Key to the Highway
2016-09-14
Freddie King
The Electric FlagJoe Houston
Andy Mazzilli
Clarence “Pinetop” Smith
*************************
I keep my CDs in a manner which, to my imagination, is
unlike most folks. I remove them from
their jewel cases and store them in binders usually in groupings of similar
players. That way, I try to keep
musicians who came from the same band (even sidemen who later had their own
careers) together, but the primary similarity would be by location. Freddie
King is one artist I feel I have always misfiled. Freddie was born on September 5th
of 1934 in Gilmer, Texas, and that is where I have him placed, but in reality the
style of his recordings should place him in one of my Chicago Blues binders
because he was a contemporary of my favorite generation of Blues artists of all
time, the one that included fellow guitar-slinging vocalists Magic Sam, Buddy
Guy, Otis Rush, Jimmy Dawkins, etc., and stylistically he certainly fits best
with them.
By the age of six, Freddie was learning to play guitar
from an uncle and his mother, Ella Mae King.
Freddie’s family relocated from Dallas to Chicago’s south side in 1949
and, although only fifteen, he began entering the nightclubs in the
neighborhood which featured some of the best Bluesmen of the day, among them
Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson II. He very soon formed his own band, The Every
Hour Blues Band (which also featured guitarist Jimmy Lee Robinson). In 1952, King was working in a steel mill,
but the eighteen year old was also finding time to play as a sideman in bands
like Earl Payton’s Blues Cats, for whom he recorded in 1953 on the Parrot label
but the tracks were never released.
Freddie continued to work as a sideman and it appears
his reputation was climbing higher as some of the bandleaders included
guitarists Jimmy Rogers, Robert Lockwood Jr., Eddie Taylor, and Hound Dog
Taylor, pianist Memphis Slim, harmonica master Little Walter Jacobs, and often
included Willie Dixon on bass. King cut
his first tracks as bandleader in 1956 for the El-Bee label. Margaret Whitfield performed vocal with him
on the A side, Country Boy, while King sang alone on the B side, both numbers
featuring the guitar of Lockwood, Jr.
Try though he may, however, in spite of backing on some of their
artists’ recordings, King was unable to acquire a contract with Chess Records, the
premier Chicago Blues label, but in the late fifties while Willie Dixon was
away from Chess, the producer and songwriter did get Freddie into a session for
Cobra Records but, again, this session was never to go to platter. Still, King was becoming among the best-known
artists on the growing West Side Blues scene.
In 1959, Freddie met pianist Sonny Thompson, who also
served as producer and A&R man for Syd Nnathan’s King Records conglomerate
and got signed to the Federal subsidiary in 1960. His first recording session for the label, on
August 26th, produced that year’s single Have You Ever Loved a Woman
and You’ve Got to Love Her with a Feeling, but easily the most significant
track from that date was his instrumental Hide Away which, when released in 1961
as the B-side to I Love the Woman, reached #5 on the R&B charts and #29 in
the Pop Singles list, the latter fact unheard of until then for a Blues
instrumental. It became common practice
after this during his stay with the company to pair singles with a vocal on one
side and one of the more than thirty instrumentals King and Thompson wrote on
the flip. Following that tradition, I have
alternated instrumentals throughout our opening set.
Wikipedia tells us his birth name was Fred King but
his recordings with Nathan’s Cincinnati-based labels listed him as Freddy King;
later, Freddie made his preference clear.
In 1961 Federal released two albums of mostly past singles, the first,
Freddy King Sings, was followed quickly by Let’s Hide Away and Dance Away with
Freddy King: Strictly Instrumental. The
latter, combined with the 1965 LP Freddy King Gives You a Bonanza of
Instrumentals, was released in 1991on CD as Just Pickin’. Freddie recorded for Nathan into 1968 but
late in the year signed on with Cotillion, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, at
the urging of one of their producers, saxophonist King Curtis, releasing the
albums Freddie King is a Blues Master in 1969 and My Feeling for the Blues in
1970.
In 1969, Freddie was booked in the Texas Pop Festival,
which was headlined by Led Zeppelin and led to his signing with Leon Russell’s
Shelter Records in the fall of 1970. The
label released Getting Ready in 1971 (recorded at the former Chess studio in
Chicago) followed by 1972’s Texas Cannonball and then Woman Across the River in
1973. Combined with the inclusion of
Freddie’s old King singles in so many popular musicians’ repertoires, the
success of these three LPs had Freddie’s concert appeal in high gear, appearing
with major rock artists and before audiences made up mostly of white fans.
