutting wax in Europe for at least 15 years by the time Johnny sat down for Black & Blue.
What came out of those sessions was an album of old school Delta blues that cut right to the heart of the matter. As guitarists go, Shines was a bit of a rarity himself, a player who was equally-lethal on an acoustic or electric instrument. Back that up with a voice that can rattle your windowpanes and Johnny Shines could be about as potent a package as one could ever hope. As much press as Johnny still gets for his Robert Johnson influences, his vocals always owed more stylistically to Patton and Howlin Wolf. Few bluesman could deliver a more piercing and emotive wail. His was a field holler with a backbeat.
Partial as I tend to be for Shines' electric material--I can think of few pairings more sublime than Shines backed by his old Memphis road-dawg, Big Walter Horton. To this end, sometimes I miss some true gemstones.
Eight years ago, Black & Blue rolled the dice again on this low profile album, retitling it Takin the Blues Back South. For the CD reissue, two previously-unreleased tracks, Blood Ran Like Wine and an alternative take of Mean Black Gobbler.
By whichever title you prefer, this is an entirely-unplugged album of traditionally-played Delta blues and it is exactly a disc that got us buying blues albums in the first place. Were it not for the comparatively pristine sound quality, one could easily imagine these songs being cut in Memphis' Peabody Hotel in the autumn of '29...or in a Dallas hotel room, playing into the corner. I would argue that there are moments sewn throughout this album that are as stirring--as real--as Shines ever managed to record.
Shines' Johnson influences through this album are undeniable. I Believe I'll Make a Change is, of course, a reworking of I Believe I'll Dust My Broom. Immediately into the hypnotic, wonderful Abide My Wish, we're waiting to hear Johnny mention a hellhound on his trail...which he does manage shortly before he closes the tune. When discussing Shines' music, we need to be careful to point out that, while an influence, Johnson was only one of Johnny's influences. Like any Delta player worth his corner stool, Shines took the best of what he had around him, made it his own, and kept on playing. In the jukes and roadhouses where Johnny plied his trade throughout the 1930's, Shines was famous for being able to perform entire sets, improvising all the way. To be clear: Shines was no Johnson imitator and he was far more than a "living link" to the Delta days of yore. He was its evolution.
Albums like this, still a relative-obscurity in its current form, reinforce the belief that sometimes life don't get much finer than Delta blues and acoustic Shines.
Peace, Mudcatz
A refugee from my old hard drive, I'm afraid I've no idea who the original uploader was for this one, but my sincerest thanks go to him.
The 1973 vinyl release...
Johnny Shines
Chicago Blues Festival 1972
Black & Blue, 1973
1. I Believe I'll Make a Change
2. Nobody's Fault But Mine
3. Back to the Steel Mill
4. The Devil's Daughter
5. Abide My Wish
1. Mean Black Gobbler
2. Lost Letter Blues
3. Freight Train
4. My Best Friend
5. The Blue Horizon
Link
...And the 2002 re-issue...
Johnny Shines
Takin' the Blues Back South
Black & Blue 2002
1. I Believe I'll Make a Change
2. Nobody's Fault But Mine
3. The Devil's Daughter
4. Back to the Steel Mill
5. Blood Ran Like Wine
6. Abide My Wish
7. Mean Black Gobbler
8. Lost Letter Blues
9. Freight Train
10. My Best Friend
11. the Blue Horizon
12. Mean Black Gobbler (alt.)
Link
I have often found it intriguing that a blues album can assert itself as essential listening and yet remain a comparative obscurity. When faced with a catalog as expansive as Johnny Shines' has become, it's been too easy to glance past Black & Blue's 2002 re-release, Takin' the Blues Back South as part of its Blues Reference series. Personally, the first time I spotted it, in a vendor's stall at North Atlantic Blues festival a few years back, I slid right on by, taking it for a repackaging of released and re-released Shines material. I'd obviously not spent much time reading the liner notes.To be clear, Takin' the Blues Back South is a repackaging of a Shines album, 1973's Chicago Blues Festival 1972. The original title itself was a bit confusing--and would have proved an infuriating turn were the material it did provide not such a banquet. At first glance, that title implied a live Shines outing, which this album is not. It was an assemblage of tunes Shines cut on a pair of dates in France, (Gan on November 14 and in Bordeaux 3 weeks later). The Gan cuts feature Luther Johnson on second guitar.
Though re-released only a couple years later as Nobody's Fault But Mine, the album remained an obscurity from the outset. Being a French label, what distribution arrangements Black & Blue did have in the 1970's didn't translate well for this album. Imported Shines just didn't compete with Homegrown Johnny and as the decade that gave us punk rock, emasculated singer/songwriters and disco wore on, the blues market was beginning to dry up again. Europe, at least, remained a more receptive environment. Shines was hardly unique in cutting material overseas; bluesmen had been cutting wax in Europe for at least 15 years by the time Johnny sat down for Black & Blue.
What came out of those sessions was an album of old school Delta blues that cut right to the heart of the matter. As guitarists go, Shines was a bit of a rarity himself, a player who was equally-lethal on an acoustic or electric instrument. Back that up with a voice that can rattle your windowpanes and Johnny Shines could be about as potent a package as one could ever hope. As much press as Johnny still gets for his Robert Johnson influences, his vocals always owed more stylistically to Patton and Howlin Wolf. Few bluesman could deliver a more piercing and emotive wail. His was a field holler with a backbeat.
Partial as I tend to be for Shines' electric material--I can think of few pairings more sublime than Shines backed by his old Memphis road-dawg, Big Walter Horton. To this end, sometimes I miss some true gemstones.
Eight years ago, Black & Blue rolled the dice again on this low profile album, retitling it Takin the Blues Back South. For the CD reissue, two previously-unreleased tracks, Blood Ran Like Wine and an alternative take of Mean Black Gobbler.
By whichever title you prefer, this is an entirely-unplugged album of traditionally-played Delta blues and it is exactly a disc that got us buying blues albums in the first place. Were it not for the comparatively pristine sound quality, one could easily imagine these songs being cut in Memphis' Peabody Hotel in the autumn of '29...or in a Dallas hotel room, playing into the corner. I would argue that there are moments sewn throughout this album that are as stirring--as real--as Shines ever managed to record.
Shines' Johnson influences through this album are undeniable. I Believe I'll Make a Change is, of course, a reworking of I Believe I'll Dust My Broom. Immediately into the hypnotic, wonderful Abide My Wish, we're waiting to hear Johnny mention a hellhound on his trail...which he does manage shortly before he closes the tune. When discussing Shines' music, we need to be careful to point out that, while an influence, Johnson was only one of Johnny's influences. Like any Delta player worth his corner stool, Shines took the best of what he had around him, made it his own, and kept on playing. In the jukes and roadhouses where Johnny plied his trade throughout the 1930's, Shines was famous for being able to perform entire sets, improvising all the way. To be clear: Shines was no Johnson imitator and he was far more than a "living link" to the Delta days of yore. He was its evolution.
Albums like this, still a relative-obscurity in its current form, reinforce the belief that sometimes life don't get much finer than Delta blues and acoustic Shines.
Peace, Mudcatz
A refugee from my old hard drive, I'm afraid I've no idea who the original uploader was for this one, but my sincerest thanks go to him.
The 1973 vinyl release...
Johnny Shines
Chicago Blues Festival 1972
Black & Blue, 1973
1. I Believe I'll Make a Change
2. Nobody's Fault But Mine
3. Back to the Steel Mill
4. The Devil's Daughter
5. Abide My Wish
1. Mean Black Gobbler
2. Lost Letter Blues
3. Freight Train
4. My Best Friend
5. The Blue Horizon
Link
...And the 2002 re-issue...
