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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2014 7:21:06 GMT -5
Jas Obrecht has written a great book about the blues music and artists who comprise the Post War greats. While some of the artists who are included in the post-war era were highly active during the pre-war era as well and came to the surface during the 1960's revolution. In Jas O's book Otis Rush, Muddy Waters and BB King get considerable coverage while West Coast and Texas bluesmen like T-Bone Walker and Clarence Gatemouth Brown are discussed in detail. Since the Chicago and British artists compose a large segment of the post-war era blues, emphasis is on those who were predominatly amplified, however acoustic players such as Mississippi Fred McDowell get's their coverage. So, following along Jas O's lead, let's discuss the post war blues artists, their music and their contribution to music as a whole.
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Post by AlanB on Jan 20, 2014 10:47:42 GMT -5
I didn't realise this was still in print. It was first published in 2000 and I guess has never been out of print. A dependable reference work even a decade or so on. He's currently working on a similar equivalent for the prewar genre.
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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2014 12:24:07 GMT -5
I didn't realise this was still in print. It was first published in 2000 and I guess has never been out of print. A dependable reference work even a decade or so on. He's currently working on a similar equivalent for the prewar genre. Do you have a review?
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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2014 20:37:24 GMT -5
When I think about Post-War Blues, many names comes to mind, but T. Bone Walker has to be among what I consider definitive post-war blues
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Post by AlanB on Jan 21, 2014 0:58:16 GMT -5
When I think about Post-War Blues, many names comes to mind, but T. Bone Walker has to be among what I consider definitive post-war blues See topic Recommended Reading List - Blues June 21, 2013 - for info/discussion about T-Bone Biography.
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Post by AlanB on Jan 21, 2014 2:29:10 GMT -5
Do you have a review?[/quote]Have been able to locate any reviews but in the meantime here's the table of contents. The introduction states "these were all originality published by Living Blues, Guitar Player Mojo and other magazines". 1 Postwar Blues: An Introduction by Jas Obrecht TEXAS AND THE WEST COAST17 T-Bone Walker by Chris Gill 25 Saunders King by Jas Obrecht 46 Lowell Fulson by Mary Katherine Aldin and Mark Humphrey 73 Lightnin' Hopkins by Jas Obrecht 79 Gatemouth Brown by Jas Obrecht SWEET HOME CHICAGO93 Muddy Waters by Jas Obrecht 115 Jimmy Rogers by John Anthony Brisbin 153 Elmore and Homesick James by Jas Obrecht 163 Robert Lockwood, Jr. by Larry Hoffman 184 Jimmy Reed by Dan Forte 189 J.B. Hutto by Dan Forte 193 Willie Johnson by John Anthony Brisbin 204 Jody Williams by Larry Birnbaum 209 Hubert Sumlin by Jim Kent 222 Otis Rush by Jas Obrecht 247 Magic Sam by Steve Franz 255 Buddy Guy by Jas Obrecht 275 Freddie King by Dan Forte BLUES WITH A FEELING283 John Lee Hooker by Jas Obrecht 315 B.B. King by Tom Wheeler and Jas Obrecht 345 Albert King by Dan "Bob" Forte 353 Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones by Jeff Hannusch 361 Mississippi Fred McDowell by Tom Pomposello 365 Little Milton by Jim O'Neal CONVERSATIONS WITH THE BLUES397 B. B. King & John Lee Hooker by Jas Obrecht 408 Muddy Waters & Johnny Winter by Tom Wheeler 417 Buddy Guy & John Lee Hooker by Jas Obrecht 429 Otis Rush & Buddy Guy by Jas Obrecht 440 Photo Credits 441 Index
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Post by Admin on Jan 21, 2014 9:44:53 GMT -5
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Post by Admin on Jan 21, 2014 9:55:59 GMT -5
More on T. Bone Walker WALKER, AARON THIBEAUX [T-BONE] T-Bone Walker (1910-1975) Courtesy Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. WALKER, AARON THIBEAUX [T-BONE] (1910–1975). T-Bone Walker also known as Oak Cliff T-Bone, the only son of Rance and Movelia (Jamison, Jimerson) Walker, was born Aaron Thibeaux Walker in Linden, Texas, on May 28, 1910. Looking for a better future for her son, his mother left her husband and moved to Dallas, where Aaron attended Northwest Hardee School through the seventh grade. His mother played guitar, and his stepfather, Marco Washington, played bass and several other instruments. Family friendship with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter familiarized him with the blues from infancy. T-Bone was recruited to lead Jefferson around the Central Avenue area, and he absorbed the legendary musician's style. While still in his teens, Walker met and married Vida Lee; they had three children. Walker was a gifted dancer who taught himself guitar. Around 1925 he joined Dr. Breeding's Big B Tonic medicine show, then toured the South with blues artist Ida Cox. In 1929 in Dallas he cut his first record, "Wichita Falls