Freddie’s next signing was with the Robert Stigwood
Organization’s RSO Records. Legendary
British producer Mike Vernon was in charge of 1974’s Burglar and the follow-up
Larger Than Life albums with the exception of Sugar Sweet, a track produced by
Tom Dowd at Miami Florida’s Criterion Studios which had King backed by Eric
Clapton and his band at that time, drummer Jamie Oldaker, bassist Carl Radle
and third guitarist George Terry. Clapton
also appeared on a ive version of Farther On Down the Road contained in the
post mortem compilation, Freddie King: 1934-1976.
I
was fortunate to hear Freddie around 1972 at the Brookdale Lodge in the Santa
Cruz Mountains, an intimate setting that was one of the highlights of my
musical appreciation. With tour dates
amounting to nearly 300 days on the road each year, Freddie’s health was
failing and, at the age of 42, he passed away due to complications from stomach
ulcers and acute pancreatitis on December 28th 1976. Posthumous recognitions came in 1993 when
Texas Governor Ann Richards proclaimed September 3rd Freddie King
Day, and when Rolling Stone magazine posted its list of 100 greatest guitarists
of all time, Freddie ranked #15. He was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
*************************
In the early nineties, just after I had joined KKUP, I
went down to the Monterey Blues Festival a couple or three times with the
Conductor (still on KKUP Thursdays 5-7pm), and on one of those occasions there
was a little R&B combo on the secondary stage whom I liked enough to pick
up the CD they had available. The disc
was titled Cornbread and Cabbage Greens, which compiled tracks recorded by the
Jazz and R&B saxophone player Joe
Houston around December of 1952. We
hear today several tracks from that disc, which was released in 1991.
Another Texan, Joe was born in the Austin suburb of
Bastrop, Texas on July 12th 1926.
Before taking up the saxophone, he learned to play trumpet in school and
received his first break in 1941 when the sax man from a band he went to see
didn’t show up and the teenager was allowed to take his place. Houston toured with the Midwest territory
band of King Kolax around Chicago and Kansas City from 1943 to 1946.
Returning home to Texas after World War II, Joe
recorded with Amos Milburn and Big Joe Turner; indeed, it was Turner who got
Houston his first recording contract, with Freedom Records to whom Big Joe was currently
signed. Through this time, Houston had
been playing alto sax but switched to tenor when he chose to emulate the
honking sound that was new on the scene.
In 1949, Joe moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he played with
Wynonie Harris, among others.
Joe moved to Los Angeles in 1952, the same year he had
two hit singles with his band The Rockets in Worry, Worry, Worry and Hard Time
Baby, both of which climbed to #10 on the Billboard R&B chart and the only
times he would make such a list despite recording for many of the L.A. record
companies.
Joe appeared
in concert and on disc throughout the 1990s and 2000s with his band the
Defrosterz (perhaps the group I saw him with in Monterey) alongside his manager
and bass player Mark St. John. Joe only
ceased playing in 1995 after he had a stroke and, having suffered several more,
passed away on December 28th 2015 in Long Beach, California.
*************************
Again, going back to my early times here at the
station, the earliest recollection I have of Andy Mazzilli was when he stopped by our studio in Cupertino and
just sat down and talked music with me as I was doing a show. I had already cued and put on a CD that I
believe was the first time I heard it and when I played it, starting with the
classic It Hurts Me Too, Andy said something like, “That’s the Holmes
Brothers.” It was their first album so I
asked Andy if he was familiar with it and he said, again paraphrasing, “No, but
I recognize the song from when I played with them in New York.”
Andy was about my son’s age; in fact, he attended the
same high school but when I asked my son recently if he happened to have known
him, he looked it up in a yearbook or something and discovered that Andy was
about three years his elder. While we
were in our Santa Clara studio Andy was staying nearby and every now and then
would stop by when I was on the air. We
also went out for beers a couple of times and I got to know him fairly well. I considered him a friend.
Andy was a very talented young guitarist (when I first
met him he would have been in his mid-twenties) and I recall one time in
particular that was among the best pure Blues jam session I had heard. It was at the short-lived Bathtub Gin and
Blues (formerly the Lakewood Lounge) and it matched him up with bass player
Charles Lyons, possibly with a drummer, and it was most likely entirely
instrumental. As far as local bassists,
I have always considered Charles among the elite and the way the two worked off
of each other . . . . All I can say is WOW!
