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blackkudos · 4 years

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Arthur Crudup

Arthur William "Big Boy" Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known, outside blues circles, for his songs "That's All Right" (1946), "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later recorded by Elvis Presley and other artists.

Early life

Crudup was born in Forest, Mississippi, to a family of migrant workers traveling through the South and Midwest. The family returned to Mississippi in 1926, where he sang gospel music. He had lessons with a local bluesman, whose name was Papa Harvey, and later he was able to play in dance halls and cafes around Forest. Around 1940 he went to Chicago.

Musical career

He began his career as a blues singer around Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a member of the Harmonizing Four, he visited Chicago in 1939. He stayed in Chicago to work as a solo musician but barely made a living as a street singer. The record producer Lester Melrose allegedly found him while Crudup was living in a packing crate, introduced him to Tampa Red and signed him to a recording contract with RCA Victor's Bluebird label.

Recordings

He recorded with RCA in the late 1940s and with Ace Records, Checker Records and Trumpet Records in the early 1950s. He toured black clubs in the South, sometimes playing with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James. He also recorded under the names Elmer James and Percy Lee Crudup. His songs "Mean Old 'Frisco Blues", "Who's Been Foolin' You" and "That's All Right" were popular in the South. These and his other songs "Rock Me Mama", "So Glad You're Mine", and "My Baby Left Me" have been recorded by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Slade, Elton John and Rod Stewart.

Crudup stopped recording in the 1950s because of disputes over royalties. He said, "I realised I was making everybody rich, and here I was poor". His last Chicago session was in 1951. His 1952–54 recording sessions for Victor were held at radio station WGST, in Atlanta, Georgia. He returned to recording, for Fire Records and Delmark Records, and touring in 1965. Sometimes labeled "The Father of Rock and Roll", he accepted this title with some bemusement. During this time Crudup worked as a laborer to augment the low wages he received as a singer (he was not receiving royalties). After a dispute with Melrose over royalties, he returned to Mississippi and took up bootlegging. He later moved to Virginia, where he lived with his family, including three sons and several of his siblings, and worked as a field laborer. He occasionally sang in and supplied moonshine to drinking establishments, including one called the Do Drop Inn, in Franktown, Northampton County.

Later years

In 1968, the blues promoter Dick Waterman began fighting for Crudup's royalties and reached an agreement in which Crudup would be paid $60,000. However, Hill and Range Songs, from which he was supposed to get the royalties, refused to sign the legal papers at the last minute, because the company thought it could not lose more money in legal action. In the early 1970s, two Virginia activists, Celia Santiago and Margaret Carter, assisted Crudup in an attempt to gain royalties he felt he was due, with little success. By 1971, he had collected over $10,000 in overdue royalties through the intervention of the Songwriters Guild of America (then called the American Guild Of Authors And Composers).

On a 1970 trip to the United Kingdom, Crudup recorded "Roebuck Man" with local musicians. His last professional engagements were with Bonnie Raitt.

Death

Crudup died in 1974, four years after the failed royalty settlement. There was some confusion about the date of death because of his use of several names, including those of his siblings. He died of complications of heart disease and diabetes in the Nassawadox hospital in Northampton County, Virginia, in March 1974.

Legacy

Crudup has been honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail, placed at Forest. Elvis Presley acknowledged Crudup's importance to rock and roll when he said, "If I had any ambition, it was to be as good as Arthur Crudup".

Discography

Solo albums

Mean Ol' Frisco (Fire, 1962)

Crudup's Mood (Delmark, 1969)

Look on Yonder's Wall (Delmark, 1969)

Roebuck Man (Sequel, 1974)

Collaborative albums

Sunny Road, with Jimmy Dawkins and Willie Smith (Delmark, 1969)

Arthur "BigBoy" Crudup Meets the Master Blues Bassists, with Willie Dixon and Ransom Knowling (Delmark, 1994)

Compilation albums

The Father of Rock and Roll (RCA, 1971)

Give Me a 32-30 (Crown Prince, 1982)

Star Bootlegger (Krazy Kat, 1982)

I'm in the Mood (Krazy Kat, 1983)

Crudup's Rockin' Blues (RCA, 1985)

Shout Sister Shout! (Bullwhip, 1987)

That's All Right Mama (Matchbox, 1989)

The Father of Rock and Roll (Blues Encore, 1992)

That's All Right Mama (BMG, 1992)

Complete Recorded Works, vols. 1–4 (Document, 1993)

Rock Me Mama (Orbis, 1993)

That's Alright Mama (Laserlight, 1995)

Crudup's After Hours (History, 1996)

The Complete Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, vols. 1 and 2 (Jazz Tribune, 1997)

After Hours (Camden, 1997)

Cool Disposition (Catfish, 1999)

Dirt Road Blues (Past Perfect Silver Line, 2000)

The Essential Arthur Crudup (Document, 2001)

Blues Legends (Rainbow, 2002)

Everything's Alright (Our World, 2002)

Crudup's After Hours (Past Perfect Silver Line, 2002)

Rock Me Mama (Tomato, 2003)

The Father of Rock 'n' Roll (Wolf, 2003)

Rock Me Mamma: When the Sun Goes Down, vol. 7 (RCA, 2003)

The Story of the Blues (Archive Blues, 2004)

Too Much Competition (Passport, 2006)

Gonna Be Some Change (Rev-Ola, 2008)

My Baby Left Me: The Definitive Collection (Fantastic Voyage, 2011)

The Blues (Fuel, 2012)

Sunny Road (Delmar, 2013)

See also

Checker Records

Fire Records

First rock and roll record

Origins of rock and roll

Quotations

"Do what you can do," Tampa Red told Crudup, "what you can't do, forget about it."

Four years before his death, Crudup said, "I was born poor, I live poor, and I am going to die poor."

#08/24 #03/28

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scarlettsabetlondongirl · 5 years

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Read the New Interview by Poet Scarlett Sabet and Led Zeppelin Founder Jimmy Page in Interview Magazine below or click on headline link.

JIMMY PAGE AND SCARLETT SABET ARE THE MUSIC-POETRY POWER COUPLE THE WORLD DIDN’T KNOW IT NEEDED

By Stephanie LaCava

Published October 10, 2019

Scarlett Sabet’s poetry is felt three-fold when she performs it. The written words aren’t the same when she says them; they are trance-like, told as if from memory. To call the London-based talent a poet and performer seems inadequate. She’s more so a musician, or, perhaps, a mystic. Her haunting readings have taken place at storied book shops such as San Francisco’s City Lights and Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, and she’s been invited to read at the likes of Wellesley College. She has published four collections of poetry on her own imprint: Rocking Undergound, The Lock and The Key, Zoreh, and Camille earlier this year.

Today, she debuts her spoken word album Catalyst, produced by her partner, the legendary musician Jimmy Page.

Interview sat down with the couple to talk about coming together for this project, the brilliance of the Velvet Underground, and paying to produce your own work.

STEPHANIE LACAVA: You two met in 2012, but it was two years later that your relationship started and you first talked about collaborating together. It would be five more years before today’s release of your project on all streaming platforms. Why this album now?

JIMMY PAGE: One project that I knew it shouldn’t be was poetry with music. So with the production of Scarlett’s work, I wanted to create an individual character for each poem, a sonic landscape to compliment it.

LACAVA: And with all due respect, that was also a cool move. It would have been kind of eye-rolling to do music accompaniment.

SCARLETT SABET: Yes. It feels exciting, but also like a natural progression, I think, because we live and work together every day. Literally every one of these poems, Jimmy was there when I wrote it, and he was the first person that heard it and he’s seen me perform so many times.

PAGE: It was six years ago that I first heard Scarlett read.

SABET: At World’s End Bookshop on the King’s Road in Chelsea.

PAGE: I thought, “This is really interesting. She’s really interesting. She’s definitely got something there.” And the people in attendance soaked up Scarlett’s reading.

LACAVA: Surely, you’ve read a lot of crowds.

PAGE: That’s a good point. The whole place hushed. Rocking Underground was the first poem I heard of Scarlett’s and when we started production, we began with it.