Blues", under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone, using the name of his Dallas neighborhood. Around 1930, after winning first prize in an amateur show promoted by Cab Calloway, Walker toured the South with Calloway's band and worked with the Raisin' Cain show and several other bands in Texas, including those of Count Biloski (Balaski) and Milt Larkin. He also appeared with Ma Rainey, a great figure in blues history, in her 1934 Fort Worth performances. Listen to this artist In 1935 Walker moved to Los Angeles, where he quickly made a name for himself singing and playing banjo, and then guitar, for black audiences in two popular nightclubs, Little Harlem and Club Alabam. Crowds of fans were attracted to his acrobatic performances, which combined playing and tap dancing, and in 1935 he became the first blues guitarist to play the electric guitar. The Trocadero Club in Hollywood, where Walker had become sufficiently well known to appear as a star, welcomed integrated audiences after his 1936 performances. From 1940 to 1945 he toured with Les Hite's Cotton Club orchestra as a featured vocalist; he recorded the classic "T-Bone Blues" with Hite in New York City in 1940. Walker used a fluid technique that combined the country blues tradition with more polished contemporary swing, his style influenced by Francis (Scrapper) Blackwell, Leroy Carr, and Lonnie Johnson. He was subsequently billed as "Daddy of the Blues." He also toured United States Army bases in the early 1940s and, recruited by boxing champion Joe Louis in 1942, went to Chicago, where he headlined a revue at the city's Rhumboogie Club so successfully that he returned year after year. In the mid-1940s he became a bandleader, signed a recording contract with the Black and White label, and turned out some of the best titles of his long recording career, including "Stormy Monday." Many of his songs reached the Top 10 on the Hit Parade. In the 1950s he recorded under the Imperial label and worked for Atlantic Records. In 1955 he underwent an operation for chronic ulcers. In the early 1960s T-Bone joined Count Basie's orchestra, appeared in Europe with a package called Rhythm and Blues, U.S.A., and played at the American Folk Blues Festival and Jazz at the Philharmonic. This began a new phase of his career as a blues legend, during which he appeared before largely white audiences. He was a regular attraction abroad, where his recordings made him a great favorite, and he was a participant on television shows and at jazz festivals in Monterey, California; Nice, France; and Montreux, Switzerland. In Europe he recorded a Polydor album entitled Good Feelin', which won the 1970 Grammy for ethnic-traditional recording. Among his other albums are Singing the Blues, Funky Town, and The Truth. As an artist and performer, Walker was accurately evaluated by blues authority Pete Welding as "one of the deep, enduring wellsprings of the modern blues to whom many others have turned, and continue to return for inspiration and renewal." Among those he influenced were B. B. King, Pee Wee Crayton, Eric Clapton, Albert Collins, and Johnny Winter. Many titles from Walker's more than four decades of recording have been reissued. Walker died of a stroke in Los Angeles on March 16, 1975. His funeral at the Inglewood Cemetery was attended by more than a thousand mourners. In 1980 T-Bone Walker was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and in 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence of the genre. He is also a member of the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. Walker's T-Bone Blues (1959, Atlantic) album was inducted as a Classic of Blues Recordings in the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2009. BIBLIOGRAPHY: John Chilton, Who's Who of Jazz: Storyville to Swing Street (London: Bloomsbury Book Shop, 1970; American ed., New York and Philadelphia: Chilton, 1972; 4th ed., New York: Da Capo Press, 1985). Helen Oakley Dance, Stormy Monday: The T-Bone Walker Story (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University, 1987). Stanley Dance, The World of Count Basie (New York: Scribner, 1980). Sheldon Harris, Blues Who's Who: A Biographical Dictionary of Blues Singers (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1979). Per Notini, Notes to T. Bone Walker: The Invention of the Electric Guitar Blues (Blues Boy LP, BB-304, 1983). Jim and Amy O'Neal, "Living Blues Interview: T-Bone Walker," Living Blues, Winter 1972–73, Spring 1973. Arnold Shaw, Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues (New York: Macmillan, 1978). Helen Oakley Dance Citation Helen Oakley Dance, "WALKER, AARON THIBEAUX [T-BONE]," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwaap), accessed January 21, 2014. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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Post by AlanB on Jan 21, 2014 10:51:07 GMT -5
Indeed he does but for some reason he never authored it for a blues mag. He obviously used the Brisbane Jimmy Rogers: I'm Havin' Fun Right Today.” Living Blues 135 (Sep/Oct 1997 pps.12-27) because it was the "bees-knees" - British colloquialism - at the time of JO compiling the book.
