Ora Nelle Blues - LITTLE WALTER

Little Walter, born Marion Walter Jacobs (May 1, 1930 – February 15, 1968), was an American blues harmonica player, whose revolutionary approach to his instrument has earned him comparisons to Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations. His virtuosity and musical innovations fundamentally altered many listeners' expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica. Little Walter was inducted to the The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 in the "sideman" category making him the first and only artist ever to be inducted specifically for his work as a harmonica player. Jacobs was born in Marksville, Louisiana and raised in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he first learned to play the harmonica. After quitting school by the age of 12, Jacobs left rural Louisiana and traveled around working odd jobs and busking on the streets of New Orleans, Memphis, Helena, Arkansas and St. Louis. He honed his musical skills on harmonica and guitar performing with much older bluesmen such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards and others. Arriving in Chicago in 1945, he occasionally found work as a guitarist but garnered more attention for his already highly developed harmonica work. According to fellow Chicago bluesman Floyd Jones, Little Walter's first recording was an unreleased demo recorded soon after he arrived in Chicago on which Walter played guitar backing Jones. Jacobs reportedly grew frustrated with having his harmonica drowned out by electric guitarists, and adopted a simple, but previously little-used method: He cupped a small microphone in his hands along with his harmonica, and plugged the microphone into a public address system or guitar amplifier. He could thus compete with any guitarist's volume. However, unlike other contemporary blues harp players such as Sonny Boy Williamson I and Snooky Pryor, who like many other harmonica players had also begun using the newly available amplifier technology around the same time solely for added volume, Little Walter purposely pushed his amplifiers beyond their intended technical limitations, using the amplification to explore and develop radical new timbres and sonic effects previously unheard from a harmonica, or any other instrument. Madison Deniro wrote a small biographical piece on Little Walter stating that "He was the first musician of any kind to purposely use electronic distortion. Jacobs made his first released recordings in 1947 for Bernard Abrams' tiny Ora-Nelle label, which operated out of the back room of Abrams' Maxwell Radio and Records store in the heart of the Maxwell Street market area in Chicago. These and several other early Little Walter recordings, like many blues harp recordings of the era, owed a strong stylistic debt to pioneering blues harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson I (John Lee Williamson). Little Walter joined Muddy Waters' band in 1948, and by 1950, he was playing acoustic (unamplified) harmonica on Muddy's recordings for Chess Records. The first appearance on record of amplified harmonica was Little Walter's performance on Muddy's "Country Boy" (Chess 1452), recorded on July 11, 1951. For years after his departure from Muddy's band in 1952, Little Walter continued to be brought in to play on his recording sessions, and as a result his harmonica is featured on most of Muddy's classic recordings from the 1950s. As a guitarist, Little Walter recorded three songs for the small Parkway label with Muddy Waters and Baby Face Leroy Foster (reissued on CD as "The Blues World of Little Walter" from Delmark Records in 1993), as well as on a session for Chess backing pianist Eddie Ware; his guitar work was also featured occasionally on early Chess sessions with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers. Jacobs had put his career as a bandleader on hold when he joined Muddy's band, but stepped back out front once and for all when he recorded as a bandleader for Chess's subsidiary label Checker Records on 12 May 1952. The first completed take of the first song attempted at his debut session became his first hit, spending eight weeks in the number-one position on the Billboard R&B chart – the song was "Juke", and it is still the only harmonica instrumental ever to become a number-one hit on the Billboard R&B. (Three other harmonica instrumentals by Little Walter also reached the Billboard R&B top 10: "Off the Wall" reached number eight, "Roller Coaster" achieved number six, and "Sad Hours" reached the number-two position while Juke was still on the charts.) "Juke" was the biggest hit to date for Chess and its affiliated labels, and one of the biggest national R&B hits of 1952, securing Walter's position on the Chess artist roster for the next decade. Little Walter scored fourteen top-ten hits on the Billboard R&B charts between 1952 and 1958, including two number-one hits (the second being "My Babe" in 1955), a level of commercial success never achieved by his former boss Waters, nor by his fellow Chess blues artists Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson II. Following the pattern of "Juke", most of Little Walter's single releases in the 1950s featured a vocal performance on one side, and a harmonica instrumental on the other. Many of Walter's vocal numbers were originals which he or Chess A&R man Willie Dixon wrote or adapted and updated from earlier blues themes. In general, his sound was more modern and uptempo than the popular Chicago blues of the day, with a jazzier conception and less rhythmically rigid approach than other contemporary blues harmonica players. Upon his departure from Muddy Waters' band in 1952, he recruited a young band that was already working steadily in Chicago backing Junior Wells, The Aces, as his new backing band. The Aces consisted of brothers David Myers and Louis Myers on guitars, and drummer Fred Below, and were re-christened "The Jukes" on most of the Little Walter records on which they appeared. By 1955 the members of The Aces / Jukes had each left Little Walter to pursue other opportunities, initially replaced by guitarists Robert "Junior" Lockwood and Luther Tucker, and drummer Odie Payne. Jr. Others who worked in Little Walter's recording and touring bands in the '50s included guitarists Jimmie Lee Robinson and Freddie Robinson. Little Walter also occasionally included saxophone players in his touring bands during this period, among them a young Albert Ayler, and even Ray Charles on one early tour. By the late 1950s, Little Walter no longer employed a regular full-time band, instead hiring various players as needed from the large pool of local blues musicians in Chicago. Jacobs was frequently utilized on records as a harmonica accompanist behind others in the Chess stable of artists, including Jimmy Rogers, John Brim, Rocky Fuller, Memphis Minnie, The Coronets, Johnny Shines, Floyd Jones, Bo Diddley, and Shel Silverstein, and on other record labels backing Otis Rush, Johnny Young, and Robert Nighthawk.[ Jacobs suffered from alcoholism and had a notoriously short temper, which in late 1950s led to a series of violent altercations, minor scrapes with the law, and increasingly irresponsible behavior. This led to a decline in his fame and fortunes beginning in the late 1950s, although he did tour Europe twice, in 1964 and 1967. (The long-circulated story that he toured the United Kingdom with The Rolling Stones in 1964 has since been refuted by Keith Richards). The 1967 European tour, as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, resulted in the only film/video footage of Little Walter performing that is known to exist. Footage of Little Walter backing Hound Dog Taylor and Koko Taylor on a television program in Copenhagen, Denmark on 11 October 1967 was released on DVD in 2004. Further video of another recently discovered TV appearance in Germany during this same tour, showing Little Walter performing his songs "My Babe", "Mean Old World", and others were released on DVD in Europe in January 2009, and is the only known footage of Little Walter singing. Other TV appearances in the UK (in 1964) and the Netherlands (in 1967) have been documented, but no footage of these has been uncovered. Jacobs recorded and toured only infrequently in the 1960s, playing mainly in and around Chicago. In 1967 Chess released a studio album featuring Little Walter with Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters titled Super Blues. A few months after returning from his second European tour, he was involved in a fight while taking a break from a performance at a nightclub on the South Side of Chicago. The relatively minor injuries sustained in this altercation aggravated and compounded damage he had suffered in previous violent encounters, and he died in his sleep at the apartment of a girlfriend at 209 E. 54th St. in Chicago early the following morning. The official cause of death indicated on his death certificate was "coronary thrombosis" (a blood clot in the heart); evidence of external injuries was so insignificant that police reported that his death was of "unknown or natural causes", and there were no external injuries noted on the death certificate. His body was buried at St. Mary's Cemetery in Evergreen Park, IL on February 22, 1968. His grave remained unmarked until 1991, when fans Scott Dirks and Eomot Rasun had a marker designed and installed. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Hoochie Coochie Man - Vinir Dóra And Chicago Beau

