Key to the Highway 

2017-02-22       Mardi Gras                                                          

Buckwheat Zydeco

John Mooney
Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns

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Next Tuesday is Mardi Gras and, each year, it is my pleasure to dedicate an entire show to the music of Louisiana and today’s is this year’s edition.  “Play an Accordion, Go to Jail” is a common bumper sticker in the Bay Area, but our main artist should definitely prove an allowable exception to that rule.  It might even make my cousin wish he hadn’t given up the instrument in his youth.  Hopefully, he will hear today’s show since he avails himself of KKUP’s streaming to his remote location in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada.
Stanley Dural, Jr. was born November 14^th 1947 in Lafayette, Louisiana, but became known popularly as Buckwheat Zydeco, so nicknamed in his youth because his braided hair created an apparent likeness to the Little Rascals character. 
A quote from The New York Times might help explain why the accordionist and his band, Ils Sont Partis Band, were among only a few Zydeco bands to achieve mainstream popularity: “Stanley ‘Buckwheat’ Dural leads one of the best bands in America.  A down-home and high-powered celebration, meaty and muscular with a fine-tuned sense of dynamics … propulsive rhythms, incendiary performances.”  NPR’s Weekend Edition referred to him as "the go-to guy for Zydeco music.”
Stanley Dural Sr. was an accordion player but Jr.’s first choice was the organ, and it was on this instrument, in the late 50s, among the artists he backed were Joe Tex and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.  It was not until 1971 that he founded his own group, the 15-piece funk and soul group Buckwheat and the Hitchhikers, with whom he achieved local success for the single It’s Hard to Get.
In 1976, Buckwheat joined Clifton Chenier’s Red Hot Louisiana Band, still playing organ, and right away he saw the effect they had on the audience: “Everywhere, people young and old just loved Zydeco music.  I had so much fun playing that first night with Clifton.  We played four hours and I wasn’t ready to quit.”  Chenier is the only artist I can think of who gained as much name recognition in the Zydeco field as Buckwheat Zydeco, albeit a generation or two earlier. 
Inspired by his time spent with Clifton, Dural took up the accordion in 1978 and the next year released One For the Road with his band named Buckwheat Zydeco, the first of three albums for the Blues Unlimited label.  After a short time with the Black Top label, Stanley moved on to Rounder Records and received Grammy nominations for both of their releases, the 1983 album Turning Point and 1985’s Waiting for My Ya Ya.  Another switch, this time to Island Records for a five record deal, making them the first Zydeco group ever signed to a major label, brought about another Grammy nomination for their initial album, On a Night Like This.  The band could also be seen in the 1987 movie The Big Easy.
1988 would find Buckwheat’s ensemble touring with Eric Clapton as well as the guitarist’s twelve night gig at the Royal Albert Hall in London.  Buckwheat was now a highly sought out commodity, performing on tours and sometimes in the studio with such artists as diverse as Keith Richards, Robert Plant, Willie Nelson, Mavis Staples, Dwight Yoakam and David Hidalgo, Paul Simon, Ry Cooder, and U2, even the Boston Pops, as well as providing music used in movies including the Bob Dylan bio-pic I’m Not There.  The group also made several television appearances including on The Late Show with David Letterman, CNN, The Today Show, MTV, NBC News, CBS Morning News and many others.  They were also invited to play the final episode of The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon.  Buckwheat also acquired an Emmy for his music in the CBS TV movie, Pistol Pete: The Life and Times of Pete Maravich.
In addition to a number of appearances at The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the most noteworthy of his many Festival performances were the Newport Folk Festival and the Montreux Jazz Festival.  Buckwheat performed at inaugural balls for both of President Bill Clinton’s terms and also in the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta to a worldwide audience of three billion.  Amid his heavy touring schedule, Buckwheat started Tomorrow Recordings and released Trouble, the first of his four albums for the label between 1997 and 2005.
About his 2009 Grammy nominated album for Alligator Records, Sonicboomers.com noted, “The CD is a vastly entertaining and appealingly diverse package. Bandleader Dural remains an ever-engaging vocalist and a whiz on any keyboard he touches. So, for Buckwheat Zydeco fans, Lay Your Burden Down finds the maestro and his group near the top of their form. For listeners with less interest in the ol' accordion get-down, the collection supplies enough interesting wrinkles to get the good times rolling."  Guest performers on the album included Steve Berlin of Los Lobos (who also produced the release), Sonny Landreth, Warren Haynes, Trombone Shorty, and J.J. Grey.
The career of Buckwheat Zydeco lasted from 1971 to 2016 but was brought to a conclusion with his passing from lung cancer on September 24^th 2016 at Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center in the town of his birth, Lafayette, Louisiana, but his music lives on.   Enjoy