Anyway, shortly after it was recorded, Andy gave me a CD
with about twenty minutes of a session at JJ’s Lounge in 2002 and that will be
played on the air for the first time, by me anyway, today. I don’t know who the other players are, but I
think you’ll find it highly enjoyable.
I found a brief bio online and from it I discovered
that Andy left the Bay Area while still in high school to attend the Berklee
School of Music in Boston, then, while still seventeen, moved to New York. Andy would tour with some of the best-known
Blues sidemen, I presume as an ensemble, including Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime
guitarist Hubert Sumlin, pianist Pinetop Perkins, former Muddy Waters guitarist
Jimmy Rogers, and harpman / guitarist / vocalist Louis Myers who, often with
his band The Aces, backed up Little Walter, Junior Wells, and Charlie
Musselwhite. When not on tour, Andy
could be found performing with The Holmes Brothers, John Popper of Blues
Traveler or, if I knew Andy, just about anybody in order to get his music
out. He also spent a year as the main
guitarist for Joan Osborne.
I’m
not sure of the exact dates but I feel safe in saying he was born in December of
1967 and left us in April of 2007. Way
too soon.``
*************************
We likely won’t get around to it due to my talking too
much, but I did include on the second disc three tunes by Clarence “Pinetop” Smith.
Clarence was born in Troy, Alabama on June 11th. 1904, and
grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. I had
always assumed that the nickname Pinetop referred to the wood in a piano, but
Wikipedia informs us that Smith acquired it from his childhood penchant for
climbing in trees. In 1920 Pinetop moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and found
work as an entertainer. He showed off
skills not only as a singer and piano player but also as a comedian when he
went out on the T.O.B.A. tour, short for Theater Owners Booking Agency but
often spoken of as Tough On Black Asses.
He spent time accompanying Blues singer Ma Rainey and the musical comedy
duo of Butterbeans and Susie.
Fellow pianist Cow Cow Davenport referred Smith to J.
Mayo Williams who was the main producer for Vocalion Records, leading Pinetop
to move his wife and son to Chicago, Illinois, where, in 1928, he made his recordings. I’ve been unable to ascertain whether Pinetop
made more than one session in 1929, but he was all set to return to the Vocalion
studio when on March 15th, the night before the session, he was shot and killed
in a bar fight; whether he was the intended victim is unknown.
At one point, Clarence lived in the same Chicago
rooming house as Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. I hope there was more than just one piano in
the house! Smith recorded what would
become almost an anthem to Boogie Woogie, a relatively new style of piano that
all three were practitioning at the time, and although Ammons and Lewis went on
for long careers, Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie was not only among the earliest hit
in the style but the December 29th creation Smith said he put
together while at a St’ Louis house rent party seems to have taken on a life of
its own.
In
1938, Tommy Dorsey had a big band arrangement of the song made and recorded by
his orchestra, which became his best selling record at five million copies, and
was followed by versions by Bing Crosby and Count Basie. Joe Willie Perkins’ version of the song in
the 50s led to his forever being known as Pinetop Perkins, a moniker which lasted
long into the new millennium. Unlike
many of the Boogie Woogie piano presentations, Smith’s music was not strictly
instrumental, and lyrics from Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie can be found in a couple
of Ray Charles’ tunes, Mess Around and What’d I Say; phrases like “the girl
with the red dress on”, “shake that thing”, and “mess around”. Smith’s tune was also included in a Modern
Jazz vein on Bob Thiele’s 1975 LP, I Saw Pinetop Spit Blood, and the renditions
go on to this day. Pinetop was inducted
into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1991.
*************************
\The Electric
Flag dubbed themselves “An American
Music Band”, originally intended to be the group’s name when first assembled in
the spring of 1967, and the only liner notes that appeared on the LP we will be
hearing from today, go on to say, “American music is not necessarily music
directly from America. I think of it as
the music you hear in the air, on the air, and in the streets; blues, soul,
country, rock, religious music, traffic, crowds, street sounds and field sounds,
the sound of people and silence.” That
is all that is provided to describe the 1968 debut album, A Long Time Comin’,
except for the song list and a somewhat complicated list of players, but I’ll
try to clarify that a little by cutting it down to its core. I believe it was an eight man band with
drummer / vocalist Buddy Miles, bassist Harvey Brooks, keyboardist Barry Goldberg
and guitarist Michael Bloomfield along with saxophonists Herbie Rich and Peter
Strazza and trumpeter Marcus Doubleday with singer Nick Gravenites holding the
front of the stage.
