Bman's Blues Report

I just received the newest release, A Tribute To Little Johnny Taylor by Jimmy Wolf and it's a great showcase not only of Taylors music but Wolf's excellent guitar work. Opening with Walking The Floor , a standard 12 bar, Wolf plays some sweet riffs but never overplays giving the music the opportunity to breathe. One of my personal favorites, Somebody's Got To Pay , is up next and Wolf digs deep to find the right voice for such a deep track. Wolf has excellent backing on this release including Thomas "T.C." Carter on bass, Joe "Lawd Deez" Cummings on keys and Stephen "Rhythmcnasty" Bender on drums. Wolf rips a hole in this track with some voracious guitar riffs... out of control! Carter lays down some real funk for Hard Head and Bender is certainly up to the task. Wolf again lets it rip and he really plays fearlessly. Don't see that often and I like it! Everybody Knows About My Good Thing is another stellar song and Wolf's voice hits...

Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910 – January 10, 1976), known as Howlin' Wolf, was an influential American blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player. He was born in West Point, Mississippi in an area now known as White Station. With a booming voice and looming physical presence, Burnett is commonly ranked among the leading performers in electric blues; musician and critic Cub Koda declared, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." A number of songs written or popularized by Burnett—such as "Smokestack Lightnin'", "Back Door Man", "Killing Floor" and "Spoonful"—have become blues and blues rock standards. At 6 feet, 3 inches and close to 300 pounds , he was an imposing presence with one of the loudest and most memorable voices of all the "classic" 1950s Chicago blues singers. This rough-edg...

On Tuesday, December 13th, the legendary Hubert Sumlin was buried at Washington Memory Gardens in the Chicago suburb of Homewood, IL. He was laid to rest next to the grave site of his late wife per his wishes (thank you Toni Ann Mamary and  Sam Burckhardt for making sure this happened). Later that night a major tribute happened at FitzGerald's in Berwyn, IL, a suburb just west of Chicago. Bob Margolin and I were the show coordinators for the night. The old school of Chicago blues came out in full force and were joined by some of the newer faces of traditional blues. Everyone was there to honor Hubert. The house band was Bob Margolin , Little Frank , Bob Stroger , Kenny Smith and Jimmy Mayes, and myself. Some of the many spectacular artists who appeared that night (I will miss some names -sorry in advance) were Eddie Shaw , Gary Martin (Hubert's nephew), Tail Dragger , Mary Lane , Billy Flynn , Scott Dirks , Rodney Brow...

OMAR DYKES' RUNNIN' WITH THE WOLF TO BE RELEASED ON JULY 9 VIA MASCOT LABEL GROUP'S PROVOGUE RECORDS New York --- The Mascot Label Group has announced a July 9 release date for Omar Dykes' Runnin' With The Wolf via the company's Provogue Records.  Dykes, and his dynamic Austin-based ensemble, has recorded 14 classics immortalized by Howlin' Wolf alongside an original that is the title track.  The band leader shares, "I do my little versions of the songs.  If Howlin’ Wolf was a 500-pound steel anvil, then I’m a little piece of steel wool that fell out of the pack.” Dykes has been making swaggering, celebratory electric blues rock out of  America’s live music Mecca, Austin, Texas since 1976.  He was born from the Blues rich heritage of McComb, Mississippi in 1950, and formed the band Omar & the Howlers in 1978.  He enjoys a worldwide following that stretches both coast to coast in North America, and across the European ...

Louisiana-based pianist and singer Henry Gray has a career in American roots music that goes back more than 60 years. Gray was born January 19, 1925, in Kenner, LA, now a suburb of New Orleans. He grew up in Alsen, LA, a few miles north of Baton Rouge. Henry began playing piano as an eight-year-old, and he learned from the radio, recordings, and Mrs. White, an elderly woman in his neighborhood. As a youngster, he began playing piano and organ in the local church, and his family eventually got a piano for the house. While blues playing was not allowed in his parents' home, Henry was encouraged to play blues at Mrs. White's house, and by the time he was 16 he was asked to play at a club near the family home in Alsen. After he told his father, his father insisted on going with him, and once he saw that little Henry made decent money playing blues, he had no ethical or moral problems with his son playing blues piano. After a stint in the Army in the South Pacific in World War II,...

The son of sharecroppers, Jimmy Anderson was born in 1934 and began playing harmonica at the age of 8. He mastered the instrument with ease, entertaining customers at a friends snowball wagon. “That’s how I started off. There was blues in Natchez at the Cross Key Club, that’s about it,” he said. “No big names travelled through but they did have a band by the name of Earl Lee. They had horns, and played mostly jazz and blues together. “Then I was inspired by Jimmy Reed. I tried to sound like him. I learned the low parts of the harmonica and the ‘squeal’ as they call it. “ Back then we didn’t have TV and the local radio didn’t play the blues. At night I would listen to WDIA out of Memphis and they would play all the old blues by Smokey Hogg, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’Slim, Howlin’Wolf, all sorts of music like that. “We’d get around the radio just like the kids do around the TV today. There was no electricity and the radio was battery operated” Jimmy Anderson moved to Baton Rouge at ...