LACAVA: I think people assume the title of the poem is a music reference, but it’s actually quite literal…

SABET: I was on a train. My computer had broken. It was just one of those, ugh, kind of despairing Sunday nights. I just remember there was a guy with a backpack in my face, and I got out my notebook, and there was the rhythm of train.

LACAVA: Do you usually listen to music while you write?

SABET: It’s got to be something that’s trance-like. I can understand why you’d listen to jazz, for example.

LACAVA: That’s a place where both of your practices kind of overlap.

PAGE: Well, yeah. I did this interview with William Burroughs for Crawdaddy Magazine in 1975. We started to talk about trance music. I thought maybe he’d been to see Led Zeppelin on just one occasion. Actually, it was many times at Madison Square Garden. Anyway, we then started talking about this whole trance ethos, about the Master Musicians of Jajouka, this whole genre of tribal trance music from Morocco.

LACAVA: You learned about Jajouka from Brian Jones?

PAGE: Yes. To be fair, I know that Brion Gysin had introduced Brian Jones.

SABET: He was a painter and musician, Burroughs’s lover, and he came up with the cut-up technique with Burroughs.

LACAVA: Ah. What was your connection to Jones?

PAGE: I’d heard Elmore James songs (which Jones played a lot,) but I couldn’t quite work out how to play the music. People would say it was literally, from the neck of a bottle. I thought, ‘So, let’s see how this guy Jones does it.’ Sure enough, he gets up on stage and starts doing some Elmore James songs, and he has the equivalent of what everyone would know as a slide on his finger. I started talking to him when he came offstage, and I said, “Well you know, you’ve really got that down. What are you actually using?” You must understand that nobody that I knew played slide guitar at all. This is the first time I’d seen somebody do it—before Jeff [Beck] was doing it, before the Rolling Stones. So, he said, “Oh, have you got a car mechanic near you?” And I said, “I literally do have one not too far away.”‘ He said, “Go there and ask for a bush. It’s called a bush.” A thing used used in car maintenance. And he said, “You’ll find that it’ll just fit on your finger absolutely perfectly, and that’s what I use.” This guy was so generous.

LACAVA: Is there any young musician today who has really impressed you?

PAGE: Well, I was so impressed with the two guys that I saw with you.

LACAVA: Stefan Tcherepnin and Taketo Shimada, the New York-based Afuma.

SABET: They were so good. You said that was reminiscent of New York in the ’60s?

PAGE: Well, well, yeah. It was. It definitely had that sort of trance vibe.

LACAVA: Back to Scarlett’s start. You did your first reading at Shakespeare & Co. in Paris in January of 2015. Jimmy help set it up?

PAGE: So, when Sylvia (Whitman, owner and daughter of George Whitman) was giving me a tour after my own book signing, I saw the poetry section there, and I said, “Do you having readings here?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Well, French as well as English?” “Oh, no. Only English.” And I thought, “I know a poet.”

LACAVA: It was Sylvia who introduced me to Scarlett years ago.

PAGE: After hosting Scarlett, Sylvia said to me, “It’s really powerful in print, but her renditions, they’re in another realm.”

LACAVA: So, Sylvia’s now the fourth person in this interview.

PAGE: That’s right. And something else funny happened when I was back at Shakespeare and Company. The man in charge of the rare book department said, “Oh, Sir, that Françoise Hardy track that you were on was absolutely amazing. That’s one of my favorite pieces of your guitar work.” I thought, “Well, wait a minute. I’m going to check, I’m going to track this down.” When I heard it, lo and behold, there’s this distortion box. It’s called a fuzz box. And I was the one who helped create this thing, and there it was on Francoise Hardy’s Je n’attends plus personne. I did it when I was a session musician. It was a session in Pye Studios at Marble Arch, downtown where all these Petula Clark hits were done. It wasn’t until you were in the studio that you’d see the artist come in. And you’d go, “Oh, I know who this is.” Or, “I don’t know who this is.” But when Francoise Hardy came in, I knew who she was. She had on one of those turtlenecks and that sort of tweedy skirt.

LACAVA: You also did some early sessions with Nico before she was part of the Velvet Underground.

PAGE: Nico came to London to record the Gordon Lightfoot song “I’m Not Sayin” with Andrew Oldham as a solo artist. So, there’s this huge orchestral session with Nico singing, and Andrew asked me to write a B-side with him for Nico, routine, play, and produce it on a separate session, which I did. It’s called The Last Mile. I was a staff producer on Immediate Records.

LACAVA: How old were you?

PAGE: 19 or 20. I was going to routine her at her apartment just near Baker Street in London with my acoustic 12-string guitar. Nico’s son with Alain Delon was there and he was holding up my guitar in the air, and I decided it was time to rescue it.

LACAVA: When did you see her again after that?

PAGE: Steve Paul’s Scene Club (Paul’s nightclub The Scene at 46th and Eighth Avenue) had been decorated by Andy Warhol. I don’t know what you’d call it here, but it’s this silver wrap—

LACAVA: Mylar.

PAGE: All the walls were covered with Mylar because Andy Warhol said that color was the color of speed. And playing down there was Nico and The Velvet Underground. I had an incredible connection with Lou Reed, and we spent lots of time talking.

SABET: Was that the first time you met him?

PAGE: Yeah, and I’d seen The Velvet Underground on more than one occasion. They were almost like a resident band. Andy Warhol was keen for them to be there. I can tell you exactly what it was like. When I heard the first album, it was just exactly what they were like. They were just like that. It was absolutely phenomenal.

LACAVA: See, that’s interesting in the context of his new project, as well. The difference between seeing someone in person versus the recording…

PAGE: The other thing about Steve Paul’s and The Velvet Underground was that it didn’t really have too many people coming to hear it, which I found extraordinary.

LACAVA: How many people were there?

PAGE: Well, hardly any people. Like, nine, a dozen people. It was so radical, such a radical band. You know, Maureen Tucker just playing the sort of snare drum. And the fact that there was the electric viola with John Cale. You just didn’t get this sort of line-up. It was really arts lab, as opposed to pop music, this wonderful glue, this synergy between them that was dark. It was very dark.

LACAVA: You mentioned Warhol. Do you remember seeing him there?

PAGE: No, he wasn’t actually there, but I met him with the Yardbirds. I don’t actually remember the hotel, but there was a reception for the Yardbirds. He came in, and he was with one other person. I was talking to him, and he said, ‘I just want to feel the band, feel the Yardbirds.’ “I want to feel their presence,” was the exact quote. We had a conversation and at the end of it he said, “You should come to the Factory, and do an audition.” But we were working, and I didn’t manage to do that. And then I saw him again in Detroit in ’67, when we were playing there. Andy Warhol was proceeding over this wedding, and The Velvet Underground were there. So, I got a chance to say hello again.

LACAVA: Something interesting that Scarlett told me once was that you steered her toward self-publishing. That legitimacy doesn’t come from a label—it comes from creating the thing you want to create.

PAGE: Yes.

LACAVA: You could have told her the opposite, based on your experience.

SABET: Jimmy was like, “Well, look. The first Led Zeppelin album, I paid for that.”

LACAVA: You produced and paid for it?

PAGE: Yes.

SABET: They had a record. He then took it to record companies. He took it to Atlantic and said, “This is what we’ve got. I’m not releasing singles. Take it or leave it.” He literally said the words, “I didn’t want to go around cap in hand saying, ‘Oh please. We’d like to write some songs.’ It’s better to do it.”

PAGE: What I’ve been producing over the last few years are Led Zeppelin rereleases and catalog items. It means a lot of listening to quarter-inch tapes, and it’s all in real time. I had to approach this project in such a way that the first album speaks for itself. The last and ninth album of the studio albums were Coda, so on every album in between, I had to make sure all of these companion discs were done and present the idea to the record company along with new artwork—that way to ensure the complete vision of the recordings were released.

