Bman's Blues Report

I just had the opportunity to review the most recent release, Kind of Blues , from Adam Holt and it's solid. Opening with up beat rocker, Mr. Morning Drive featuring Adam Holt on vocals and guitars, Owen Finley on bass, Greg DeLuca on drums and Donnie Sundal on keys. With it's upfront poppy sound, nice melody and lovable tempo, this is a sure radio track. One of my favorite tracks on the release is I'm Still Holdin' On with a melodic slide lead from Lee Yankie and beautifully country style vocal blending, underscored by the pedal steel work of Mark Welborn and real nice electric blues style soloing by Holt. Very nice. Piano rocker, Give The Dog A Bone is a cool stripped down rocker with a definite country twinge. Holt really has a great voice and his sense of lyrics are great. Sundal, piano work on this track set a nice groove and Holt's guitar used as punctuation is perfect. Very cool. Another country flavored track, The Bourgeoisie really is a great track ...

I just had the opportunity to review the newest self-titled release from David Vest and it's a rock and roller. Opening with Some Old Lonesome Day , David Vest, who handles piano and lead vocals is backed by Billy Hicks on drums, Ryan Tandy on bass and Tom Bowler and Peter Dammann on guitar. Genevieve kicks into a R&B style with a cool bass and drum rhythm and New Orleans style piano rolls by Vest and tasty guitar work by Bowler and Dammann. Boogie track, Party In The Room Next Door , kicks it up a few more notches giving Vest the open road to really rock out on piano. Following suit is a strong rockabilly style guitar solo making this one of the best tracks on the release. Elvis Presley's Leak In This Old Building really captures that R&B rockin style with gospel style piano. Traditional track, Gotta Travel On gets a Latin jazz remix with lead piano by Vest improvising the melody with tight drum riffs by Hicks giving it a New Orleans flavor. Very cool. Renovicti...

Alabama Singer Lisa Mills Says I’m Changing on New CD Coming Oct. 21 from Her MillsBluz Record Label MOBILE, AL – Blues, roots and gospel singer Lisa Mills announces an October 21 release date for her new CD, I’m Changing , on her MillsBluz record label, distributed nationally by Burnside Distribution. I’m Changing was recorded primarily at Back Door studios in Mobile and was produced by Lisa Mills and Ian Jennings. The album showcases Mills backed by an impressive cast of musicians including guitarist Rick Hirsch and drummer T. K. Lively of Wet Willie fame, as well as guitarist Corky Hughes (Bo Diddley, Black Oak Arkansas). Bassist Ian Jennings has a host of world-class recording credentials, including work on albums with J eff Beck ( Crazy Legs ), several albums with Van Morrison and Tom Jones, plus appearances with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Ian was also named Britain's best bassist last year by one of the UK’s top blues magazines. Lisa Mills is ...

Good Rockin' Charles (March 4, 1933 – May 17, 1989) was an American Chicago blues and electric blues harmonicist, singer and songwriter. He released one album in his lifetime, and is best known for his work with Johnny "Man" Young, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, Arthur "Big Boy" Spires and Jimmy Rogers. He was born Henry Lee Bester in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States, and later known as Charles Edwards. He relocated from his birthplace to Chicago, Illinois in 1949, and was inspired by fellow harmonica players, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Little Walter. In the following decade, Charles found steady work with local Chicago blues musicians such as Johnny "Man" Young, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, and Arthur "Big Boy" Spires. In 1955 he settled on working in the backing band for the blues singer, Jimmy Rogers. Two years later, the short-lived independent record label, Cobra Records, offered Charles the o...

Arthur Alexander (May 10, 1940 – June 9, 1993) was an American country songwriter and soul singer. Jason Ankeny, music critic for Allmusic, said Alexander was a "country-soul pioneer" and that, though largely unknown, "his music is the stuff of genius, a poignant and deeply intimate body of work on par with the best of his contemporaries."Alexander wrote songs publicized by such stars as The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, Tina Turner and Jerry Lee Lewis. Alexander was born in Sheffield, Alabama. Working with Spar Music in Florence, Alabama, Alexander recorded his first single, "Sally Sue Brown", under the name of June Alexander (short for Junior), which was released in 1960 on Jud Phillips' Judd Records. (Phillips is the brother of music pioneer Sam Phillips). A year later, Alexander cut "You Better Move On" at a former tobacco warehouse-turned-recording studio in Muscle Shoals. Released on Nashville's Dot Records, the song became...

