Development of the British Blues --- show 8 ---
5-28-2014
American Folk Blues Festival
1962 to 1964
Curtis Jones 1963
SB Williamson with Animals, Yardbirds 1963
It might have come to mind to
question how these British lads even came into contact with this music from a
far off land that overwhelmingly became the focus of their musical
existence. Official imports to music
shops were a rare thing indeed. Some of
the British merchant sailors would bring back momentos from their travels with
Jazz, Blues and other records often among the favorites. Many
of the American servicemen who were stationed in Europe brought favorite
records from home. During WWII, there
were no current musicians being commercially recorded because of union
disagreements and the fact that the shellac used to make records was needed for
the industrial uses of the war, but morale boosting recordings called V-disks
were issued strictly to the military.
Many of the servicemen were black and their choices were again primarily
Jazz and Blues. Their willingness to
share their musical heritage brought joy to many an Englishman’s ear.
One of the success stories of
the sixties was Willie Dixon. He was
known during his travels abroad to bring enough of his music, probably mainly in
the form of sheet music, to disperse to the young local musicians. We see a dominance of his writings in the
Blues boom years along with his recording mates at Chess Records, rockers Chuck
Berry and Bo Diddley as well as Blues purists Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, so
his outgoing nature and essentially a “learn to read the Blues” campaign just
might have been a driving force especially in the Blues boom’s infancy. And Dixon got to Europe on a regular basis
once he set up the American Folk Blues
Festival beginning in 1962, another direct influence on the young musicians.
By the sixties, Europeans
were in the midst of a decades-long love affair with American Jazz and its
players and the feeling was mutual as so many of the black entertainers found
the unexpected treatment they received by their white admirers so powerful as
to make them prolong their stays. The
Blues were also held in high regard as the bedrock of Jazz. Since the mid-fifties, Bluesmen such as Big
Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee had made
appearances on the continent through loose-knit organizations of essentially
Jazz aficionados.
Among those Jazz enthusiasts
was a pair of young Germans, Horst Lippman and Fritz Rau, who set up a company
to produce Jazz concerts beginning with the Modern Jazz Quartet tour in
1957. Lippman also began working with a
West German television station and, using the shows he produced and directed to
help in the funding of bringing over American artists, the two began to set up
the first American Folk Blues Festival set of concert tours. Through a friend who had visited Chicago,
Lippman heard about Willie Dixon and contacted him while Willie was overseas
playing with Memphis Slim.
When Dixon got home to
Chicago he began to work on the idea, assembling a rhythm section including
himself on bass, Slim on piano and drummer Armand “Jump“ Jackson as the backbone
of the shows. Lippman already knew
T-Bone Walker, who would be the lead guitarist in the group, as well as John
Lee Hooker and Terry and McGhee so they were included in this first tour along
with “Shakey Jake” Harris and Helen Humes, although the latter two did not make
our playlist. (Unlike other harmonica
men who picked up the moniker because of the way they wiggled the harp to
achieve their sound, this Shakey acquired it because he likely earned more at
dice than he did through his music. I
have also seen him referred to as Magic Sam’s uncle and have no reason to doubt
it.) The shows were set up so the band
would back up any vocalists desiring it during their twenty to thirty minute
sets as well as taking a little time in the spotlight themselves.
Dixon and Lippman actually met face to face for the first time
when Willie landed in Germany immediately before the tour began. The first four days were spent in the studio
recording for the television show. The
full tour, set for three weeks, continued with ten days of near-sellout
concerts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, then on to Paris and the
Scandinavian countries.
Instead of the dives they were used to playing in the States, here
they were featured in classical music hall venues that held about 2,000 people. Everything provided was top-notch, from the
finest hotels and food to the tour bus they used. The audiences were tremendously receptive
and, in most places, the people on the street treated them with the utmost
dignity. Through his participation in
the Festival, Memphis Slim became sufficiently well-known to live comfortably
from his playing and so remained in Paris long after the tour up until his
death in 1988.
***********************************
Since T-Bone Walker was
pretty much the headliner for the first year’s show, it occurred to me that it
would be appropriate to include this short profile I wrote about twenty years
ago:
“He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go
out and get an electric guitar … That was the best sound I ever heard.” So spoke B.B. King of Aaron Thibeaux Walker,
the man who influenced just about every guitarist since with any Blues roots.