Johnny Shines
Takin' the Blues Back South
Black & Blue 2002
1. I Believe I'll Make a Change
2. Nobody's Fault But Mine
3. The Devil's Daughter
4. Back to the Steel Mill
5. Blood Ran Like Wine
6. Abide My Wish
7. Mean Black Gobbler
8. Lost Letter Blues
9. Freight Train
10. My Best Friend
11. the Blue Horizon
12. Mean Black Gobbler (alt.)
Link
Monday, December 13, 2010
Blue Monday: John Lee @ University Aula, '76
These cold wet nights must have been invented to get a wood fire going and sprawl out with the blues. Something smooth and deep. I have seen this John Lee Hooker show as having taken place in Salzburg--and that just ain't so. This gig actually hails from the Aula Der Universitat in Koln. But it don't really matter where this one took place; it's a spot-on dose of Hooker on anybody's road-map.
John Lee's out in front of the Coast To Coast Blues Band for this outing, a line-up that featured Jim Kahr on guitar, Roger Brouse on bass, and Ken Swank on the drums. Kahr also handles vocal duties on As the Years Go Passing By. Kahr's guitar work for this gig, and especially this song, is tight and tasty indeed.
But John Lee Hooker's at center stage and he delivers a roughly half-hour set mixing live Hooker staples such as Crawlin Kingsnake and Serves Me Right to Suffer with juicy little rarities like Charles Brown's Black Night.
Time to turn the lights low and get you & your lady into something more comfortable. It's plenty warm in here. John Lee Hooker's in the house.
Peace, Mudcatz
John Lee Hooker
Aula Der Universitat
Cologne, Germany
June 18th, 1976
1. Intro
2. Goin' To California
3. Crawlin' King Snake
4. You're So Fine
5. It Serves Me Right To Suffer
6. As The Years Go Passing By
7. Black Night Is Falling
8. Can't Stop Groovin'
Link
John Lee's out in front of the Coast To Coast Blues Band for this outing, a line-up that featured Jim Kahr on guitar, Roger Brouse on bass, and Ken Swank on the drums. Kahr also handles vocal duties on As the Years Go Passing By. Kahr's guitar work for this gig, and especially this song, is tight and tasty indeed. But John Lee Hooker's at center stage and he delivers a roughly half-hour set mixing live Hooker staples such as Crawlin Kingsnake and Serves Me Right to Suffer with juicy little rarities like Charles Brown's Black Night.
Time to turn the lights low and get you & your lady into something more comfortable. It's plenty warm in here. John Lee Hooker's in the house.
Peace, Mudcatz
John Lee Hooker
Aula Der Universitat
Cologne, Germany
June 18th, 1976
1. Intro
2. Goin' To California
3. Crawlin' King Snake
4. You're So Fine
5. It Serves Me Right To Suffer
6. As The Years Go Passing By
7. Black Night Is Falling
8. Can't Stop Groovin'
Link
Blue Monday: Mississippi Fred @ Court Coffee House, '71
Stepping off from yesterday's "Sunday Spirituals" offering and Fred & Annie Mae McDowell's My Home Is In the Delta, it seems only appropriate that Fred gets to take another turn, showing up in Tacoma, Washington for this two-set glory of stripped-down blues.
While touring through '71, Fred would be diagnosed with the cancer that would ultimately claim him in July of the following year. Finding renown at the tail end of his life, Fred became one of the blues' few success stories, leaving us some of the finest blues ever recorded.
This April, 1971 bootleg finds Fred at the Court Coffee House, doing what he did best: entrancing a crowd with a guitar on his knee, coming on with blues so deep BP couldn't dig a well that far down.
Peace, Mudcatz
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Court Coffee House
Tacoma WA
April 14, 1971
sbd
Set 1
01 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
02 Louise
03 John Henry
04 My Babe
05 I woke Up This Morning
06 When I Lay My Burden Down
07 Jesus On The Mainline
08 You Got To Move
09 Worried Blues
E:
10 Baby Take My Rest
Set 2
01 Mojo Hand
02 Instrumental
03 I feel So Bad
04 Unknown Instrumental
05 Lord I Wonder What I Have Done Wrong
06 Kokomo Blues
07 Lord,When You Get Home
08 Bye Bye Little Girl
09 Someday Baby
10 61 Highway
E:
11 Oh, That´s Alright
12 (false start)
13 Unknown Instrumental
14 Lord I Wonder What I Have Done Wrong
15 Lord My Head Don´t Hurt Me
Link
While touring through '71, Fred would be diagnosed with the cancer that would ultimately claim him in July of the following year. Finding renown at the tail end of his life, Fred became one of the blues' few success stories, leaving us some of the finest blues ever recorded. This April, 1971 bootleg finds Fred at the Court Coffee House, doing what he did best: entrancing a crowd with a guitar on his knee, coming on with blues so deep BP couldn't dig a well that far down.
Peace, Mudcatz
Mississippi Fred McDowell
Court Coffee House
Tacoma WA
April 14, 1971
sbd
Set 1
01 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
02 Louise
03 John Henry
04 My Babe
05 I woke Up This Morning
06 When I Lay My Burden Down
07 Jesus On The Mainline
08 You Got To Move
09 Worried Blues
E:
10 Baby Take My Rest
Set 2
01 Mojo Hand
02 Instrumental
03 I feel So Bad
04 Unknown Instrumental
05 Lord I Wonder What I Have Done Wrong
06 Kokomo Blues
07 Lord,When You Get Home
08 Bye Bye Little Girl
09 Someday Baby
10 61 Highway
E:
11 Oh, That´s Alright
12 (false start)
13 Unknown Instrumental
14 Lord I Wonder What I Have Done Wrong
15 Lord My Head Don´t Hurt Me
Link
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Back to Sundays: Fred & Annie Mae
Back before my recent hiatus, I'd gotten into the rhythm of featuring blues recording's spiritual side. I have always been of the belief that the music flows from the same wellspring, not merely that African American spirituals were integral root to the blues' family tree, but from the level of the soul. 
The same longings and joys, laments and vows of perseverance, the same up-from-the-belly surge that find their expression so perfectly in blues were always brought to bear when making some joyful noise to their God.
Few blues musicians could reconcile both their secular and spiritual material more effortlessly than Mississippi Fred McDowell. Fred lived in a world that refused to recognize any common ground between these two camps, the sacred and the profane. One need only think of Rube Lacey or Ishmon Bracey, two of the finest bluesmen the Delta produced, having their spiritual conversions and turning their backs forever on blues and recording. It was a polarized world where if you weren't "Giving it up to the Lord" you were giving the devil his due. Straight through the American south, through its vaunted Bible Belt, the bluesmen were, to the last, racing down the road to hell. The Rev. Gary Davis would begin recording more secular tunes as he moved into the 1960's. Son House would personally always have trouble reconciling the two camps.
Mississippi Fred McDowell was cutting both blues and spirituals, right along side each other, pretty much from the point when he began recording, famously late in his career. A few months back I posted an album featuring Fred, his wife and Como, Mississippi's Hunter's Chapel Singers --Here--. Amazing Grace, essential album that it's become, was only made possible by the positive reception, and inroads, made by Mississippi Fred's first spiritually-heavy release, My Home Is In The Delta, released two years earlier. That album gave his wife Annie Mae co-billing--and most deservedly so. The album is very much a husband and wife presentation. It was always a sublime partnership.
In its original 1964 configuration, Side A was Fred playing a secular selection, while on Side B he joined his wife Annie Mae for a brace of spirituals. It is a uniformly-wonderful album that flowed smooth as running water. Fred's solo contributions include venerable standards as Sleepy John Estes' The Girl I'm Loving and McDowell originals The Sun Rose This Morning. I'm In Jail Again and Going Down South, Carry My Whip are so juicy you'll want to line the floor with newspaper before cracking them open.
