Bman's Blues Report

 Howlin' Wuelf Media The Smithsonian Channel announced the debut of "The Lost Tapes: Pearl Harbor," a look at the historic attack on United States military forces that brought the country into World War II. This program uses a wealth of original audio and film sources, much of it never available to the public before including folklorist Alan Lomax's man-on-the-street interviews the day after the attack. These particular interviews have not been featured in any other documentary, although other ones from Lomax are online. The Smithsonian's site says: "President Roosevelt called December 7, 1941, 'a date which will live in infamy,' a quote that would become one of the most famous in American history. In fact, the attack on Pearl Harbor inspired several powerful public statements, but many of them have never been heard before, until now. Take an unprecedented look at this tr...

Othar Turner's Rising Star Fife & Drum band (Turner, fife; G.D. Young, bass drum; E.P. Burton, snare; Eddie Ware, snare) play "the call" to picnic night at Othar's farm. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long in Gravel Springs, Mississippi, August 1978. Othar "Otha" Turner (June 2, 1907 – February 26, 2003) was one of the last well-known fife players in the vanishing American fife and drum blues tradition. He was born in Madison County, Mississippi, and lived his entire life in northern Mississippi as a farmer, where in 1923, aged 16, he learned to play fifes fashioned out of rivercanes. Turner's Rising Star Fife and Drum Band (which consisted of friends and relatives) primarily played at farm parties. They began to receive wider recognition in the 1990s. They appeared on Mississippi Blues in Memphis Vol. 1 in 1993, followed by inclusion in many other blues collections. They released their own critically acclaimed album Everybody Hollerin...

Alan Lomax (January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain. In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of Cantometrics, the sampling and statistical analysis of folk music, with the help of collaborators Victor Grauer and Roswell Rudd. Lomax was the son of pioneering folklorist and author John A. Lomax, with whom he started his career by recording songs sung by sharecroppers and prisoners in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Because of frail health he was mostly home schooled, but attended The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) for a year, graduating in 1930 at age 15.[1] He enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin in 1930 and the following year studied philosophy at Harvard but upon his mother's death interrupted his education to console his fathe...

Clyde Maxwell (vocal and guitar) performs "Corrina" as his family and Belton Sutherland listen. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long at Maxwell's farm, near Canton, Mississippi, September 3, 1978 Write on our Facebook Wall or post your Photos of great blues events! -  ”LIKE”

Napoleon Strickland (October 1, 1919 – July 21, 2001) was a fife and drum blues artist, and songwriter, and vocalist specializing in country blues, sometimes known as Napolian Strickland. He also played guitar, drums, harmonica, fife, and all manner of percussion instruments. Born near Como in the northern Mississippi Delta, his father introduced him to the music as a boy but it was Otha Turner that taught him how to play. He was adept with guitar, drums, harmonica, diddley-bow, fife, and all manner of percussion. He was primarily a fie player and singer, playing a great number of festivals, on appearing on several compilation albums of North Mississippi Country Blues. He also appeared in the bopic documentary film, The Land Where The Blues Began. Strickland was considered by many to have been the premier fife player of his genre, having appeared at numerous festivals, on several recorded compilations and on film. He worked as a share cropper for most of his life, mentoring other music...

Alan Lomax, circa 1942. Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity In an age where Justin Bieber can skyrocket to the highest heights of pop consciousness thanks to a couple well-placed YouTube videos, we've forgotten how hard it once was to spread popular music to the populace it described. In the 1930's and '40's, while  Woody Guthrie , Lead Belly , and others were crafting the folk songs that laid the foundation for uniquely American styles like rock and roll and the blues, they mostly sang in obscurity to local audiences in the country quarters where they lived. Recording equipment was bulky, fragile, and expensive, and those who could afford access to recorded music were listening mostly to European imports and early jazz. Thus, the music that best captured the lives of workaday Americans could only be heard by lucky locals in small-town dance halls and living rooms.    Enter Alan Lomax, an upstart folklorist who in his early teens began...