Listen to the music: when he sings, Willie Kent’s voice blazes out from the heart of the blues. Below the singing, you hear his bass guitar, flawless and rich. Between these two runs the music, a deep, honest blues that flowed from rural Mississippi to urban Chicago and remembers everything it learned along the way. Willie Kent was born in 1936 in the small town of Inverness, Mississippi, just a hundred miles south of the border with Tennessee, and the blues ran all through his childhood. His first experience singing came in church, where he went "all the time" with his mother and brother. "Blues and gospel come from the same place," he would say later in life. "They're both from the heart." But the blues always called to him. Dewitt Munson, a neighbor wending homeward late nights with a guitar in his hand and a bottle in his pocket, would stop a while at the Kent porch to rest, letting the young Willie hold his guitar while he told stories. Through r...

If I had to describe Nora Jean Wallace in one word, that would be an easy task: Nora Jean is all about love. When asked why she sings the blues, she used the word love three times … in two sentences! “I love to share the love God put in me … I love to express my story in [the] songs of my life.” And when asked why she recorded Good Blues, her new CD, there was that word again: “I put in my songs what is inside of me: love.” And while Nora Jean made it easy for me to sum her up in one word, I’m grateful that I get to use a few more of them here to share her fascinating life story with you. Once you walk the path she’s traveled in this world, you’ll know exactly where her blues come from, not to mention all that love. You could say that Nora Jean Wallace was born to sing the blues. The seventh child of a Mississippi sharecropper, she grew up in the Delta with her 15 brothers and sisters on the 11,000-acre Equen Plantation, located halfway between Clarksdale and Greenwood, the to...

When it comes to Americana Roots Music and especially the Blues, the late great Stephen Bruton knew what he was talking about. Those who knew him knew that he always got to the point. His description of his long time friend and musical comrade in arms is succinct and quite a heady compliment, but then, Johnny Nicholas is an amazing talent. For four decades Johnny’s consummate musicianship and vocal skills have graced live music scenes across the country and abroad. He has toured, performed and recorded with many true blues and Americana Roots Music legends including: Mississippi Fred McDowell, Robert Lockwood Jr., Johnny Shines, Big Walter Horton, Roosevelt Sykes, Nathan Abshire, Robert Pete Williams, Eddie Taylor, Billy Boy Arnold, Hound Dog Taylor, Johnny Young, Houston Stackhouse, and Boogie Woogie Red. He recorded and toured with Johnny Shines and Snooky Pryor, producing and playing guitar on their W.C. Handy Award-winning album Back to the Country. He was a lead vocalist and multi...

“Tracy Nelson isn’t so much a singer as she is a force field — a blues practitioner of tremendous vocal power and emotional range.” - Alanna Nash, Entertainment Weekly “ . . . a bad white girl . . .” —Etta James, from her autobiography, Rage To Live She has one of the signature voices of her generation. That natural gift has always guided Tracy Nelson’s soul; indeed allowed her to both write and seek out the deeper songs regardless of niche or genre. A fierce singer of truth, a fountain of the deepest heartache, she is an ultimate communicator and has regularly destroyed audiences across decades of performing. She is one of the few female singers who has had hit records in both blues and country genres, performing with everyone from Muddy Waters to Willie Nelson to Marcia Ball and Irma Thomas, with Grammy® nominations for both her country and blues efforts. John Swenson, writing in Rolling Stone, asserted, “Tracy Nelson proves that the human voice is the most expressive instrument...

JAMES YANCY JONES, known as THE TAIL DRAGGER, is a long-time disciple of Howlin' Wolf; in fact, the Wolf gave James the moniker "Tail Dragger" emanating from one of the Wolf's now-classic songs. The Tail Dragger followed Wolf from club- to-club, watching and getting pointers from the larger-then-life Howlin' Wolf for more than 20 years. The Wolf allowed "The Dragger" to perform his blues while Wolf took a break on weekend shows. Soon "The Dragger" was playing his own numerous club dates on the West and South Sides of Chicago. TAIL DRAGGER is from Altheimer, Arkansas and during his formative years he saw Sonny Boy Williamson and Boyd Gilmore perform at house parties and country suppers. Dragger soon heard the records of Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters and Elmore James and his musical tastes were set in stone. Tail Dragger remains intensely loyal to his early influences. The Tail Dragger, by his own admission, sings only lowdown blues. "Lowdown blu...

Heralded Austin Musician Johnny Nicholas Brings a Breath of Fresh Air with New Blues/Roots CD Coming September 2 AUSTIN, TX – Acclaimed roots musician Johnny Nicholas has announced a September 2 release date for his new CD, Fresh Air , which showcases his multiple talents on various guitars and soulful vocals for an album surely to be one of the best musical revelations of the year. Watch the Johnny Nicholas video that includes musical excerpts from the Fresh Air album: Fresh Air was produced by Bruce Hughes and recorded at Arlyn Studios in Austin. Featuring an all-star cast that includes Scrappy Jud Newcomb (guitars, mandolin, mandocello), John Chipman (drums, percussion, vocals) and Bruce Hughes (bass, vocals, percussion), plus a guest list that includes Cindy Cashdollar (lap steel and additional guitars), the new CD creates a satisfying statement of true American roots music at its finest and most authentic. “ Fresh Air is a collection of ...