SABET: With the sound engineer, Drew, Jimmy would explain how he wanted to kind of layer some of my voices. And I practiced some on cassette, so it was like a guiding track, and then I’d listen back, and I understood the timing and what we were going to do for each one. If there was a sound or there was a better take, we’d talk about that.

PAGE: The first one that I wanted to try was Rocking Underground, which opens up the whole of this work. It was recorded on a cassette tape. It was so noisy, but urgent. I said, this is what we’re going to use, but then it needed some extra work to be done to augment the base layer—

LACAVA: Oh, that’s cool!

PAGE: So, it opens, and it’s really disturbing, all this ambient noise. And I know we pulled it off. Because there’s such a variety on it, and it will be such a surprise. It’s the sort of thing that you listen to for, say, Side One, from beginning to end. The whole sequencing is there for a reason.

LACAVA: We’re living in an age of the ubiquitous podcast. Everyone has those things in her ears.

“Catalyst, a spoken word album written and performed by Scarlett Sabet and produced by Jimmy Page, is released on a special 12-inch etched vinyl via JimmyPage.com.”-Jimmy Page

Photos: Interview Magazine

#scarlett sabet #jimmy page #jimmy page girlfriend #led zeppelin #poet #poetry #rock couple #Stephanie LaCava #catalyst #interview #interview magazine #poetry on vinyl #spoken word album #poetry album #spoken poetry album

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wsmith215 · 4 years

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College basketball wishes happy retirement to Tom Konchalski, revered inside the sport but unknown beyond

Legendary scout Tom Konchalski was standing alongside one of the many basketball courts stuffed inside the Sewall Center on the campus of Robert Morris University. He was easy to spot. It might be a challenge to locate him in a crowd of players, but among the few reporters congregating to watch the action at the Five-Star Basketball Camp, someone standing 6-6 was certain to tower above the crowd.

Konchalski stood above other scouts figuratively, as well. Few ever have had the same eye for talent, for what it is that separates a good high school basketball player from a great college basketball prospect. Hall of Fame coaches sought his opinion. All-Star players recalled how he discovered them.

MORE: Clearing up misconceptions about new NIL rules for student-athletes

On that day in July 2000, I was visiting Pittsburgh along with my wife to spend a few days with family and friends. She was out shopping with her sister and our niece, so I had an afternoon to sneak out to the Five-Star Basketball Camp and take in the hoop scene. But I only had the afternoon. We were meeting later for dinner, and missing was not an option.

“You have to see this young man, LeBron James,” Konchalski said to me as I squeezed in next to him.

“Really? OK, when does he play? What court?”

“He doesn’t play again until tonight. You HAVE to see him,” he said.

The urgency with which he issued this declaration made it clear I was going to be missing something extraordinary, even historic. It was like being told by The New York Times theater critic that you had to get to a performance of “Hamilton,” at the Public Theater, before it got to Broadway and everyone discovered it.

Even that many years ago, however, I’d been married long enough to understand an afternoon hall pass expired when the afternoon was over. Konchalski seemed almost defeated. He knew how I’d have appreciated that moment.

Now 73, Konchalski is retiring from his life’s work of publishing the HSBI Report, the scouting service to which most every major college basketball coach subscribed, and which has carried him on a journey across more than 40 years and thousands of miles, not one of which he has driven.

A native New Yorker, Konchalski never owned a car, using public transportation for much of his travels. He also never bothered learning to use a computer and doesn’t carry a cell phone. He composed his scouting reports using a typewriter. He compiles them for coaches to peruse, and employ, not for public distribution.

“Tom is one of the best and smartest human beings on this planet,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski told Sporting News. “His instant recall of players, coaches, games and events is unmatched. He helped thousands of players get the opportunity to play college basketball at all levels. Every youngster that he talked about was important. With the Five-Star Basketball Camp, Tom and Howard Garfinkel created an experience for players and coaches that will not be duplicated. Tom is a true gift to the game of basketball.

Konchalski fell in love with the game watching Connie Hawkins in the late 1950s and completed his last reports in a year that will produce such future stars as Cade Cunningham and B.J. Boston. In between he scouted Michael Jordan, who currently is being celebrated in “The Last Dance,” an epic-length documentary series on ESPN. Jordan got into one Five-Star Camp session on Konchalski’s recommendation and wound up as the best player there.

“Tom Konchalski is one of the most kind and sincere souls in basketball,” Villanova coach Jay Wright told Sporting News. “He truly lived for others, always revering the great players, respecting every player. I think he is the most honest and precise evaluator of talent ever. One of a kind, never to be matched.”

Early in Konchalski’s career, he helped Tennessee find Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King in New York City. The “Ernie and Bernie Show” remains one of the most revered periods in the history of Vols basketball, delivering an SEC championship in 1977 and five victories in six tries against SEC power Kentucky. It was not long after that success, in 1979, that Konchalski chose to leave his job as a schoolteacher and scout full time for Howard Garfinkel, the originator of the Five-Star camps who owned HSBI. Konchalski subsequently purchased the service from the man known to all of basketball as “Garf” and continued until now.

MORE: SN staff picks best high school basketball players they ever saw

Hofstra coach Joe Mihalich told Sporting News he followed Konchalski’s work, “Only for like 40 years! I am so sad. There may be more scouting services, but there will never be another Tom Konchalski. He is an icon, and truly loved by the entire basketball world. This is the end of an era.”

For the past decade or so, basketball writer Adam Zagoria has been Konchalski’s “chauffeur and roommate,” mostly at the annual Nike EYBL at the Peach Jam tournament in North Augusta, S.C.

Those are long days, with four to six games occurring simultaneously and often running from 9 a.m. well into prime time. Konchalski is so respected that Zagoria often would find himself frustrated by the mere act of trying to leave the community center gymnasium when the games were complete.

“It’s 11 o’clock at the end of the day and you want to go out and get some food … and it takes an added 30 minutes because everybody wants to talk to him with him and spend some time with him,” Zagoria told SN. “I’m not going to lie: That gets a little frustrating.

“Last year in the parking lot, we ran into Jamal Mashburn. He was there to watch his son. Jamal’s face lit up when he saw Tom, couldn’t have been happier to see him and shake his hand. So we spent another 10-15 minutes standing in the dark, listening to Jamal talk about how Tom first scouted him and was one of the first people to evaluate him.”

Konchalski owns an astonishing memory of the players he scouted; players who’d been in his reports would tell stories about how, even decades later, he would recognize them and immediately rattle off what school they’d attended and some of their old teammates.

He also owns an encyclopedic knowledge of the game. When returning last winter from the Hoophall Classic in Springfield, Mass., a three-day tournament for top high school teams, Konchalski and Zagoria stopped at a diner and began to discuss where this past season’s Montverde Academy team, featuring Cunningham and Florida State-bound Scottie Barnes, would rank among the best high school teams ever.

Konchalski told Zagoria the three best high school teams ever were the Power Memorial teams featuring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Lew Alcindor) from 1963 to 1965. He also cited the Power Memorial’s 1970 team with Len Elmore, Jap Trimble and Ed Searcy, the early 1980s Baltimore Dunbar teams featuring Reggie Williams, Muggsy Bogues and David Wingate, and the 1989 Jersey City St. Anthony’s team that included Bobby Hurley, Terry Dehere and Jerry Walker.

Zagoria thought that was worth sharing with the world, so he put Konchalski’s thoughts on Twitter.

Almost immediately, Zagoria received a response from Oak Hill Academy coach Steve Smith, eager to learn where the best Oak Hill teams might fit into that discussion. When Konchalski spoke, the basketball world was listening.