As many times ad I've posted Boyd, still don't know a lot about him He was filmed by Alan Lomax and he was born December 25,1934 in PICKENS, MS. Write on our Facebook Wall or post your Photos of great blues events! -  Here

Bessie Jones leads a work song she first heard as a girl being sung by a road-crew chain gang in North Georgia in the nineteen-teens. With support by Big John Davis, Willis Proctor, and Henry Morrison. The Georgia Sea Island Singers are a group of African Americans who travel the world to share the songs, stories, dances, games, and language of their Gullah heritage. Started sometime in the early 1900s and composed of many individuals over time, the current generation of singers includes Frankie Sullivan Quimby; her husband, Doug Quimby; and Tony Merrell. Together they have presented educational programs that testify about the history of enslaved Africans from coastal Georgia and celebrate the rich language, culture, and traditions that developed on and near the Sea Islands of the Georgia coast—in relative isolation from the rest of the South—for more than 200 years. Write on our Facebook Wall or post your Photos of great blues events! -  Here

"Dangerous Blues," sung by Joe Savage, former muleskinner and Parchman Farm inmate, on the levee in Greenville, Mississippi. Shot by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop, on September 2, 1978. Alan Lomax recorded another version of this holler in 1959 from a Parchman prisoner named Floyd Batts. It was also popular in the women's camp: Alan's father John A. Lomax recorded it sung by a group of female prisoners in 1933, and in 1937 Herbert Halpert recorded a solo version at the camp performed by Mattie May Thomas. “Like” Bman’s Facebook page (available in over 50 languages). I will not relay senseless nonsense. In this way I can get out the word on new talent, venues and blues happenings! - click Here

Belton Sutherland (vocal and guitar) performs an improvised blues on Clyde Maxwell's porch. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long at Maxwell's farm near Canton, Mississippi, September 3, 1978. For more information about the American Patchwork filmwork, Alan Lomax, and his collections, visit http://culturalequity.org “Like” Bman’s Facebook page (available in over 50 languages). I use Facebook to spread the word about my blog. I will not hit you with 50 posts a day. I will not relay senseless nonsense. I use it only to draw attention to some of the key posts on my blog each day. In this way I can get out the word on new talent, venues and blues happenings! - click Here

Here's some guys who have played dixieland jazz a few times! Kid Thomas Valentine's band performs "Tiger Rag" at Preservation Hall. Drums: Alonzo Stewart; Trombone: Worthia Thomas; Bass: Chester Zardis; Piano: Sing Miller; Banjo: Emanuel Sayles; Sax: Emmanuel Paul; Clarinet: Willie Humphrey; Trumpet: Kid Thomas Valentine. Shot by Alan Lomax and crew in New Orleans, May 17, 1982. Thomas Valentine, commonly known as Kid Thomas (3 February 1896 - 18 June 1987) was a jazz trumpeter and bandleader. Kid Thomas was born in Reserve, Louisiana and came to New Orleans in his youth. He gained a reputation as a hot trumpet man in the early 1920s. Starting in 1926 he led his own band, for decades based in the New Orleans suburb of Algiers, Louisiana. The band was long popular with local dancers. Kid Thomas had perhaps the city's longest lasting old-style traditional jazz dance band. Unlike many other musicians, Thomas was unaffected by the influence of Louis Armstron...

He was born Eugene Powell, in Utica, Mississippi, the child of an interracial affair and his white father soon abandoned the family. His family soon moved to a plantation at Lombardy, near Shelby, Mississippi. Nelson learned to play the guitar by the age of seven. Together with his half brother Ben on a mandolin, Nelson began to play as a novelty act at picnics and suppers, and for prisoners at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. In 1915, his half brother, Bennie "Sugar" Wilson, may have been the inspiration for Nelson to learn the banjo-mandolin. Nelson became friends with the Chatmon family (see Sam Chatmon), as both families worked together on the Kelly Drew Plantation in Hollandale, Mississippi. He later married fellow singer, Mississippi Matilda. Nelson played many musical instruments, including banjo, guitar, harmonica, horn, mandolin, violin, and played lead most of the time when accompanied with another musician. Nelson's guitar was a Silvertone and he insert...

Fred McDowell: The Alan Lomax Recordings are the first recordings made of Fred McDowell before the folk festivals and blues clubs, before Mississippi was inserted in front of his name, before the Rolling Stones covered his You Got To Move. They're the sound of the music McDowell played on his porch, at picnics, and juke joints; with his friends and family; occasionally for money but always for pleasure. It's the music he taught a young R.L. Burnside to play. Freshly remastered from 24-bit digital transfers of Alan Lomax's original tapes, and annotated by Arhoolie Records' Adam Machado and the Alan Lomax Archive's Nathan Salsburg, they are an illustration of the mind-blowing revelation that was Fred McDowell. This was released DIGITALLY by Global Jukebox September 6 On the first day of fall, 1959, in Como, Mississippi, a farmer named Fred McDowell emerged from the woods and ambled over to his neighbor Lonnie Young's front porch with a guitar in ...