CHICAGO BEAU Bandleader, Vocal, Harmonica, Percussion, Author

Chicago Beau (L Beauchamp), was born on the south-side of Chicago on 13 February 1949, into a house of music. The recordings of Dinah Washington, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, Billy Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and others inundated his senses from the beginning. From the age of 10 until 15, Beau studied tap-dancing with the great Afro-Cuban dancer and choreographer, Jimmy Payne. He participated in many Cabaret-type shows that were popular during that era. A show could consist of performances by Afro-Cuban dancers, magicians, tap dancers, Jazz and Blues performers, and drill teams. These shows gave young people the opportunity to participate with professionals in a community setting. There was little distinction in the taste of the audience, people of all ages appreciated the same talent. Beau was becoming quite a tap-dancer (sometimes still used in his shows), but it was the Blues and Jazz elements of these shows that really held his interest. He became so interested in Blues that he began sneaking around to Blues clubs after school to listen to Blues bands rehearse. On famous 47th street, he would slip into the 708 Club which sizzled at night with artists like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Mama Thornton, Little Walter, and Billy Boy Arnold. Up the street from there was the Sutherland Lounge which featured Jazz and Blues acts as Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Williams, Esther Philips, Von Freeman, E Parker McDougal, Louis Armstrong, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillispie, Chico Hamilton, Philly Joe Jones, and nearly everyone that had a name. Little did Beau know at the time that some of these performers he watched and listened would have a permanent impact on his life: Billy Boy Arnold gave him harmonica lessons (they later recorded together), and Muddy Waters gave him his name, ‘Chicago Beau.’ After spending three years from the age of 17 playing harmonica and singing in small clubs, mining and logging camps, and on street corners from Chicago, to Boston, to Nova Scotia, to Amsterdam, he moved to Paris where he met, performed and recorded with Archie Shepp in August, 1969, at age 20. Beau considers the first recording with Shepp to be the beginning of his professional career. For over 30 years Chicago Beau has recorded and performed with some of the most respected names in music including Memphis Slim, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Cal Massey, Anthony Braxton, Sunny Maurry, Pinetop Perkins, Anthony Braxton, Jimmy Dawkins, Johnny Shines, Billy Boy Arnold, Fontella Bass, Habib Koite, James Carter, Lester Bowie, Philly Joe Jones, Famoudou Don Moye, Jeanne Lee, Willie Kent, E. Parker McDougal, Amina Claudine Meyers, Zulu Chorus of Soweto, Frank Zappa, Sunnyland Slim, and others. Chicago Beau has received the CLIO award, the American advertising industry’s highest honor, for his music which was used in the 1991-92 National Basketball Association Champions, Chicago Bulls, cable television campaign. Chicago Beau is committed to the literary side culture. In 1988 he founded Literati Internazionale, a publishing company dedicated to multi-culturalism. To date his company has published over ten journals, books, and magazines. As a writer, Chicago Beau has written numerous articles and two books, Great Black Music-The Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Blues Stories. He was working with trumpeter Lester Bowie on his Autobiography at the time of his death. Excerpts from this work will be published soon. Chicago Beau also lectures in Universities, Schools, and music festivals on the topics: The Evolution of Blues as Language and Literature,’ and ‘History of Music Along the Mississippi River.’ Beau is currently touring with his BLUZ-MULTI-GROOVE BAND: CHICAGO BEAU AND HIS WONDERFUL TIME BAND If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

Time For A Change - Jody Williams

photo credit: Dan Machnik

Joseph Leon Williams (born February 3, 1935), better known as Jody Williams, is an American blues guitarist and singer. His singular guitar playing, marked by flamboyant string-bending, imaginative chord changes and a distinctive tone, was influential in the Chicago blues scene of the 1950s. In the mid 1950s, Williams was one of the most sought-after session guitarists in Chicago, yet he was little known outside the music industry since his name rarely appeared on discs. His acclaimed comeback in 2000 led to a resurgence of interest in Williams’ early work, and his reappraisal as one of the great blues guitarists Born in Mobile, Alabama, United States, Williams moved to Chicago at the age of five. His first instrument was the harmonica, which he swapped for the guitar after hearing Bo Diddley play at a talent show where they were both performing. Diddley, seven years his senior, took Williams under his wing and taught him the rudiments of guitar. By 1951 Williams and Diddley were playing on the street together, with Williams providing backing to Diddley's vocals, accompanied by Roosevelt Jackson on washtub bass. Williams cut his teeth gigging with a string of blues musicians, notably Memphis Minnie, Elmore James and Otis Spann. After touring with West Coast piano player Charles Brown, Williams established himself as a session player with Chess Records. At Chess, Williams met Howlin’ Wolf, recently arrived in Chicago from Memphis, Tennessee, and was hired by Wolf as the first guitarist in his new Chicago-based band. A year later Hubert Sumlin moved to Chicago to join Wolf's band, and the dual guitars of Williams and Sumlin are featured on Howlin’ Wolf’s 1954 singles, "Evil Is Going On", and "Forty Four", and on the 1955 releases, "Who Will Be Next" and "Come To Me Baby." Williams also provided backing on Otis Spann’s 1954 release, "It Must Have Been The Devil", that features lead guitar work from B. B. King, one of Williams’ early heroes and a big influence on his playing. Williams’ solo career began in December 1955 with the upbeat saxophone-driven "Lookin' For My Baby", released under the name Little Papa Joe on the Blue Lake label. The label closed a few months later, leaving his slide guitar performance on "Groaning My Blues Away" unreleased. By this time, Williams was highly sought after as a session guitarist, and his virtuosity in this capacity is well illustrated by his blistering lead guitar work on Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?", a hit for Checker Records in 1956. (Rock musician Marshall Crenshaw listed Williams' guitar solo on "Who Do You Love" as one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded.) Other notable session work from the 1950s include lead guitar parts on Billy Boy Arnold's "I Ain't Got You" and "I Wish You Would", Jimmy Rogers’ "One Kiss", Jimmy Witherspoon’s "Ain't Nobody's Business" and Otis Rush’s "Three Times A Fool". In 1957, Williams released "You May" on Argo Records, with the inventive b-side instrumental "Lucky Lou", the extraordinary opening riff of which Otis Rush copied on his 1958 Cobra Records side "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)". Further evidence of Williams’ influence on Rush (they played on a number of sessions together) is Rush’s solo on Buddy Guy’s 1958 debut, "Sit And Cry (The Blues)", copied almost exactly from Williams’ "You May" Only after his retirement did he consider picking up his guitar again, which had laid untouched under his bed all the while. "One day my wife said if I started playing again I might feel better about life in general," he told Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times. In March 2000, he went to see his old friend Robert Lockwood, Jr. play, and grew nostalgic for his music days. Back at home, an old tape of himself playing moved him to tears and inspired him to pick up his guitar again. He returned to playing in public in June 2000, when he was featured at a club gig during the 2000 Chicago Blues Festival. He gained much encouragement in this period from Dick Shurman, who eventually produced his comeback album, Return of a Legend (2002), on which his bold playing belies his thirty-year break from music. "He plays with a verve and vigor that sound as good today as it did on the classic records," wrote Vintage Guitar magazine. Williams continues to perform around the world, mainly at large blues festivals, and can often be seen sitting in with blues guitarist Billy Flynn at Chicago club appearances. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Stripper - Mr Nick & the Dirty Tricks

BLUES KINGPINS MR. NICK & the DIRTY TRICKS ARE READY TO BUST OUT BAD AND NATIONWIDE by Ted Drozdowski Nick David's harmonica playing has a swagger - developed over thousands of one-nighters from Massachusetts to Memphis and from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, and even across the pond to Europe. Or maybe it's a swing, or a little extra hip-shake, just like the grooves generated by the powerhouse band he's formed with four other kingpins of the New England blues scene: Mr. Nick & the Dirty Tricks. Mr. Nick & the Dirty Tricks unites veteran musicians Nick David (a.k.a. Mr. Nick), "Lonely" Gus Carlson, Teddy B. (Bukowski) and Rick Rousseau for one of the region's most formidable live outfits in any genre. But their hearts belong to blues. Real blues. They play elegant, stomping and swinging classics like Little Walter's "Mellow Down Easy," Howlin' Wolf's "300 Pounds of Joy" and Wynonie Harris' "Good Morning Judge." Their bag of originals is a mix of rhumbas, jump blues, and boogies they're developing for a debut album and currently taking to legions of fans in New England on their way to stages throughout the US and abroad. "This band is a killer outfit," says David. And that's the truth. Everything comes together when they play: their deep mutual understanding and knowledge of blues, their originality and depth as players, and the band's ability to put on a great show that brings people to their feet. It's a blend that wins new converts wherever they perform. "We all really dig being on stage making music together," David affirms. The audiences loves it, but we love it just as much." Mr. Nick & the Dirty Tricks came together just as David's previous band, the popular and critically acclaimed Mr. Nick's Blues Mafia, was busting up. That group, which was fueled by David's graceful tradition-shaded singing and unique harmonica style, had a great run. They recorded two full-length CDs and an EP. And the band had the lead track - "Look At That Cadillac" - on the well-received 2005 blues compilation Fins, Chrome and the Open Road: A Tribute to the Cadillac. That disc found the group alongside Kim Wilson, Little Milton, Charlie Musselwhite, Maria Muldaur and other blues legends. Over the course of their seven year history the Blues Mafia won the Boston Blues Challenge and was awarded the title of Boston's Best Blues Band. The group was also voted Blues Act of the Year by Jam Music Magazine and went on to compete in the prestigious International Blues Challenge in Memphis, where they were finalists in 2006. During that period Rousseau, David, Carlson, and B. became friends. They shared bills at festivals and sat in at each other's gigs, and along the way developed a mutual admiration based on their superb musicianship. "One of the amazing things about the Dirty Tricks is that Rick and Gus are also experienced frontmen," says David. "While I do most of the singing, make no mistake, either of those guys can handle the whole night on their own. Having two other great singers in the band opens up a lot more room for harmonies as well." Guitarslinger Carlson also led roadhouse heroes Lonely Gus and the One Night Stand. In the Dirty Tricks, his main job is blazing licks - like the gritty low-end picking that propels their percolating version of Jimmy McCracklin's "Georgia Slop" and the slicing arcs of bent notes and scalding bursts of melody that ripple through Lowell Fulson's "Tramp." Teddy B. primarily wields his 1950s upright Kay bass in the band, but also comes to gigs equipped with an assortment of vintage Fender electrics. He's played with soul greats Mighty Sam McClain and Toni Lynn Washington, as well as a host of New England blues artists including Cheryl Arena and K.D. Bell. As well as being a crack drummer, Rousseau also sings and writes. For more than a half-decade he fronted popular blues, rock, and roots band Rhumboogie. Together B. and Rousseau are a living history of blues rhythm, able to leap from gritty shuffles to up-tempo jump blues to swampy backwoods grooves from tune to tune. "Playing with these guys is one of the most rewarding musical experiences of my life," says David. The feeling's assuredly mutual. It's easy to buy a harmonica and work up a couple tunes, but it's hard to play one like a real instrument. And David is a self-taught virtuoso who - while digging on the sounds of James Cotton, Little Walter, Junior Wells, Paul Delay and many other blues harmonica masters - picked up the harp and developed a wildly percussive original style that dazzles audiences and makes his recordings instantly recognizable. Mr. Nick & the Dirty Tricks brings David's singing front and center. Unlike the Blues Mafia, which was an unabashed harmonica band, Nick scales back a bit on his honking and focuses more on his vocals. So David's vocal performances are more arcing and melismatic - perfect to handle the dramatic vocal range of Little Willie John's demanding "Shakin'." And his melodies are full of long-held relaxed notes punctuated by blunt phrases that underscore the lyrics of crowd-pleasing tunes like "Buzz Buzz Buzz." None of that gets in the way of his patented nasty harp blowing. In fact David expands his harmonica abilities. On several songs he expands and extends his harp talents to recreate horn lines. And David's increased use of chromatic harp along with Carlson's flexible guitar chops allow them to share the horn parts of beloved chestnuts like "300 Pounds of Joy" and "Good Morning Judge." "We're not a just-add-water blues band," says David. "Much of the music we do has complex arrangements and requires more forethought and preparation. We enjoy challenging ourselves. And that's another one of the many reasons why we love playing this music." If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