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John Mooney was born on April 3^rd 1955 in East Orange, New Jersey but at an early aged his family moved to Rochester, New York.  One of his neighbors was Blues legend Son House and John was taught the basics of both the guitar and the power of the musical genre.  Mooney would later back House on his mid-70s performances in the twilight of his career.
In 1976 Mooney relocated to New Orleans where he quickly signed on with Blind Pig, releasing his first album, Comin’ Your Way, in 1977.  His next album was Late Last Night for Bullseye Blues, which hit the shelves 1990.  The backing musicians are Jon Cleary on keyboards, David Ransom on bass and Kenneth Blevins on drums.  It is from this disc that we air Mooney’s first set.
John veered away from his acoustic style when he formed Bluesiana I 1983 with drummer Kerry Brown and bassist Glenn Fukunaga to meld the music of the Delta with the rhythms of New Orleans.  The band is well represented today from the live album, Travelin’ On, recorded in Breminale, Germany in 1991 by the Bay Area’s own Blue Rock’it label.
These two albums were put together early in John’s recording career and were instrumental as a foundation for an enduring run of entries on record store shelves.   Enjoy

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Huey “Piano” Smith became known through a handful of R&B hits he had with his band, the Clowns, but he was also behind the scenes of several more of the Crescent City’s classics.  He became a highly desired sideman in a city known as a Mecca for talented and innovative piano players.
Huey was born on Robertson Street in New Orleans on January 26^th 1934 where, early on, he listened to an uncle play piano.  He took music lessons but also learned much from his sister and listened to Charles Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter, Ray Charles, and Hank Williams on the jukeboxes, but it was a piano player he often heard in his neighborhood, Professor Longhair, who had the most profound effect on his own style.  Entering a talent contest with a friend under the pseudonym Slick and Dark, they performed a tune the two penned, Robertson Street Boogie.
When he was fourteen he put together the Honeyjumpers, a group loosely inspired by the music of Louis Jordan.  A year later, in 1950, Huey teamed up with guitarist Eddie Jones, better known as Guitar Slim, and drummer Willie Nettles.  Eddie Jones and his Playboys recorded for Imperial in May of 1951 and Smith also backed Jones’ 1952 session for Bullet.  Huey’s first recordings he was credited for were in a session for Savoy split with guitarist Earl King in 1953.  Slim’s first sessions for Specialty had Lloyd Lambert’s band backing him which featured Ray Charles on piano, although one of my sources says it was Lawrence Cotton and not Ray Charles who played piano for Lambert.  Johnny Vincent had Jones continue with the Lambert band for his touring so Huey teamed up with Earl King as vocalist.  Smith preferred to be bandleader and not lead singer. 
In 1955 Huey was a part of the sessions that created Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti and Smiley lewis’ I Hear You Knockin’.  Johnny Vincent had left Specialty to set up Ace Records and he convinced Earl and Huey to come record for him.  They laid down Those Lonely, Lonely Nights and the tune, credited to Earl King, became the label’s first hit; Huey was upset when the platter listed the piano as by “Fats”.  It started King on his solo career, but in mid-1956 Huey came out with his own release, Everybody’s Whalin’ with Little Liza Jane on the B-side.  Huey provided Ace’s first national hit in August 1957 with Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu, reaching #9 on the R&B charts and #52 on Billboard’s Hot 100.  As Smith recalled, “I was trying to pick up on some catchy lines.  Chuck Berry had this line, ‘I got rockin’ pneumonia sittin’ down at a rhythm revue’ and Roy Brown had a line about ‘young man rhythm’.I started thinking about opposite lines like ‘kissin’ a girl that’s too tall’.  So we came up with Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu right there in the studio.”
One of the stops on Huey’s tour backing up Shirley and Lee was at the Royal Theatre in Baltimore where vocalist Bobby Marchan was the opening act.  Smith had backed Marchan on his successful Ace release, Chickee Wah Wah, and the two decided backstage to form Huey Smith and his Clowns.  After Free, Single and Disengaged b\w Just a Lonely Clown failed to chart, their 45 Don’t You Just Know It b\w High Blood Pressure reached #9 in the spring of 1958.  The song’s title came to mind when the band’s tour bus driver whose response to practically everything was “Don’t you just know it.”  While the record was achieving such a good market, the group was rushed into the studio to put together Havin’ a Good Time (also the title of the CD  that provided the music for this set) with the flip side We Love Birdland, but it achieved only local success. 
Vincent had again drawn Smith’s ire when he had him record We Like Mambo as the flip side of Eddie Bo’s My Love is Strong (one source says it was I’m So Tired) and ultimately credited both sides to Bo, but the last straw was in 1958 when he took Huey’s Sea Cruise track, sped it up a little and replaced the vocal with Frankie Ford, essentially stealing another hit from the piano man.  Huey had another hit for Ace with December 1958’s release of Don’t You Know Yockomo b\w Well I’ll Be John Brown (#56 in the Hot 100), then left for Imperial in 1959.
The musical tastes of times had changed and Huey was struggling at Imperial when, in 1962, Vincent released The Popeye, a tune Smith had recorded while with Ace, and its success caused Imperial to drop Huey so he returned to Ace until the label folded in 1964.  Huey went on to form his own label, releasing a disc under the name Shindig Smith and the Shakes, and he went on make a few recordings of little note through the end of the 60s, instead depending on his gardening business to make his living.  In 1970, Huey had a session for Cotillion with hopes of an album but only a single was put out.  In 1981, Huey decided to retire from music in Baton Rouge, with the exception of appearances in the 1979 and 1981 with Bobby Marchan, became a Jehovah’s Witness and set about studying the Bible while running his gardening business.   Enjoy