Joe Savage recalls breaking out of the Rosedale jail, his time spent at Parchman Farm (the Mississippi State Penitentiary) at Lambert Camp and Camp 1, and his work with a contrary white mule. He sings several field holler verses. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long on the levee in Greenville, Mississippi, August 22, 1978. For more information about the American Patchwork filmwork, Alan Lomax, and his collections, visit http://culturalequity.org.

Belton Sutherland (vocal and guitar) performs an improvised blues on Clyde Maxwell's porch. Shot by Alan Lomax, John Bishop, and Worth Long at Maxwell's farm near Canton, Mississippi, September 3, 1978.

Miles Pratcher, vocal and guitar; Bob Pratcher, fiddle. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Como, Mississippi. September 22, 1959. From "I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die," one of five albums commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lomax's "Southern Journey" field recording trip. Released in 2011 digitally by Global Jukebox (GJ 1005) and on LP by Mississippi Records (MR 065). The Pratcher brothers were neighbors of bluesman Fred McDowell in Como, and also farmers, but were of an earlier musical generation. Miles and Bob were repositories of the raggy country dance music that would have been heard at picnics and other social occasions in the fin-de-siecle Mississippi Hill Country. Lomax wrote of this performance in 1978 that he "always thought of this genre as a bluesy ballad in ragtime," lying chronologically and stylistically "between black square dance music and the first true instrumental blues." "I'm Going to Live Anyhow Until I Die...

Fred McDowell, vocal and guitar. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Como, Mississippi. September 25, 1959. From "I'll Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down," one of five albums commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lomax's "Southern Journey" field recording trip. Released in 2011 digitally by Global Jukebox (GJ 1004) and on LP by Mississippi Records (MR 060). Fred McDowell was a farmer who emerged from the woods on the first day of fall, 1959, and ambled over to his neighbor Lonnie Young's front porch in his overalls with a guitar in hand. Lomax had no idea what he was in for, but after McDowell's first song he knew he was in the presence of one of the most original, talented, and affecting country bluesmen ever recorded. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE McDowell showed few outward signs of conflict he might have felt by playing sacred and "sinful" music in the same setting. A 1964 record of Fred's, "My ...

Rosalie (or Rosa Lee) Hill, guitar and vocal. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Como, Mississippi, September 25, 1959. From "Worried Now, Won't Be Worried Long," one of five albums commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lomax's "Southern Journey" field recording trip. Released in 2010 digitally by Global Jukebox (GJ 1002) and on LP by Mississippi Records (MR 058). Rosalie Hill was a daughter of the Mississippi Hill Country's composer, multi-instrumentalist, band leader, and musical patriarch Sid Hemphill. Sid taught Rosalie to play the guitar when she was six; by the time she was ten she was playing dances with him. The only two songs she recorded for Alan were marked by a desolate, keening intensity, although by all accounts she was a jolly woman. Her father died in 1961, after which, as blues researcher George Mitchell noted, most of the very musical Hemphills "just didn't feel like playing no more." Rosie hung up her guitar for a time, but by ...

Bessie Jones, lead vocal, with Nat Rahmings, drum; Hobart Smith, banjo; Ed Young, fife; and John Davis, Henry Morrison, Albert Ramsay, and Emma Ramsay, vocals. Recorded by Alan Lomax in Williamsburg, Virginia. April 28, 1959. From "Wave the Ocean, Wave the Sea," one of five albums commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lomax's "Southern Journey" field recording trip. Released in 2010 digitally by Global Jukebox (GJ 1001) and on LP by Mississippi Records (MR 057).

I’ll Meet You On That Other Shore” is the third release from Global Jukebox, the independent label set up by the Alan Lomax Archives to make its vast holdings readily accessible to the music lovers via download-only releases. It's also the third in the series of releases celebrating Alan Lomax's Southern Journey field recordings. These releases were compiled and annotated by Nathan Salsburg, the albums draw on new transfers of the original tapes, and include considerable previously unreleased material and extensive booklets of photos and notes. “I’ll Meet You On That Other Shore” is released 12/28/2011. “I’ll Meet You On That Other Shore” features John Davis and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Tidewater Virginia’s Union Choir of the Church of God and Saints of Christ, Old Regular Baptist lining hymns from Eastern Kentucky, Ozark balladeer Neal Morris, work songs from Parchman Farm (the Mississippi State Penitentiary), octogenarian Charles Barnett on vocal and washtub, fiddler C...