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soundjunglefan · 5 years

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Das Indie Pop Duo Flora Cash veröffentlicht ihr neues Album „Baby, It’s Okay“

Flora Cash sagt: „Diese Songs umfassen 6 Jahre. Der älteste Track wurde 2013 und der neueste Song erst letztes Jahr geschrieben und aufgenommen. So viele unserer Momente aus den letzten Jahren werden in diesen Tracks festgehalten. Höhen, Tiefen, Momente der Liebe, Freude und Inspiration, aber auch Verlust, Verzweiflung und Hoffnungslosigkeit. Diese Songs verkörpern ein Spektrum. Sie gaben uns Kraft und halfen uns weiter zu machen. Unser größtes Ziel ist es, dass diese Songs das auch für andere Menschen tun.“

https://smarturl.it/fcbabyitsokay Flora Cash konnte mit ihrer #1 Single „You´re Somebody Else“ große Erfolge verzeichnen. Das Forbes Magazine bezeichnete den Song als „brilliant“ und sagte, es sei „der wohl faszinierendste Song im Radio des vergangenen Jahres“. Insgesamt wurde die Single über 200Mio mal gestreamt, erreichte eine #1 Platzierung im Alternative und Triple A Radio in US und ist eine der meist shazamten Alternative Songs des letzten Jahres. Flora Cash performte „You´re Somebody Else“ bereits in der „The Late Late Show With James Corden“, bei „Last Call With Carson Daly“ und bei “Live! With Kelly and Ryan”. Im Synch Bereich war der Song in folgenden Formaten gefeatured: Runaways (ABC), Locke & Key (Netflix), The Good Doctor (ABC), Fox Sports Thanksgiving Feature, Movistar Commercial (Mexiko, Zentralamerika, Südamerika). Das verheiratete Duo entstand, als Cole Randall aus Minneapolis seine Musik auf die Plattform Soundcloud hoch lud und die Schwedin Shpresa Lleshaj auf Coles Account aufmerksam wurde. Sie fing an Kommentare unter den Songs zu hinterlassen, bevor sie sich über Facebook Nachrichten austauschten. Dies führte zunächst zu einem Telefonat, dann zu einer Marathon-Skype-Session und schließlich zu ihrer Hochzeit. Dem Duo gelang es einen einzigartigen mystischen Stil aus persönlichen Ängsten, Kämpfen und letztendlichen Triumphen zusammenzunähen. 2017 veröffentlichten sie ihr Debüt Album „Nothing Lasts Forever (And It´s Fine)“, welches schnell die Aufmerksamkeit von vielen Tastemakern erhielt. Darunter eine begehrte 9-out-of-10 Bewertung von Earmilk, sowie die Anerkennung von Noisey, Paste, Wonderland Magazine, Elmore Magazine und The Line of Best Fit. Zusätzlich veröffentlichte die Band letztes Jahr ihre EP „Press“ und schloss kürzlich eine Reihe von Shows als Support von „Judah & the Lion“ und „AJR“ ab. Links: https://www.facebook.com/floracash/ https://www.instagram.com/floracash/ https://floracash.com/ https://www.youtube.com/user/floracash/ Read the full article

#FloraCash #Indie #Indie-Pop #MustRead #Spotify

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falsedescent · 7 years

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1 In The Wee Small Hours by Frank Sinatra (Capitol) 1955

Actually, the very first 'concept' album. The idea being you put this record on after dinner and by the last song you are exactly where you want to be. Sinatra said that he's certain most baby boomers were conceived with this as the soundtrack.

2 Solo Monk by Thelonious Monk (Columbia) 1964

Monk said 'There is no wrong note, it has to do with how you resolve it'. He almost sounded like a kid taking piano lessons. I could relate to that when I first started playing the piano, because he was decomposing the music while he was playing it. It was like demystifying the sound, because there is a certain veneer to jazz and to any music, after a while it gets traffic rules, and the music takes a backseat to the rules. It's like aerial photography, telling you that this is how we do it. That happens in folk music too. Try playing with a bluegrass group and introducing new ideas. Forget about it. They look at you like you're a communist. On Solo Monk, he appears to be composing as he plays, extending intervals, voicing chords with impossible clusters of notes. 'I Should Care' kills me, a communion wine with a twist. Stride, church, jump rope, Bartok, melodies scratched into the plaster with a knife. A bold iconoclast. Solo Monk lets you not only see these melodies without clothes, but without skin. This is astronaut music from Bedlam.

3 Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart (Straight) 1969

The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud. Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours. This is indispensable for the serious listener. An expedition into the centre of the earth, this is the high jump record that'll never be beat, it's a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump. Drink once and thirst no more.

4 Exile On Main St. by Rolling Stones (Rolling Stones Records) 1972

'I Just Want To See His Face' - that song had a big impact on me, particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does. When he sings like a girl, I go crazy. I said, 'I've got to learn how to do that.' I couldn't really do it until I stopped smoking. That's when it started getting easier to do. [Waits's own] 'Shore Leave' has that, 'All Stripped Down', 'Temptation'. Nobody does it like Mick Jagger; nobody does it like Prince. But this is just a tree of life. This record is the watering hole. Keith Richards plays his ass off. This has the Checkerboard Lounge all over it.

5 The Sinking of the Titanic by Gavin Bryars (Point Music) 1975

This is difficult to find, have you heard this? It's a musical impression of the sinking of the Titanic. You hear a small chamber orchestra playing in the background, and then slowly it starts to go under water, while they play. It also has 'Jesus Blood' on it. I did a version of that with Gavin Bryars. I first heard it on my wife's birthday, at about two in the morning in the kitchen, and I taped it. For a long time I just had a little crummy cassette of this song, didn't know where it came from, it was on one of those Pacifica radio stations where you can play anything you want. This is really an interesting evening's music.

6 The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan (Columbia) 1975

With Dylan, so much has been said about him, it's difficult so say anything about him that hasn't already been said, and say it better. Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in - so the bootlegs I obtained in the Sixties and Seventies, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me. His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth, because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record; it's also a history lesson.

7 Lounge Lizards by Lounge Lizards (EG) 1980

They used to accuse John Lurie of doing fake jazz - a lot of posture, a lot of volume. When I first heard it, it was so loud, I wanted to go outside and listen through the door, and it was jazz. And that was an unusual thing, in New York, to go to a club and hear jazz that loud, at the same volume people were listening to punk rock. Get the first record, The Lounge Lizards. You know, John's one of those people, if you walk into a field with him, he'll pick up an old pipe and start to play it, and get a really good sound out of it. He's very musical, works with the best musicians, but never go fishing with him. He's a great arranger and composer with an odd sense of humour.

8 Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues (Stiff) 1985

Sometimes when things are real flat, you want to hear something flat, other times you just want to project onto it, something more like.... you might want to hear the Pogues. Because they love the West. They love all those old movies. The thing about Ireland, the idea that you can get into a car and point it towards California and drive it for the next five days is like Euphoria, because in Ireland you just keep going around in circles, those tiny little roads. 'Dirty Old Town', 'The Old Main Drag'. Shane has the gift. I believe him. He knows how to tell a story. They are a roaring, stumbling band. These are the dead end kids for real. Shane's voice conveys so much. They play like soldiers on leave. The songs are epic. It's whimsical and blasphemous, seasick and sacrilegious, wear it out and then get another one.

9 I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen (Columbia) 1988

Euro, klezmer, chansons, apocalyptic, revelations, with that mellifluous voice. A shipwrecked Aznovar, washed up on shore. Important songs, meditative, authoritative, and Leonard is a poet, an Extra Large one.

10 The Specialty Sessions by Little Richard (Specialty Records) 1989

The steam and chug of 'Lucille' alone pointed a finger that showed the way. The equipment wasn't meant to be treated this way. The needle is still in the red.

11 Startime by James Brown (Polydor) 1991

I first saw James Brown in 1962 at an outdoor theatre in San Diego and it was indescribable... it was like putting a finger in a light socket. He did the whole thing with the cape. He did 'Please Please Please'. It was such a spectacle. It had all the pageantry of the Catholic Church. It was really like seeing mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Christmas and you couldn't ignore the impact of it in your life. You'd been changed, your life is changed now. And everybody wanted to step down, step forward, take communion, take sacrament, they wanted to get close to the stage and be anointed with his sweat, his cold sweat.