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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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Soul Serenade
What You Gonna Do?
Walking to New Orleans
Hard to Stop
   Buckwheat Zydeco

Country Gal

Baby Please Don’t Go
It Don’t Matter
Coma Mama
Late on in the Evening
Country Boy
   John Mooney

Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

      (part one)
Don’t You Just Know It
Little Chickee Wah-Wah
Lil Liza Jane
Well I’ll Be John Brown
Everybody’s Whalin’
Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu
      (part two)
High Blood Pressure
Don’t You Know Yockamo
   Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns   21mins

I’m Gonna Love You Anyway

It Must Be Magic
Buck’s Going Downtown
Buck’s Going Uptown
Rock, Boogie, Shout
You Lookin’ for Me?
   Buckwheat Zydeco

Mean Mistreater

Maybe Baby
Standing Around Crying
Junco Partner
Ain’t Gonna Marry
Shortnin’ Bread
   John Mooney

Out on the Town

Put It in the Pocket
   Buckwheat Zydeco

Key to the Highway 

2017-02-08           

Billy Boy Arnold                      1955-64               

Lou Donaldson                         1964-65

Johnny Shines

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It seems like I’ve written this before but I can’t recall in what context, but Billy Boy Arnold is a perfect example of how I found new and interesting artists in the 60s and 70s.  I came across Billy Boy’s first album, Prestige’s 1964 release More Blues from the West Side, which leads off today’s show, and discovered that Jerome Arnold, bass player for the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band album, was his brother.  That was a good start, but the topper was the fact that two of Magic Sam’s recording sidemen, guitarist Mighty Joe Young and piano man par excellence Lafayette Leake, were included here along with another familiar name, drummer Junior Blackmon, filling out the four man backing crew.

From that album we take a step backward a decade, as we return for our next Arnold set, to visit his earliest recordings backing Bo Diddley in 1955 and some things put out in his own name from the same sessions.  Billy Boy had laid down a couple of tracks in 1952 for the Cool label, but they are not in my collection so we begin here with a March 2^nd 1955 session for Chess Records, which produced Bo Diddley and I.m a Man, plus two tracks released under Arnold’s name, Sweet on You Baby and You’ve Got to Love Me.  Earlier, in the fall of 1954, Billy Boy and Bo, along with another future well-known Chicago sideman, guitarist Jody Williams, had teamed up playing on the street corners outside the bars.  Williams appeared on that first Vee Jay session, Bo did not.  Billy Boy joined Bo again on May 15^th to cut Diddley Daddy and The Great Grandfather, but sometime that month Billy Boy went into the Vee Jay studio and came out with his first hit, I Wish You Would, along with its B-side I Was Fooled.  This was reportedly the first Chicago Blues release to utilize an electric bass but the song’s airplay was reduced when Leonard Chess complained it was too similar to Bo Diddley, whether that meant the song or the artist was unclear.