When Annie Mae takes her chair, she and Fred serve up a cross-section of mostly time-honored standards, though with their stamp very much on each one to the last. Witness, for example, their reading of Amazing Grace, as "standard" as it gets for church hymns, building from a slow to lament to something a bit more joyful.
My Home Is In The Delta was recorded on a pair of dates in November, 1963 and February, 1964. When Testament re-issued the album on CD, it included 4 bonus tracks, When I Lay My Burden Down, Big Road Blues, Down on Dankin's Farm, and a true McDowell rarity, Six White Horses, essentially a reworking of Blind Lemon Jefferson's See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, that I believe makes its only appearance in McDowell's canon on this disc.
Through the Fred and Annie Mae duets, we are struck by their being such under-stated wonders. This is no fire & brimstone, Give-Your-Heart-to-Jesus sales pitch. These are straight from the heart and soul country spirituals feeling like they're being played from a back porch. They are all exquisitely rendered.
Peace, Mudcatz
Mississippi Fred & Annie Mae McDowell
My Home Is In The Delta
Testament, 1995
1. Waiting For My Baby
2. I'm In Jail Again
3. The Girl I'm Loving
4. Going Down South, Carry My Whip
5. Diving Duck Blues
6. The Sun Rose This Morning
7. Six White Horses
8. Down On Dankin's Farm
9. Get Right Church
10. Amazing Grace
11. Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed
12. Where Could I Go
13. The Lord Will Make a Way
14. Keep Your Lamp Trimmed & Burning
15. When The Saints Go Marching In
16. Big Road Blues
17. When I Lay My Burden Down
Link
The same longings and joys, laments and vows of perseverance, the same up-from-the-belly surge that find their expression so perfectly in blues were always brought to bear when making some joyful noise to their God.Few blues musicians could reconcile both their secular and spiritual material more effortlessly than Mississippi Fred McDowell. Fred lived in a world that refused to recognize any common ground between these two camps, the sacred and the profane. One need only think of Rube Lacey or Ishmon Bracey, two of the finest bluesmen the Delta produced, having their spiritual conversions and turning their backs forever on blues and recording. It was a polarized world where if you weren't "Giving it up to the Lord" you were giving the devil his due. Straight through the American south, through its vaunted Bible Belt, the bluesmen were, to the last, racing down the road to hell. The Rev. Gary Davis would begin recording more secular tunes as he moved into the 1960's. Son House would personally always have trouble reconciling the two camps.
Mississippi Fred McDowell was cutting both blues and spirituals, right along side each other, pretty much from the point when he began recording, famously late in his career. A few months back I posted an album featuring Fred, his wife and Como, Mississippi's Hunter's Chapel Singers --Here--. Amazing Grace, essential album that it's become, was only made possible by the positive reception, and inroads, made by Mississippi Fred's first spiritually-heavy release, My Home Is In The Delta, released two years earlier. That album gave his wife Annie Mae co-billing--and most deservedly so. The album is very much a husband and wife presentation. It was always a sublime partnership.
In its original 1964 configuration, Side A was Fred playing a secular selection, while on Side B he joined his wife Annie Mae for a brace of spirituals. It is a uniformly-wonderful album that flowed smooth as running water. Fred's solo contributions include venerable standards as Sleepy John Estes' The Girl I'm Loving and McDowell originals The Sun Rose This Morning. I'm In Jail Again and Going Down South, Carry My Whip are so juicy you'll want to line the floor with newspaper before cracking them open.
When Annie Mae takes her chair, she and Fred serve up a cross-section of mostly time-honored standards, though with their stamp very much on each one to the last. Witness, for example, their reading of Amazing Grace, as "standard" as it gets for church hymns, building from a slow to lament to something a bit more joyful.
My Home Is In The Delta was recorded on a pair of dates in November, 1963 and February, 1964. When Testament re-issued the album on CD, it included 4 bonus tracks, When I Lay My Burden Down, Big Road Blues, Down on Dankin's Farm, and a true McDowell rarity, Six White Horses, essentially a reworking of Blind Lemon Jefferson's See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, that I believe makes its only appearance in McDowell's canon on this disc.
Through the Fred and Annie Mae duets, we are struck by their being such under-stated wonders. This is no fire & brimstone, Give-Your-Heart-to-Jesus sales pitch. These are straight from the heart and soul country spirituals feeling like they're being played from a back porch. They are all exquisitely rendered.
Peace, Mudcatz
Mississippi Fred & Annie Mae McDowell
My Home Is In The Delta
Testament, 1995
1. Waiting For My Baby
2. I'm In Jail Again
3. The Girl I'm Loving
4. Going Down South, Carry My Whip
5. Diving Duck Blues
6. The Sun Rose This Morning
7. Six White Horses
8. Down On Dankin's Farm
9. Get Right Church
10. Amazing Grace
11. Jesus Gonna Make Up My Dying Bed
12. Where Could I Go
13. The Lord Will Make a Way
14. Keep Your Lamp Trimmed & Burning
15. When The Saints Go Marching In
16. Big Road Blues
17. When I Lay My Burden Down
Link
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Lightnin Schools Swarthmore
Looking back, it now seems an odd place for me to have begun my Lightnin Hopkins collection. 
By the time I started getting hipped to Hopkins, already a few years into my love affair with the blues, you could have sunk an aircraft carrier beneath the weight of Lightnin's discography. Like a great many of the discs I purchased back then, I'd done so blind, mail-ordering and rolling the dice, hoping I wouldn't crap out. The blues gods smiled on me and I managed to order a classic...even if it was only just then achieving that status.
Before Fantasy released The Swarthmore Concert, this stellar set of live Lightnin had gone unreleased for years, only to appear on the fifth disc of The Complete Prestige/Bluesville Recordings in '91. Fantasy astutely repackaged the concert, which appears to be complete, and turned it loose two years later, in August, of '93. It started being called "essential" almost immediately and has continued to hold a lofty position in the quintessential Texas bluesman's canon. That it had languished in the vault for 27 years had been an unfortunate twist of fate. Prestige/Bluesville was being bought out by Fantasy, and at the time Fantasy wasn't terribly interested in releasing "yet another" Hopkins album. It appears that so much time went by simply because it had been forgotten. Listening to this set and drinking it in, it now seems an exasperating oversight.
The Swarthmore Concert is perhaps the best live concert we have from Hopkins. I ain't even playing on that point. There weren't too many bluesmen around (excepting, perhaps, John Lee Hooker) who were recorded as prolifically as Hopkins. Lightnin recorded for nearly forty years for a dizzying array of labels, to include Arhoolie, Herald, Candid, Aladdin, etc etc etc. Personal tastes being what they are, I believe he did his best work through the first 15 years of his reign, beginning with Aladdin sides and hitting his peak through the late '50's-mid-'60's on labels that very much included Prestige/Bluesville.
Taped on April 6, 1964 at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival, this set was almost certainly planned to be released to capitalize on the emergent (read that young & caucasian) interest in primarily the country blues. Swarthmore is a prestigious Quaker university just outside Philadelphia, was, for all practical purposes, just another stop on the coffee house & university circuit that a great many bluesmen were finding themselves on through the 1960's. Veteran that he was, Hopkins knew precisely how to work a crowd and, odd as it may have seen to him (& most of his contemporaries), Hopkins made the leap from African-American clubs and jukes to the college crowd almost seamlessly.
We see in venues like this bluesmen like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt and Hopkins getting chatty as they introduce their next number. This presentation was very much geared to their "new audience," who would consistently find themselves enthralled in the stories almost as much as the music. Few bluesmen could weave their homespun tales more effectively or warmly-humored as Hopkins--and we see this recipe delivered throughout this disc. On many of Hopkins' recordings, we'll find he can play this out too much. While he did get a little wordy and rambling at Swarthmore, he at least managed to keep it entertaining. Witness, for example, his story of My Black Cadillac, a witty proto-rock ditty of luring a lady away from her man with his new car...and where that little move got him. His story behind his Short Haired Woman is every bit as entertaining--and enlightening as to why Lightnin didn't want no woman whose hair was longer than his.