I'm King Bee - Johnny B. Moore

Johnny B. Moore (born Johnny Belle Moore, January 24, 1950, Clarksdale, Mississippi) is an American Chicago blues and electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He was a member of Koko Taylor's backing band in the mid 1970s, but has recorded nine solo albums since 1987. Moore's music retains a link to the earlier Chicago blues of Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters, who also travelled to the Windy City from the Mississippi delta. "If Johnny B. Moore isn't a star in the making," stated Allmusic's Bill Dahl, "there's no justice in the world."The European blues historian Gérard Herzhaft commented that "[Moore's] albums reflect a strong Delta flavor that is refreshing in the present blues scene, dominated by rock or funk overtones."However, the blues historian, Tony Russell, noted in 1997 that Moore "was still one of Chicago's interesting secrets" Moore's Baptist minister father, Floyd Moore, taught his son to play the guitar from the age of seven. John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen'," was the first piece Moore mastered, but he was influenced by the style of Magic Sam. In his early days Moore performed gospel music in his hometown of Clarksdale, and later in Chicago with the Gospel Keys group. In 1964, the teenage Moore relocated to Chicago with his father. In high school Moore learned to read music, and his education was enhanced listening to blues records with Letha Jones, Little Johnny Jones' widow.By the late 1960s Moore was working in a lamp factory, but after work continued to play. He was further tutored by Jimmy Reed, whom he first met in his childhood, and then with the Charles Spiers band. By 1975, Moore found a further musical outlet by joining Koko Taylor's backing band, the Blues Machine, as lead guitarist. His lead guitar work appeared on Taylor's album The Earthshaker (1978). He toured separately with Taylor and Willie Dixon, undertaking European jaunts with both, and worked in Dixon's band until the latter's death in 1992. He also augmented his income by appearing more often under his own name Moore appeared on the bill on June 10, 1984, at the inaugural Chicago Blues Festival. His debut album, Hard Times, was released in 1987 on the B.L.U.E.S. label. In the 1990s Moore recorded six more efforts of his own, and started the new millennium with Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi (2001) for the Austrian based Wolf record label. His Live at Blue Chicago (1996), was recorded in that club's basement, and featured Ken Saydak on keyboards. The 1999 live album, Acoustic Blue Chicago featured Willie Kent, Lester Davenport and Bonnie Lee. Moore more often used a bottleneck on his guitar solos. Moore appeared again at the Chicago Blues Festival in 2002. In addition, he has made several guest appearances on other blues musicians albums. These included Willie Kent's Too Hurt to Cry (1994). His most recent album, Rockin' in the Same Old Boat (2003), was described by Allmusic's journalist, Matt Collar, as "Moore's hard-driving lead guitar lines are well intact as is his off-hand, sometimes slurred vocal delivery" If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

Blackbird Music artist: Lucky Peterson Band featuring Tamara Peterson - Live At The 55 Arts Club Berlin - New Release Review II (CD/DVD)

Following up on last nights report on the super deluxe 5 disc set that Lucky peterson has just completed, set two begins with Giving Me The Blues designed to get the crowd hopping and it sure does. Shawn Kellerman plays a blistering solo and the band is really in the groove. Up next Peterson plays a tribute to one of my favorite (funk/soul) blues artists, Johnny Guitar Watson, with Ta' Ta' You. This is a great track and Peterson not only pushes the band with his Hammond, he does a great job on vocals. Kellerman plays a hot solo on this track as well but you all know this music is about the soul... and Peterson has it! He keeps the volume down and the band even takes a reggae twist on the track but the groove is solid as a rock. On It Ain;t

Safe Peterson calls on the funk and even conjures up a little Billy Preston. Kellerman takes another nice guitar interlude on this track but again Peterson is at the wheel driving with his organ and his dynamic voice. On Dixon's I'm Ready, the band plays with a lot more swing, giving it a bit more of a jazz styling. A walking bass line from Waites and B3 work by Peterson really make the difference on this track which has been covered by just about every band who's ever played the blues. Howlin' Wolf's Who's been Talking is done over a Latin beat (Otis Rush style) beginning very subdued early. Peterson takes a really nice organ solo on this track and again Valdes plays masterfully on this track. Peterson hops up and straps on an old red Supro Belmont for an Elmore James romp. Sounds like the guitar is tuned in open D and equipped with a glass slide Peterson rips it up on Dust My Broom, a Robert Johnson track. He then slows it down and does a really nice version of the Jimmy Reed's World's In A Tangle.
Bringing the band and the crowd back to a frenzy, Peterson welcomes Tamara back on stage for a bluesy version of Prince's Kiss. Although I'm not a big fan of any version of this song, Tamara does a particularly nice job on the vocals on this track. Last Night You Left, a R&B style track written by Tamara, moves Lucky back to keys. This is a cool number and Peterson once again brings an entire different dimension to the band. Lots of bands have organ but not often do you hear a band that id lead by an organ player as tasteful as this. Next up is Ain't Nobody like You in neo soul style. This is a cool track and likely one that would well fall into an airplay list. Waits finally gets a chance to solo and play my man does. Waites plays like a fine jazz player with no fancy tricks ... just nice chords and soulful lead melody lines. Finishing up the set is another T. Peterson track, Real Music. A built up funk track Waites carries this track with his hot bass riffs. Kellerman and Lucky bring up the heat and Waites is invited to bring on another solo. Finally Valdes rips it loose with a solo that is really hot but likely with its out of sequence and extremely difficulty patterns is lost on many observers. This band is extremely tight and the audience really got a show! If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Fever - Zora Young

Zora Young (born January 21, 1948, West Point, Mississippi, United States) is an American blues singer. She is a distant relative of Howlin' Wolf. Young's family moved to Chicago at age seven and sang gospel at the Greater Harvest Baptist Church. As an adult she began singing blues and R&B music, and over the course of her career played with Junior Wells, Jimmy Dawkins, Bobby Rush, Buddy Guy, Albert King, Professor Eddie Lusk, and B. B. King. Among those she has collaborated with on record are Willie Dixon, Sunnyland Slim, Mississippi Heat, Paul DeLay, and Maurice John Vaughan. In 1982, she toured Europe on the bill with Bonnie Lee and Big Time Sarah in 'Blues with the Girls', and then recorded an album in Paris, France. She was later cast in the role of Bessie Smith in the stage show, The Heart of the Blues. By 1991 she had recorded the album, Travelin' Light, with the Canadian guitar player, Colin Linden. Young has toured Europe more than thirty times, in addition to appearances in Turkey and Taiwan. She was the featured performer at the Chicago Blues Festival six times Zora Young (born January 21, 1948, West Point, Mississippi, United States) is an American blues singer. She is a distant relative of Howlin' Wolf. Young's family moved to Chicago at age seven and sang gospel at the Greater Harvest Baptist Church. As an adult she began singing blues and R&B music, and over the course of her career played with Junior Wells, Jimmy Dawkins, Bobby Rush, Buddy Guy, Albert King, Professor Eddie Lusk, and B. B. King. Among those she has collaborated with on record are Willie Dixon, Sunnyland Slim, Mississippi Heat, Paul DeLay, and Maurice John Vaughan. In 1982, she toured Europe on the bill with Bonnie Lee and Big Time Sarah in 'Blues with the Girls', and then recorded an album in Paris, France. She was later cast in the role of Bessie Smith in the stage show, The Heart of the Blues. By 1991 she had recorded the album, Travelin' Light, with the Canadian guitar player, Colin Linden. Young has toured Europe more than thirty times, in addition to appearances in Turkey and Taiwan. She was the featured performer at the Chicago Blues Festival six times If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Blueberry Hill - Henry Gray