Born May 28th, 1910 in Linden, Texas, T-Bone (a takeoff
of his middle name) grew up listening to the likes of the piano/guitar duo
Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell and Jazz/Blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson. He also recalled many Sundays when the
legendary Texas Bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson “player the guitar while my
uncle he played the mandolin and my father played the bass” as they drank home
brew and corn whiskey.
Not surprisingly, T-Bone took up the guitar at age 13, then ukulele,
banjo, violin, mandolin and piano. He
began entertaining for pay in the late twenties playing and dancing in
travelling medicine shows, some to include early Blues singers Ida Cox or Ma
Rainey. In 1929, under the name “Oak
Cliff T-Bone”, he made his first recording, Trinity River Blues / Wichita Falls
Blues for the Columbia label as they passed through Dallas looking for new
artists for their race recordings.
Unfortunately, sales were insufficient to warrant further recordings and
T-Bone strayed further towards a Jazzier style of play.
In 1933, the 23 year old Walker met a 17 year old guitarist named
Charlie Christian. T-Bone recalled that
they used to play on street corners: “Charlie would play guitar awhile and I’d
play bass, and then we’d change and he’d play bass and I’d play guitar. And then we’d go into our little dance.” In 1934, when Walker moved to Los Angeles, he
passed down his old job in the Lawson-Brooks band to the youngster, sending
Christian on his way to becoming a major innovator of the Jazz guitar.
Not that Walker was irrelevant to the Jazz scene; he had already
achieved success in black orchestras of the Swing era as a guitarist/vocalist.
But his real claim to fame began when, as early as 1935, he started to play an
electric guitar and was among the first to record with one (in 1939 on T-Bone
Blues with sax man Les Hite’s Cotton Club Orchestra). By this time he was also becoming a showman
on stage, having already developed his duck walk (later used by Rock ‘n’ Roller
Chuck Berry), playing behind his head and even picking the strings with his
teeth, almost commonplace today!
T-Bone broke into the Blues big time (“I didn’t start playing the
Blues, ever. That was in me before I was
born and I been playing and living the Blues ever since.”) right after World
War II. In 1946 he returned to the west
coast after a stint on the Chicago circuit and hooked up with the Black and
White label. During the war years, the
shellac needed to make 78s was a prized commodity, but when restrictions were
eased, a rerelease of Mean Old World (originally recorded in 1942 and most
notably redone by Little Walter Jacobs) and his new 1947 classic Call It Stormy
Monday (according to Jimmy Witherspoon: “It’s just like a national anthem. It tells the truth … people getting paid on
Friday, Saturday they go out and have a ball.”) set him in place as a
Bluesmaster to be noticed and imitated.
The Charly label has a couple of great CDs of this span. Another 2CD set well worth checking out is
available on EMI covering his 52-cut output on Imperial during the years 1950
to ’54. (Not only are these good listening, but much of the information
included here was gleaned from their liner notes.)
During the late 40s and into the 50s he had his own 11-piece
traveling band, but seven years of one-nighters and an over-enjoyment of
alcohol brought about medical problems (he was down to 93 pounds with ulcers
that required stomach surgery) forcing the breakup of the band. After his recovery, he returned to performing
in and around L.A. and some of the less strenuous tours, hiring local backup
groups when he strayed too far from home.
The late 50s brought about a change in the music young blacks were
listening to. Blues gave way to other
forms of music: R&B, Doo Wop, Soul …T-Bone recorded for many labels after
that, but was not really given the acclaim he was due during the Blues revival
of the 60s that brought a newer white audience to the Blues
Going into the 70s, his health had regressed to the point that he
often preferred to give up the guitar for a seat at the piano. On March 16th, 1975 T-Bone died of
pneumonia in L.A.’s Vernon Convalescent Hospital at age 64, leaving a legacy
best realized by the musicians who would follow.
