Hurt @ NYU '63

Through the early 1960's, when the folk blues revival was reaching fever pitch, a good deal of that interest was fueled by New York City's Friends of Old Time Music. This group staged more than a dozen concerts in the city between 1961 and 1965, shining the spotlight directly on folk and blues artists who had long been relegated to obscurity. Most of these concerts were recorded by Peter Siegel, to whom we are indebted for preserving this legacy.

1963 was a significant year for Mississippi John Hurt. Presumed by many to be dead--and by everybody to be lost to Time--a musicologist by the name of Tom Hoskins adopted a novel approach: he simply went to Avalon, Mississippi, the town of which Hurt had sang about 35 years before, and began to ask around. Avalon was mythical in its own right, a hamlet that didn't even appear on highway maps of that time. Certain that it, and presumably the only link to Hurt, was there, Hoskins located the town just outside Greenwood, MS, in an atlas, circa 1878. He located Hurt himself shortly thereafter.

In December of that year, the Friends of Old Time Music staged a concert at NYU's School of Medicine, a double bill that had Hurt sharing the stage with Dock Boggs, who, like Mississippi John, had also recorded his obscure sides in that city, more than 30 years before. I have never been able to locate Boggs' set from this legendary night. Mississippi John Hurt's contributions that evening were a love letter to us all.


Mississippi John Hurt
NYU School of Medicine Alumini Hall
New York University
New York NY
December 13, 1963

1. Do Lord Intro
2. Do Lord Remember Me
3. Since I've Laid My Burden Down
4. C.C. Rider
5. Casey Jones
6. Nobody's Dirty Business
7. Richmond Woman Blues Intro
8. Richmond Woman Blues
9. Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me
10. Spike Driver's Blues
11. Stack O'Lee Blues
12. Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
13. Coffee Blues Intro
14. Coffee Blues
15. My Creole Blues
16. Frankie and Al
17. Talking Casey //

Link

Peace, Mudcatz

Home Again

I told you folks from the get: I'm an erratic bastard, wholly expected to vanish for weeks at a time--or, in this case, nigh on 4 months. It's been a wild ride out here, most of it positive, though I have missed my time here tremendously. There's a few more bumps on the imminent horizon, but I'm anxious to get back to one of my life's greatest pleasures: jabbering on about the blues.

I've only recently noticed several comments (THANK YOU!) that I have as yet to respond to; for that I apologize. I've got such great folks visiting this blog--still quite a few of you, though I've been decidedly on the road for months. Stick around, folks. You're in for some you-ain't-seen-nuthin-yet!

Peace, Mudcatz

Blue Monday: Otis & Luther @ Chicago Blues Festival, '95

For tonight's Blue Monday installments, we'll be revisiting the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival. Through the years, across Grant Park's 3 stages, the Chicago Blues Festival has come to represent the pinnacle of blues festivals, featuring the very best the idiom has got to offer. For 3 days in June 1995, there was just something in the air and the festival would produce at least 3 sets that have become the stuff of legend, from Luther Allison, Otis Rush, and Brownie McGhee. We would lose Brownie to stomach cancer the following February...and as we would soon find out, Luther wouldn't be around much longer either.

Blazing through Saturday evening's performances at the Petrillo Band Shell were sets by Eddie C. Campbell, followed by Allison. Otis Rush headlined that night, delivering a blistering performance, climaxed by Luther and Campbell sitting in with Otis for the Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel Medley.

If this recording is any indication, then Otis Rush could not have felt more at home on that stage than he did, rendering a near-perfect dose of West Side Chicago blues.