Hopkins' setlist for this concert is a wonderfully-balanced blend of his reinventions of old standards and his own originals (some of which can sound derivative in their own right. For example, his It's Crazy (aka The Rub), a tune famously "his," is, of course, drawn heavily from Leadbelly's Bottle Up & Go.) With his covers, whether we're talking about Big Joe Williams' Baby Please Don't Go, Willie Dixon's My Babe or Big Boy Crudup's Mean Ol Frisco, Lightnin was a master of putting his stamp to his arrangements. These songs, in this milieu, firmly become his own. As for his covers, riffing up Booker T & the MG's' Green Onion seems probably the most curious inclusion of the evening. And that one he does talk to death.
Lightnin's slower, more mournful blues, most especially I'm a Stranger and his frigging magical reading of Trouble in Mind end up providing some of the evening's most stirring moments.
Few men could hold an auditorium full of folks as enthralled and entertained with just a box guitar and strength of personality, and make it seem so effortless, as could Sam Hopkins. With this disc we are given one of its best examples. Few blues albums would wait as long to assert itself as Essential.
Peace, Mudcatz
Lightnin Hopkins
The Swarthmore Concert
Fantasy/Prestige 1993
1. Baby Please Don't Go
2. My Black Cadillac
3. It's Crazy
4. Mojo Hand
5. My Babe
6. Short Haired Woman
7. Mean Ol Frisco
8. Trouble in Mind
9. The Twister
10. Green Onion
11. Sun Goin' Down
12. Come Go Home With Me
13. I'm a Stranger
Link
By the time I started getting hipped to Hopkins, already a few years into my love affair with the blues, you could have sunk an aircraft carrier beneath the weight of Lightnin's discography. Like a great many of the discs I purchased back then, I'd done so blind, mail-ordering and rolling the dice, hoping I wouldn't crap out. The blues gods smiled on me and I managed to order a classic...even if it was only just then achieving that status.Before Fantasy released The Swarthmore Concert, this stellar set of live Lightnin had gone unreleased for years, only to appear on the fifth disc of The Complete Prestige/Bluesville Recordings in '91. Fantasy astutely repackaged the concert, which appears to be complete, and turned it loose two years later, in August, of '93. It started being called "essential" almost immediately and has continued to hold a lofty position in the quintessential Texas bluesman's canon. That it had languished in the vault for 27 years had been an unfortunate twist of fate. Prestige/Bluesville was being bought out by Fantasy, and at the time Fantasy wasn't terribly interested in releasing "yet another" Hopkins album. It appears that so much time went by simply because it had been forgotten. Listening to this set and drinking it in, it now seems an exasperating oversight.
The Swarthmore Concert is perhaps the best live concert we have from Hopkins. I ain't even playing on that point. There weren't too many bluesmen around (excepting, perhaps, John Lee Hooker) who were recorded as prolifically as Hopkins. Lightnin recorded for nearly forty years for a dizzying array of labels, to include Arhoolie, Herald, Candid, Aladdin, etc etc etc. Personal tastes being what they are, I believe he did his best work through the first 15 years of his reign, beginning with Aladdin sides and hitting his peak through the late '50's-mid-'60's on labels that very much included Prestige/Bluesville.
Taped on April 6, 1964 at the Swarthmore College Folk Festival, this set was almost certainly planned to be released to capitalize on the emergent (read that young & caucasian) interest in primarily the country blues. Swarthmore is a prestigious Quaker university just outside Philadelphia, was, for all practical purposes, just another stop on the coffee house & university circuit that a great many bluesmen were finding themselves on through the 1960's. Veteran that he was, Hopkins knew precisely how to work a crowd and, odd as it may have seen to him (& most of his contemporaries), Hopkins made the leap from African-American clubs and jukes to the college crowd almost seamlessly.
We see in venues like this bluesmen like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt and Hopkins getting chatty as they introduce their next number. This presentation was very much geared to their "new audience," who would consistently find themselves enthralled in the stories almost as much as the music. Few bluesmen could weave their homespun tales more effectively or warmly-humored as Hopkins--and we see this recipe delivered throughout this disc. On many of Hopkins' recordings, we'll find he can play this out too much. While he did get a little wordy and rambling at Swarthmore, he at least managed to keep it entertaining. Witness, for example, his story of My Black Cadillac, a witty proto-rock ditty of luring a lady away from her man with his new car...and where that little move got him. His story behind his Short Haired Woman is every bit as entertaining--and enlightening as to why Lightnin didn't want no woman whose hair was longer than his.
Hopkins' setlist for this concert is a wonderfully-balanced blend of his reinventions of old standards and his own originals (some of which can sound derivative in their own right. For example, his It's Crazy (aka The Rub), a tune famously "his," is, of course, drawn heavily from Leadbelly's Bottle Up & Go.) With his covers, whether we're talking about Big Joe Williams' Baby Please Don't Go, Willie Dixon's My Babe or Big Boy Crudup's Mean Ol Frisco, Lightnin was a master of putting his stamp to his arrangements. These songs, in this milieu, firmly become his own. As for his covers, riffing up Booker T & the MG's' Green Onion seems probably the most curious inclusion of the evening. And that one he does talk to death.
Lightnin's slower, more mournful blues, most especially I'm a Stranger and his frigging magical reading of Trouble in Mind end up providing some of the evening's most stirring moments.
Few men could hold an auditorium full of folks as enthralled and entertained with just a box guitar and strength of personality, and make it seem so effortless, as could Sam Hopkins. With this disc we are given one of its best examples. Few blues albums would wait as long to assert itself as Essential.
Peace, Mudcatz
Lightnin Hopkins
The Swarthmore Concert
Fantasy/Prestige 1993
1. Baby Please Don't Go
2. My Black Cadillac
3. It's Crazy
4. Mojo Hand
5. My Babe
6. Short Haired Woman
7. Mean Ol Frisco
8. Trouble in Mind
9. The Twister
10. Green Onion
11. Sun Goin' Down
12. Come Go Home With Me
13. I'm a Stranger
Link
Monday, December 6, 2010
Blue Monday: Buddy & Junior @ Newport Folk, '68
This is some Junior & Buddy for your ass! A vintage treat from front to back. Guy and Wells, caught in middle of the Golden Age of their partnership, and serving up a short & sublime blast of Chicago blues on the closing night of 1968's Newport Folk Festival.
Enough talk. This one sings for itself.
Buddy Guy & Junior Wells
Newport Folk Festival
Newport RI
July 28, 1968
(sbd @ 320)
1. Intro
2. One Room Country Shack
3. Checkin' On My Baby
4. Hoodoo Man Intro
5. Hoodoo Man Blues
6. Messin' With The Kid
7. Help Me Intro
8. Help Me
9. Crowd/Talk
10. Stormy Monday/I Feel Good
Link
Buddy Guy - Guitar, Vocals
Junior Wells - Vocals, Harmonica
A.C. Reed - Sax
Jack Myers- Bass
Fred Below - Drums
Peace, Mudcatz
Blue Monday: Buddy & Junior @ Lone Star, '85
Getting back into my Blue Monday features here at Backwoods, I figure it's been well past time to bring it on home with a couple of rollicking sets from a pair of my favorite bluesmen, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells.
Our first outing finds this legendary duo on stage at New York City's Lone Star Cafe in February, 1985. Long before this date it had become Standard Operating Procedure with their club dates for the band to warm up with a few tunes, then for Buddy to take center stage for a set before bringing out Junior. In the case of this boot, we see this very template. The first couple tracks has guitarist Pete Allen fronting a band that includes Ike Anderson on bass and Jerry Porter on the drums. It's a dandy warm-up, too. Buddy joins them for a fully-charged and decidedly-Buddy take on Dust My Broom (while also riffing on Sweet Home Chicago) Buddy's playing throughout this gig is razor's-edged and ripping.