***********************************
Not unlike many a
Bluesman, Curtis Jones was well
travelled throughout his career, plying his trade in Texas, Kansas, New Orleans
and Chicago, all en route to his finally setting foot in Europe to wind up his
life. Jones was born in Naples, Texas, a
small town on the Louisiana border, on August 18th, 1906 to
sharecroppers Agnes Logan and Willie Jones, but after working the land for four
years since his mother’s passing he went to Dallas to strike out on his own at
the age of ten. It was here that he
moved from guitar to piano and organ as his instruments of choice. To supplement his musical income, Curtis
became involved in bootlegging, got caught, spent 47 days in jail and was
unceremoniously asked to “shake the dust of Dallas off his feet”, and therefore
proceeded to hop the next freight train to Wichita. Curtis worked his way around Kansas until he
got to Kansas City, Missouri, the corrupt town where pleasure was the name of
the game. Rife with speakeasies,
gambling and prostitution, the freewheeling town also had need of musicians for
the merriment to be complete. Among many
who based themselves there in the 30s were the Count Basie Band, Jay McShann, Andy
Kirk and his Clouds of Joy and a homegrown Blues singer, Big Joe Turner. According
to drummer Jo Jones, "You could hear music twenty-four hours a day in
Kansas City". It seemed there was
no need to go anywhere else until 1939, when the city’s mayor Prendergast was
convicted of tax evasion and the Kansas City night life was quickly and
drastically curtailed.
After honing his craft in the city’s
brothels, Curtis was on the road again in 1931 to Wyoming and Nevada. In Cheyenne, he joined the Georgia Strollers
minstrel show for nine months as they travelled through Wyoming and the Dakotas,
at the rate of one town per evening, until they wound up in Nebraska. Jones took his leave of the troupe in Fremont
and traversed the forty-five miles to Omaha.
He stayed there a few months but was back on the move again with a
return to Kansas City followed by a stint in Oklahoma City before hopping
another train back to Dallas.
Being recognized in Dallas and again sent
packing, he worked his way across Texas and into Baton Rouge, Louisiana. By now able to match the competition in an area
renowned for its piano players, Jones settled in with a gig at the Anchorage
until he went to check out a high stakes dice game. Although he was only a bystander, his “stranger
in town” status when the police raided the game brought him twenty-five lashes
and another get out of town quick suggestion, to which he acquiesced via
hoboing a freight train to New Orleans.
New Orleans was good to Curtis and so were
the gigs, so he settled there with his wife for quite a while until the travel
bug once again took over. He was to be
found in Chicago by 1936, where he put together a four piece combo (joined by two
horns and a drummer) and gigged on the south side. His playing caught the ear of Lester Melrose,
the biggest of the race recordings producers at the time, who signed him up
with Vocalion. While Jones preferred to
play with a combo, his was not in the formulaic style that Melrose preferred so
Curtis was recorded solo. His first
release was based on his wife leaving him and the sincerity of his September
1937 Lonesome Bedroom Blues brought good sales and recognition. Jones’ hit kept him a popular performer and
through 1941 he released dozens of 78s on Vocalion, Bluebird and Okeh including
his oft-recorded composition Tin Pan Alley, but ill health was among the
factors which curtailed his recording career.
His songs were often repetitive musically and not particularly
inspiring, but his lyrics were considered novel. His March 1938 recording of Palace Blues
tackled the topic of the abdication by England’s Edward VIII who gave up his
throne in order to marry a commoner, much less an American woman.
He recorded four tracks for the Parrot
label in 1953 and then faded away again until late 1960 when he laid down the
album Trouble Blues for Bluesville. A
little over a year later, his 1962 LP Lonesome Bedroom Blues on the Delmark
label provided him with much more complementary backing musicians and is
considered to be the best representation of his music featuring both new
compositions and a fresh look at some of his old favorites.
Later in 1962, Curtis left Chicago to
forge his way in France and around Europe, working also in Germany, Spain,
Poland and Greece, as well as Morocco where he once took up residence. He would make two LPs for Mike Vernon, In
London in 1963 when Mike was a producer at Decca and again in 1968 for the
Vernon brother’s Blue Horizon label titled Now Resident in Europe. It is from In London that our music is taken,
mixing solo tracks in among those where he was accompanied by a small British
backing band, notably including the legendary Alexis Korner on guitar.
