Bman's Blues Report

I just received the newest release, Snake Box , from Harvey Mandel and it's very adventurous. For those of you unfamiliar with Mandel's work, he played with Charlie Musselwhite, Canned Heat, John Mayall, Rolling Stones, Love and the Ventures. This 6 disc set, 5 studio releases packaged in original covers and one live jam set make up a good cross section of Mandel's early work. Also in the box are 4 pages of liner notes, poster photos and track info. Disc One, Cristo Redentor was released in 1968 and shows a strong slice of the musical experimentation that was happening at the time. Before Six with it's Latin rhythm and horns is not unlike things that Butterfield was experimenting with. Musselwhite adds his distinctive harp tones on the Lark . The Snake has a lot of the sounds that you would expect from a San Francisco band of the late 60's. Long Wait shows true signs of blues roots with interesting interweaving of guitar, keys and percussion. A long experime...

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician who was best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead. Though he disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group. One of its founders, Garcia performed with the Grateful Dead for their entire three-decade career (1965–1995). Garcia also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Saunders-Garcia Band (with longtime friend Merl Saunders), Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, Legion of Mary, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage (which Garcia co-founded with John Dawson and David Nelson). He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician. He was well known by many for his distinctive guitar playing and was ranked 13th in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest ...

John Kahn (June 13, 1947 - May 30, 1996) was an American rock bass player. For a period of about twenty five years Kahn was Jerry Garcia's principal collaborator outside of the Grateful Dead. John Kahn was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Adopted at birth by the Kahn family, he grew up in Beverly Hills, California. At Beverly Hills High School, he earned a reputation as a precocious musician playing jazz guitar and composing a symphonic piece, "Western Impressions", the first orchestral work by a student to be publicly performed by the high school orchestra under the direction of Robert Holmes. In his junior year at high school, Kahn switched to acoustic bass and formed a jazz duo with a pianist, Peter Isackson, who encouraged him to study with Monty Budwig, a member of the house rhythm section at Shelly's Manne-hole. Kahn moved to Sausalito, California in 1965, where he began gravitating towards the rock culture that was in full bloom at the very time that Haight Ashbury ...