Otis Rush
Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park
Chicago, IL
June 3, 1995

Sbd @320

01. Everything's Going To Be Alright
02. Big Legged Woman
03. Otis Rush Introduction - Crosscut Saw
04. Right Place, Wrong Time
05. Somebody Have Mercy
06. Homework
07. 1 It's My Own Fault
08. All Your Love
09. Tore Up
10. A Fool For You
11. Tell Me The Reason
12. I Don´t What Love Is>Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel*

*with Luther Allison & Eddie C. Campbell


Link



Few people had more to prove than Luther Allison did that night. Allison had been away from Chicago for years, having emigrated to Paris in the early 1980's. Like Memphis Slim (who headlined the following night's performances...), Luther felt he was getting more respect in Europe than he was in a United States that was once again leaving the blues behind...in favor of soul music and pop dreck.

Luther had famously been reintroduced to his domestic public, and his career launched to heights that had always eluded him, when he signed to Alligator in 1994. Soul Fixin Man and its follow-up, Blue Streak were revelations and made Luther an overnight star...more than 35 years after his career began.

Luther was very much aware of how important his set at the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival was to his reestablishment and to making his presence known. When Luther took the stage that Saturday evening, he hadn't seen a a bed in two nights. He'd played a festival in Nantes, France, before grabbing a Paris to Chicago flight to be on time for his set. Luther was a bluesman renowned for high energy sets and for always delivering the goods. Drawing heavily on material from his recently-released Blue Streak, Luther pulled off a career high point that night, with ripping renditions of Cherry Red Wine, Bad Love, a wild Give Me Back My Wig and a soaring take on Tampa Red's It Hurts Me Too.

When Alligator Records released Luther's set as the first disc of Live In Chicago, they tacked on the Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel medley from Otis Rush's set. The second disc features material from a further pair of Allison concerts, a November, '95 gig at Buddy Guy's Legends and a May 1997 outing from Lincoln Nebraska's Zoo Bar.

The 1999 release would prove to be the first (and my opinion best) of a spate of posthumous live Allison releases, a double-disc blast of a legend at the top of his game.




Luther Allison
Live in Chicago
Alligator, 1999

Disc 1

1-intro
2-Soul Fixin Man
3-Cherry Red Wine
4-Move from the Hood
5-Bad Love
6-Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
7-Big City
8-Give Me back My Wig
9-It Hurts Me Too
10-Gambler's Blues>Sweet Little Angel

Disc 2

1-Party Time
2-All the King's Horses
3-What Have I Done Wrong?
4-Walking Papers
5-Think With Your Heart
6-What's Goin On In My Home?
7-Will it Ever Change?
8-You're Gonna Make Me Cry
9-Everything's Gonna Be Alright


Link


AND...for those of you who would like to explore just one more from the 1995 Chicago Blues festival, I would invite you to check out Mitch Lopate's recent post over at Voodoo Wagon...

Brownie McGhee, June 4, 1995


Peace, Mudcatz

Blue Monday: Lockwood @ Chicago Blues '95 (Re-post)

It's only been about 5 weeks since I first put this gemstone of a gig up. I'm re-posting it to give it some continuity with the sets that will be following on this blog momentarily...

For tonight's Blue Monday installments, I'll be revisiting the 1995 Chicago Blues Festival and throwing some attention on four sets from those three days, each one blue gold to the core...


A couple years back, when I first came across this Robert Junior Lockwood set, I thought it was manna from Heaven, a late-career gem that has never gotten notice, much less the love it deserves. Lockwood had just turned 80 when he took the stage at Grant Park for this set and would still have another decade's worth of playing ahead of him. On stage at that year's Chicago Blues Festival, Lockwood more than proved he was still one of the best there ever was.


Robert Lockwood Jr.
1995 Chicago Blues Festival
Grant Park
Chicago IL
June 2, 1995

(@ 320/kps)

1. King Biscuit Time
2. I'm Just Your Fool
3. Lockwood's Boogie
4. Tell Me What's In Store
5. Hangin' On
6. Ramblin' On My Mind
7. Stop Breakin' Down
8. This Is The Blues
9. Everyday I Have The Blues
10. Mojo Hand

Link


Don't ask, just do.