Jones signed on for the 1968 American Folk
Blues Festival, oddly the only one of the concert series not represented on CD
or vinyl, where he proudly promoted his new album. After the tour, he settled down in Munich
where he passed away in 1971.
***********************************
Representing the 1963 concert series, our basic band gets quite a
bit of airtime, opening up with pianist Memphis Slim’s Wish Me Well and Memphis
Boogie, bassist Willie Dixon joining him on their story of the legendary John
Henry and then singing Crazy for My Baby and ending with Matt Murphy’s
instrumental Matt’s Guitar Boogie, all with their drummer Bill Stepney there to
hold down the rhythm.
We move away from the Chicago sound momentarily as Big Joe
Williams takes the stage with only his booming 12-string’s sound to join him as
he sings Big Roll Blues and Baby Please Don’t Go. Muddy Waters continues the acoustic mood as
he opens up his portion with his solo performance of Catfish Blues before being
joined on In the City by Stepney, Murphy, Dixon and his longtime piano partner
Otis Spann, who takes over the vocal of Going Down Slow.
While T-Bone
Walker was the most inspirational of the early electric Blues guitarists, his
predecessor would have been Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson, who successfully straddled the dual realms of Jazz
and Blues and was among the earliest recorded and perhaps the most influential
guitarist of the entire pre-electric era, although it would appear that he was
more publicized initially as a vocalist. And, yes, this is the guy we read about in
our first segment from whom Lonnie Donegan “borrowed” his first name. While Robert Johnson’s rough-hewn Blues is
held in high regard today, during their lifetime it was Lonnie’s smoother music
that reached far and away the most listeners.
It is only fair to add that Robert’s premature death halted his rise
that surely would have closer approached many more of his contemporaries. As a passing point of interest, Lonnie spent
maybe as much as two years beginning in 1917 in London (he didn’t get home to
New Orleans until 1919) and, again maybe, Europe performing for the U.S.
servicemen stationed there.
Here, he is heard solo on Careless Love, C.C. Rider and It’s Too Late
to Cry, but early on he was accompanied by his brother James (not to be confused with the more well-known pianist
James P. Johnson).
As his career progressed he would play in Jazz bands headed by artists
the stature of Louis Armstrong (1927) and Duke Ellington (1928). In the late 20s, he began a successful
teaming with fellow guitarist Blind Willie Dunn (real name Eddie Lang), mostly
as an instrumental duo but also with King Oliver playing cornet and Hoagy
Carmichael providing vocal and percussion on one of their sessions. When he signed with King Records in 1947 he
recorded Tomorrow Night, which was redone by Elvis Presley, and moved for a
while to a more modern sound much akin to the Jump Blues style. Everything I have of his is a pleasure to my
ears in one way or another, and that is seldom true for artists from the 20s. I guess that qualifies him as exceptional. My favorite collection is his 4CD box set put
out by Proper Records, but JSP’s similar issue is likely just as good and more
readily available.
Pianist Victoria Spivey, one of Blues’ grande dames who had done a
couple of vocal duet sessions with Lonnie Johnson in 1928 and 1929, performs
with only Dixon and Stepney as she allows them each to step out a bit on T.B.
Blues. The session was closed when all
the performers were brought back on stage for the finale, a resounding version
of Slim’s Bye Bye Blues. A few Sonny Boy
tunes were taken out of order to start our next set.
***********************************
Sonny Boy Williamson II was known by several names and gave out several
birthdates, ranging from 1894 to 1912.
He died in 1965, but even there an exact date has been disputed. The son of Millie Ford and Jim Miller, his
given name was purportedly Aleck Ford, Aleck Miller, Alex Ford, Willie Miller
or Rice Miller, but family members called him Rice. He seldom spoke of his early years except
when he was drunk, which might explain so many varied tales. There was also much dispute as to who was the
true Sonny Boy. John Lee Williamson had
gained national prominence through recordings earlier and had always gone by
the Sonny Boy moniker, but in time our Sonny Boy would eclipse his substantial
legacy.