Billy backed up Bo once again July 14^th on the recordings of Bring It to Jerome and Pretty Thing.  Then it was back to Vee Jay in September for four more tracks, of which we hear Don’t Stay Out All Night and I Ain’t Got You, the latter tune released simultaneously by Vee Jay’s most popular Bluesman, Jimmy Reed.  The song was chosen almost a decade later by a couple of British groups, The Yardbirds (who had already done Arnold’s I Wish You Would) and The Animals, and those versions made the song a favorite of seemingly every local garage band around 1966.  Our set closes with Arnold’s last recording with Bo, Down Home Special from some time in 1956.

All the Bo Diddley tunes are sourced from the 2CD Chess Box while the six remaining songs come from Charlie Records Billy Boy Arnold: I Wish You Would.  More from the latter album provides us with four more numbers from Arnold’s Vee Jay sessions to open our closing set.  Whether he was playing with Bo’s band or assembling a combo for each of his own sessions, Arnold was availed of the highest caliber of Chicago’s sidemen, including for Vee Jay Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime pianist Henry Gray or Sunnyland Slim and drummers Fred Below and Earl Phillips.  Pianist Otis Spann and drummer Clifton James were part of the first Diddley date.  The bassist on all the Diddley tracks was Chess’ A&R man Willie Dixon.

Alligator Records acquired a taped session from June 25^th 1963 featuring Johnnie Jones, best known as the piano man behind Elmore James.  He was also very popular on Chicago’s West Side clubs and for a while was essentially the house pianist at Sylvio’s, which provided a base at various times to such as Howlin’ Wolf or Magic Sam.  Most often the club featured three bands and Johnnie would join in with all three.  Had he not died of cancer in November of 1964 and played maybe a decade longer, his stature as one of Chicago’s best keyboard players would have been cast in concrete.  As Arnold recalled, “It was a little place in the basement. I guess there were about fifty people, no more.  It was an old upright piano.  No, we didn’t rehearse.  We just called out tunes when we got on stage.  A guy like that, you don’t have to rehearse.”  Most of the album Jones plays solo, but we did take three tunes showing Billy Boy’s talents to close today’s presentation.

Billy Boy was a native of Chicago (born there on March 16^th 1935, one of sixteen children) and in 1948 was taken under the wing of harmonica legend John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson.  I have come across a few explanations why Billy became Billy Boy, one being that he was a child prodigy, but the one I choose to believe is that he took on the addition in tribute to Sonny Boy, who was murdered the same year Arnold came under his tutelage.  Arnold had met Ellis McDaniel in the early 50s and, while busking on the Chicago street corners, the two created McDaniel’s lasting identity as Bo Diddley.  At one point, Bo even put together Billy Boy’s first amp out of an orange crate   After his recording successes with Bo but mostly from his own releases for Vee Jay, Billy Boy was able to play the Chicago club circuit regularly, but partly due to the young black audience moving away from the Blues combined with the competition of so many quality Bluesmen in Chicago and his contract with Vee Jay not being renewed, the early 60s found Billy making his living out of music as a bus driver, truant officer or counselor to women paroled from the Illinois Justice system.

As Arnold expressed to Pete Welding for the 1965 liner notes to the Prestige LP, “The main reason I haven’t been working as much as I could is that I just got tired of all the trouble, the hassle, involved in keeping a band together.  You form a group and it seems that you no sooner get it where it’s good, get it to where you want it, than the guys start leaving to go out on their own.  So you spend practically all your time recruiting new musicians and breaking them in; the rest of the time you’re out hustling for jobs.  You spend all your energy staying where you are and to keep what you have.  I just got tired of it all.”

Chicago sessions recorded in 1966 for Testament Records comprised all but one track of the 1995 release Goin’ to Chicago, but I believe many of the tracks were released on vinyl in the late 60s or early 70s on a compilation album of the same name.  The 70s also saw Billy boy hitting the festivals and making his first tour of Europe in 1974.  There was a 1973 Vogue release titled Kings of Chicago Blues Volume 3, but I guess by the title it may be reissues of American stuff.  A couple of albums came out on Red Lightnin’ in 1975 (Blow the Back Off It) and 1979 (Checkin’ It Out) as well as the recording of an October 1977 session for BBC Radio One DJ John Peel.  Another session in London in 1997 with Tony McPhee’s Groundhogs created the Catfish album, released in 1999.