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, Henry relocated to Chicago where he had relatives. After arriving in Chicago in 1946, Gray began hanging out in the bustling postwar club scene there, checking out the Windy City's best piano players. One day while he was sitting in at a club, he caught the attention of Big Maceo Merriweather, then a big fish in a small pond of Chicago piano players. Merriweather kindly took Gray under his wing and showed him around the city's blues clubs, and he got to know stars of the scene, including Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. In 1956 Wolf asked Henry to join his band. Gray quickly accepted the offer and stayed on as Wolf's primary piano player until 1968. Gray also became a session player for other recordings made by Chess Records, and over the years he has recorded with many icons of the blues. In addition to Wolf, Gray has recorded or performed with Robert Lockwood Jr., Billy Boy Arnold, Muddy Waters, Johnny Shines, Hubert Sumlin, Lazy Lester, Little Walter Jacobs, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Little Milton Campbell, Jimmy Rogers, Jimmy Reed, and Koko Taylor, among others. Although Howlin' Wolf did not pass away until 1976, Gray left Wolf's band in 1968, following the death of his father, and returned to Alsen to assist his mother with the family fish market business. Gray worked with the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board as a roofer for the next 15 years. A Tribute to Howlin' Wolf In the past 30 years, since he's been back in Louisiana, Gray has performed at nearly every New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as well as other prestigious gatherings, including the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, and the San Francisco Blues Festival. In 1999 he was nominated for a Grammy for his playing on the Tribute to Howlin' Wolf album released by the Cleveland-based Telarc label, and in 1998 he was handpicked by Mick Jagger himself to play Jagger's 55th birthday soiree in Paris, along with a few other noted blues musicians. Having spent so much of his life as a sideman, Gray's recordings under his own name were few and far between, but that all began to change in the 1990s. Gray's recordings include Lucky Man for Blind Pig in 1988; Louisiana Swamp Blues, Vol. 2 for Wolf Records in 1990; Watch Yourself in 2001 for Lucky Cat; Henry Gray Plays Chicago Blues for Hightone Records in 2001; and the Henry Gray and the Cats CD and DVD sets for the Lucky Cat label in 2004. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Nora Jean Bruso

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 town where she was born. Working the merciless cotton fields during the week with her family, Nora Jean looked forward to Friday and Saturday nights, when a different kind of picking prevailed. Her grandmother owned the local juke joint, and her father, Bobby Lee Wallace, and her uncle, Henry “Son” Wallace, both accomplished blues performers, would gather their families there for some much needed, soul-stirring music therapy every weekend. Once the kids were put to bed for the night, how the good times would roll! And while the adults in the family were thus enjoying their well-earned down time, Nora and her siblings were secretly doing the same, sneaking out of bed to peek through the keyhole and eavesdrop on the grownups and the night’s entertainment. “Down to Miss Mae’s Juke Joint,” written and recorded for her second CD, Going Back to Mississippi, is Nora’s loving tribute to that special place and time in her life. In addition to the blues classics of Howlin’ Wolf that she overheard through that keyhole, Nora Jean was also exposed to the best of gospel music as her mother, Ida Lee Wallace, serenaded the family with the songs of Mahalia Jackson, The Staples Singers, The Dixie Hummingbirds, Albertina Walker, Shirley Caesar, and The Mighty Clouds of Joy. With so much music in her life, it was almost inevitable that Nora Jean would find her own voice in the family. She says that the first song she ever sang was “Howlin’ for My Darling”; she was four or five years old at the time. A fast learner, she turned professional at the age of six! It seems that one of her eleven brothers bragged to two of his friends that his sister could really sing. To prove his point, he brought them into her room for an impromptu jam. Nora tore it up with some Howlin’ Wolf she had heard during her father’s performances down at Miss Mae’s, and each of the boys gave her a nickel. Voila! Her first paying gig! Despite that early success, it wasn’t until Nora Jean won a local high school talent competition that she really began to believe in the possibility of a professional singing career. By this time, her early education in the classic blues of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Big Mama Thornton, John Lee Hooker, and Robert Johnson was being supplemented by the soul artists she was hearing on the radio: James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, and Ray Charles all contributed new flavors to Nora Jean’s simmering musical gumbo. But like so many other blues musicians before her, Nora did not actually get her professional start in music until she left the deep South and headed to the West Side of Chicago, the blues capital of the world. There, one fateful night in 1976, after her Aunt Rose had heard her singing at home and brought her along to several clubs she was promoting at the time, Nora Jean sat in with Scottie and the Oasis at the Majestic. And just like that, her dream of a professional singing career became reality. She was invited to join the band and spent several years with them until Scottie’s unfortunate passing. During this time many local Chicago musicians, most notably Mary Lane and Joe Barr, encouraged Nora and taught her the fine points of her craft. Photo Credit: Purely DigitalNora's big break came in 1985, when Jimmy Dawkins saw her performing at a local Chicago club and hired her on the spot. For the next seven years, she toured the world and recorded with Jimmy and his band. During this period she appeared on two of Jimmy's CDs, Feel the Blues and Can't Shake These Blues, released her own self-penned single, "Untrue Lover," and worked on developing her budding songwriting skills. While touring Europe, Canada, and the United States, Nora also refined her performing skills and acquired an international fan base. She appeared at many major festivals, including the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas, and was featured on the front page of the Chicago Tribune following her 1989 performance at the Chicago Blues Festival. In addition to her appearances with Jimmy Dawkins, Nora also sang occasionally with other major blues acts and remembers with special fondness her shows with Willie Kent and his band. By 1991 Nora felt that the demands of life on the road were taking a toll on her family life, and she courageously walked away from her promising professional career to devote herself to raising her two sons. No longer singing the blues, Nora found musical release in her other early musical passion: a devout Christian, she sang gospel in church every week, praising God for the love He had put in her heart and thanking Him for the friendships that continued to bless her life. Among those friendships were many of those she had made in the blues community. By the late 90s, through the support of these loyal friends, Nora was persuaded to make a limited return to performing, taking on local gigs to fulfill her undeniable love of the blues. She sang occasionally with Johnny Drummer at Lee’s Unleaded Blues and then formed her own band, Nora Jean and the Fellas. For the next few years they performed in local Chicago clubs, but Nora remained conflicted about returning full time to life in the fast lane of the blues highway. More than once she retreated from the music scene in frustration at having to begin her career again. In 2001 a phone call from close friend Billy Flynn precipitated a series of events that would put an end to all doubts and bring Nora back to the blues for good. Billy asked Nora to sing lead and background vocals on four tracks for his new CD, Blues and Love. So moving was the experience of being in the studio and recording again that Nora realized once and for all that this was her gift, her passion, her destiny. And she committed to embracing that destiny: come fame or obscurity, wealth or poverty, she was born to be a blues singer, and sing the blues she would. In 2002, reflecting her determination to start anew, Nora moved to La Porte, Indiana, where she found that the town’s most famous resident was none other than legendary blues piano player Pinetop Perkins, a member of the great Muddy Waters Band. (In 2008, recording under her married name at the time, Nora Jean Bruso, she would join Eric Clapton, B.B. King, and a host of other luminaries in the blues world for the recording of Pinetop’s penultimate recording, Pinetop Perkins and Friends. And a proud friend she was, indeed. Pinetop regularly joined Nora for her local shows at Buck’s Workingman’s Pub. La Porte will never see the likes of those shows again! RIP, Pinetop.) Having relocated and recommitted to her career, Nora called on friend and mentor Jimmy Dawkins for advice. Jimmy’s response was to invite her to perform with him at the 2002 Chicago Blues Festival. Although she sang only two songs during that appearance, the Chicago Sun-Times called the songs “show-stopping” and proclaimed Nora “up-and-coming” in the blues world. That same year, the Black History Association in Chicago presented her a “Keeping the Blues Alive” citation for her comeback. After eleven years out of the spotlight, Nora Jean was once again taking her rightful place center stage. In October of 2002, Nora entered the recording studio of her old friend Jerry Soto with the same band that had backed her just four months earlier at the Chicago Blues Festival. Only three lineup changes were made: Nora added an old friend, the legendary Willie Kent, on bass; a regular member of her own band, Brian Lupo, on guitar; and (in the absence of Jimmy Dawkins, who had undergone emergency arm surgery) James Wheeler, also on guitar. Released in 2003, the resulting CD, Nora Jean Bruso Sings the Blues, was awarded a rare and coveted five-star rating from Big City Blues and received critical acclaim from radio programmers throughout North America, appearing on the Living Blues charts and XM Radio play lists for many months. 2003 proved to be a breakthrough year for Nora. On the strength of her debut CD, she made a triumphal return to the stage at the Chicago Blues Festival and did a summer tour of Europe. By the end of the year, she had the pleasure of seeing her CD on everyone’s list of top blues CDs of the year. In 2004 her industry peers endorsed her success by nominating Nora for two W. C. Handy Awards: one for Best New Artist and one for Best Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year. And the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry named her one of the ten great women in Chicago blues, saying, “There is talk of Nora Jean as the next Queen of the Blues.” Photo Credit: Purely DigitalThe accolades and warm reception of her first CD were particularly gratifying to Nora Jean, who had poured her heart and soul into the recording, intending it as a loving tribute to her musical influences. The four Howlin’ Wolf songs on it were the first songs she ever heard her father sing and were recorded as a gesture of love and respect for him and for her mother. “Can’t Shake These Blues” was a nod to Jimmy Dawkins, and the Magic Sam numbers represented the raw West Side of Chicago sound that was as integral to her music as were her Mississippi roots. “Doin’ the Shout” acknowledged the influence of the one and only Boogie Man, Mr. John Lee Hooker; and the Etta James classic “I’d Rather Go Blind,” so powerfully covered by the magnificent Koko Taylor, afforded Nora the perfect opportunity to express her respect and gratitude to the great ladies of the blues who had paved the path she walks to this day. Nora rounded out the offering with several numbers she knew were fan favorites from her earlier performing days, as well as a reworked version of “Untrue Lover,” the first song she had ever written herself. Nora had previously recorded “Untrue Lover” during her time in the 80s with Jimmy Dawkins. Revealing just how much her songwriting skills had progressed since those days, she was already sitting on fourteen new tunes for an anticipated follow-up to her brilliant debut CD. But the rigors of maintaining a hectic performance schedule while trying to produce and distribute a record proved overwhelming, so it came as great news that Maryland-based roots label Severn Records wanted to sign her to a multi-record deal. Nora spent several months of 2004 in the Severn studios, recording Going Back to Mississippi, a gritty chronicle of her life growing up on the Equen Plantation; every lyric on the CD came straight from her heart. The “baby” she longed to return to in the title cut was the blues, and “What I Been Through” told you everything you needed to know and more about the woman’s spirit and determination. Nora debuted several cuts from the album with her band on the main stage at the Chicago Blues Festival in June and at the Pocono Blues Festival in July. Upon its release in September, Going Back to Mississippi came out strong, debuting at number five on the Living Blues radio charts, and went all the way to number one on XM Radio. In support of her sophomore effort, Nora spent most of 2005 on the festival circuit, relentlessly touring the U.S. and Canada; highlights included the Cape May Jazz and Pocono Blues festivals. By 2006 circumstances in Nora Jean’s personal life once again threatened to derail her phenomenal comeback, but the blues would not be denied. Armed with unshakeable faith, she defiantly stared down the devil, never blinking once. Working two jobs while raising a grandchild and performing whenever and wherever she could, there were definitely times when she was not just singing the blues … she was living them. Yet every year between 2005 and 2009 Nora Jean was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the Traditional Blues Female Artist of the Year category. Praised by the likes of Koko Taylor, Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin and Debbie Davies and heralded as the next “Queen of the Blues” by Pocono Blues Director Michael Cloeren and Blues in Britain magazine, Nora Jean Wallace has earned her place in the blues world. Speaking of her first love, she says: The blues is alive and well, and I am proud to be a part of it. I feel privileged to sing the music that is my heritage. The artistic achievements of my ancestors are not only one of their greatest contributions to America, but also one of America’s greatest contributions to the world. The blues is great American music and, God willing, I will be singing it for you for many, many years to come. On any given night you may hear me throw some Tina Turner or Tracy Chapman into my show, depending on the audience. I have even been known to perform a rap song called “Superstar” that my oldest son wrote for me when I have an audience of mainly young people. But I always begin and end with the blues. It is my passion and my calling to try to keep this great music alive. Call it traditional blues, hard blues, old school blues, whatever you like, it is my blues and I love it. There’s that word again … in the world of Nora Jean Wallace, love and the blues go hand in hand. Get yourself out to see her soon, and you’ll see – and hear and feel – exactly what I’m talking about. Donna Johnston If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Listen Girl - Bill Magee Blues Band