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Post by Admin on Jan 21, 2014 11:06:25 GMT -5
Got to give credit to the British Blues The Yardbirds
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Post by Admin on Jan 22, 2014 11:33:33 GMT -5
Little Junior Parker Junior Parker Junior Parker was an American Memphis blues singer and musician. He is best remembered for his unique voice which has been described as "honeyed," and "velvet-smooth". He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. Wikipedia Born: May 27, 1932, Clarksdale, MS Died: November 18, 1971, Blue Island, IL Albums: Albums: You Don't Have To Be Black To Love The Blues, Good Things Don't Happen Every Day, Ride with Me, Baby: The Singles 1952-1961, The Dudes Doin' Business, The ABC Collection, Honey-Drippin' Blues, Love Ain't Nothin' But A Business Goin' On, Jimmy Mcgriff/Junior Parker, The Outside Man, Driving Wheel, The Best of Junior Parker, Blue Shadows Falling, Blues Man, Like It Is, Baby Please, The Collection Record labels: Modern Records, Mercury Records, Capitol Records, Sun Records A great song recorded at Sun Records in 1953 and later covered by Elvis (of course)
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Post by AlanB on Jan 23, 2014 3:28:28 GMT -5
Little Junior Parker Junior Parker was an American Memphis blues singer and musician. He is best remembered for his unique voice which has been described as "honeyed," and "velvet-smooth". He was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001. Wikipedia Born: May 27, 1932, Clarksdale, MS Died: November 18, 1971, Blue Island, IL Here's an obituary. JUNIOR'S LAST STAND BY CHARLIE GILLETT(Cream, issue 9, January 1972, p. 7) WHILE I was in New York for a short time last April, 1 noticed some billposters up near Columbia University on the upper West Side, advertising Jimmy McGriff and Junior Parker, who were playing a club called The Third Phase. Nobody I knew had heard of either Junior Parker or the Third Phase, so I went by myself and found a basement club, done up like a grotto in some sort of white polystyrene. Four or five student type girls seemed to be running the place; and along with the five musicians on stage, they outnumbered the audience two to one. In the two hours I was there, maybe as many as ten people came in to see the show. That was sad, but more depressing still was the degeneration of Junior Parker, who had made some of my favourite blues records less than ten years before, into a sort of cocktail jazz singer. There's something about the tone of an organ that seems to suck all the fire out of a singer, and although Jimmy McGriff may have been a pleasure to jazz fans (for whom Junior Parker must have been an irritant), the whole thing was a disaster for me. When Junior finished he went to sit at a table, and after five minutes of working up my courage I went over to say hello. I had nothing to ask him about his recent years, when he had made uninteresting records for Mercury, Minit, and Capitol, but wanted to know about his early days, when he recorded 'Mystery Train' for Sun in 1953, before Elvis and 'Next Time You See Me' for Duke in 1957. Don Robey, who owns the Duke label, is credited as composer of 'Next Time You See Me', but I'd heard that Robey probably never wrote a song in his life; Junior laughed. 'No, he used to buy them from kids on the street in Houston. Do you know how much that song cost? $12.50.' I'd also heard that a name often used in the composer credits on Duke records, 'Deadric Malone', was used for songs acquired in the same way. Junior laughed again and shook my hand. Also at the table was Sonny Lester, who was producing records by Junior on some kind on independent basis, leasing the tapes off to Capitol; he said he'd send me Junior's two Capitol LPs (and he did). More immediately, he plied me with beers, under whose influence I lost the train of my interview. Never did get to ask Junior about his early days with Sun, but I stayed to watch him do his set again; ignoring Jimmy McGriff, I enjoyed 'That's All Right', 'Sweet Home Chicago', and 'Yonders Wall'. When Junior pulled out his harmonica, it was almost like his records. Those records, the Duke recordings, were done between 1957 and 1964: the best of them are still available on three Duke LPs, Barefoot Rock/You Got Me (Duke 72), which has Junior on one side and Bobby Bland on the other; Driving Wheel (76), and the highly recommended Best of Junior Parker (83); if you can't get them, try writing to Duke Records, 2809 Erastus Street, Houston, Texas. Compared to either the rough Chicago blues of Muddy and Wolf, or the intense blues of B.B. King, Junior Parker's sound was light and smooth. But Sonny Boy Williamson II named Junior the man who would carry his own tradition, and on the recordings of 'Mother in Law Blues' and 'Yonders Wall' Junior showed he had Sonny Boy's technique of moving from vocal to mouth harp and back so fast you could never be sure it was all done by him. Behind, bands arranged and led by Bill Harvey, Joe Scott or Alvin Tyler jumped, swung, and drove, as if they'd never heard of rock 'n' roll, or Philadelphia pop, or the twist. I was sure that if the world could take B.B. King to its heart, then Bobby Bland and Junior Parker need only hang on the their time would come too, for in spite of all its hustlers and hypesters, pop music has a curious innate sense of justice that eventually accords recognition to the people whose talent deserves it. Bobby still has an outside chance, but Junior Parker died in Chicago in November, mourned by his fellow bluesmen, but hardly missed by the rest of the music business. When people turn their attention away from guitars and start listening to how people sing, they'll realise how good Junior Parker was (a much better singer than B.B. King, as B.B. would tell you himself). But too late.
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2014 6:37:28 GMT -5
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2014 8:25:14 GMT -5
Big Maybelle (Mabel Louise Smith) In memory of Big Maybelle who passed away January 23, 1972 Mabel Louise Smith, known professionally as Big Maybelle, was an American R&B singer and pianist. Her 1956 hit single "Candy" received the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999. Wikipedia Born: May 1, 1924, Jackson, TN Died: January 23, 1972, Cleveland, OH Albums: The Complete OKeh Sessions 1952-'55, More Children: Barbara Smith Record labels: Brunswick Records, Scepter Records, King Records, Epic Records, Okeh Records, Chess Records, Savoy Records
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Post by Admin on Jan 23, 2014 8:45:59 GMT -5
Willie Nix From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Willie Nix - Also known as "The Memphis Blues Boy"[1] Born August 6, 1922 Memphis, Tennessee, United States Died July 8, 1991 (aged 68) Leland, Mississippi, United States Genres Memphis blues, Chicago blues, electric blues[2] Occupations Singer, guitarist, drummer Years active 1940s–1970s Willie Nix (August 6, 1922 — July 8, 1991)[2] was an American Chicago blues singer and drummer, active in Memphis, Tennessee, United States, in the 1940s and 1950s.[3] Life and career Born in Memphis,[2] as a child he learnt to tap dance, later working as a teenager as part dancer, part comedian, with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. This led to work in various variety shows in the 1940s, and Nix later became a part of the blues scene that grew up around Beale Street (see Memphis Blues).[2] His musical work saw him appear on local radio with Robert Lockwood Jr., and work alongside Willie Love, Joe Willie Wilkins and Sonny Boy Williamson II, billed as the Four Aces, who toured the Deep South. Further Memphis based radio work in the mid-1940s, saw Nix appear with both B.B. King and Joe Hill Louis, and later the same decade Nix worked with the Beale Streeters. In 1951, Nix made his first recording for RPM Records in Memphis, and a year later he later recorded for Checker Records.[2] He recorded for the Sun Records label and others in the 1950s, including the Chicago, Illinois based duo of Chance[4] and Sabre. Nix wrote the songs "Nervous Wreck" and "Try Me One More Time", and reworked others such as Catfish Blues and Curtis Jones' Lonesome Bedroom Blues. He variously worked with Big Walter Horton, Elmore James, Johnny Shines, and Memphis Slim during his active years.[2][1] By the end of the 1950s, Nix returned to Memphis, and spent a short time in prison before the 1960s started. The next twenty years saw Nix perform sporadically, and as his health declined, his behaviour became more eccentric. He did not record again, although his mid-1950s work is held in high regard for his lyrical dexterity and compelling beat.[2] Nix died in Leland, Mississippi, in 1991.[2] www.sunrecords.com/artists/willie-nix
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