A Paris recording from December 1984 was rereleased in 1995 on the Evidence label as Ten Million Dollars.  Things were looking up as Billy Boy got a contract with Alligator Records but only two albums were released, Back Where I Belong in 1993 and El Dorado Cadillac in 1995.  After another recording drought, Arnold was backed in 2001 by Duke Robillard’s band for Stony Plain Record’s Boogie ‘n’ Shuffle.

Mark Hummel set up ten dates for Billy Boy and Jimmy Rogers, and he used Billy Boy’s time in California as an opportunity to record him backed up by Mark’s band, the Blues Survivors, which at the time featured guitarist Rusty Zinn and bass player Ronnie James Weber.  The tracks were laid down in eight hours on October 1^st 1992 but didn’t see the light of day until 2005 on Electro-Fi Records, then the label followed with Billy Boy Arnold Sings Sonny Boy in 2008 and Billy Boy Arnold Sings Big Bill Broonzy in 2012.  Stony Plain came back with another release in 2014, The Blues Soul of Billy Boy Arnold.

In 2012, the album Blue and Lonesome was released, but it might be the same as the earlier mentioned Catfish album because it featured McPhee’s Groundhogs.  Wikipedia also lists Live at the Venue 1990 on the Catfish label so that brings up some confusion.  Not that big a deal, though.  What is more disconcerting to me is the fact that since 1955 (over 60 years) that this small selection of releases is all there is of such a fine Bluesman.  In 2014, Billy Boy was nominated for a Blues Music Award in the category of Traditional Blues Male Artist of the Year.

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From its inception in 1990, this show was intended that Jazz would be an occasional participant, but likely due to my lack of knowledge of that genre the appearances have been relatively rare.  That should change this year. 

 

My earliest Jazz purchases were around 1970 or so at the Flea Market where used LPs sold for about a quarter, not much of a risk.  One decision that was really a no-brainer was an album called Rough House Blues which we’ll be hearing as the second set of this airing.  The album cover caught my attention right away with a large-looking black guy wearing a derby hat and a half-drank mug of beer resting just outside his left hand on the bar, not to mention two of the songs having Blues right there in the title.  For the longest time, Lou Donaldson was my Jazz go-to guy, particularly this 1964 album and you should probably be able to tell why.  So please forgive the scratches but they were well earned.  Likewise, our other Donaldson LP, 1965’s live recording Fried Buzzard, both albums released on the Chess subsidiary, Cadet Records.

 

Since we are talking over 50 years since these tracks were laid down, when I looked up his biographical information I was pleasantly surprised that Lou was still active.  Born on November 1^st 1926 in Badin, North Carolina, the alto saxophonist attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University in the early 40s, then signed up for the Navy during World War II.  Doing his naval training in Chicago, Lou was exposed to Bop music when he hit the city’s club scene and was particularly influenced by the music of Charlie Parker.  After the war, Donaldson returned to Greensboro where he played the clubs with The Rhythm Vets, a group of Navy men who also attended A&T.

The Rhythm Vets performed the soundtrack to a musical comedy short film, Pitch a Boogie Woogie, in 1947.  The film hit the Black theaters the next year and was chosen for restoration by the American Film Institute in 1985, and the band gave a reunion concert after the restored movie’s debut was held at Greenville’s East Carolina University.  There was a bit of a Fayetteville, N.C. concert contained in the documentary titled Boogie in Black and White about the film.

 

Lou recorded first in 1950 as part of the Charlie Singleton Orchestra and in 1952 with Milt Jackson and Thelonius Monk.  Among those he gigged with were trumpeter Blue Mitchell, pianist Horace Silver and drummer Art Blakey.  He was part of sessions in 1953 with Clifford Brown and Philly Joe Jones.  He joined Art Blakey’s Quintet and one of the albums they recorded was Night at Birdland, done in February of 1954 at the legendary Jazz venue.  He entered the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2012, the same year he was proclaimed a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, considered America’s most esteemed honor for Jazz musicians.

