Bman's Blues Report

James "Son" Thomas (1926-1993)was one of the great Delta blues musicians, as well as a self-taught sculptor. Born in Eden, Mississippi, he was taught to play guitar by his uncle and grandfather, but began to play seriously only after reaching the age of fifty. Soon afterward, Thomas' bottle-neck blues style was enthusiastically received all over the world. Thomas worked for a while as a grave digger and this profession most certainly stimulated his creation of clay caskets and skulls with human teeth. He said he made his first skull as a little boy to scare his grandfather who was afraid of ghosts. Thomas' music and sculpture were first documented by William Ferris, a folklorist and Director for the Study of Southern Culture in Oxford, Mississippi. In 1981, Thomas' work was included in the "Black Folk Art" show at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

Jesse Fuller (March 12, 1896 — January 29, 1976) was an American one-man band musician, best known for his song "San Francisco Bay Blues". His nickname was "Lone Cat." Starting locally, in clubs and bars in San Francisco and across the bay in Oakland and Berkeley, Fuller became more widely known when he performed on television in both the Bay Area and Los Angeles, and in 1958 his recording career started with his first album on the Good Time Jazz record label. Fuller's instruments included 12-string guitar, harmonica, kazoo, cymbal (high-hat) and fotdella, several of which could be played simultaneously, particularly with the use of a head-piece to hold the harmonica and kazoo, often at the same time. No discussion of Fuller would be complete without devoting some attention to the fotdella. This is an instrument entirely of Fuller's creation and construction. Keeping in mind that he was a one-man band, the problem was how to supply a more substantial accompa...

Mance Lipscomb (April 9, 1895 – January 30, 1976) was an influential blues singer, guitarist and songster. Born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas, he as a youth took the name of 'Mance' from a friend of his oldest brother Charlie (Mance short for emancipation). Lipscomb was born April 9, 1895 to an ex-slave father from Alabama and a half Native American (Choctaw) mother. Lipscomb spent most of his life working as a tenant farmer in Texas and was "discovered" and recorded by Mack McCormick and Chris Strachwitz in 1960 during the country blues revival. He released many albums of blues, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley and folk music (most of them on Strachwitz' Arhoolie label[1]), singing and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. He had a fine finger-picking guitar technique, and an expressive voice well suited to his material. Lipscomb often honed his skills by playing in nearby Brenham, Texas, with a blind musician, Sam Porter Norman. His debut release, Texas So...

Born Booker T. Washington White between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, he gave his cousin B.B. King, a Stella guitar, King's first guitar. White himself is remembered as a player of National steel guitars. He also played, but was less adept at, the piano. White started his career playing the fiddle at square dances. He claims to have met Charlie Patton early on, although some doubt has been cast upon this; Regardless, Patton was a large influence on White. White typically played slide guitar, in an open tuning. He was one of the few, along with Skip James, to use a crossnote tuning in E minor, which he may have learned, as James did, from Henry Stuckey. He first recorded for the Victor Records label in 1930. His recordings for Victor, like those of many other bluesmen, fluctuated between country blues and gospel numbers. His gospel songs were done in the style of Blind Willie Johnson, with a female singer accentuating the last phrase of each line. Nine years later, whil...

Big Bill Broonzy (26 June 1898 – 15 August 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century. Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten (January 5, 1895 – June 29, 1987) was an American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter. A self-taught left-handed guitarist, Cotten developed her own original style. Her approach involved using a right-handed guitar (usually in standard tuning), not re-strung for left-handed playing, essentially, holding a right-handed guitar upside down. This position required her to play the bass lines with her fingers and the melody with her thumb. Her signature alternating bass style has become known as "Cotten picking". Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

Roosevelt Sykes (January 31, 1906 – July 17, 1983) was an American blues musician also known as "The Honeydripper". He was a successful and prolific cigar-chomping blues piano player whose rollicking thundering boogie was highly influential. Born in Elmar, Arkansas, Sykes grew up near Helena but at age 15, went on the road playing piano with a barrelhouse style of blues. Like many bluesmen of his time, he travelled around playing to all-male audiences in sawmill, turpentine and levee camps along the Mississippi River, gathering a repertoire of raw, sexually explicit material. His wanderings eventually brought him to St. Louis, Missouri, where he met St. Louis Jimmy Oden. In 1929 he was spotted by a talent scout and sent to New York to record for Okeh Records. His first release was "'44' Blues" which became a blues standard and his trademark. He quickly began recording for multiple labels under various names including 'Easy Papa Johnson', 'Dobby B...

Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 – July 3, 1972) known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell , was a blues singer and guitar player in the North Mississippi style.McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee, near Memphis. His parents, who were farmers, died when McDowell was a youth. He started playing guitar at the age of 14 and played at dances around Rossville. Wanting a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926 where he started to work in the Buck-Eye feed mill where they processed cotton into oil and other products.He also had a number of other jobs and played music for tips. Later in 1928 he moved south into Mississippi to pick cotton. He settled in Como, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1940 or 1941, and worked steadily as a farmer, continuing to perform music at dances and picnics. Initially he played slide guitar using a pocket knife and then a slide made from a beef rib bone, later switching to a glass slide for its clearer sound. He played...

Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982), billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded such songs as "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama" for a variety of record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. Williams was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. Blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) attempted to document the gritty intensity of the Big Joe persona in this description: When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. ...

Born Booker T. Washington White between Aberdeen and Houston, Mississippi, he gave his cousin B.B. King, a Stella guitar, King's first guitar. White himself is remembered as a player of National steel guitars. He also played, but was less adept at, the piano. White started his career playing the fiddle at square dances. He claims to have met Charlie Patton early on, although some doubt has been cast upon this; Regardless, Patton was a large influence on White. White typically played slide guitar, in an open tuning. He was one of the few, along with Skip James, to use a crossnote tuning in E minor, which he may have learned, as James did, from Henry Stuckey. He first recorded for the Victor Records label in 1930. His recordings for Victor, like those of many other bluesmen, fluctuated between country blues and gospel numbers. His gospel songs were done in the style of Blind Willie Johnson, with a female singer accentuating the last phrase of each line. Nine years later, while...

If you watched the movie "the Jerk" and wondered who the musicians were when all the family was sitting around singing ... that Was Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Here's a short little song by them that shows their ongoing talents at their instruments in the traditional blues style. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

I saw this Leon Russell special on PBS may years ago and Furry lewis was featured on it. He demonstrates some of that famous "John Lee Hooker" timing for his singing. Walter E. Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, but his family moved to Memphis when he was aged seven. Lewis acquired the nickname "Furry" from childhood playmates. By 1908, he was playing solo for parties, in taverns, and on the street. He also was invited to play several dates with W. C. Handy's Orchestra. His travels exposed him to a wide variety of performers including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Alger "Texas" Alexander. Like his contemporary Frank Stokes, he tired of the road and took a permanent job in 1922. His position as a street sweeper for the City of Memphis, a job he would hold until his retirement in 1966, allowed him to remain active in the Memphis music scene. In 1927, Lewis cut his first records in Chicago for the Vocalion label. A year later he recorded...

This is the great John Lee Hooker. Hooker has always been one of my favorite blues singers and guitar players. The main reason is because he sings it with no polish and no pretense. If you watch him try to play with a band, they try to squeeze him into 8 bars or 12 bars. John Lee plays to his own time. The band always has to adapt to his shortening of the "traditional" phasing. His voice is humble and cutting and honest. It's refreshing. It's a shame that he had to be put with so many current day blues players to get his due. I'm glad that he did. But people who saw only that or heard only that style of Hooker, never understood where he was coming from. This is the real deal. Enjoy Oh yeah..by the way... don't have to have a fancy guitar to play the blues...looks like a Kay copy he's got there just adding to his persona. He's posing with a Les Paul in the photo... but I really only saw him with thin hollow body guitars. Get Facebook support for your fa...

This is one of the unsung great blues players. He never had the notoriety of Muddy or BB or Freddy or Albert. But Lightnin was the real deal. It's my pleasure to put him up here on the board today for all to enjoy. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

One of the great fingerstyle players of the old blues. It's great to have some of these old videos as crude as they may be. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

The blues is a way of life. The blues is an outlet for emotion. The blues is experiencing someones life ... the turmoil... the strife... actual feelings. But who knows why, it makes you smile. It's happiness, it's sorrow, its a lot of things... it's the expression of emotion in one note of a song or the story that is told that just gets you. It isn't always fast, it isn't always slow it doesn't always swing. I'm just glad that it is. This is a good intro to the blues... can't think of a better place to start. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE