Key to the Highway KSCU
103.3FM
2019-11-24 7-11PM
repeat from 2017-08-23
Hound
Dog Taylor
Earl
Hooker
Sunnyland
Slim
*************************
Before any discussion about today’s show, I’d like to
mention my next show and my last show: first, a heads up for December 8th
when Gil de Leon will assist me with running the sound equipment as I make my
first attempt at a live broadcast in decades when my Canadian friend, harmonica
master Harpdog Brown, stops by in the midst of his West Coast tour with his
band to play for you. I met him when I
was in Vancouver in 2017 and have hyped him on each of his escapades to the Bay
Area since, this being his third in that span.
This time he will not be gigging in the Bay Area so this will be the
only opportunity to hear him again this year.
I’m sure you will enjoy it!
Also, I very much enjoyed my last show although I
understand there were technical difficulties causing distortion that made the
interview portions almost unlistenable.
With this in mind, I will round out today’s show with some music from
the two CDs featured last time, Goddess Isis and the Cold Truth’s See in Me,
and J.C. Smith and the South American All Stars Live at the MJ Pub. Since I cannot recall having as much fun on a
show, and that goes back more than thirty years, I would very much like to
figure out a way to rebroadcast that show in the future. Anyway, I asked them all for their access
info and here it is:
Isis
and the Cold Truth, Facebook page w/ links to video clips and performance
updates
reverbnation.com/Isis and the Cold Truth
- w/ some album cuts, photos, and gig updates
or
send a request to bluesonice@gmail.com to
get on the band email list
and,
returning soon, Isisandthecoldtruth.com (website
currently under re-construction)
and
CD Baby/Goddess Isis and the Cod Truth - to learn more about the band,
purchase CD’s and/or downloads...
www.jcsmithband.com
Facebook Band page is JC Smith Band
Facebook Band page is JC Smith Band
Reverb
nation is JC Smith and the JC Smith Band
Which
leaves today’s show. For a few reasons, most
notably listening to all the Impeachment hearings over the last coupla weeks, I
was unable to complete the show I was planning so have chosen to use the CDs I
made for a show that aired August 23rd of 2017 on KKUP. Some of my
favorite artists, of which I have many or else I’d run out of material, and
below is the original set of essays for that airing. enjoy
*************************
I
felt a bit under pressure while preparing this show because, in my always so
humble opinion, the Chuck Berry show last time was as good as I expected it to
be, meaning possibly the best I have done in almost thirty years. In order to avoid that type of letdown, I
decided to go with the most distinctive sounding Blues guitarist in my library,
Hound Dog Taylor. I am pairing him up
today with another slide guitarist, Earl Hooker, (although I find their sounds
to be totally different) mostly because I had a bio all ready for use, or so I
thought. Turned out I had increased the
number of sources I use since writing it.
I could have filled the three hours with just their music but felt a
change of pace was required, so the piano of Sunnyland Slim (born Albert
Luandrew) serves that purpose well, particularly by slowing down the tempo
considerably. I’m sure you will enjoy
this show, but what do I do next time?
*************************
I first came across Hound Dog Taylor when I went on a record buying spree to Mill
Valley with a couple of friends from San Jose’s row of hippie shops on San Fernando
Street near the University around 1972.
With me were a clerk from Underground Records and the man I will always
consider my mentor, Bob Sidebottom, who ran the Comic Collector shop but was
also a big-time Jazz and Blues fan, so much so that he named his daughter
Parker after the legendary alto sax player Charlie Parker. Anyway, working my way through the record
bins I come across just about the homeliest guy I’d seen with a big grin on his
face and a guitar in his hands. I’d
never heard of the guy or the record label but Bob was familiar with him and
his opinion was good enough for me. It
was one of my best decisions yet. His
sound still reminds me of someone playing through torn speakers.
Theodore
Roosevelt Taylor’s date of birth is in question, either 1915 or 1917, in
Natchez, Mississippi. His first
instrument was piano but at age twenty he took up the guitar. He moved to Chicago in 1942 but didn’t become
a full time musician until fifteen years later, playing the usual house
parties, club gigs and in the Maxwell Street Market, long a haven for aspiring
musicians in the Chicago area.
Taylor had made a
few appearances on Sonny Boy Williamson II’s King Biscuit Time before his move
to Chicago, and he did do a few recordings beginning in 1960 for Bea and Baby
(including a version of Take Five which he redid for his second album) and the
Marjette label as well as a couple of singles for Carl Jones’ labels in 1962
(one backing Homesick James), but it was his live performances in the Chicago
area that earned him significant respect, ultimately leading to his being chosen
to participate in the 1967 American Folk Blues Festival European tour,
performing with Little Walter and Koko Taylor.
Perhaps his best chance for success was in 1969 when he laid down five
tracks for the Checker label, but none were released.
In 1970, Bruce
Iglauer heard Taylor and the Houserockers, a three piece group which also
included drummer Ted Harvey and second guitarist Brewer Phillips behind
Taylor’s Elmore James-tinged slide guitar, at Florence’s Lounge, and
recommended them to his employer at Delmark Records but, when nothing came from
his suggestion, shipping clerk Iglauer took a $2,500 inheritance and put out
the first Alligator Records release simply titled Hound Dog Taylor and the
House Rockers. Iglauer took on the full business
side and got Taylor a nationwide tour with Muddy Waters, Freddie King and Big
Mama Thornton, with the LP Live at Joe’s Place being recorded in Boston in 1972,
followed up by two more albums from the same venue. I have never seen them but have read that the
sound quality is extremely lacking.
Late in 1973, the band was back in the studio and
their second album, Natural Boogie, was also a success. Once again, the band went on the road, then
recorded the live album Beware of Dog in 1974, but neither it nor a collection
of outtakes from the first two studio albums were released before Taylor’s
death from lung cancer in 1975. The
compilation album was titled Genuine Houserocking Music, which became sort of a
mantra for the Alligator label.
In
Taylor’s last year, his ensemble played Australia and New Zealand along with
Freddie King and the duo of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame
in 1984. Alligator put out Hound Dog
Taylor: A Tribute, fourteen tracks with different artists (Luther Allison,
Elvin Bishop, and All Music’s biographical contributor Cub Koda among others)
in 1997, then a deluxe edition in 1999 and Release the Hound in 2004. Houserockers Phillips and Harvey went on to
back another of Chicago’s slide guitar masters, J.B. Hutto, on at least one
album.
*************************
It
is likely inevitable that Earl
Zebedee Hooker (January 15th 1930 -
April 21st 1970) would be caught up by the lure of the Blues, what with his
father playing harmonica and guitar, his mother having sung with the renowned traveling
troupe, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, John Lee Hooker being a first cousin, and
moving to Chicago from the Mississippi Delta at the age of one. Earl took up the guitar seriously after
hanging around Robert Nighthawk's music store about 1945, and left Chicago
around 1946, traveling to Helena, Arkansas, where he performed with his mentor
or Sonny Boy Williamson II, including sometimes on Sonny Boy’s King Biscuit
Time on Helena’s KFFA radio. He spent a
couple of years with Nighthawk touring the South. By the end of the decade he wound up playing
in Ike Turner's band, attempting to establish himself on the Memphis music
scene in 1949, then taking to the road again, this time fronting his own group.
After
his earliest recordings from a Florida nightclub (Race Track Blues and Blue
Guitar Blues) were released on King in 1952, as well as backing vocalist /
harmonica player Little Sam Davis for the Rockin’ label in 1953, Earl went into
Sam Phillips’ Sun studio on July 15th 1953 and laid down about a
dozen tracks but none of the recordings were released at the time. Hooker then hit a dry spell as far as recording
was concerned, ending with a single on Argo in 1956, four tracks on C.J. in
1959 and a session in 1960 for Bea and Baby.
Earl had an aversion to taking the microphone, quite likely due to his
stuttering, so many of the releases were credited to the vocalists rather than
Hooker.
Earl
hit his stride when he teamed up with Mel London and his Chief and Age labels
between 1960 and 1963, not only recording under his own name but also backing
many of the labels’ other artists. On
August 8th 1960, Earl and Junior Wells recorded Galloping Horses a
Lazy Mule along with Junior’s classic Messin’ with the Kid. A couple of months later, October 17th,
the pair were back to lay down an instrumental, Universal Rock. Earl and Junior were longtime friends, not
only playing on the streets but sometimes playing on the streetcars all across
town to evade the truant officers. Indeed,
it was Junior who brought Earl to the label and their first session in 1960
created Junior’s Little by Little, reaching #23 on Billboard’s R&B Hot
Sides the next year. Riding on the
success of Wells’ Messin’ with the Kid, May 3rd 1961 saw Earl cut
his instrumental version, Rockin’ with the Kid.
Also included today are a couple of tracks done in 1962, These Cotton
Pickin’ Blues and How Long Can This Go On.
Another
track Hooker recorded on that May 3rd session was Blue Guitar, and
Chess Records got London’s approval to use the instrumental as Muddy Waters’
backing track for You Shook Me, with lyrics by Willie Dixon. The song’s success led to more backing track
purchases and Muddy released You Need Love and Little Brown Bird, the
instrumentals taped in July 1962. In
1965, Earl found his way onto the BBC show Ready Steady Go with the
Beatles. The late 60s saw him popular on
the college and festival circuits.