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Born John Ned Shines in Memphis, Tennessee on April 26^th 1915, it took little time after learning the basics of guitar from his mother before Johnny Shines was busking on the Memphis streets and playing the local jook joints.  Johnny worked on the farms around Hughes, Arkansas beginning in 1932 until he met Robert Johnson and got back into his music beginning in 1935 when he and Johnson toured the States and Canada.  A year after they went their separate ways, Johnson was murdered.

 

Shines shared his music around the southern states until moving to Chicago in 1941 where, in addition to playing the bar scene, he worked in construction.  After recording for Columbia in 1946 and Chess in 1950, it wasn’t until his 1952 session for J.O.B. Records that anything ever hit the shelf.  While these have been considered the best of his output, they didn’t make a dent in the market and Shines disappointedly sold off his musical equipment and looked again to construction to make his living.

 

In 1967, I got what must have been my first experience of hearing some of the “real Blues” when a fellow student played a great set of three LPs, Vanguard’s Chicago / The Blues / Today!.  The first album is my favorite with The Junior Wells Chicago Blues Band (with Buddy Guy), Otis Spann’s South Side Piano, and my favorite from the collection, J.B. Hutto and his Hawks.  The second platter has The Otis Rush Blues Band, Homesick James (Williamson) and his Dusters, and The Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, but it is the third in the series that concerns us today.  After twenty-two minutes of Johnny Young’s South Side Blues Band comes The Johnny Shines Blues Band, including drummer Frank Kirkland, bassist Floyd Jones and Big Walter “Shakey” Horton on harmonica (Walter also appears on Young’s portion of the LP), and when Walter is allowed the instrumental Rockin’ My Boogie he adds a second harmonica player, Memphis Charlie Musselwhite, to the ensemble.  In my always humble opinion (yeah, sure!) there hasn’t been a compilation that comes close to this one, especially considering all these recordings were made specifically for this series.  We use all the Shines tracks from this volume except one to conclude our set; the first three tunes may be from that J.O.B. session but I have no further information available.

Shines, along with Horton, went on to join The Chicago Blues All Stars, headed by bassist and generally all around Blues legend Willie Dixon.  In 1969, Johnny moved to Holt, Alabama but remained active on the international Blues scene and in the late 60s into the 70s could be found on tour with Robert Lockwood, Jr. the guitar-playing stepson of Robert Johnson.

 

In 1980, Johnny suffered a stroke that put a damper on his playing.  In 1989 Johnny began touring with Kent DuChaine, which continued right up to his death on April 20^th 1992 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the same year he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.  Prior to that he played in the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson and put out his final album along with Snooky Pryor and Johnny Nicholas, Back to the Country, for which he was given a W.C. Handy Award.

 

Shortly before Johnny’s passing, I was fortunate to see him at the San Jose State Fountain Blues Festival.  As I recall, Roy Rogers had been given the honor of choosing the guitarists to be included that year.  The only other imported act I can recall was Louisiana’s John Mooney, but the show was all top notch talent.  Shines also gave a lecture, probably the Monday after the Sunday event, but I was not smart enough to attend.  I presume it would have been relevant to the Johnson documentary.

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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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School Time

Goin’ By the River

Evaleena

You’re My Girl

I Love Only You

I’ll Forget About You

Billy Boy’s Blues

You Better Cut That Out

Get Out of Here

You Don’t Love Me No More

   Billy Boy Arnold   25mins

Tippin’ In

L.D. Blues

Rough House Blues

Huffin’ ‘n’ Puffin’

Back Talk

   Lou Donaldson   24mins

Fishtail

Cool Driver

Evening Shuffle

Dynaflow Blues

Black Spider Blues

Layin’ Down My Shoes and Clothes

If I Get Lucky

Rockin’ My Boogie

Hey, Hey

   Johnny Shines   25mins

Bo Diddley

I’m a Man

Sweet on You

You’ve Got to Love Me

Diddley Daddy

The Great Grandfather

I Wish You Would

I Was Fooled

Bring It to Jerome

Pretty Thing

Don’t Stay Out All Night

I Ain’t Got You

Down Home Special

   Billy Boy Arnold (w/ Bo Diddley)   34mins

Fried Buzzard

The Thang

Peck Time

The Best Things in Life Are Free

We

   Lou Donaldson   28mins

Prisoner’s Plea

Everyday, Every Night

My Heart is Crying

Rockinitis

Sloppy Drunk

Early in the Morning

I Have Got to Go

   Billy Boy Arnold   18mins