Born in Collins, the back woods of Mississippi in 1943, Willie (Bill) Magee grew up loving music, listening to Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and B.B. King on his Father's small radio. Life was difficult and Willie experienced many hard knocks. His mother died when he was four years old and his father followed when he was just thirteen. Taken from his parentless home, his older brother Deloy moved him to his tiny one room flat in Ithaca, New York. Determined to finish high school, Willie concentrated on his studies while Deloy worked hard to support him. At the Community Center Willie met guitarist Butch Rosenberg and his focus turned to music. As the friendship grew, they spent many hours listening to R&B and Rock and Roll, especially the blues guitars of B.B. King and Muddy Waters. With a part time job at a Department store Willie managed to save for his first guitar...a $29.99 Montgomery Ward special, much to the chagrin of his brother. Willie promised Deloy that some day he would play the Apollo Theater. A year of solid practice brought Willie to join his first local band and at age fourteen music became his life. Working with various local bands he soon was earning money, and also managed to graduate from High School...the first in his family to do so. His ambition is to become the best guitarist in the country!!! In 1967 Jimmy James(Hendrix) left for England and Willie toured Russia, Japan, Europe and England with his band. Professional play kept him touring on the Chittlin' Circuit and on the New York scene when he was home. It was during this time Bill Magee played with B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Otis Redding, John Lee Hooker, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Wilson Pickett, and Bo Diddley among others in venues like The Regal and McCormick Place in Chicago, The Royal in D.C., Madison Square Garden, The Filmore East, The Baby Grand as well as Yankee and Shea Stadium in New York City. With the birth of his fourth child, Willie finally gave up the relentless touring and the music business for a 9 to 5 and fatherhood. Relocating to San Diego in 1987, he continued his hiatus from music until 1993. With music in his blood, Bill had to return and is now burning up the San Diego Music scene with his guitar virtuosos and those New York/Chicago Blues. Bill Magee is THE REAL DEAL. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Shake For Me - Howlin' Wolf