Everyone's in good humor tonight and Buddy is clearly having fun through his "Guitar Imitations," mimicking the styles of his Chicago mentors. He concludes this by saying, "...now let me show you how Junior Wells sounds," thundering then into his Low Down Dirty Shame opening riffs.
Junior comes out strong, giving Low Down Dirty a healthy, slicker-than-greased-owlshit reading. Heading into Ships on the Ocean, Junior's vocals just aren't quite hitting the spot. "Sing, motherfucker!" Buddy goads him playfully, and Junior slides a whole lot closer into the pocket.
And he stays there, right along with a band that's just getting it on through the balance of the this off the radar bootleg.
Peace, Mudcatz
Buddy Guy & Junior Wells
Lone Star Cafe
New York City NY
February 18, 1985
sbd @ 256/k
Set 1
1. Teenie Weenie Bit
2. Hush Hush
3. Dust My Broom
4. Five Long Years
5. Crazy About You
6. I Just Want To Make Love To You
7. Stormy Monday
8. Buddy's Guitar Imitations
9. Low Down Dirty Shame (tape flip)
Set 2
1. Ships On The Ocean
2. Trouble No More
3. (banter/tuning)
4. Sweet Home Chicago
5. Hoochie Coochie Man
6. James Brown Medley
Link
Our first outing finds this legendary duo on stage at New York City's Lone Star Cafe in February, 1985. Long before this date it had become Standard Operating Procedure with their club dates for the band to warm up with a few tunes, then for Buddy to take center stage for a set before bringing out Junior. In the case of this boot, we see this very template. The first couple tracks has guitarist Pete Allen fronting a band that includes Ike Anderson on bass and Jerry Porter on the drums. It's a dandy warm-up, too. Buddy joins them for a fully-charged and decidedly-Buddy take on Dust My Broom (while also riffing on Sweet Home Chicago) Buddy's playing throughout this gig is razor's-edged and ripping.
Everyone's in good humor tonight and Buddy is clearly having fun through his "Guitar Imitations," mimicking the styles of his Chicago mentors. He concludes this by saying, "...now let me show you how Junior Wells sounds," thundering then into his Low Down Dirty Shame opening riffs.
Junior comes out strong, giving Low Down Dirty a healthy, slicker-than-greased-owlshit reading. Heading into Ships on the Ocean, Junior's vocals just aren't quite hitting the spot. "Sing, motherfucker!" Buddy goads him playfully, and Junior slides a whole lot closer into the pocket.
And he stays there, right along with a band that's just getting it on through the balance of the this off the radar bootleg.
Peace, Mudcatz
Buddy Guy & Junior Wells
Lone Star Cafe
New York City NY
February 18, 1985
sbd @ 256/k
Set 1
1. Teenie Weenie Bit
2. Hush Hush
3. Dust My Broom
4. Five Long Years
5. Crazy About You
6. I Just Want To Make Love To You
7. Stormy Monday
8. Buddy's Guitar Imitations
9. Low Down Dirty Shame (tape flip)
Set 2
1. Ships On The Ocean
2. Trouble No More
3. (banter/tuning)
4. Sweet Home Chicago
5. Hoochie Coochie Man
6. James Brown Medley
Link
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Down Bummer Road
"You better cut it now because if you let it cool, goddamn it, it won't be what was there..."
Forty-five years after Sonny Boy Williamson hard-lived himself to death, it's difficult to imagine a time when the breadth of his recordings weren't readily available to us. We have become so pampered in this digital age and Sonny Boy's work has been packaged and repackaged with such reliable rapidity as to become dizzying. This was obviously not always the case. When Chess released Bummer Road as part of its Vintage Series in October, 1969, it was still something of a revelation. While it has long been considered an essential inclusion to anyone's blues collection, the years have allowed it to become eclipsed by subsequent, more inclusive releases--and remembered chiefly for its quick moments of notorious hilarity.
So let's set the clocks back to a time when single-LP posthumous collections were the rule rather than the archaic exception, to a time when no one had even heard the Williamson classics Keep Your Hands Out of My Pockets and Unseen Eye before.
Bummer Road originally assembled 10 cuts from 5 different recording sessions between September of '57 and September, 1960. When MCA reissued the album in 1997, they included a previously-unreleased alternate track of Your Funeral and My Trial. Even with this bonus track, the disc weighs in at an underweight 39 minutes and change; still very much the standard length of old school vinyl. When it was released, none of these cuts had yet seen the light of day. With what was almost certainly a sensationalist bit of marketing, the brothers Chess adopted a novel approach and included the 12-minute Work in Progress, Little Village. With labels warning that this cut was "Not Suitable for Airplay," in an era when such a label would attract notice, it did precisely that.
The obscenity-laced exchange between Sonny Boy and Leonard Chess has since become part of blues legend. Many years after I first heard it, I still keep it on hand for a quick smile. That it has become the most-recognized moment of this album, however, tends to trivialize the album as a whole. And this album is decidedly not trivial.
Taken as a whole, Little Village is an intriguing glimpse into both recording and the creative process in action. This is Sonny Boy, the band, and Leonard Chess working out a new song front start to finish. There are times when I find (especially) the middle minutes tedious and, as a whole, I feel it staggers the pace of the album. Mostly I just suck it up because it is a fascinating journey. We are also afforded a precious look at how Sonny Boy wrote. Besides being one of the blues harmonica's undisputed masters, Sonny Boy can also claim credit for being one of its true poets. And a great many of those timeless lines were completely spontaneous.
Willie Dixon, who appears on all but 3 of these tracks,would say of Sonny Boy and those studio sessions, "...Well, the first thing he'd do, when he'd get ready to record, he'd say, 'Get me something to drink'... I think he got to a place where he could perform better by having a few drinks. I think his mind worked better then, because a lot of the stuff he'd make up right on the spot. I'd ask him, say, 'what are you goin' to record?' He'd just had a title or two...I'd say, 'What is it?' He'd say, 'Well, I don't know, but after we get into it, why, I'll straighten it out..."
We see this dynamic play out through Little Village. Finishing with what amounts to a pair of serviceable cuts Takes 2 and 11, each incarnation is markedly different from the last. When Sonny Boy snaps at Leonard Chess, it seems he's pissed that Chess had aborted a very strong start for no more reason than asking for a title. In the 2 or 3 second pause between Chess asking and Sonny Boy's first, quiet "Little Village," I swear you can hear Sonny Boy seething in the silence. Chess doesn't quite hear the title, so Sonny Boy turns up the volume on him. (That's Robert Lockwood and Otis Spann we hear chuckling when Sonny Boy blows his cool...) Shocking as the resultant exchange is the first time we hear it, just about everyone who was around Chess Studios back in the day are in agreement that this was just another day at the office. For our eternal delight, they caught that one on tape.
I'd suggest that neither of the "complete" takes on Little Village quite fulfilled the promise of that first aborted pass. Sonny Boy's playing through the first 30-40 seconds is so juicy you wanna grab a napkin. Lyrically, both complete takes remain true to each other only in theme. Take 2, the canonical one, has Sonny Boy splitting from his small-town girl because she was getting too serious on him. Just a few moments later, in Take 11, Sonny Boy's the one filled with regret that he has to move on.
Given the girth of recorded Sonny Boy material, much still vaulted and unreleased at the time, Chess took some care in assembling the tracks they did. Though I would offer a qualifying point or two on a couple inclusions, these 10 (now 11) cuts are solid to the last, a quick-dose showcase of Williamson his slow-grooving magic. His harp, always an extension of his voice, always played as if it were how he wanted his voice to be, is as clear, restrained and emotive as it had ever been.