Enjoy.

Peace, Mudcatz

Essentials: Big Mama in Jail

"Well, here I am again, stuck down in this old rotten jail..."

When Big Mama Thornton went to jail in the autumn of 1971, she was rolling with a tour that featured both Muddy Waters and Big Joe Turner. They cut an arc across the Pacific Northwest, playing a battery of shows at universities and state prison facilities. Footage of this tour survives and it provided the material for a pair of concert releases, one each from Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton. Muddy's recordings popped up in 1999, on Blind Pig's The Lost Tapes. A quarter century earlier, Big Mama inaugurated her stay with Vanguard Records with her contributions from that tour, culled from a pair of dates at the Oregon State Reformatory in Eugene and Monroe State Prison in Monroe, Washington. Released in 1975, it was titled simply Jail.

I uploaded an interview clip from this tour of Muddy, with Big Mama beside him (and Big Joe Turner silent in the back seat...)this afternoon. I've seen about half of it on youtube before, posted by a couple folks, so I figured I'd just upload the whole whack...

Muddy & Big Mama, Interview, 1971

Big Mama was without a record contract when she joined this tour. It was a frequent state of affairs for Willa Mae, who would spend much of her 30+ year career without a parent label and unable to keep a band together for any length of time. She remained a dogged tour-hound and through the 1960's and into the 70's, Thornton's live shows were consistently electrifying. When she took the stages at these prisons, she didn't hold back and ended up providing the tunes for one of the blues' essential live albums.

As she's introduced and speaking to her audience, she seems to forget that there are few women in this house. She stumbles a bit and decides to call them "man and all and whatnot..." before launching into a romping, get 'em grooving Little Red Rooster. She dedicates the album's next number "to the late, great Janis Joplin," who died one year before these dates. She reminds her audience that she "had the pleasure of writing" this tune. "I wrote this number," she says.


Ball and Chain is wonderfully rendered here. In contrast to Janis' blistering, high-decibel approach to this song, Big Mama's strikes one as more introspective and mournful, mining pain and inner turmoil more than Janis' exasperated rage. Where the twain does meet with these ladies is that this is one of Big Mama's very best compositions.

Big Mama's other "famous" staple isn't far behind...and when she serves up Hound Dog, she and her backing players provide one of this album's most-ready examples of what helped make this such a strong album: in this context, they are allowed to function as a band. Rather than be relegated to anonymous backing, Thornton's band are allowed to stretch out and jam. They're strong players to a last and they're playing tight throughout these selections. What they produce here is a Hound Dog that can stand on its own rather than feeling like the obligatory "greatest hits" setlist inclusion.

Some of this album's strongest points are in the slow blues numbers Jail and Rock Me. Timely as its inclusion certainly was, Jail is a spot-on doing time lament, reminding her audience (as if they needed reminding...) that "looking out through those bars, I know it ain't nothing but a waste of time..."

From this tour, at least two versions of Rock Me have been preserved. There is, of course, this version here, and it is a sweaty, belly-deep joy, and one I've been loving on youtube, filmed at one of the university dates on this Autumn, '71 tour. Big Mama kicks the video off with an almost-apologetic introduction, telling those gathered that she has to sing this song "my own way." When the audience applauds this, leaving Big Mama grinning, she blazes into Rock Me, reminding us all that she could blow a nasty harp and go deep. It's just an exquisite bit of live blues and it's here...

Big Mama, Rock Me video

When Big Mama brings this album to a close, it is with a return to her gospel roots, with a rousing Oh Happy Day, to which the audience sounds very receptive...charged as they must have been to have been on the receiving end of these shows.


