Development of the British Blues and Rhythm

  --- show 49 ---   5-25-2016

Blues Band                           1981

Johnny Mars                    1980-1994

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This is another show that I have been anxiously awaiting.  I do not have any direct connection with any of the artists that we have profiled in this series … until now!  There used to be a Blues DJ here at KKUP in the early 90s who used the moniker Dan the Bluesman and he had the privilege of showing around the Bay Area some of the performers who came into town for the San Francisco Blues Festival and one of them was Johnny Mars.  Johnny came over from England for the festival but actually had an earlier Blues band out of San Francisco in 1967 which also included guitarist Dan Kennedy.

Johnny was raised in the South where he would visit juke joints and become exposed to the recordings of the Bluesmen of the day such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King and, likely most noteworthy, Muddy’s harmonica man Little Walter Jacobs.  Mars had started playing harmonica by the time he was nine years old, and when his mother died in 1957 when he was 14 Johnny moved to New Palz in New York State where he joined his first Blues band, the Train Riders.  The band morphed into the Burning Bush and by the mid-60s Johnny was recording for Mercury Records.  As he was playing around Greenwich Village he performed in the same show as Jimmi James and the Blue Flames, a guitarist who later became known as Jimi Hendrix.

In 1967 Johnny came to San Francisco and assembled what would become The Johnny Mars Band where he played bass as well as harmonica, performing at many of the free festivals that were prevalent at the time.  The band toured with Magic Sam and played on gigs with Earl Hooker, B.B. King and Jesse Fuller.  In May of 1972, Johnny and his wife Elaine moved to Britain and Johnny once again looked around for band mates, soon making the album Blues from Mars.

Long after becoming established in England, Johnny played a gig with Jazz guitarist Larry Carlton and the wording is unclear on whether it is this performance or one of Johnny’s own which was telecast in Germany in 1984 and is available on DVD.  In 1991 Johnny sat in with the Pop group Bananarama for their single The Preacher Man and appeared on the video.  This, as well as his guesting on their other singles Megalamaniac and Long Train Running, led to more TV opportunities across Europe as he continued performing in Blues Festivals in the U.K. and on the continent and even back in the U.S.

A longtime priority for Johnny over the years has been to pass on the legacy of the Blues harmonica and to that end he put in more than 15 years in the British public school system and, in 1999, this was embodied in his CD Dare to Dream, Aim to Achieve, as well as organizing a youth ensemble, Johnny Mars and the Stars.

So before that is where I enter the picture.  In my cab travels I had met Dan Kennedy who was playing regularly at one of the clubs where I often picked up customers and we got to know each other, so when Johnny came to the Bay Area again Dan brought him down to KKUP to tell us his story.  At one point in the conversation I used the term stateside and it caught Johnny’s ear, saying, “Stateside; I like that.  I should call my next album that.”  I believe it was that day that Johnny gave me a couple of his CDs that we’ll hear today, Can You Hear Me and Life on Mars.

Well, Johnny visited again pretty quickly after that and went into the studio and cut the album Stateside.  Dan called me up one evening around that time and said he was busy but would I like to show Johnny around town some and I was happy to do so.  There was a club (the now-defunct C.S. Riff’s) that featured some bands I enjoyed and I took Johnny to sit in with Sid Morris’ band.  Now, realize that Johnny had been first described to me as thinking of Jimi Hendrix except on harmonica, and I think you’ll hear why that image stuck with me, but even without all of his effects his pure harmonica blended perfectly with Sid’s band.  I haven’t seen Dan for years, maybe even decades, but when the Stateside disc was ready for distribution he made sure I got one.

A few years ago I made a rare stop in at a book store and looked at Living Blues magazine and there, staring at me from the cover, was Johnny Mars.  I’ll probably locate it right after the show; isn’t that how it always works?  I went online and purchased the 1980 album Mighty Mars to open up our show with the earliest material I could get my hands on.  Our second Mars set is taken from 1984’s Life on Mars with the closer taken from the CD Can You Hear Me (release date uncertain).