To this day, Sonny Boy carries a well-earned reputation as a sullen and temperamental loner. We forget that a great many of his friends thoroughly enjoyed his company (suggesting he could be more sociable when he was a mind to be...) and that he had a vicious sense of humor. We see this humor, often bordering on the ridiculous, and always dryly and wryly writ, repeatedly through his recordings--though rarely as readily as we do in Santa Claus, this album's second cut. A 'Santa Claus,' as Sonny Boy describes it, is a Christmas gift his woman has purchased for him and hidden in her dresser til Xmas morning. Curiosity gets the better of Sonny Boy, he sets to "rambling all in my baby's dresser drawers," prompting her landlady to call for the police. Say what you will, but it takes a demented sense of humor to dream that one up. The tune itself is just a delight and a Christmas staple around these parts.
It should be no surprise that these tracks are, to the last, as solid as they are. It's hard to go wrong with Chess' stable of players in those years and for these sessions, Willie Dixon consistently put some of Chicago's best in that room. Sonny Boy could never keep a band together and had to rely on Dixon to organize the players. "He would always try to get Robert Junior (Lockwood) and (Luther) Tucker to work with him, and (Fred) Below, because they were all friends..." Piano duties were covered by Otis Spann for 7 of these tunes, with Lafayette Leake on the remaining 4. Tucker and Below appear on all 11 tracks. Robert Lockwood's on board for 9 of them.
One cannot look at this album without mentioning Lockwood's performances. Of Lockwood (& several other legendary bluesmen), we hear repeatedly that he did some of his best work behind other players. Backing folks like Sonny Boy Williamson and Otis Spann, on albums like this one, is precisely how he earned that reputation. While his jazz influences are apparent in his playing here, he understates them, achieving a near-perfect balance with Sonny Boy on tunes like I Can't Do Without You and She Got Next To Me.
The album is not without its requisite derivative moments. The "title" track (called Bummer Road in Chess' files but Open Road on the album) draws heavily from Muddy Waters' My Home Is In the Delta--and it don't detract a bit from it. Temperature 110, however, has Sonny Boy looting his own Nine Below Zero so heavily that I find it distracting. Were it not for the strength of the playing goin' on...
The somber, poignant This Old Life closes out the proceedings on a near-perfect note. Part of Williamson's magic were those millisecond glimpses of vulnerability peeking out through the cracks in a genuinely tough-and-gruff soul. This song, and especially this album, is rife with them.
Sonny Boy was, of course, 4 years dead by the time these recordings debuted. Leonard Chess would die of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on October 16, 1969, the same month Bummer Road was initially released. He never lived to appreciate the joy we've found in Sonny Boy calling him a motherfucker.
Peace, Mudcatz
Sonny Boy Williamson
Bummer Road
MCA 1997
1.She Got Next To Me
2. Santa Claus
3. Little Village
4. Your Funeral and My trial (alt)
5. Lonesome Cabin
6.I Can't Do Without You
7. Temperature 110
8. Unseen Eye
9. Keep Your Hand Out of My Pocket
10. Open Road
11. This Old Life
Link
Forty-five years after Sonny Boy Williamson hard-lived himself to death, it's difficult to imagine a time when the breadth of his recordings weren't readily available to us. We have become so pampered in this digital age and Sonny Boy's work has been packaged and repackaged with such reliable rapidity as to become dizzying. This was obviously not always the case. When Chess released Bummer Road as part of its Vintage Series in October, 1969, it was still something of a revelation. While it has long been considered an essential inclusion to anyone's blues collection, the years have allowed it to become eclipsed by subsequent, more inclusive releases--and remembered chiefly for its quick moments of notorious hilarity.So let's set the clocks back to a time when single-LP posthumous collections were the rule rather than the archaic exception, to a time when no one had even heard the Williamson classics Keep Your Hands Out of My Pockets and Unseen Eye before.
Bummer Road originally assembled 10 cuts from 5 different recording sessions between September of '57 and September, 1960. When MCA reissued the album in 1997, they included a previously-unreleased alternate track of Your Funeral and My Trial. Even with this bonus track, the disc weighs in at an underweight 39 minutes and change; still very much the standard length of old school vinyl. When it was released, none of these cuts had yet seen the light of day. With what was almost certainly a sensationalist bit of marketing, the brothers Chess adopted a novel approach and included the 12-minute Work in Progress, Little Village. With labels warning that this cut was "Not Suitable for Airplay," in an era when such a label would attract notice, it did precisely that.
The obscenity-laced exchange between Sonny Boy and Leonard Chess has since become part of blues legend. Many years after I first heard it, I still keep it on hand for a quick smile. That it has become the most-recognized moment of this album, however, tends to trivialize the album as a whole. And this album is decidedly not trivial.
Taken as a whole, Little Village is an intriguing glimpse into both recording and the creative process in action. This is Sonny Boy, the band, and Leonard Chess working out a new song front start to finish. There are times when I find (especially) the middle minutes tedious and, as a whole, I feel it staggers the pace of the album. Mostly I just suck it up because it is a fascinating journey. We are also afforded a precious look at how Sonny Boy wrote. Besides being one of the blues harmonica's undisputed masters, Sonny Boy can also claim credit for being one of its true poets. And a great many of those timeless lines were completely spontaneous.
Willie Dixon, who appears on all but 3 of these tracks,would say of Sonny Boy and those studio sessions, "...Well, the first thing he'd do, when he'd get ready to record, he'd say, 'Get me something to drink'... I think he got to a place where he could perform better by having a few drinks. I think his mind worked better then, because a lot of the stuff he'd make up right on the spot. I'd ask him, say, 'what are you goin' to record?' He'd just had a title or two...I'd say, 'What is it?' He'd say, 'Well, I don't know, but after we get into it, why, I'll straighten it out..."
We see this dynamic play out through Little Village. Finishing with what amounts to a pair of serviceable cuts Takes 2 and 11, each incarnation is markedly different from the last. When Sonny Boy snaps at Leonard Chess, it seems he's pissed that Chess had aborted a very strong start for no more reason than asking for a title. In the 2 or 3 second pause between Chess asking and Sonny Boy's first, quiet "Little Village," I swear you can hear Sonny Boy seething in the silence. Chess doesn't quite hear the title, so Sonny Boy turns up the volume on him. (That's Robert Lockwood and Otis Spann we hear chuckling when Sonny Boy blows his cool...) Shocking as the resultant exchange is the first time we hear it, just about everyone who was around Chess Studios back in the day are in agreement that this was just another day at the office. For our eternal delight, they caught that one on tape.
I'd suggest that neither of the "complete" takes on Little Village quite fulfilled the promise of that first aborted pass. Sonny Boy's playing through the first 30-40 seconds is so juicy you wanna grab a napkin. Lyrically, both complete takes remain true to each other only in theme. Take 2, the canonical one, has Sonny Boy splitting from his small-town girl because she was getting too serious on him. Just a few moments later, in Take 11, Sonny Boy's the one filled with regret that he has to move on.
Given the girth of recorded Sonny Boy material, much still vaulted and unreleased at the time, Chess took some care in assembling the tracks they did. Though I would offer a qualifying point or two on a couple inclusions, these 10 (now 11) cuts are solid to the last, a quick-dose showcase of Williamson his slow-grooving magic. His harp, always an extension of his voice, always played as if it were how he wanted his voice to be, is as clear, restrained and emotive as it had ever been.