Charley West was born in Andalusia, AL. on September 27. 1914 and raised in Cincinnati, OH. He began singing in the mid-1920's with probable encouragement from Leroy Carr. In 1929 he moved to Chicago, IL. and began singing and playing piano in clubs. In 1937 Big Bill Broonzy got West a recording date at Bluebird Records where he recorded four sides in May. A few months later in July, he cut two more sides for Vocalion as "Poor Charlie". For unknown reasons, West didn't play piano on any of his recordings. The piano on the Bluebird recordings was played by Black Bob, while Joshua Altheimer manned the chair on the Vocalion sides. West didn't make any more recordings but kept playing in clubs up until the late 1940's. He stoppeed playing piano around 1949 or 1950 due to a wrist injury. He then held down a job in a steel mill for the next decade. Charley's daughter Dorothy married blues singer/harmonica player Carey Bell. In the 1960's Bell would let his f...

To the avid blues fan, the name Alabama Jr. (Daddy Rabbit) has been synonymous with that of Magic Slim & The Teardrops for 10 years, From 1973 to 1983. Alabama Jr. was a staple of the Teadrops band providing sympathetic backing to the driving lead of Magic Slim and pulsating bass of his brother, Nick Holt. Coleman Pettis Jr. (his real name) was born in Alabama in the mid 1930s. At the age of 8 his mother taught him to play the guitar, which he practiced sporadically throughout his childhood. When there wasn’t a guitar handy for him to play on, he would make his own by winding bothe ends of some baling wire around a long stick and plucking out whatever sound he could get. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing at local fish fries, first as a solo guitarist, then adding another guitar and playing as a part of a duo, for the then grand sum of $5. - per night. In 1952 he moved to Chicago, where he was eventually to meet and play with many of the great musicians who were building...

b. 24 March 1931, Birmingham, Alabama, USA, d. December 1985, Los Angeles, USA. Like many of his generation, Jenkins drew his influences from 40s blues and spent much of his mature career adapting to the demands of rock ‘n’ roll and R&B. As his earliest recordings for Chess and Specialty show, Jenkins, like Jimmy McCracklin, modelled himself on St. Louis pianist Walter Davis. Both largely unissued sessions took place in 1953 and featured ‘Cold Love’ and ‘Mean And Evil’, which along with ‘Eight Ball’ and ‘I Ate The Wrong Part’, were based on Davis originals. Thereafter, Jenkins recorded extensively for Combo and Flash, before he started his own Pioneer label in 1959. Most of these recordings were piano or organ instrumentals with his or Mamie Perry’s vocals. He continued this policy through the early 60s with a series of singles on General Artists. Late in the decade, he converted to Islam and assumed the name Jaarone Pharoah.   If you support live Blues acts, up and coming...

Wilson Pickett (March 18, 1941 – January 19, 2006) was an American R&B, soul and rock and roll singer and songwriter. A major figure in the development of American soul music, Pickett recorded over 50 songs which made the US R&B charts, and frequently crossed over to the US Billboard Hot 100. Among his best known hits are "In the Midnight Hour" (which he co-wrote), "Land of 1,000 Dances", "Mustang Sally", and "Funky Broadway". The impact of Pickett's songwriting and recording led to his 1991 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Pickett was born March 18, 1941 in Prattville, Alabama, and grew up singing in Baptist church choirs. He was the fourth of 11 children and called his mother "the baddest woman in my book," telling historian Gerri Hirshey: "I get scared of her now. She used to hit me with anything, skillets, stove wood — (one time I ran away and) cried for a week. Stayed in the woods, me and my little ...