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-edged, slightly fearsome musical style is often contrasted with the less crude but still powerful presentation of his contemporary and professional rival, Muddy Waters. Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Little Walter Jacobs, and Muddy Waters are usually regarded in retrospect as the greatest blues artists who recorded for Chess in Chicago. Sam Phillips once remarked, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.'" In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #51 on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Born in White Station, Mississippi, near West Point, he was named after Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States, and was nicknamed Big Foot Chester and Bull Cow in his early years because of his massive size. He explained the origin of the name Howlin' Wolf thus: "I got that from my grandfather [John Jones]." His Grandfather would often tell him stories about the wolves in that part of the country and warn him that if he misbehaved, the howling wolves would "get him". According to the documentary film The Howlin' Wolf Story, Howlin' Wolf's parents broke up when he was young. His very religious mother Gertrude threw him out of the house while he was still a child for refusing to work around the farm; he then moved in with his uncle, Will Young, who treated him badly. When he was 13, he ran away and claimed to have walked 85 miles barefoot to join his father, where he finally found a happy home within his father's large family. During the peak of his success, he returned from Chicago to his home town to see his mother again, but was driven to tears when she rebuffed him and refused to take any money he offered her, saying it was from his playing the "Devil's music". In 1930, Howlin' Wolf met Charley Patton, the most popular bluesman in the Delta at the time. Wolf would listen to Patton play nightly from outside a nearby juke joint. There he remembered Patton playing "Pony Blues," "High Water Everywhere," "A Spoonful Blues," and "Banty Rooster Blues." The two became acquainted and soon Patton was teaching him guitar. "The first piece I ever played in my life was ... a tune about hook up my pony and saddle up my black mare" (Patton's "Pony Blues"). Wolf also learned about showmanship from Patton: "When he played his guitar, he would turn it over backwards and forwards, and throw it around over his shoulders, between his legs, throw it up in the sky." "Chester [Wolf] could perform the guitar tricks he learned from Patton for the rest of his life." "Chester learned his lessons well and played with Patton often ." Howlin' Wolf was also inspired by other popular blues performers of the time, including the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, Blind Blake, and Tommy Johnson (two of the earliest songs he mastered were Jefferson's "Match Box Blues" and Leroy Carr's "How Long, How Long Blues"). Country singer Jimmie Rodgers, who was Wolf's childhood idol, was also an influence. Wolf tried to emulate Rodgers' "blue yodel," but found that his efforts sounded more like a growl or a howl. "I couldn't do no yodelin'," Barry Gifford quoted him as saying in Rolling Stone, "so I turned to howlin'. And it's done me just fine."[citation needed] His harmonica playing was modeled after that of Rice Miller (also known as Sonny Boy Williamson II), who had taught him how to play when Howlin Wolf had moved to Parkin, Arkansas, in 1933. During the 1930s, Wolf performed in the South as a solo performer and with a number of blues musicians, including Floyd Jones, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Johnson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Willie Brown, Son House, Willie Johnson. On April 9, 1941, at age thirty, he was inducted into the U.S. Army and was stationed at several army bases. Finding it difficult to adjust to military life, Wolf was discharged November 3, 1943, during the middle of World War II, without ever being sent overseas. Wolf returned to his family and helped with farming, while performing as he had done in the 1930s with Floyd Jones and others. In 1948 he formed a band which included guitarists Willie Johnson and Matt "Guitar" Murphy, harmonica player Junior Parker, a pianist remembered only as "Destruction" and drummer Willie Steele. He began broadcasting on KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas, alternating between performing and pitching equipment on his father's farm after his family's move to this area in the same year. Eventually, Sam Phillips discovered him and ended up signing him for Memphis Recording Service in 1951. Matt "Guitar" Murphy played with Wolf teaching him to play on time. Matt says sometimes he played 13 bars and sometimes 14 and Murphy would cut through to show him how to stay in time, getting it down to 12 bars. Wolf regularly made up lyrics about the band on stage, sometimes in jest and sometimes hurtful. Murphy arranged for Junior Parker to join Wolf's band. Later Parker and Murphy both left to form "The Blue Flames", the name chosen by Murphy In 1950, Howlin' Wolf cut several tracks at Sun Studio in Memphis. He quickly became a local celebrity, and soon began working with a band that included Willie Johnson and guitarist Pat Hare. His first recordings came in 1951, when he recorded sessions for both the Bihari brothers at RPM Records and Leonard Chess's Chess Records. Chess issued Howlin' Wolf's "Moanin' At Midnight" b/w "How Many More Years" on August 15, 1951; Wolf also recorded sides for RPM, with Ike Turner, in late 1951 and early 1952. Chess eventually won the war over the singer, and Wolf settled in Chicago, Illinois c. 1953. arriving in Chicago, he assembled a new band, recruiting Chicagoan Jody Williams from Memphis Slim's band as his first guitarist. Within a year Wolf enticed guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago; Sumlin's terse, curlicued solos perfectly complemented Burnett's huge voice and surprisingly subtle phrasing. Although the line-up of Wolf's band would change regularly over the years, employing many different guitarists both on recordings and in live performance including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D. McGhee, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, his brother Little Smokey Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie "Abu Talib" Robinson, and Buddy Guy, among others, with the exception of a couple of brief absences in the late '50s Sumlin remained a member of the band for the rest of Wolf's career, and is the guitarist most often associated with the Chicago Howlin' Wolf sound. In the 1950s Wolf had four songs that qualified as "hits" on the Billboard national R&B charts: "How Many More Years", his first and biggest hit, made it to #4 in 1951; its flip side, "Moanin' at Midnight", made it to #10 the same year; "Smokestack Lightning" charted for three weeks in 1956, peaking at #8; and "I Asked For Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" appeared on the charts for one week in 1956, in the #8 position. In 1959, Wolf's first album, Moanin' in the Moonlight, a compilation of previously released singles, was released. His 1962 LP Howlin' Wolf, which featured contributions from Willie Dixon, Jimmy Rogers and Sam Lay among others, is a famous and influential blues album, often referred to as "The Rocking Chair album" because of its cover illustration depicting an acoustic guitar leaning against a rocking chair. This album contained "Wang Dang Doodle", "Goin' Down Slow", "Spoonful", and "Little Red Rooster" (titled "The Red Rooster" on this album), songs which found their way into the repertoires of British and American bands infatuated with Chicago blues. In 1964 he toured Europe as part of the American Folk Blues Festival tour produced by German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. In 1965 he appeared on the television show Shindig at the insistence of The Rolling Stones, who were scheduled to appear on the same program and who had covered "Little Red Rooster" on an early album. He was often backed on records by bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon who is credited with such Howlin' Wolf standards as "Spoonful", "I Ain't Superstitious", "Little Red Rooster", "Back Door Man", "Evil", "Wang Dang Doodle" (later recorded by Koko Taylor), and others. In September 1967, he joined forces with Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters for The Super Super Blues Band album of Chess blues standards, including "The Red Rooster" and "Spoonful". In May 1970, Howlin' Wolf, his long-time guitarist Hubert Sumlin, and the young Chicago blues harmonica player Jeff Carp traveled to London along with Chess Records producer Norman Dayron to record the Howlin' Wolf London Sessions LP, accompanied by British blues/rock musicians Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts and others. He recorded his last album for Chess, The Back Door Wolf, in 1973. Unlike many other blues musicians, after he left his impoverished childhood to begin a musical career, Howlin' Wolf was always financially successful. Having already achieved a measure of success in Memphis, he described himself as "the onliest one to drive himself up from the Delta" to Chicago, which he did, in his own car on the Blues Highway and with four thousand dollars in his pocket, a rare distinction for a black blues man of the time. In his early career, this was the result of his musical popularity and his ability to avoid the pitfalls of alcohol, gambling and the various dangers inherent in what are vaguely described as "loose women", to which so many of his peers fell prey. Though functionally illiterate into his 40s, Burnett eventually returned to school, first to earn a G.E.D., and later to study accounting and other business courses aimed to help his business career. Wolf met his future wife, Lillie, when she attended one of his performances in a Chicago club. She and her family were urban and educated, and not involved in what was generally seen as the unsavory world of blues musicians. Nonetheless, immediately attracted when he saw her in the audience as Wolf says he was, he pursued her and won her over. According to those who knew them, the couple remained deeply in love until his death. Together they raised Bettye and Barbara, Lillie's two daughters from an earlier relationship. After he married Lillie, who was able to manage his professional finances, Wolf was so financially successful that he was able to offer band members not only a decent salary, but benefits such as health insurance; this in turn enabled him to hire his pick of the available musicians, and keep his band one of the best around. According to his daughters, he was never financially extravagant, for instance driving a Pontiac station wagon rather than a more expensive and flashy car. Wolf's health declined in the late 1960s through 1970s. He suffered several heart attacks and in 1970 his kidneys were severely damaged in an automobile accident. He died in 1976 from complications of kidney disease. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Cool Drink Of Water - Joe Willie Wilkins w/ Houston Stackhouse

Joe Willie Wilkins (January 7, 1921 – March 28, 1981) was an American Memphis blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Whilst he influenced contemporaries such as Houston Stackhouse, Robert Nighthawk, David Honeyboy Edwards, and Jimmy Rogers, Wilkins' bigger impact was on up and coming guitarists, including Little Milton, B.B. King, and Albert King. Wilkins' songs included "Hard Headed Woman" and "It's Too Bad." Wilkins was born in Davenport, Coahoma County, Mississippi. He grew up on a plantation near Bobo. His father, Papa Frank Wilkins, was a local sharecropper and guitarist, whose friend was the country bluesman, Charley Patton. Young Wilkins learned to play guitar, harmonica and accordion. His early proficiency of the guitar, and slavish devotion to learning from records, earned him the nickname of "Walking Seeburg" (Seeburg Corporation being an early manufacturer of jukebox). Becoming a well-known musician in the Mississippi Delta, by the early 1940s Wilkins took over from Robert Lockwood, Jr. in Sonny Boy Williamson II's band. In 1941, Wilkins reloacted to Helena, Arkansas, and joined both Williamson and Lockwood on KFFA Radio's "King Biscuit Time". Through the 1940s Wilkins broadcast regularly playing alongside Williamson, Willie Love, Robert Nighthawk, Elmore James, Memphis Slim, Houston Stackhouse and Howlin' Wolf. His guitar playing appeared on several recordings by Williamson, Love and Big Joe Williams, for the latter of whom he played bass. For Muddy Waters, Wilkins was noted as the first guitarist from the Delta who played single string guitar riffs without a slide. Later on Waters stated “ "The man is great, the man is stone great. For blues, like I say, he's the best." ” Forming The Three Aces with Willie Nix and Love in 1950, he rejoined Williamson at KWEM Radio, which led on to Wilkin's becoming part of the studio band at Sun Records. He was also utilised by Trumpet Records, and as a prominent sideman, Wilkins recorded with Williamson, Love, Nix, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter, Mose Vinson, Joe Hill Louis, Elmore James, and Floyd Jones. Charley Booker's final recording was as a guest with Wilkins at a 1973 blues festival at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. The same year, Mimosa Records released a single of Wilkin's debut vocal performance. Adamo Records later issued a live album of some of his concert dates. His working relationship and friendship with Houston Stackhouse endured over the years, with Stackhouse at one time living in the same premises as Wilkins and his wife. Wilkins and Stackhouse played at various blues music festivals, and were part of the traveling Memphis Blues Caravan. After undergoing a colostomy in the late 1970s, Wilkins still continued to perform until his final East Coast tour in 1981. Wilkins is buried near Memphis in the Galilee Memorial Gardens If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer - George Thorogood And Destroyers