To this day, Sonny Boy carries a well-earned reputation as a sullen and temperamental loner. We forget that a great many of his friends thoroughly enjoyed his company (suggesting he could be more sociable when he was a mind to be...) and that he had a vicious sense of humor. We see this humor, often bordering on the ridiculous, and always dryly and wryly writ, repeatedly through his recordings--though rarely as readily as we do in Santa Claus, this album's second cut. A 'Santa Claus,' as Sonny Boy describes it, is a Christmas gift his woman has purchased for him and hidden in her dresser til Xmas morning. Curiosity gets the better of Sonny Boy, he sets to "rambling all in my baby's dresser drawers," prompting her landlady to call for the police. Say what you will, but it takes a demented sense of humor to dream that one up. The tune itself is just a delight and a Christmas staple around these parts. It should be no surprise that these tracks are, to the last, as solid as they are. It's hard to go wrong with Chess' stable of players in those years and for these sessions, Willie Dixon consistently put some of Chicago's best in that room. Sonny Boy could never keep a band together and had to rely on Dixon to organize the players. "He would always try to get Robert Junior (Lockwood) and (Luther) Tucker to work with him, and (Fred) Below, because they were all friends..." Piano duties were covered by Otis Spann for 7 of these tunes, with Lafayette Leake on the remaining 4. Tucker and Below appear on all 11 tracks. Robert Lockwood's on board for 9 of them.
One cannot look at this album without mentioning Lockwood's performances. Of Lockwood (& several other legendary bluesmen), we hear repeatedly that he did some of his best work behind other players. Backing folks like Sonny Boy Williamson and Otis Spann, on albums like this one, is precisely how he earned that reputation. While his jazz influences are apparent in his playing here, he understates them, achieving a near-perfect balance with Sonny Boy on tunes like I Can't Do Without You and She Got Next To Me.
The album is not without its requisite derivative moments. The "title" track (called Bummer Road in Chess' files but Open Road on the album) draws heavily from Muddy Waters' My Home Is In the Delta--and it don't detract a bit from it. Temperature 110, however, has Sonny Boy looting his own Nine Below Zero so heavily that I find it distracting. Were it not for the strength of the playing goin' on...
The somber, poignant This Old Life closes out the proceedings on a near-perfect note. Part of Williamson's magic were those millisecond glimpses of vulnerability peeking out through the cracks in a genuinely tough-and-gruff soul. This song, and especially this album, is rife with them.
Sonny Boy was, of course, 4 years dead by the time these recordings debuted. Leonard Chess would die of a heart attack behind the wheel of his car on October 16, 1969, the same month Bummer Road was initially released. He never lived to appreciate the joy we've found in Sonny Boy calling him a motherfucker.
Peace, Mudcatz
Sonny Boy Williamson
Bummer Road
MCA 1997
1.She Got Next To Me
2. Santa Claus
3. Little Village
4. Your Funeral and My trial (alt)
5. Lonesome Cabin
6.I Can't Do Without You
7. Temperature 110
8. Unseen Eye
9. Keep Your Hand Out of My Pocket
10. Open Road
11. This Old Life
Link
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Two Nights @ Paul's Mall, '76 & '78
You could also read this one as Muddy Waters & BB King...
Continuing on with mention I made in my last post of the early '60's Folk Blues revival, I'd like to throw some notice on one of the clubs that would emerge from that burgeoning scene to become a concert venue of near-mythical status. When Fred Taylor opened Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop on Boston's Boylston Street, that same revival was reaching its peak, thanks in no small measure to clubs like these. Just down the way from Paul's Mall was the Unicorn Coffee House. Across the Charles River in Cambridge was Club 47. These were the clubs that would make Boston a curious hotbed for the blues.
Some things never change: where you have universities, you have coffeehouses. Boston is chock full of both. The importance of the universities in how the blues unfolded through this time-frame cannot be overstated, for it was with their students that the country blues (especially) were getting noticed. These same students would be getting turned on to electricity in short order. New York had its Gaslight Cafe. Boston had Paul's Mall.
I take a certain mirthful pleasure in serving up a couple bootlegs cut at the Mall, when Taylor himself began his career taping jazz shows with a $149 recorder he would lug from venue to venue. He was still a Boston College student and along the way, he managed to record Sarah Vaughan and Dave Brubeck.
"I'd heard about this incredible pianist named Dave Brubeck," Taylor recalls, "and when I saw he was coming to Storyville, I set up the mike where the balance was right, and I recorded him. Afterward, I said, 'Come back to my folks' house, because we have to plug it into my hi-fi.' So, Dave and Paul Desmond and I piled into my car and went to my house. When Dave heard it, he said it was great, that he'd never been caught that way playing 'Over the Rainbow.'
"A few days later, he called and said Fantasy wanted to release it as an album. He gave me $110 for the tape, and they produced a 10-inch LP that was praised twice in The New York Times, first as one of the best new works of the year, despite the amateur equipment, and second, as one of the first recordings to abandon three-minute cuts and to take advantage of the long-play format."
The liner notes for Brubeck's Live at Storyville list Taylor as Engineer.
In 1963, he and a business partner invested $4,000 and opened Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop, a pair of basement clubs featuring jazz in one and (mostly) electric music and comedy acts in the other. By the time they closed their doors 15 years later, few clubs could boast their longevity or the roster of talent that played those stages; John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan. Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell and Little Feat.
A great many of these concerts were broadcast over Boston's WBCN...which is precisely why we find so many FM-sourced bootleg recordings coming out of Paul's Mall. We see a very similar dynamic with playing out with New York's Bottom Line shows broadcast by WNYU. (Here and Here, for example)
This evening's two outings were both broadcast over WBCN--and both serve up some soaring blues from a pair of its undisputed masters, Muddy Waters and BB King.
When Muddy took the stage at Paul's Mall, it was June 15, 1976 and Boston's Mayor had proclaimed that day "Muddy Waters Day." After the band plays a trio of numbers (all instrumentals this time out...), the Proclamation is read and Muddy is noticeably moved by the moment, stumbling a bit with his thanks. With a stroke of panache, he begins his set by honoring a request.
"This is going out for a young lady, she's a little ill tonight and she's in the bed but she's listening on the radio...Here it is, Terry, your number, Caledonia..."
Both Caledonia and Kansas City are time-honored blues that Muddy appears to have grown an affection for and would perform them repeatedly throughout the balance of his career. Through the 1970's, Kansas City served as a vehicle for the band to open up and jam, as well as share vocal duties with the master.
The early-mid-'70's were a rough road for Muddy. He'd started the decade off recovering from a car wreck that had left him with a sprained back and a broken pelvis and hip. His wife, Geneva, had died in '73 and Chess was sliding towards its demise. Many of Muddy's shows through these years could be uneven affairs--though he would also produce quite a number that are just stand-outs. His night at Paul's Mall in June of '76 is ample testimony of a night when he & his band were "on," blazing through a setlist of standards and making them feel vibrant. Muddy is in great spirits through this set and his audience is raucous and appreciative. It all makes for one tasty bootleg.
Like Muddy, BB King had performed at Paul's Mall before and his affection for the place is apparent when he takes the stage not quite two years later, on April 9, 1978. Times had changed, the Mall was closing, and B. B. was brought in to close the joint out on a high note. Production and maintenance costs had become too prohibitive for these two small clubs to remain open. That they had lasted 15 years, far longer than most of their contemporaries, had been an achievement in itself.
Of BB, Fred Taylor said in his intro (& farewell) "There couldn't be a better group or a better artist to go out with the blues, and that's so appropriate...Thank you, Boston, it's been a beautiful engagement!"
It was past midnight when BB stepped to the microphone, leaping into a roaring set and kicking things off, like Muddy, with Caledonia.
This offering is amply laden with energy but feels a bit like BB-by-rote. It is well enough that it is serving as a warm-up, as BB gets into the pocket by How Blue Can You Get and soars there through the balance of this legendary set, building to a ripping, percussive I Need You Baby, sandwiched with a saucy Outside Help for a finale. Along the way, BB calls DeeDee Bridgewater to the stage for a soulful Everyday I Have the Blues duet. "You can sing anything you want," BB assures her, "as long as it's Everyday I Have the Blues..."