Clarence Smith, better known as Pinetop Smith or Pine Top Smith (June 11, 1904 – March 15, 1929) was an American boogie-woogie style blues pianist. His hit tune, "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie," featured rhythmic "breaks" that were an essential ingredient of ragtime music. He was a posthumous 1991 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Smith was born in Troy, Alabama and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his nickname as a child from his liking for climbing trees. In 1920 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he worked as an entertainer before touring on the T. O. B. A. vaudeville circuit, performing as a singer and comedian as well as a pianist. For a time he worked as accompanist for blues singer Ma Rainey and Butterbeans and Susie. In the mid 1920s he was recommended by Cow Cow Davenport to J. Mayo Williams at Vocalion Records, and in 1928 he moved, with his wife and young son, to Chicago, Illinois to record. For a time he, Albert Ammons, and M...

Eddie King (April 21, 1938 – March 14, 2012) was an American Chicago blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Living Blues once stated "King is a potent singer and player with a raw, gospel-tinged voice and an aggressive, thick-toned guitar sound". He was noted as creating a "straightforward style, after Freddie King and Little Milton" King was born Edward Lewis Davis Milton in Talladega, Alabama, United States. His parents were both musical, with his father playing guitar and his mother a gospel singer. King learned basic guitar riffs from watching from outside the window of local blues clubs, and was inspired by the playing of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. He grew up playing alongside Luther Allison, Magic Sam, Junior Wells, Eddie C. Campbell, and Freddie King. He relocated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1954, and his diminutive stature and the influence of B.B. King led to him being referred to as 'Little Eddie King'. Given a break by Littl...

Jo Jo Adams (often billed as Doctor Jo Jo ) was born in rural Alabama in 1918. His first notices in the field of music was for his efforts in the gospel music field in the late nineteen thirties. One of the gospel groups he was part of was known as the Big Four Gospel Jubilee Singers. By his late twenties Adams had gone over into secular music and began to make performance appearances in clubs on Chicago's south side. He soon adopted a Cab Calloway like persona affecting flashy tuxedo jackets with very long tails that he swung out from him while whirling about the stage delivering a song. He hooked up with the band led by Freddie Williams and soon got a chance to record with Williams own record label called Melody Lane . Adams first recording for Melody Lane was in 1946 with the two part "Jo Jo Blues" on # 11. That was followed by "Please Don't Give It Away" and "Corine" on Melody Lane # 12. Soon Melody Lane Records had morphed into the Hy-Tone la...

Claimed by the proud state of Alabama as one of their homegrown talents, Beulah Bryant was born Blooma Bryant and sang in local church groups. She left the state as a teenager, though, relocating to California in 1936 and more or less officially launching her professional career about a decade later by winning an amateur contest held by a network radio show. This victory inspired her to start up her own trio, which worked regularly in California. In the mid-'40s she moved to New York and by 1950 was part of a group of signings pulled off by Joe Davis wearing his hat as an MGM A&R man. The June, Billboard of that year announced that the label had "inked West Coast blues thrush Beulah Bryant." She made some excellent recordings with a group of musicians that had also backed up singers such as Irene Redfield and Millie Bosman, including the fine trombonist Will Bradley and trumpeter Taft Jordan. Bryant's style was tailored from the same type of musical suits worn by ...

Veterans of the Alabama blues scene for more than four decades, Little Whitt (born Jolly Wells, February 19, 1931) and Big Bo (born Bo McGee, October 9, 1928) reached out to an audience outside their home state for the first time in March 1995. Touring Europe for more than two months, the two bluesmen performed over 50 concerts in Ireland, Scotland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, and England. Their debut album, Moody Swamp Blues, released the same year, was named "CD of the Year" by British blues magazine Blueprint. In early 2002, one year after McGee won an award from the Alabama Folk Heritage for his contributions to blues, he was killed and his stepson charged with the murder.   If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Professor Alex Bradford (January 23, 1927 – February 15, 1978) was a multi-talented gospel composer, singer, arranger and choir director, who was a great influence on artists such as Little Richard, Bob Marley and Ray Charles and who helped bring about the modern mass choir movement in gospel. Born in Bessemer, Alabama, USA, he first appeared on stage at the age of four, then joined a children's gospel group at thirteen, soon obtaining his own radio show. He organized another group after his mother sent him to New York City following a racial incident; he continued singing after returning to attend the Snow Hill Institute in Snow Hill, Alabama, where he acquired the title "Professor" while teaching as a student. He moved to Chicago in 1947, where he worked briefly with Roberta Martin and toured with Mahalia Jackson, then struck out on his own with his own group, the Bradford Singers, followed by another group, the Bradford Specials. He recorded his first hit record, ...