Peace, Mudcatz



Big Mama Thornton
Jail
Vanguard, 1975


1. Little Red Rooster
2. Ball and Chain
3. Jail
4. Hound Dog
5. Rock Me Baby
6. Sheriff O.E. and Me
7. Oh Happy Day

Link

Blue Monday: Janis in Honolulu, '70

Rounding out this evening's Janis Joplin highlights, we find ourselves in moonlit Hawaii, or more specifically at the International Centre Arena in Honolulu, fronting her recently-convened Full-Tilt Boogie Band. This gig was put together almost as an after-thought, booked largely because Janis had taken her band on vacation to the islands--and rather than waste an opportunity...

As bootleg Janis goes, this one isn't without its issues. There are equipment/guitar amplifier issues on stage, prompting some interesting banter and moments through Track 4. Coming out of this into an otherwise strong reading of Maybe, we are getting some distortion. Sound fluctuations will follow, scattered throughout the balance of this show.

I would suggest that Janis' stronger moments in this gig are actually in the front half, with Tell Mama, Half Moon, and a Move Over that begins with Janis inciting the crowd to "rock."

"Do you hear that rhythm?" she implores the audience over Clark Pearson's insistent beat. "Do you understand that rhythm? Alright, get it on..."

Jose Cuervo is definitely on stage with Pearl through this outing and I'm thinking that is precisely why the first half of this show is stronger than its second. She's gassed the whole way through and becomes increasingly inflammatory as the show goes on, winding up the audience and, coming in for her encore, admonishing the MC who has been trying in vain to get the raucous audience to calm down and take their seats.

"I'll be responsible for any damages," Janis tells him. "So split and leave me alone. You figure out what it costs and I'll pay for it, man..."

Still, the bottom half of the show is not without its high points, which include Kozmic Blues (though sound issues mar Richard Bell's sweet piano intro...)and Get It While You Can, which Janis describes as new and "gets about as close to the truth as I've ever heard..."


Janis Joplin
International Centre Arena
Honolulu Hawaii
July 6, 1970


1. Tell Mama
2. Half Moon
3. Move Over
4. Stage Problems
5. Maybe
6. Summertime
7. Banter
8. Get It While You Can
9. Kozmic Blues
10. Encore Break
11. Piece of My Heart


Link


Peace, Mudcatz

Blue Monday: Janis, Frankfurt & Stockholm, '69

Much to my surprise, it appears that my recent Joplin boot, Amsterdam '69, ended up being quite popular among you folks. I didn't know how it'd go over, but good Janis is all the reason I'll ever need to feature these shows...

The response I've gotten from last week's post has had me rooting about through my Janis bootlegs to separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. As I mentioned in my last post, Janis' boots are rife with shoddy, at times hideous sound quality.

So let's just stick with the ones that are the best of the lot...

From the same European tour that produced Janis' Amsterdam show comes her Kosmic Blues Band lighting up the stages in Stockholm and Frankfurt-am-Main.

We are rewarded by sticking with the Frankfurt show as both the sound quality and performance improve a short ways in. Playing at the legendary Hundred Year Hall to an audience that was largely American servicemen and dependents, Janis goads the audience to "get up and move!" as they head into Snooky Flowers' instrumental, Me. Coming back off this break, Janis tears into a spot-on Maybe and stays strong through the balance of the set. A later-era Ball & Chain provide some of this set's stand-out moments.

Both the Frankfurt and Stockholm shows share Summertimes that are things of beauty. Sam Andrew had followed Janis into the Kosmic Blues from Big Brother and was still on hand to lend his superlative licks through these readings. Recorded for Swedish television just a week after Janis' Frankfurt gig, Stockholm's show is further enhanced by a stand-out cover of Nick Gravenites' Work Me Lord.

Don't wonder, just enjoy...


Janis Joplin
Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
April 12, 1969


Raise Your Hands
Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)
Me
Maybe
Summertime
Ball and Chain
Piece of My Heart


Link


Janis Joplin
Groena Lund
Stockholm, Sweden
April 19, 1969



Piece of My Heart
Interview
Summertime
Me
Raise Your Hand
Work Me Lord

Link


Peace, Mudcatz