733 Boylston Street is a Chinese restaurant now. The torch has been passed a few times since the spring of '78. The music that was made there is something more eternal.
Peace, Mudcatz
Muddy Waters
Paul's Mall
Boston MA
June 15, 1976
FM Broadcast
1. Intro
2. Instrumental 1
3. Instrumental 2
4. Instrumental 3
5. Muddy Waters Day Proclamation
6. Caledonia
7. Kansas City
8. Hoochie Coochie Man
9. I Want You To Love Me
10. Baby Please Don't Go
11. Long Distance Call
12. Mannish Boy
13. Got My Mojo Working
14. You Don't Have To Go
15. Outro
16. WBCN Outro
Muddy Waters - Vocals/Guitar
Luther "Guitar Jr." Johnson - Guitar
Bob Margolin - Guitar
Calvin Jones - Bass
Pinetop Perkins - Piano
Jerry Portnoy - Harmonica
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith - Drums
Link
BB King
Paul's Mall
Boston MA
April 9, 1978
FM Broadcast
1. Intro Jam
2. Caledonia
3. How Blue Can You Get
4. Cryin Won't Help You
5. Why I Sing The Blues
6. Everyday I Have The Blues
7. 3 O'Clock Blues
8. Everything Gonna Be Alright
9. I Need You Baby
Link
Continuing on with mention I made in my last post of the early '60's Folk Blues revival, I'd like to throw some notice on one of the clubs that would emerge from that burgeoning scene to become a concert venue of near-mythical status. When Fred Taylor opened Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop on Boston's Boylston Street, that same revival was reaching its peak, thanks in no small measure to clubs like these. Just down the way from Paul's Mall was the Unicorn Coffee House. Across the Charles River in Cambridge was Club 47. These were the clubs that would make Boston a curious hotbed for the blues.
Some things never change: where you have universities, you have coffeehouses. Boston is chock full of both. The importance of the universities in how the blues unfolded through this time-frame cannot be overstated, for it was with their students that the country blues (especially) were getting noticed. These same students would be getting turned on to electricity in short order. New York had its Gaslight Cafe. Boston had Paul's Mall.
I take a certain mirthful pleasure in serving up a couple bootlegs cut at the Mall, when Taylor himself began his career taping jazz shows with a $149 recorder he would lug from venue to venue. He was still a Boston College student and along the way, he managed to record Sarah Vaughan and Dave Brubeck.
"I'd heard about this incredible pianist named Dave Brubeck," Taylor recalls, "and when I saw he was coming to Storyville, I set up the mike where the balance was right, and I recorded him. Afterward, I said, 'Come back to my folks' house, because we have to plug it into my hi-fi.' So, Dave and Paul Desmond and I piled into my car and went to my house. When Dave heard it, he said it was great, that he'd never been caught that way playing 'Over the Rainbow.'
"A few days later, he called and said Fantasy wanted to release it as an album. He gave me $110 for the tape, and they produced a 10-inch LP that was praised twice in The New York Times, first as one of the best new works of the year, despite the amateur equipment, and second, as one of the first recordings to abandon three-minute cuts and to take advantage of the long-play format."
The liner notes for Brubeck's Live at Storyville list Taylor as Engineer.
In 1963, he and a business partner invested $4,000 and opened Paul's Mall and the Jazz Workshop, a pair of basement clubs featuring jazz in one and (mostly) electric music and comedy acts in the other. By the time they closed their doors 15 years later, few clubs could boast their longevity or the roster of talent that played those stages; John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan. Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell and Little Feat.A great many of these concerts were broadcast over Boston's WBCN...which is precisely why we find so many FM-sourced bootleg recordings coming out of Paul's Mall. We see a very similar dynamic with playing out with New York's Bottom Line shows broadcast by WNYU. (Here and Here, for example)
This evening's two outings were both broadcast over WBCN--and both serve up some soaring blues from a pair of its undisputed masters, Muddy Waters and BB King.
When Muddy took the stage at Paul's Mall, it was June 15, 1976 and Boston's Mayor had proclaimed that day "Muddy Waters Day." After the band plays a trio of numbers (all instrumentals this time out...), the Proclamation is read and Muddy is noticeably moved by the moment, stumbling a bit with his thanks. With a stroke of panache, he begins his set by honoring a request.
"This is going out for a young lady, she's a little ill tonight and she's in the bed but she's listening on the radio...Here it is, Terry, your number, Caledonia..."Both Caledonia and Kansas City are time-honored blues that Muddy appears to have grown an affection for and would perform them repeatedly throughout the balance of his career. Through the 1970's, Kansas City served as a vehicle for the band to open up and jam, as well as share vocal duties with the master.
The early-mid-'70's were a rough road for Muddy. He'd started the decade off recovering from a car wreck that had left him with a sprained back and a broken pelvis and hip. His wife, Geneva, had died in '73 and Chess was sliding towards its demise. Many of Muddy's shows through these years could be uneven affairs--though he would also produce quite a number that are just stand-outs. His night at Paul's Mall in June of '76 is ample testimony of a night when he & his band were "on," blazing through a setlist of standards and making them feel vibrant. Muddy is in great spirits through this set and his audience is raucous and appreciative. It all makes for one tasty bootleg.
Like Muddy, BB King had performed at Paul's Mall before and his affection for the place is apparent when he takes the stage not quite two years later, on April 9, 1978. Times had changed, the Mall was closing, and B. B. was brought in to close the joint out on a high note. Production and maintenance costs had become too prohibitive for these two small clubs to remain open. That they had lasted 15 years, far longer than most of their contemporaries, had been an achievement in itself.
Of BB, Fred Taylor said in his intro (& farewell) "There couldn't be a better group or a better artist to go out with the blues, and that's so appropriate...Thank you, Boston, it's been a beautiful engagement!"
It was past midnight when BB stepped to the microphone, leaping into a roaring set and kicking things off, like Muddy, with Caledonia.
This offering is amply laden with energy but feels a bit like BB-by-rote. It is well enough that it is serving as a warm-up, as BB gets into the pocket by How Blue Can You Get and soars there through the balance of this legendary set, building to a ripping, percussive I Need You Baby, sandwiched with a saucy Outside Help for a finale. Along the way, BB calls DeeDee Bridgewater to the stage for a soulful Everyday I Have the Blues duet. "You can sing anything you want," BB assures her, "as long as it's Everyday I Have the Blues..."
733 Boylston Street is a Chinese restaurant now. The torch has been passed a few times since the spring of '78. The music that was made there is something more eternal.
Peace, Mudcatz
Muddy Waters
Paul's Mall
Boston MA
June 15, 1976
FM Broadcast
1. Intro
2. Instrumental 1
3. Instrumental 2
4. Instrumental 3
5. Muddy Waters Day Proclamation
6. Caledonia
7. Kansas City
8. Hoochie Coochie Man
9. I Want You To Love Me
10. Baby Please Don't Go
11. Long Distance Call
12. Mannish Boy
13. Got My Mojo Working
14. You Don't Have To Go
15. Outro
16. WBCN Outro
Muddy Waters - Vocals/Guitar
Luther "Guitar Jr." Johnson - Guitar
Bob Margolin - Guitar
Calvin Jones - Bass
Pinetop Perkins - Piano
Jerry Portnoy - Harmonica
Willie "Big Eyes" Smith - Drums
Link
BB King
Paul's Mall
Boston MA
April 9, 1978
FM Broadcast
1. Intro Jam
2. Caledonia
3. How Blue Can You Get
4. Cryin Won't Help You
5. Why I Sing The Blues
6. Everyday I Have The Blues
7. 3 O'Clock Blues
8. Everything Gonna Be Alright
9. I Need You Baby
Link
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