Around 1927, Sonny Boy II
left home for the musicians' wanderings, mostly in the Delta and sometimes
accompanied by the Roberts Johnson, Nighthawk or Lockwood or occasionally
Elmore James. By 1930, he was doing a
radio broadcast on Illinois' WEBQ as Little Boy Blue, but he gained his biggest
following in the early forties when he did the King Biscuit Time show on KFFA
in Arkansas. It was here that he was
convinced to pick up the nickname Sonny Boy Williamson to capitalize on the
Chicago harpster's growing reputation.
John Lee tried half-heartedly to stop the fraudulent use of his name,
but seldom wished to leave Chicago to resolve the situation. He did, however, join Big Joe Williams on a
tune that turned the tables to try and increase their sales in the South when
they recorded King Biscuit Stomp. Sonny
Boy II continued to widen his audience by taping half-hour spots pitching
"medicines" (mostly alcohol) that would be broadcast later in various
regional stations throughout the South.
Despite Sonny Boy's claims to
have recorded previously, his first known sessions were in 1951 for Trumpet
Records, where he remained until 1954.
It was for them in 1952 that Sonny Boy teamed up with Elmore James on
the original version of "Dust My Broom". In need of money, Trumpet sold his contract
to Buster Williams, but it was quickly acquired by Chess Records. He had also been part of sessions in Detroit
in 1954 with singer-guitarist Baby Boy Warren, uncommonly featuring an
amplified harmonica on the four recordings.
"Don't Start Me
Talking", from his initial Chess session in 1955, solidified Sonny Boy as
a prime artist for the Chicago-based label that already included Muddy Waters
and Howlin' Wolf.
Now that he was with Chess
and under the guidance of A&R man Willie Dixon, the influence of the
musicians he was playing with was refining Williamson's sound to a much more
urban flavor. His oftentimes
accompanying guitarist Robert Jr. Lockwood had added a jazz influence since he
left the Delta and, along with jazz-versed drummer Fred Below, provided some of
the most polished blues backgrounds without altering Sonny Boy's own style or
efficiency. While he was with Chess
Sonny Boy had Willie Dixon playing bass and in charge of the sessions, but he
rarely if ever availed himself of Dixon's writing talents. He was also able to take advantage of Chess'
other cream of the crop musicians, including guitarist Luther Tucker, pianists
Otis Spann or Lafayette Leake, drummer Odie Payne, and even had at least one
session with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers sitting in on guitars.
Sonny Boy and his wife Mattie
settled in Milwaukee, and he often gigged with Robert Jr. around his hometown
of Cleveland, but if business was waning there or around Chicago, he had no
problem packing up and heading back to the Delta where he would always have a
following. Then came Europe.
To be concluded in a few weeks …
Key to the Highway
May 28th, 2014
We’re
Gonna Rock
Memphis Slim
I
Wanna See My Baby
I’m
in Love
Aaron “T-Bone” Walker
Let’s
make It
Shake
It Baby
John Lee Hooker
Stewball
Memphis Slim & Willie
Dixon
I’m
Crazy ‘Bout You Baby
Sonny Terry
I’m
Crying at the Station
Brownie McGhee
Bye
Bye Baby
Ensemble
Lonesome
Bedroom Blues
Curtis
Jones Boogie
Dust
My Broom
Skid
Row
The
Honeydripper
Red
River Blues
You
Got Good Business
Curtis Jones
Wish
Me Well
Memphis
Boogie
Memphis Slim
John
Henry
Memphis Slim & Willie
Dixon
Crazy
for My Baby
Willie Dixon
Matt’s
Guitar Boogie
Matt “Guitar” Murphy
Big
Roll Blues
Baby,
Please Don’t Go
Big Joe Williams
Catfish
Blues
In
the City
Muddy Waters
Going
Down Slow
Otis Spann
Careless
Love
C.C.
Rider
It’s
Too Late to Cry
Lonnie Johnson
T.B.
Blues
Victoria Spivey
Bye
Bye Blues
Ensemble
Your
Love for Me is True
I’m
Getting’ Tired
Sonny
Boy’s Harmonica Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson
Bye
Bye Bird
Mr.
Downchild
My
Little Cabin
Highway
69
Sonny Boy and the Yardbirds
Night
Time is the Right Time
Pontiac
Blues
My
Babe
Talkin’
‘Bout You
Bye
Bye Sonny Bye Bye
Coda
Sonny Boy and the Animals
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