12 Bohemian-Moravian Bands by Texas-Czech (Folk Lyric) 1993

I love these Czech-Bavarian bands that landed in Texas of all places. The seminal river for mariachi came from that migration to that part of the United States, bringing the accordion over, just like the drum and fife music of post slavery, they picked up the revolutionary war instruments and played blues on them. This music is both sour and bitter, and picante, and floating above itself like steam over the kettle. There's a piece called the 'Circling Pigeons Waltz', it's the most beautiful thing - kind of sour, like a wheel about to go off the road all the time. It's the most lilting little waltz. It's accordion, soprano sax, clarinet, bass, banjo and percussion.

13 The Yellow Shark by Frank Zappa (Barking Pumpkin) 1993It is his last major work. The ensemble is awe-inspiring. It is a rich pageant of texture in colour. It's the clarity of his perfect madness, and mastery. Frank governs with Elmore James on his left and Stravinsky on his right. Frank reigns and rules with the strangest tools.14 Passion for Opera Aria (EMI Classics) 1994I heard 'Nessun Dorma' in the kitchen at Coppola's with Raul Julia one night, and it changed my life, that particular Aria. I had never heard it. He asked me if I had ever heard it, and I said no, and he was like, as if I said I've never had spaghetti and meatballs - 'Oh My God, Oh My God!' - and he grabbed me and he brought me into the jukebox (there was a jukebox in the kitchen) and he put that on and he just kind of left me there. It was like giving a cigar to a five-year old. I turned blue, and I cried.15 Rant in E Minor by Bill Hicks (Rykodisc) 1997Bill Hicks, blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. Pay attention to Rant in E Minor, it is a major work, as important as Lenny Bruce's. He will correct your vision. His life was cut short by cancer, though he did leave his tools here. Others will drive on the road he built. Long may his records rant even though he can't.16 Prison Songs: Murderous Home Alan Lomax Collection (Rounder Select) 1997Without spirituals and the Baptist Church and the whole African-American experience in this country, I don't know what we would consider music, I don't know what we'd all be drinking from. It's in the water. The impact the whole black experience continues to have on all musicians is immeasurable. Lomax recorded everything, from the sounds of the junkyard to the sound of a cash register in the market... disappearing machinery that we would no longer be hearing. You know, one thing that doesn't change is the sound of kids getting out of school. Record that in 1921, record that now, it's the same sound. The good thing about these is that they're so raw, they're recorded so raw, that it's just like listening to a landscape. It's like listening to a big open field. You hear other things in the background. You hear people talking while they are singing. It's the hair in the gate.

17 Cubanos Postizos by Marc Ribot (Atlantic) 1998

This Atlantic recording shows off one of many of Ribot's incarnations as a prosthetic Cuban. They are hot and Marc dazzles us with his bottomless soul. Shaking and burning like a native.

18 Houndog by Houndog (Sony) 1999

Houndog, the David Hidalgo [Los Lobos] record he did with Mike Halby [Canned Heat]. Now that's a good record to listen to when you drive through Texas. I can't get enough of that. Anything by Latin Playboys, anything by Los Lobos. They are like a fountain. The Colossal Head album killed me. Those guys are so wild, and they've gotten so cubist. They've become like Picasso. They've gone from being purely ethnic and classical, to this strange, indescribable item that they are now. They're worthwhile to listen to under any circumstances. But the sound he got on Houndog, on the electric violin ... the whole record is a dusty road. Dark and burnished and mostly unfurnished. Superb texture and reverb. Lo fi and its highest level. Songs of depth and atmosphere. It ain't nothin' but a...

19 Purple Onion by Les Claypool (Prawn Song) 2002

Les Claypool's sharp and imaginative, contemporary ironic humour and lightning musicianship makes me think of Frank Zappa. 'Dee's Diner' is like a great song your kid makes up in the car on the way to the drive-in. Songs for big kids.

20 The Delivery Man by Elvis Costello (Mercury) 2004

Scalding hot bedlam, monkey to man needle time. I'd hate to be balled out by him, I'd quit first. Grooves wide enough to put your foot in and the bass player is a gorilla of groove. Pete Thomas, still one of the best rock drummers alive. Diatribes and rants with steam and funk. It has locomotion and heat. Steam heat, that is.

#tom waits #music #pop and rock #culture #bill hicks

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music-i-like-to-write-about-blog · 8 years

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Grammy Performer Gary Clark Jr. Announces Raw ‘Live/North America 2016′ Album

Gary Clark Jr. announced the release of his new album Live/North America 2016, due out March 17th. The second volume includes recent live performances from Clark Jr.’s North American tour in support of his fourth album The Story of Sonny Boy Slim.

With 12 all new and previously unreleased live recordings, Live/North America 2016 was recorded without overdubs. The album contains several tracks from Clark Jr.’s fourth album including “The Healing,” “Grinder” and “Our Love.” In addition to these tracks, the live album also features several covers of classics such as Jimmy Reed’s “Honest I Do” and Elmore James’ “My Baby’s Gone.”

For his new album, Clark Jr. collaborated with fellow Texan, Leon Bridges. Joined by his saxophonist Jeff Dazey, Bridges is a guest vocalist on the track “Shake.” Both hailed as contemporary blues and soul revivalists, it was only a matter of time before Clark Jr. and Bridges came together for a collaboration – and lucky for us, they did. The duo first crossed paths while on tour in Australia last year where they held an impromptu jam session and performed "Mississippi Kisses” at the Sydney Opera House.

Following Clark Jr.’s album announcement, the singer-guitarist dropped a video for “The Healing,” the first single off of the upcoming live album. Interspersed with colorful animated graphics, Clark Jr. sings “This music is my healing.” The simple music video highlights the power of Clark Jr.’s raw voice and bluesy guitar riffs in all their glory.

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This is a big week for the singer-guitarist, who is set to perform at the 59th Grammy Awards on Sunday. The acclaimed artist has partnered with Lincoln Motor Company for a 60-second commercial that will air during the 59th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday.

Live/North American 2016 is available for pre-order. All pre-orders will include an instant download of a live version of “The Healing.”

#gary clark jr #leon bridges #blues #soul #music #grammys #gary clark jr album

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news-markharrisonrootsmusic · 4 years

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review of Blues People show at The Theatre Chipping Norton

https://rhythmbooze.tumblr.com/post/612482614094430208/mark-harrison-blues-people-with-narration-by

Mark Harrison, Blues People, with Narration by David Freeman

This promised to be an evening with a difference, a last minute call to the lovely old temperance hall in Chipping Norton, now in service as a small, but ambient theatre, to take a few pictures at the event. A bit of a trek, but it proved to be a very interesting and enjoyable evening. The purpose, was to launch a book, written by David Freeman, signposting the story of the blues, and the people who shaped what we recognise today in the blues musical arena. To bring the book to life, Mark Harrison with his band, drummer, Ben Wellburn and double bassist, Charles Benfield, would be breathing life into the style and stories of the blues, through Mark’s own song book. Mark’s music gives traditional porch and juke joint blues, a more modern perspective.

David opens the story, with background projections of plates used in the book, the first known recording by Mamie Smith singing into a trumpeted recorder, WC Hanley, stumbled on blues slide, using any metal object to hand, whilst traveling, Mark dutifully demonstrated. Hanley committed it to his music book, and eventually, ‘Yellow Dog Blues’, which was recorded by Bessie Smith, bringing her fame and fortune. David turned to share cropping, and Mark’s first song, based around the croppers letting go on a Friday night, ‘Big Mary’s House’, slipped out, along with Mark’s atypical slice of humour.

David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards, was unusual for the cotton fields of the South, in having lived into his 90’s, resulting in a ‘bible’ of life in the deep South for black workers. Time for Mark to go, ‘Sneakin’ Away’. Basic guitars, gave way to resonators, to boost there sound, with coming of thermionic valves, electric amps arrived, as well as recording sessions. David Freeman, moved through the blues greats, Paxton, Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, and Muddy Waters, time for a 40’s reflection on the migration of unemployed cotton pickers, ‘Changes Gonna Come’, with its railroad rhythm, laid by Ben and Charles. The inequality and degredation suffered by the descendants of black slaves, depicted in Mark’s, ‘Ain’t No Justice’, bringing up a break.