2120 South Michigan Avenue, home of Chicago’s Chess Records, may be the most important address in the bloodline of the blues and rock ‘n’ roll. That address – immortalized in the Rolling Stones’ like-named instrumental, recorded at an epochal session at Chess in June 1964 and included on the band’s album 12 X 5 – serves as the title to George Thorogood’s electrifying Capitol/EMI salute to the Chess label and its immortal artists. Thorogood has been essaying the Chess repertoire since his 1977 debut album, which included songs by Elmore James and Bo Diddley that originated on the label. He has cut 18 Chess covers over the years; three appeared on his last studio release, 2009’s The Dirty Dozen. On 2120 South Michigan Avenue, he offers a full-length homage to the label that bred his style with interpretations of 10 Chess classics. The album also includes original tributes to the Windy City and Chess’ crucial songwriter-producer-bassist Willie Dixon, penned by Thorogood, producer Tom Hambridge, and Richard Fleming, plus a cranked-up version of the Stones’ titular instrumental. Chess Records had been making musical history for a decade before it moved into its offices on Michigan Avenue, in the heart of the Windy City’s record business district, in 1957. Leonard and Phil Chess, sons of a Polish immigrant family and South Side nightclub operators, bought into a new independent label called Aristocrat Records in 1947. The brothers bought out their partners in 1950 and gave the label the family name; by that time, they had racked up blues hits by Muddy Waters, Sunnyland Slim, Robert Nighthawk, and St. Louis Jimmy. Chess’ studio spawned timeless ‘50s and ‘60s recordings by Waters, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Howlin’ Wolf, which served as inspiration for the Stones and their blues-rocking brethren, and then lit a fire under their successors George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Thorogood recalls, “I remember as a teenager reading about Mick Jagger meeting Keith Richards on a train. Jagger had a Chuck Berry record, and he said he wrote to Chess Records and got a catalog sent to him. Just out of curiosity, I took out one of my Chess records, got the address, and I wrote to Chess Records. And they sent me a catalog of the complete Chess library, and I started buying up these Chess records. I bought every single one of them I could possibly get. “And I remember reading the backs of those Chess records and seeing the address, 2120 South Michigan Avenue, and I said, ‘That’s the same address as the Rolling Stones’ instrumental!’ And I started putting one and one together and coming up with a big two.” Over time, Chess’ catalog and artists became the sources of Thorogood’s higher education in music. “That was my school, the college that I had to learn my trade in,” he says. “I had to figure out how these people did these things.” The new album also celebrates the performers who shared stages with Thorogood and the Destroyers and encouraged them when they were just coming up on the East Coast blues scene. He says, “The people who helped me out were all the guys in Muddy Waters’ band, all the guys in Howlin’ Wolf’s band. They were wonderful to me, and they wanted to help me. They saw what I was trying to do.” 2120 South Michigan Avenue isn’t just Thorogood’s salute to a great record label – it also pays homage to the tough, larger-than-life men who made the music. “It was a lifestyle as well as an art form, as far as music goes,” Thorogood notes. “They were singing about what their life was like on a daily basis. Sonny Boy Williamson and Wolf and Muddy Waters – they didn’t think they were the baddest cats in the world, they knew they were the baddest cats in the world. They had to be, or they wouldn’t have survived. There’s nothing glamorous in it – that’s just the facts. They had to fight their way through on a daily basis just to keep their heads above water. That’s very clear in a lot of their songs.” Some of the songs from the Chess catalog heard on 2120 South Michigan Avenue were staples of the Destroyers’ live repertoire; Thorogood says, “A lot of the things I recorded I was doing 25 or 30 years ago, and I had stopped doing them.” He adds that since many Chess recordings have become linchpins of the rock and blues repertoire, both on record and in concert, some careful winnowing had to be done for the album: “We did a lot of research and said, ‘Wait a minute, the Rolling Stones did that song, John Hammond did that song.'" Producer Tom Hambridge is the ideal collaborator for 2120 South Michigan Avenue. A veteran of tours with Chuck Berry, Roy Buchanan, the Drifters, and other stars, Hambridge won a 2010 Grammy for his work on Buddy Guy’s Living Proof, and wrote the album’s Guy-B.B. King duet “Stay Around a Little Longer.” He received Grammy nominations for Guy’s Skin Deep (2008), Johnny Winter’s I’m a Bluesman (2004), and Susan Tedeschi’s Just Won’t Burn (1998). He also fronts his own band, Tom Hambridge & the Rattlesnakes. The special guests on 2120 South Michigan Avenue sport direct connections to Chess and Chicago’s blues scene. Guitarist Buddy Guy made his Chess label debut 51 years ago. Thorogood remembers, “I went to [the Austin blues club] Antone’s for the first time in 1977, and I saw Buddy Guy play. It was the first time I saw him, and I never forgot that he led off with [Chess artist Tommy Tucker’s] ‘High Heeled Sneakers.’ I thought that was just unbelievable. Buddy just tore it apart, like he does everything – that’s his style.” Harmonica master Charlie Musselwhite is heard on two of the album’s tracks, a cover of Little Walter’s hit “My Babe” and the Stones’ “2120.” “Memphis Charlie” haunted Chicago’s South Side clubs in the ‘60s, learning at the feet of Chess titans like Little Walter Jacobs and Sonny Boy Williamson and hanging out with such like-minded contemporaries as Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, and Elvin Bishop of the pathfinding Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Thorogood says, “I don’t play harmonica. Little Walter plays harp, and Sonny Boy Williamson plays harp, and Howlin’ Wolf plays harp. So I said, ‘Well, what am I gonna do about this?’ It’s an easy choice. I said, ‘There’s only one cat we can get to play ‘My Babe’ by Little Walter, and that’s Charlie.’ He’s the last cat!” Through the entire project, Thorogood and the Destroyers attempted to put their own distinctive spin on the Chess material while maintaining fidelity to the originals’ attack. “When you do Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, when you play Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, there’s no experimenting,” Thorogood explains. “That’s a religion, and you’ve gotta do it right.” The historic music heard on 2120 South Michigan Avenue didn’t merely change George Thorogood’s life, as he himself notes. “It’s not a musical phenomenon, it’s a social phenomenon. The man who created rock ‘n’ roll was Chuck Berry, and he listened to Muddy Waters. Bo Diddley went to the same school and listened to the same people. Rock ‘n’ roll changed the whole world. That never would have happened if it hadn’t been for Chess Records. It’s the source of the whole thing.” If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Going Down Slow - St. Louis Jimmy Oden

James Burke "St. Louis Jimmy" Oden (June 26, 1903 – December 30, 1977) was an American blues vocalist and songwriter. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, Oden sang and taught himself to play the piano in childhood. In his teens, he left home to go to St. Louis, Missouri (c. 1917 ) where piano-based blues was prominent. He was able to develop his vocal talents and began performing with the pianist, Roosevelt Sykes. After more than ten years playing in and around St. Louis, in 1933 he and Sykes decided to move on to Chicago. In Chicago he was dubbed St. Louis Jimmy and there he would enjoy a solid performing and recording career for the next four decades. While Chicago became his home base, Oden traveled with a group of blues players to various places throughout the United States. He recorded a large number of records, his best known coming in 1941 on the Bluebird Records label called "Goin' Down Slow." Oden wrote a number of songs, two of which, "Take the Bitter with the Sweet" and "Soon Forgotten," were recorded by his friend, Muddy Waters. In 1948 on Aristocrat Records Oden cut "Florida Hurricane", accompanied by the pianist Sunnyland Slim and the guitarist Muddy Waters. In 1949, Oden partnered with Joe Brown to form a small recording company called J.O.B. Records. Oden appears to have ended his involvement within a year, but with other partners the company remained in business till 1974. After a serious road accident in 1957 he devoted himself to writing and placed material with Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf ("What a Woman!") and John Lee Hooker. In 1960 he made an album with Bluesville Records, and sang on a Candid Records session with Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Otis Spann. Oden died of bronchopneumonia, at the age of 74, in 1977 and was interred in the Restvale Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, near Chicago. If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!

