Bman's Blues Report

This was my fifth Blues Cruise and this marks the third review of the LRBC I’ve done for Bman’s Blues Report .   I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve become a well-seasoned cruiser by now, or if it’s because I had some close friends join me on this cruise, or if the music was any better, or if the islands were more friendly, but this was the best Blues Cruise yet for me! If you haven’t heard me say it before, I’ll start off with these words of wisdom.   A Blues Cruise vacation is exactly what you make it. You don’t even have to be a fan of blues music to have the time of your life, but it helps!   You can listen to as much music as you want starting as early as 10:30AM and going non-stop somewhere on the ship until 6:00AM.   One night I wandered into the Crows Nest at 5:00AM and listened to JP Soars jam until 5:30AM when they finally called it a night… except for one thing, it was already 6:30AM because we had crossed from the Eastern time zone to the Atlanti...

When we hit St. Croix, USVI, it was just in time for the St. Croix Blues Festival. This festival began at noon and was spread out across various bars all afternoon culminating in a huge gathering at the Verne I. Richards Memorial Park stage in Frederiksted at dusk where the featured artists were Coco Montoya, Shemekia Copeland, and the Low Rider Band (formerly known as WAR... the band can't legally market themselves as WAR, but I can say that). After a hike of 1.25 miles through "the jungle," as my wife called it, I hit a place ca lled Rhythms At Rainbow Beach. They had a local band called the St. Croix Blues Society playing. These guys jammed and played well beyond the 12-3 time frame. I ended up here due to a prior commitment to deliver some Tom Jenkins BBQ Sauce down from Ft. Lauderdale to the keyboard player of the St. Croix Blues Society, Tom Eimer. And what I discovered at Rhythms is that Harry Nilsson was right. You put de lime in de coconut and drink em bot togett...

James "Super Chikan" Johnson (born February 16, 1951, Darling, Mississippi) is an American blues musician, based in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He is the nephew of fellow blues musician Big Jack Johnson. One commentator noted that Super Chikan, along with Big Jack Johnson, Booba Barnes, R. L. Burnside, and Paul "Wine" Jones were "present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues soundSuper Chikan goes one step further to show that it's in the hands...as he plays a guitar made from a shotgun. Delta Bluesman, Super Chikan, plays one of his unique creations during the , 2011 Juke Joint Festival, Clarksdale Mississippi (at Ground Zero Club). Write on our Facebook Wall or post your Photos of great blues events! -  Here

James "Super Chikan" Johnson is a Blues Music Award winning American blues musician, artist and guitar maker based in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He is the nephew of fellow blues musician Big Jack Johnson. James Louis Johnson was born in Darling, Mississippi on February 16, 1951. He spent his childhood moving from town to town in the Mississippi Delta and working on his family's farms. He was very fond of the chickens on the farm, and before he was old enough to work in the fields, he would walk around talking to them. This led his friends to give him the nickname "Chikan Boy". At an early age, Johnson got his first rudimentary musical instrument, a "diddley bow", which was simply a piece of wood with a piece of baling wire stretched from end to end. As he grew up, he came up with new ways to improve and vary the sounds he could make with it, and finally, in 1964, at the age of thirteen, he bought his first guitar, an acoustic model that had only two stri...

A film documentary about the blues. Clarksdale Mississippi to Memphis Tennessee. Although not new, a new one on the list for me to watch! Features Morgan Freeman, Bill Luckett, Jimbo Mathus, Scott Bomar, James Montgomery, Chris Cotton, Ruby Wilson, Super Chikan, Grace Kelly, Pinetop Perkins, Honeyboy Edwards and others. Get Facebook support for your favorite band or venue - click HERE

The cigar box guitar is a primitive chordophone whose resonator is a discarded cigar box. Because the instrument is homemade, there is no standard for dimensions, string types or construction techniques. Many early cigar box guitars consisted of only one or two strings that were attached to the ends of a broomstick that was inserted into the cigar box. Other cigar box guitars were more complex, with the builder attempting to simulate a traditional string instrument such as a guitar, banjo, or fiddle. Cigars were packed in boxes, crates, and barrels as early as 1800, but the small sized boxes that we are familiar with today did not exist prior to around 1840.[1] Until then, cigars were shipped in larger crates containing 100 or more per case. After 1840, cigar manufacturers started using smaller, more portable boxes with 20-50 cigars per box. Trace evidence of cigar box instruments exist from 1840 to the 1860s. The earliest illustrated proof of a cigar box instrument known is an etching...

James "Super Chikan" Johnson is a Blues Music Award winning American blues musician, artist and guitar maker based in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He is the nephew of fellow blues musician Big Jack Johnson. James Louis Johnson was born in Darling, Mississippi on February 16, 1951. He spent his childhood moving from town to town in the Mississippi Delta and working on his family's farms. He was very fond of the chickens on the farm, and before he was old enough to work in the fields, he would walk around talking to them. This led his friends to give him the nickname "Chikan Boy". At an early age, Johnson got his first rudimentary musical instrument, a "diddley bow", which was simply a piece of wood with a piece of baling wire stretched from end to end. As he grew up, he came up with new ways to improve and vary the sounds he could make with it, and finally, in 1964, at the age of thirteen, he bought his first guitar, an acoustic model that had only two stri...

Photo of Blues Ace and Super Chikan on the Blues Cruise last year. This video features Super Chikan on Cigar Box Guitar. He spent his childhood moving from town to town in the Mississippi Delta and working on his family's farms. He was very fond of the chickens on the farm, and before he was old enough to work in the fields, he would walk around talking to them. This led his friends to give him the nickname "Chikan Boy". At an early age, Johnson got his first rudimentary musical instrument, a "diddley bow", which was simply a piece of wood with a piece of baling wire stretched from end to end. As he grew up, he came up with new ways to improve and vary the sounds he could make with it, and finally, in 1964, at the age of thirteen, he bought his first guitar, an acoustic model that had only two strings, from a Salvation Army store in Clarksdale. As an adult, Super Chikan began driving a truck for a living. During the long stretches on the road, he began composing...