Electric guitar, brought a ‘new’, crop of musicians, like Hooker, and Elmore James, Muddy adopted the new sound. Columbia records had not forgotten Robert Johnson, and his music was collected together for an album, leading to a blues revival. Mark gave the continuing story life with his compositions, like,’Rediscovery Blues’, ‘What Son House Said’, and the juke joint skiffle of, ‘Shake This House’, all interspersed with the deadpan humour that Mark delivers so easily. Slipping nicely into all that, Mark’s background, growing up in Coventry, led to the delightful riff of, ‘Bombs Coming Down’, blues of a different nature, maybe not the cotton fields, more a case of wrong place, wrong time. To close the evening Mark, Ben and Charles, stressed out with, ’Panic Attack’, Ben’s sticks rattle against the rim, the bass thumps away, its a madass journey, which you can find featuring in a video link on Mark’s website.

Its difficult to capture an evening like this, all I can say is, if it comes your way, just go, there’s much to learn and much to enjoy, not least the humour, the songs, and a very worthy book from David Freeman, full of excellent plate pictures of some of those greats from the past.

Words & Photos Graham Munn

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ulyssessklein · 6 years

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Dave Mason on the Rock ‘n Soul Review with Steve Cropper

By: Rick Landers

Dave Mason – Photo courtesy of Dawn Studios

Armed with a talent for creating an eclectic array of songs, with clever twists, beautiful melodic riffs, butter smooth vocals, the legendary singer-songwriter, Dave Mason, has gifted us with such memorable tracks that include: “Feeling Alright”, “Only You Know and I Know”, “Hole in My Shoe”, “So High (Rock Me Baby and Roll Me Away)” and many more.

Mason has toured the world for over fifty years, beginning with his time as a member of the acclaimed British jazz-blues-rock-pop fusion group, Traffic and later as a solo act. Not that he was a loner.

No, Dave’s worked alongside other rock icons like Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Leon Russell, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac and a host of other majors in the pantheon of modern music.

Listen to the opening acoustic riffs on Jimi’s “All Along the Watchtower” or the vocals of the Hendrix classic, “Crosstown Traffic” and Dave’s made his mark. Be reminded that Mason had a turn managing The Spencer Davis Group, then later running solo, he had his 1977 hit, “We Just Disagree” a staple of the classic rock airwaves with it’s honey soaked vocal and poetically aching lyrics. And let’s not reduce the album, Let It Flow, to just that single, the album is a masterpiece. And, yes, Dave’s got his well deserved place as an inductee in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. There’s more, like his work with the Stones on Beggars Banquet and George Harrison’s prolific All Things Must Pass solo pursuit.

Music runs in his veins, yet when asked about his love of rock ‘n roll, he merely claims to be a “working musician”. And on his latest venture, the Rock and Soul Revue Tour with the legendary Stax session man and stellar song-writer, Steve Cropper, Mason deflects praise directed his way to his friend Steve.

Steve Cropper’s and Dave Mason’s Rock and Soul Revue has kickstarted and will roam America for months. We can expect to hear many of the hit songs that they’ve appeared on, like “Green Onions”, “Dear Mr. Fantasy”, “All Along the Watchtower”, “We Just Disagree”, “Feeling Alright”, “Sitting on the Dock of a Bay”, “Soul Man” and many more that have been a part of their storied musical careers. The term legend floats around easily these days, but in fact. Steve Cropper and Dave Mason are the true grit that’s fundamental to the word – legends, indeed. The Rock and Soul Tour is one not to miss…

Steve Cropper and Dave Mason Rock & Soul Review Tour 2018

TICKETS ON SALE HERE

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Rick Landers: Songwriting has changed over the years due to technology. When lyrics or melodies popped into your head decades ago, how did the challenges of keeping them for later differ from today?

Dave Mason: Well, I ‘d use cassettes. I didn’t start writing until ’67. If the song was worth a shit, then I’d just remember it, but otherwise, for the most part, I’d just use a cassette.

Rick: I recently saw a photo of you playing a sitar. How’d that come about and were you influenced by Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, Shawn Philips or some other players? And, what other instruments are you comfortable playing?

Dave Mason: Back in the Sixties…I’m English for one thing and we had a lot of Indian restaurants where I grew up. So, I was familiar with the Eastern music and then the Sixties started to make its way into Western music . And I was listening to all kinds of stuff back then; Bulgarian music, Eastern, classical, jazz, rock, blues, whatever. It was interesting and, actually,

George Harrison gave me my first sitar. I used it on a couple of Traffic’s things. I used it on the first song I ever wrote, Traffic’s first big hit called, “Hole in My Shoe” and I used it on “Paper Sun”. I actually did a couple of tracks with Hendrix where I used it, I played bass, but I have no idea what happened to those things. I played around with it. I haven’t used it in years.

Rick: You played on Electric Ladyland?

Dave Mason: Yes, I played on Electric Ladyland, played on “All along the Watchtower” sang on “Crosstown Traffic” and just some tracks that Jimi and I just cut together. We did complete tracks, drums, whatever. But, but I don’t know what happened to them.

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Rick: Going back in time, I suppose you were inspired by Scotty Moore, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Burnette, Grady Martin nd Chuck Berry. But, it seems that a lot of British players wore out records of B.B. King, Muddy Waters and other blues players too.

Dave Mason: My stuff originally? I listened to The Shadows, with Hank Marvin, The Ventures, then got more into things and started to listen more, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Kenny Burrell, all the Kings, Albert, BB, Otis Rush, Elmore James, all that stuff.

Rick: How’d Traffic come together?

Dave Mason: Jim (Capaldi) and I had bands together, the Deep Feeling and The Hellions. We cut a record with The Hellions, didn’t do anything. And then we met up with Winwood and Chris Wood in Birmingham, in a place called The Algorithm, an after hours club. We all sort of just hung out when we could. We had pretty diversified tastes. We were all pretty much listening to a lot of the same stuff.

You know, when people talk about the British Invasion? The British Invasion is an American story. It’s not a British story, without America and the music coming from here, there would be no Eric Clapton or any of us, frankly. That’s what we did, we learned from all the American music. It all goes back to the early stuff, Alexis Korner and earlier and Long John Baldry, Bryan Auger, John Mayall. There was the blues influence and the hits. A lot of the stuff was covers of American hits.

Rick: Yeah, even The Beatles and the Stones did American covers.

Dave Mason: Yeah, we learned from here. So, obviously for me, to be able to do this after all these years with Steve Cropper is a huge thing for me. Because, that shit we were listening to back when I was 16, 17 and 18 years old. What’s interesting to me in doing this with Steve is to find out how few people know who the hell he is, let alone Booker T. and the MGs did, and the records those people played on is just ridiculous, and then of course the songs Steve co-wrote.

To me, it’s like “Wow!” I didn’t realize it that nobody really know who the hell this guy is, it’s amazing. That they did that whole HBO Special on the Muscle Shoals guys, Hawkins (Roger Hawkins) and all those guys, and I don’t understand why they didn’t do one of those things on Booker T. and the MGs. And what they did, it’s ridiculous.

Rick: I saw Booker T. and the MGs and Cobo Hall in Detroit with Creedence and Wilbert Harrison. I was floored how good they were and they got a standing ovation.

Dave Mason: Yeah, well I saw them in ’67, at the time they were backing Otis Redding. I mean, take the entire Stax record collection and they were backing everybody!

Rick: What was your first impression of Jimi Hendrix and what was he like as a collaborator?

Dave Mason: I just got to know him and I got to hang out with him a lot and I got to go to the studio with him and record, We both heard John Wesley Harding together, and something caught his interest on “Watchtower”.

I found myself in the studio with him and Mitch Mitchell, got the track down. Otherwise, I mean, just hanging out with Jimi, he was a pretty quiet guy, soft spoken. In the studio he was all business. The thing about him, and there are a lot of great guitar players, a lot of them, but there are no more Jimi Hendrix’s. I mean the guy was just so innovative.

Dave Mason – Photo by Chris Jensen

Rick: You were with the Island label early, with many of the British folk artists of the time, John Martyn, Nick Drake, and I think the Incredible String Band. Did you know them well?

Dave Mason: I don’t really know them. I never worked with them. One person I used to listened to was Davey Graham.

Rick: Yeah, Graham was amazing, loved his “Angie”. Traffic was such a cool group with some jazz-blues grooves. How did you guys click?

Dave Mason: I have a pop sensibility, but we all pretty much liked the same kinds of music, more or less. And Traffic, I guess, was one of the first alternative bands, basically.

Rick: Yeah, your music was different. You’ve got “Feeling Alright” that’s got kind of Motown and Stax sounds that could have easily been covered by the Four Tops or the Temptations.

Dave Mason: Well, I think it may have been. [Laughs] Over fifty major artists have covered it.

Rick: You’ll soon be on the road with Steve Cropper. How’d your Rock and Soul Revue tour come about and how’d you meet Steve?

Dave Mason: I was in Nashville a year ago and we had lunch with a mutual friend and kind of threw some things around. Kind of doing something and then last New Years, I have a house in Maui and Shep Gordon does a benefit thing every New Years and everybody goes there, like Mick Fleetwood and whatever musicians are around.

Steve came over and we started talking about it. That’s basically how it came together. Three weeks ago we rehearsed for the first time. It’s the first time we played together, rehearsing this show at a friend’s ranch in North Carolina, in the northern corner.

Rick: That’s bluegrass country.

Dave Mason: [Laughs] Yeah! And I’ve been doing gigs, besides when I was with Traffic, since I was 22 years old, and now I’m 72. So, I thought it would be fun to do it now, something different and turn people on to who the hell Steve Cropper is and the songs, his “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay”, “Soul Man:, “In the Midnight Hour”, I mean, c’mon!

Rick: Have you guys come up with a structured set list or are you going wing it, some of it? Or half you, then half Steve, then mix it up?

Dave Mason: No, no, no… we’re not going to wing it. There’s a set list. We’re playing on stage together and there are songs of mine that he’s not on and songs that’s he’s doing, like “Green Onions” and two or three other things that I’m not playing on, because I think me playing some of the guitar parts, I’d be getting in the way, keep to the original.

I’ve got great musicians, great players, Gretchen, Rhodes, Tony Patler and my keyboard player has a great R&B voice. And we’re doing other stuff like, “Can’t Find My Way Back Home”, “Shake, Rattle and Roll” and then I’ve got my songs, “Only You Know and I Know”, “We Just Disagree” and stuff like that. So, let’s put it this way, there are no filler songs in the entire show.

Rick: It’s gotta be tough fitting in all the songs you like to play. Do you pick songs you love to play or the big sellers?

Dave Mason: It’s a combination of both, a combination of hits with Cropper’s stuff; his records are huge, they’ll get played.

Rick: You’ve got a lot of albums you’ve put out. I think there’s close to twenty-seven.

Dave Mason: Oh, God I don’t know. [Laughs] I can’t say I’m putting anything out. In the last ten years, there’s no label. It’s a waste of time. It’s sad that there’s no radio anymore, no DJs, no way to promote anything. I think it’s the biggest flaw of it all.

Rick: What kind of rig and guitar are you grabbing for this tour?

Dave Mason: I play a Strat.

Rick: What about acoustic?

Dave Mason: I‘m using it on “We Just Disagree”. I’m using the same 12-string I’ve played for years, an Alvarez Yairi.

Rick: The black one?

Dave Mason: Yeah. And, then I use a rig I put through a Fender Blues Deville.

Rick: During the late sixties and the early ‘70s, what do you think was the best rock city in America?

Dave Mason: The best rock city? It’s hard to say if you go back to the ‘60s and ‘70s. There was music coming out of Nashville, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles. You had a shit load of places and, it depends, I mean rock music could have been cut in any one of those places.

I don’t know, when I think of rock ‘n roll and what people classify as rock ‘n roll are different things. On the set we do, at the end of the show I tell people I’m gonna to do some real rock and roll, not AC/DC, okay? Real rock, like in 1954, “Shake, Rattle and Roll”, Little Richard’s rock ‘n roll, Eddie Cochran’s rock ‘n roll and all that.

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Rick: You ever play the old Grande Ballroom in Detroit?

Dave Mason: Probably. [Laughs]

Rick: I’m from the Detroit area and we’d go there and Cobo Hall.

Dave Mason: Yeah, I played there too. Kick out the jams motherfuckers, [Both Laugh]

Rick: Yeah, I saw them (MC5) do that back in ’68 or ‘69 at the Grande. Anything you’re looking forward to on the Rock and Soul Revue Tour you and Steve (Cropper) are doing?

Dave Mason: We spent a week working on the show and to me it’s a great honor. It’s like completing a circle for me, fifty, sixty years later.

Rick: I was gonna say, he’s a hoot. He’s fun.

Dave Mason: Steve, oh yeah [Laughs] He’s got an endless amount of stories.

Rick: I think you’re gonna have a blast. How many gigs do you have?

Dave Mason: I’m not sure, probably about thirty at the moment. We’re just going to see how it goes. We’re going wherever we can.

Rick: You still like playing rock ‘n roll?

Dave Mason: I love playing. I’m a working musician,

Rick: What kind of acoustic guitar do you noodle around with at home?

Dave Mason: I have a Taylor that I bought back in ’94, and I have that beautiful Alvarez Yairi 12-string that was made for me twenty-five years ago.

Rick: Any parting words about the tour?

Dave Mason: I just hope people come out and check out the show and re-discover one of the greats, Steve Cropper

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blackkudos · 8 years

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Arthur Crudup

Arthur William "Big Boy" Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for his songs "That's All Right" (1946), "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later covered by Elvis Presley and other artists.

Career

Crudup was born in Forest, Mississippi, to a family of migrant workers traveling through the South and Midwest. The family returned to Mississippi in 1926, where he sang gospel music. He began his career as a blues singer around Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a member of the Harmonizing Four, he visited Chicago in 1939. He stayed in Chicago to work as a solo musician but barely made a living as a street singer. The record producer Lester Melrose allegedly found him while Crudup was living in a packing crate, introduced him to Tampa Red and signed him to a recording contract with RCA Victor's Bluebird label.

He recorded with RCA in the late 1940s and with Ace Records, Checker Records and Trumpet Records in the early 1950s. He toured black clubs in the South, sometimes playing with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James. He also recorded under the names Elmer James and Percy Lee Crudup. His songs "Mean Old 'Frisco Blues", "Who's Been Foolin' You" and "That's All Right" were popular in the South. These and his other songs "Rock Me Mama", "So Glad You're Mine", and "My Baby Left Me" have been covered by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Elton John and Rod Stewart.

Crudup stopped recording in the 1950s, because of disputes over royalties. He said, "I realised I was making everybody rich, and here I was poor". His last Chicago session was in 1951. His 1952–54 recording sessions for Victor were held at radio station WGST, in Atlanta, Georgia. He returned to recording, for Fire Records and Delmark Records, and touring in 1965. Sometimes labeled "The Father of Rock and Roll", he accepted this title with some bemusement. During this time Crudup worked as a laborer to augment the low wages he received as a singer (he was not receiving royalties). After a dispute with Melrose over royalties, he returned to Mississippi and took up bootlegging. He later moved to Virginia, where he lived with his family, including three sons and several of his siblings, and worked as a field laborer. He occasionally sang in and supplied moonshine to drinking establishments, including one called the Dew-Drop Inn, in Northampton County.

In 1968, the blues promoter Dick Waterman began fighting for Crudup's royalties and reached an agreement in which Crudup would be paid $60,000. However, Hill and Range Songs, from which he was supposed to get the royalties, refused to sign the legal papers at the last minute, because the company thought it could not lose more money in legal action. In the early 1970s, two Virginia activists, Celia Santiago and Margaret Carter, assisted him in an attempt to gain royalties he felt he was due, with little success.