Shoot My Baby - Tracy Nelson w/ Marcia Ball

“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 in creation.” With Victim of the Blues (Delta Groove), her 26th album in just over five decades, she has circled fully, back to the original music from South Side Chicago that mesmerized her teenaged mind in the mid-1960s. “Several years ago,” Nelson reveals now, “I was driving with a friend across Montana, tooling down I-90 hauling a 1962 Bambi II Airstream trailer, the one that looks like a toaster. We were making a trip to Hebron, North Dakota where my grandfather homesteaded and built up a 2000+ acre ranch which he sold in the early ’60s.” The current owners were about to tear down the old claim shack and she wanted to go back there one last time. The car windows were down and national blues DJ Bill Wax was on their XM Satellite Radio — the great Otis Spann’s “One More Mile,” from his 1964 Prestige album, rolled out of the truck speakers. “It had always been a song I wanted to do” Nelson recalls, “and that started me thinking about all the great Chicago blues songs and artists I had heard in my formative years, especially Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. This was around the time I made my first record, Deep Are the Roots.” She thought too of just a few years ago when she was touring nationally as part of a well-known Chicago blues revue, playing a lot of blues festivals. “The music I heard back in the day in Chicago and what I was hearing from the current crop of blues acts bore little relation to each other.” From that memorable day in the Badlands hearing “One More Mile,” she decided it was time to make a record she says, with “some of those fine old songs and be as true and authentic to the style as a Norwegian white girl (is that redundant?) from Wisconsin could manage it.” This new album, Victim of the Blues, is a hand-picked collection of songs, most written by Nelson’s early heroes: Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Percy Mayfield, Lightning Hopkins, Joe Tex and Howlin’ Wolf. She has chosen 11 songs of the day, ones that were spilling out of AM radios from second-story apartments, rolled-down car windows, and live from darkened clubs with exotic names like El Macambo. The album kicks off with a rollicking Wolf tune, “You Be Mine,” propelled by piano man Jimmy Pugh (Robert Cray, John Lee Hooker, Etta James) and tough guitarist Mike Henderson (The Bluebloods), with slapping doghouse bass from Byron House (Robert Plant’s Band of Joy) consummately conjuring Willie Dixon, as Tracy Nelson’s voice soars. One contemporary song, “Lead a Horse to Water,” Nelson notes, “is by a wonderful singer/songwriter named Earl Thomas, who should have been born in that era.” The snaky, shimmery Pops Staples sound from guitarist Henderson along with the gospel background vocals (Vicki Carrico, Reba Russell, John Cowan, Terry Tucker and Nick Nixon) would make Mavis grin. A pair of Jimmy Reed (“the great Chicago blues communicator” —Robert Santelli) classics follows: “Shoot Him” pops like a wry firecracker, complete with rimshot/gunshot from drummer John Gardner (Earl Scruggs, The Dixie Chicks, James Taylor) and Henderson’s unexpected (and dismayed) shout. Nelson’s pal and guest singer/piano woman Marcia Ball jumps in on the action too. And on “It’s a Sin” Nelson delivers perfect slow-drag vocals. (Lyrics on both are by Mary Reed, Jimmy’s longtime collaborator and wife.) Women howling never sounded so damn classy in Wolf’s “Howlin’ for My Baby.” Here Nelson is joined by Texan and her fellow Blues Broad, Angela Strehli. “One More Mile,” the Otis Spann song that inspired the whole album, is a true tribute to the Delta/Chicago bluesmen who brought their soul and musical skill to future generations, and could be considered a bookend to Nelson’s 1968 version of her Memphis Slim namesake song, “Mother Earth.” Again, Nelson just tears it up, deeply, cathartically, achingly. Percy Mayfield’s minor-key masterpiece “Stranger in My Own Hometown” is seductively propulsive thanks to Gardner’s brushes and Pugh’s touch on the Hammond B-3. The dramatic and tender caution Nelson offers in “The Love You Save,” a 1966 Joe Tex gem, pleads for intimate understanding in a timely, worldly way. A New Orleans second-line beat infuses Nelson’s take on the dark Lightning Hopkin’s “Feel So Bad” with the notion to dance away the pain. And when Nelson intones “feel like a ball game on a rainy day,” you can taste the humidity, and the clouds overhead. “Without Love,” written by Danny Small, made famous by Tom Jones, Irma Thomas and Elvis Presley, closes, magnificent in presentation, humble and redemptive — ”I had conquered the world, but what did I have? Without love, I had nothing at all.” Singer John Cowen matches Nelson’s explosive power as he takes the high part and goes to church. The only piece on this album from the first generation blues era — replete with banjo, steppin’ bass from House and Pugh’s whorehouse piano — is by Ma Rainey, whom Nelson defines as “my first musical influence when I started to sing seriously. It’s the title tune, ‘Victim of the Blues’ — and the story of my life . . .” Nelson’s listening education began in the early 1960s when, while growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, she immersed herself in the R&B she heard beamed into her bedroom from Nashville’s WLAC-AM. “It was like hearing music from Mars,” she recalls of the alien sounds that stirred her so. As an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, she combined her musical passions singing blues and folk at coffeehouses and R&B at frat parties as one of three singers fronting a band (including keyboardist Ben Sidran) called the Fabulous Imitations. She was all of 18. In 1964 she went to Chicago to record her first album, Deep Are the Roots, produced by Sam Charters and released on Prestige Records. “We hired Charlie Musselwhite to play harp on that record and he and I connected and hung together for a while. I’d go visit him in Chicago and he’d take me to the clubs on the South Side. That’s where I first met Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.” A short time later, Tracy moved to San Francisco and, in the midst of that era’s psychedelic explosion, formed Mother Earth, a group that was named after the fatalistic Memphis Slim song (which she sang at his 1988 funeral). Mother Earth the group, true to its origin more grounded than freaky, was nonetheless a major attraction at the Fillmore, where they shared stages with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Burdon. In 1968 Mother Earth recorded its first album, which included Nelson’s own composition “Down So Low.” It became her signature song, and is considered by all a staggering achievement in the canon of rock music. Esquire magazine called it “one of the five saddest songs ever written.” It has been regularly covered by great women singers through the years, including Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, Maria Muldaur and, in 2010, Cyndi Lauper, who chose it for her own Grammy-nominated blues album. In 1969, the second Mother Earth album, Make a Joyful Noise, was recorded in Nashville, leading Tracy to rent a house and later buy a small farm in the area where she still lives today. As a side project, she soon recorded Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country for which she coaxed Elvis Presley’s original Sun-era guitarist Scotty Moore to co-produce (with Pete Drake) and play on her rendition of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right Mama.” In a way, the phenomenon that is Tracy Nelson is encapsulated in that circumstance: it’s a blues song, made famous by a rock ’n’ roller, recorded on a country album by a folkie turned Fillmore goddess, produced by a rockabilly legend and the preeminent pedal steel player of the day. After six Mother Earth albums for Mercury Records and Reprise Records, Nelson continued to record throughout the ’70s as a solo artist on various labels. In 1974, she garnered her first Grammy nomination for “After the Fire Is Gone,” a track from her Atlantic Records album, a hit duet with Willie Nelson that Tracy reprised on her 2003 album, Live From Cell Block D. Willie (who, despite the rumors, is not related to Tracy although he contends they just might be “the illegitimate children of Ozzie and Harriet”) said of Tracy’s remarkable pipes, “that tremendous voice has only gotten better over the years.” The highlight of Nelson’s tenure with Rounder Records throughout the 1990s was surely Sing It!, the brilliant, big-selling 1998 album starring Nelson, swamp blues/rocker Marcia Ball and soul queen Irma Thomas. “She has a magnificent voice. She can truly sell a song,” said Thomas, and music critics enthusiastically agreed —”Nelson repeatedly stops the show with her enormous, wraparound voice, transforming tunes like ‘In Tears’ from simple country-flavored ballads into cathartic emotional experiences,” wrote Michael Point (Austin American-Statesman). And drawing from the recent albums she did with Memphis International, Nelson gave fans worldwide the chance to hear her live (in the great jailhouse album tradition of Johnny Cash and B.B. King) when she released Live From Cell Block D, recorded at the West Tennessee Detention Center in Mason, Tennessee. It was a profound experience for her and reinforced “the value of sharing music in every venue imaginable.” In late July, 2010, Nelson was featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” a little more than a month after the tragic fire that took the 100+ year old farmhouse she shared with longtime partner Mike Dysinger. She was just beginning to deal with the aftermath of losing her home and many of her personal belongings. “The firemen told us they could save one room — we had to decide —we said ‘the studio.’” This album, Victim of the Blues, is the album that miraculously survived the fire. And that is the reason that the first people Nelson thanks in this album’s notes are the Burns, Tennessee Volunteer Fire Department. To date, there have been several benefits across the country to assist the two in rebuilding their farmhouse on the land they love. Seeing as how her first Grammy nomination was for “After the Fire Is Gone,” with Willie Nelson, she would say drolly, “It seemed like the perfect thing to call these events.” Nelson had titled this album before the fire, so the irony is not missed on her. Victim of the Blues is as deeply felt as anything she has recorded in her exceptional career; she is a soul survivor. - Mindy Giles If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, -  ”LIKE” ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorite band!