Always
able to earn his living through his music, Earl made himself into an extremely
versatile guitarist with forays into Country & Western and Jazz. Hooker suffered, from an early age, serious
attacks of tuberculosis, and his constant touring and recording didn’t mitigate
the problem. After losing a year in the
hospital to treat a particularly severe attack, at which time he took up using
the wah wah peddle, 1968 began the most productive studio work of Earl's
career. Based on a recommendation from
Buddy Guy, Arhoolie Records' owner Chris Strachwitz went to Chicago to check
him out, where they wound up recording the album Two Bugs and a Roach. The following year, Earl came out to
California to make a second album, Hooker and Steve, for the label.
There
were also some live club recordings that were caught in the late sixties. Earl made his farthest tour from home in November
of 1969 when he went on the annual American Folk Blues Festival concert series. Back in Los Angeles, he teamed up with
producer / pianist Ike Turner on a fine instrumental album, Sweet Black Angel,
for Blue Thumb, but a few months later, he succumbed to complications from his
tuberculosis in Chicago at the age of 41.
When he was voted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2013, it was noted that "Earl Hooker was the
'blues guitarists' guitarist,' the most respected six-string wizard in Chicago
blues musicians' circles during the 1950s and '60s." Perhaps the best way to summarize would be
with B.B. King’s statement that, "to me he is the best of modern
guitarists. Period. With the slide he was the best. It was nobody else like
him, he was just one of a kind".
My favorite reminiscence of
one of my on-air gaffes is when I misspoke and said that John Lee and Earl were
not related. I knew better, but
sometimes your brain doesn't click on all cylinders. Very quickly, I received a call from Michael
Osborn, at that time John Lee's lead guitarist, to politely tell me something
to the effect of, "John just wanted you to know Earl was his cousin."
*************************
For Your
Information
To listen to KSCU on a computer, use
either iTunes or WinAmp for the media player.
To listen to KSCU on a smart phone use
either the NextRadio or TuneIn apps.
The studio phone number is (408) 554-KSCU or, for the
digitally inclined 554-5728 but, as always, make sure no one is speaking on the
air before you dial.
The
mailing address for sending CDs, et cetera, is:
KSCU
Local Music
500
El Camino Real
Santa
Clara, CA
95053
KSCU radio’s studio is located in the basement of
Benson Hall
KSCU’s Sunday morning Blues rotation has the Jakester,
Mister G, Dave the Blues Dude and the Bluesevangelist between 9AM and 1PM. Sherri Jones does her Blues show between
10:30AM and 12:30PM on Saturdays. And,
of course, me!
The
best way to reach me is by email at coyledon@yahoo.com
(my computer’s autocorrect adds a letter t, so if that shows up here please
remove it before trying to contact me; apparently, cotyledon is some kind of
botanical term). I do send out my blog
via email so, if you would like to be added to that list, just give me your
address and I’d be happy to do so, otherwise all my writings going back to 2014
are still available at key2highway.blogspot.
I do recommend the direct email to let you know when I will be on, especially
now that I will occasionally waiver from the second and fourth week of each
month format. Thank you all for your
continued support. Feel free to call me
during the show; it gets lonely in the dungeon.
*************************
She’s Gone
Walking the Ceiling
I Held My Baby Last Night
Taylor’s Rock
It’s Alright
Wild about You Baby
It Hurts Me Too
44 Blues
55th Street Boogie
Hound Dog Taylor 38mins
I’m Going Down the Line
Guitar Rag
Galloping Horses a Lazy Mule
Universal Rock
These Cotton Pickin’ Blues
Rockin’ with the Kid
How Long Can This Go On?
Earl Hooker
You Shook Me
You Need Love
Little Brown Bird
Muddy Waters
Boogie Man
Woman I Ain’t Gonna Drink No More
Whiskey
Nervous Breakdown
Get Hip to Yourself
I Had it So Hard
Hard Time (When Mother’s Gone)
Gonna Be My Baby
Sunnyland Slim
Take Five
Hawaiian Boogie
Sadie
See Me in the Morning
Sitting at Home Alone
Roll Your Moneymaker
Goodnight Boogie
Hound Dog Taylor
Two Bugs and a Roach
Wah Wah Blues
Off the Hook
Anna Lee
Earl Hooker Blues
You Don’t Want Me
The Hook
Earl
Hooker
Give Me Back My Wig
The Sun is Shining
Dust My Broom
Rock Me
Hound Dog Taylor