On a 1970 trip to the United Kingdom, Crudup recorded "Roebuck Man" with local musicians. His last professional engagements were with Bonnie Raitt.

Discography

Solo albums

Mean Ol' Frisco (1962)

Crudup's Mood (Delmark, 1969)

Look on Yonder's Wall (Delmark, 1969)

Roebuck Man (Sequel, 1974)

Collaborative albums

Sunny Road, with Jimmy Dawkins and Willie Smith (Delmark, 1969)

Arthur "BigBoy" Crudup Meets the Master Blues Bassists, with Willie Dixon and Ransom Knowling (Delmark, 1994)

Compilation albums

The Father of Rock and Roll (RCA, 1971)

Give Me a 32-30 (Crown Prince, 1982)

Star Bootlegger (Krazy Kat, 1982)

I'm in the Mood (Krazy Kat, 1983)

Crudup's Rockin' Blues (RCA, 1985)

Shout Sister Shout! (Bullwhip, 1987)

That's All Right Mama (Matchbox, 1989)

The Father of Rock and Roll (Blues Encore, 1992)

That's All Right Mama (BMG, 1992)

Complete Recorded Works, vols. 1–4 (Document, 1993)

Rock Me Mama (Orbis, 1993)

That's Alright Mama (Laserlight, 1995)

Crudup's After Hours (History, 1996)

The Complete Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, vols. 1 and 2 (Jazz Tribune, 1997)

After Hours (Camden, 1997)

Cool Disposition (Catfish, 1999)

Dirt Road Blues (Past Perfect Silver Line, 2000)

The Essential Arthur Crudup (Document, 2001)

Blues Legends (Rainbow, 2002)

Everything's Alright (Our World, 2002)

Crudup's After Hours (Past Perfect Silver Line, 2002)

Rock Me Mama (Tomato, 2003)

The Father of Rock 'n' Roll (Wolf, 2003)

Rock Me Mamma: When the Sun Goes Down, vol. 7 (RCA, 2003)

The Story of the Blues (Archive Blues, 2004)

Too Much Competition (Passport, 2006)

Gonna Be Some Change (Rev-Ola, 2008)

My Baby Left Me: The Definitive Collection (Fantastic Voyage, 2011)

The Blues (Fuel, 2012)

Sunny Road (Delmar, 2013)

Wikipedia

#Arthur Crudup #08-24 #03-28

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blackkudos · 8 years

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Memphis Slim

Memphis Slim (September 3, 1915 – February 24, 1988) was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other artists. He made over 500 recordings.

Biography

Memphis Slim was born John Len Chatman, in Memphis, Tennessee. For his first recordings, for Okeh Records in 1940, he used the name of his father, Peter Chatman (who sang, played piano and guitar, and operated juke joints); it is commonly believed that he did so to honor his father. He started performing under the name "Memphis Slim" later that year but continued to publish songs under the name Peter Chatman.

He spent most of the 1930s performing in honky-tonks, dance halls, and gambling joints in West Memphis, Arkansas, and southeast Missouri. He settled in Chicago in 1939 and began teaming with the guitarist and singer Big Bill Broonzy in clubs soon afterward. In 1940 and 1941 he recorded two songs for Bluebird Records that became part of his repertoire for decades, "Beer Drinking Woman" and "Grinder Man Blues". These were released under the name "Memphis Slim," given to him by Bluebird's producer, Lester Melrose. Slim became a regular session musician for Bluebird, and his piano talents supported established stars such as John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, Washboard Sam, and Jazz Gillum. Many of Slim's recordings and performances until the mid-1940s were with Broonzy, who had recruited Slim to be his piano player after the death of his accompanist Joshua Altheimer in 1940.

After World War II, Slim began leading bands that generally included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues. With the decline of blues recording by the major labels, Slim worked with emerging independent labels. Starting in late 1945, he recorded with trios for the small Chicago-based Hy-Tone Records. With a lineup of alto saxophone, tenor sax, piano, and string bass (Willie Dixon played the instrument on the first session), he signed with the Miracle label in the fall of 1946. One of the numbers recorded at the first session was the ebullient boogie "Rockin' the House," from which his band would take its name. Slim and the House Rockers recorded mainly for Miracle through 1949, with some commercial success. Among the songs they recorded were "Messin' Around" (which reached number one on the R&B charts in 1948) and "Harlem Bound". In 1947, the day after producing a concert by Slim, Broonzy, and Williamson at New York City's Town Hall, folklorist Alan Lomax brought the three musicians to the Decca Records studios and recorded with Slim on vocal and piano. Lomax presented sections of this recording on BBC Radio in the early 1950s as a documentary, The Art of the Negro, and later released an expanded version as the LP Blues in the Mississippi Night. In 1949, Slim expanded his combo to a quintet by adding a drummer; the group was now spending most of its time on tour, leading to off-contract recording sessions for King Records in Cincinnati and Peacock Records in Houston.

One of Slim's 1947 recordings for Miracle, released in 1949, was originally titled "Nobody Loves Me". It has become as famous as "Every Day I Have the Blues." The tune was recorded in 1950 by Lowell Fulson and subsequently by numerous other artists, including B. B. King, Elmore James, T-Bone Walker, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Natalie Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimi Hendrix, Mahalia Jackson, Sarah Vaughan, Carlos Santana, John Mayer and Lou Rawls. Joe Williams recorded it in 1952 for Checker Records; his remake from 1956 (included in Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings) was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1992.

Early in 1950, Miracle succumbed to financial troubles, but its owners regrouped to form the Premium label, and Slim remained on board until the successor company faltered in the summer of 1951. His February 1951 session for Premium saw two changes in the House Rockers' lineup: Slim started using two tenor saxophones instead of the alto and tenor combination, and he made a trial of adding guitarist Ike Perkins. His last session for Premium kept the two-tenor lineup but dispensed with the guitar. During his time with Premium, Slim first recorded his song "Mother Earth".

Slim made just one session for King, but the company bought his Hy-Tone sides in 1948 and acquired his Miracle masters after that company failed in 1950. He was never a Chess artist, but Leonard Chess bought most of the Premium masters after the demise of Premium.

After a year with Mercury Records, Slim signed with United Records in Chicago; the A&R man, Lew Simpkins, knew him from Miracle and Premium. The timing was propitious, because he had just added Matt "Guitar" Murphy to his group. He remained with United through the end of 1954, when the company began to cut back on blues recording.

After 1954, Slim did not have a steady relationship with a record company until 1958, when he signed with Vee-Jay Records. In 1959 his band, still featuring Murphy, cut the album Memphis Slim at the Gate of the Horn, which featured a lineup of his best-known songs, including "Mother Earth", "Gotta Find My Baby", "Rockin' the Blues", "Steppin' Out", and "Slim's Blues".

Slim first appeared outside the United States in 1960, touring with Willie Dixon, with whom he returned to Europe in 1962 as a featured artist in the first of the series of American Folk Festival concerts organized by Dixon, which brought many notable blues artists to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. The duo released several albums together on Folkways Records, including Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon at the Village Gate with Pete Seeger (1962)

In 1962 Slim moved permanently to Paris, and his engaging personality and well-honed presentation of playing, singing, and storytelling about the blues secured his position as one of the most prominent blues artists for nearly three decades. He appeared on television in numerous European countries, acted in several French films and wrote the score for À nous deux France (1970), and performed regularly in Paris, throughout Europe, and on return visits to the United States. In the last years of his life, he teamed up with the respected jazz drummer George Collier. The two toured Europe together and became friends. After Collier died in August 1987, Slim rarely appeared in public, although he reunited with Matt "Guitar" Murphy for a gig at Antone's in Austin in 1987.

Two years before his death, Slim was named a Commander in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France. In addition, the U.S. Senate honored Slim with the title of Ambassador-at-Large of Good Will.

Memphis Slim died on February 24, 1988, of renal failure in Paris, France, at the age of 72. He is buried at Galilee Memorial Gardens in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1989, he was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame in 2015.

Wikipedia

#Memphis Slim

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