Paul Bascomb (February 12, 1912, Birmingham, Alabama – December 2, 1986 (aged 74), Chicago) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, noted for his extended tenure with Erskine Hawkins. He is a 1979 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. Bascomb was a founding member of the Bama State Collegians, which was led by Erskine Hawkins and eventually became his big band. Bascomb's brother Dud played in this ensemble as well. Bascomb remained in this ensemble until 1944, aside from a brief interval in 1938–39 where he played in Count Basie's orchestra after Herschel Evans's death. From 1944 to 1947 he and Dud co-led a septet which evolved into a big band. He recorded for States Records in 1952; these sides were reissued by Delmark Records in the 1970s. From 1953 to 1955 he recorded for Parrot. He was active as a performer nearly up until the time of his death. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of...

Big Joe Duskin (February 10, 1921 – May 6, 2007) was an American blues and boogie-woogie pianist. He is best known for his debut album, Cincinnati Stomp (1978), and the tracks "Well, Well Baby" and "I Met a Girl Named Martha". Born Joseph L. Duskin in Birmingham, Alabama, by the age of seven he had started playing piano. He played in church, accompanying his preacher father, the Rev. Perry Duskin. His family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Duskin was raised near to the Union Terminal train station where his father worked. On his local radio station, WLW, Duskin heard his hero Fats Waller play. He was also inspired to play in a boogie-woogie style by Pete Johnson's, "627 Stomp". In his younger days Duskin performed in clubs in Cincinnati and across the river in Newport, Kentucky. While serving in the US Army in World War II, he continued to play and, in entertaining the US forces, met his idols Johnson, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. After his m...

Leon Bibb was one of the more prominent African-American folk singers of the 1950s and early '60s, and enjoyed a parallel career as an actor, as well (sometimes under the name Lee Charles). Born Charles Leon Arthello Bibb in Louisville, KY in 1922, he grew up as an admirer of the actor/singer/activist Paul Robeson, the most prominent African-American performer -- in music, theater, or films -- of the '30s and early '40s, and sought to emulate the latter's career. He studied classical singing in New York City, and made his first major theater appearance in the original production of Annie Get Your Gun (1946), starring Ethel Merman, in which he played a waiter; he was also heard and credited on the 1946 cast recording of the show. Bibb later turned toward folk music, and was heard, along with such luminaries as Robert DeCormier, Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry, on the 1954 album Hootenanny Tonight!, issued by Folkways Records. His work brought him into the orbit of Langsto...

photo credit: Dan Machnik Joseph Leon Williams (born February 3, 1935), better known as Jody Williams, is an American blues guitarist and singer. His singular guitar playing, marked by flamboyant string-bending, imaginative chord changes and a distinctive tone, was influential in the Chicago blues scene of the 1950s. In the mid 1950s, Williams was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Chicago, yet he was little known outside the music industry since his name rarely appeared on discs. His acclaimed comeback in 2000 led to a resurgence of interest in Williams’ early work, and his reappraisal as one of the great blues guitarists Born in Mobile, Alabama, United States, Williams moved to Chicago at the age of five. His first instrument was the harmonica, which he swapped for the guitar after hearing Bo Diddley play at a talent show where they were both performing. Diddley, seven years his senior, took Williams under his wing and taught him the rudiments of guitar. By 1951 W...

Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon (February 3, 1895 – 1944?) was an African American vaudeville singer, female impersonator, stage designer and comedian, popular in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, orphaned, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname of "Half Pint" referred to his 5'2" height. He started in show business around 1910 as a singer in Kansas City, before travelling extensively with medicine shows in Texas, and then touring the eastern seaboard. His feminine voice and outrageous manner, often as a female impersonator, established him as a crowd favorite. By 1917 he had begun working regularly in Atlantic City, New Jersey and in Chicago, Illinois, often with such performers as Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters, whose staging he helped design. In the late 1920s he sang with top jazz bands when they passed through Chicago, working with Bennie Moten, King Oliver and Freddie Keppard among others. He also perform...