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We continue with our primary band from our last airing on their third album, Itchy Feet.  The CD version of the 1982 release includes 74 minutes of music and we will hear the original LP in our first Blues Band set while the later grouping is from the many included outtakes.  Just as excellent as their first two discs, I would just like to point out one bit of lyrics that caught my ear.  From Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio, “If my money and my guitar were burning I know which one I would choose”.  I doubt that it would be surprising to any of you the emotional value placed by musicians on their instruments, likely the most time invested in any relationship throughout a lifetime.  Even a poor musician as myself, while I haven’t held my bass guitar for more than five minutes at any one time in the last ten years, has a favorite tune to the axe, I Can’t Quit You Baby (but I have to put you down for a while).

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A couple of notes on upcoming stuff: I will be filling in for Dr. J who has been subbing for The Conductor on the Thursday 5-7pm slot one day after this show.  Not quite sure what Blues I’ll play but it will not be British.  And our 2016 Blues marathon is coming up June 24^th through 26^th and I have posted the most up to date schedule at the end of today’s playlist.

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Since it is still relatively new, I thought I’d mention that KKUP is now streaming on the internet and, while it is still in a developing stage, we have been putting out the word.  I’m not all of that good with high-tech stuff, but it seems pretty easy to access.  If you go to our website at KKUP.org you will see on the home page a strip of options immediately above the pictures of the musicians the next to the last option being LISTEN ONLINE.  By clicking this, it brings up a choice of desktop or mobile.  I can only speak for the desktop but after maybe a minute I was receiving a crystal clear feed.  As already mentioned, this is still a work in progress and we are currently limited to a finite number of listeners at any one time.  I mention this so you will be aware to turn off the application when you are not actually listening.  (I put the player in my favorites bar for the easiest of access.)  Now we can reach our listeners in Los Gatos and Palo Alto, even my family in Canada.  Let your friends elsewhere know they can now listen to your favorite station, and while they have the home page open they can check out our schedule.

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Johnny’s Groove
Desert Island
Cash Ain’t Nothing
If I Had a Woman
Watch Yourself
Mighty Mars
Rocket 88
I’ll Go Crazy
Mellow Down
   Johnny Mars

Talkin’ Woman Blues

Who’s Right, Who’s Wrong
Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio
Itchy Feet
Ultimatum Time
So Lonely
I Can’t Be Satisfied
Got to Love You Baby
Nothin’ But the Blues
Let Your Bucket Down
Come On
   The Blues Band

Don’t Start Me Talking

Standing in Line
I Can’t Take a Jealous Woman
Born Under a Bad Sign
Get On Up
Steal Away
Keep On Swingin’
   Johnny Mars

Tobacco Road

Doing Alright
Stealing
Let the Four Winds Blow
-         Smokestack Lightning
Bad Penny Blues
Green Stuff (LIVE)
   The Blues Band

Living in the Ghetto

-         A Change Will Come
Driving Sideways
Can You Hear Me?
I’m Hungry Blues
Harp Funk
Hoochie Coochie Man
   Johnny Mars

2016 Blues Marathon schedule:

FRIDAY     June 24th 2016

noon-3pm   Gil  will host live music

   1pm Rob Vey

   2pm Preacher boy 

3-6pm   "Blue Suede Dave" Stafford will continue with live music:

   3pm Chris Burkhardt

   4pm Ruth Gerson 

6-9pm   Mike the Fly

9-midnight   Kingman

SATURDAY     June 25th, 2016

midnight-3am  The Rhythm Mechanic will be exploring the Many Shades of the Blues, from the Darkness of the Delta to the Brightest of the Bay

3-6am  Dr. J

6-9am   Tomas Montoya

9am-noon   The One Foggy-Eyed Radish  

noon-2pm  Lars Bourne

2-4pm Mark Owens

4-6pm   The Conductor

6-8pm   Jim Dandy and his Mystic Blues Knights of the El Camino

8-10   Paul Johnson and friends

10-midnight   Rhythm Doctor and friends

SUNDAY     June 26th, 2016

midnight-3am  Johnnie Cozmik

3-7am   Bobby G

7-10am   Paul Jacobs

10am-noon   The Hoochie Coochie Man (Rockin’ Rick)

noon-2pm Jim and Gratia

2pm   Jammin' Jim Farris transitions us from the recorded music to our live in-studio Blues

3pm-midnight will be live performances in the station.

3pm GG Amos

4pm Ron Thompson

5pm Pat Wilder

6[pm Gary Smith,David Barrett,Andy Just

7pm the Benton st blues band

8pm Alabama Mike 

9pm JC Smith 

10pm Big Jon Atkinson

11pm Kid Andersen,Aki Kumar and friends