In 1967, the ensemble was formed by Bloomfield shortly
after leaving the Paul Butterfield Blues Band just as they were winning acclaim
for their first two albums. He was
strongly assisted by Goldberg’s organizational skills. Goldberg, a Chicago native, began as a
drummer until his barrelhouse playing mother convinced him to switch to piano. Shortly after graduating high school, Barry joined
an R&B band, Robbie and the Troubadours, with whom he toured for three
years. Later, on July 25th
1965 he was part of the infamous Bob Dylan performance at the Newport Folk
Festival.
Also that year, he met the Texas-born guitarist Steve
Miller, who had moved to Chicago because of the town’s wealth of Blues. The Miller-Goldberg Blues Band was formed and
maintained a year’s residency at Big John’s, putting out one single on Epic
which led to a promotional spot on the TV show Hullabaloo. The next step was a four week gig at New York’s
nightclub The Phone Booth beginning December 15th, where an unreleased
album Live at the Phone Booth was recorded.
Miller soon went back to Texas and it then became the Barry Goldberg
Blues Band.
By 1966, when they went to Nashville to lay down the
tracks to the album Blowing My Mind, the band included Charlie Musselwhite on
harmonica and Harvey Mandel on guitar.
The LP didn’t do much, as Goldberg recalled, “We were playing stone
Blues, but nobody knew and we were starving, so we finally broke up.” The three were re-united for Musselwhite’s
1967 debut album, Stand Back! Here Comes
Charlie Musselwhite’s South Side Band.
In between those, Goldberg, who had been set to tour
with Dylan until Bob got in a motorcycle accident, spent a few months with the
Chicago Loop, including appearing on a 1966 single which also included
Bloomfield and another in 1967. Goldberg’s
organ was a driving force on Mitch Ryder’s #4 single, recorded in late 1966,
Devil with the Blue Dress On / Good Golly Miss Molly, and he and Michael backed
Ryder on his 1967 LP What Now My Love.
Now that the Electric Flag was about to happen, Ryder was offered the
vocalist spot but decided to stay with the Detroit Wheels
Nick Gravenites was another Chicago native, growing up
on the city’s South Side. He was enrolled
at the University of Chicago beginning in 1956 and soon met the
sixteen-year-old harp player Paul Butterfield, who attended a nearby high
school. The two began performing as a
duet in the style Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Nick playing guitar). Gravenites: “Then we got more interested in
electric Blues, and we began hanging out together in black clubs and thinking
we may even be able to play that stuff.”
In 1959, after receiving a small inheritance, Nick seized
the opportunity to visit San Francisco where he played the coffeehouses and
crashed where he could, shuttling back and forth between Chicago and S.F. until
he finally made the Bay Area his home in 1965.
One evening while Butterfield was visiting, the two were playing at the
Cabal coffeehouse and were heard by Elektra Records producer Paul Rothchild,
who offered Butterfield a contract. When
Butterfield said he was not yet ready to commit, the other Paul gave him a card
to use when the time was right.
In early 1963, Paul and Nick were together, playing at
the Blind Pig in Chicago, until Butterfield got an offer to take over
Bloomfield’s gig at Big John’s. He formed
a new band without Gravenites, but in early 1965 Michael and Nick formed another
group which, at times, also included Musselwhite. Unable to quite make a success of it, the
band fell apart when Michael joined the Butterfield band.
Still in 1965, Gravenites was able to place two of his
compositions on vinyl and included future Butterfield guitarist Elvin Bishop on
one side. Nick went on to become
managing partner in a club on the North Side called the Burning Bush and put
together a band to play there. Things
went well until Nick’s partner was killed in a car crash; it was then that
Gravenites made the final move to San Francisco, playing gigs at the Matrix and
the Jabberwock. Then, in 1967,
Gravenites signed on with the Electric Flag as songwriter and featured singer,
singing two of his compositions Groovin’ is Easy and Another Country which we
hear here.
I must once again express my gratitude to the
compilers of the 2001 book Blues-Rock Explosion, for without it I surely would
not have had almost any background on Goldberg and Gravenites. Maybe I should just congratulate myself for
having the wisdom to have bought it!
Bassist Brooks was in Bob Dylan’s band when Bloomfield
had worked on the 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited, and it was his
recommendation that they bring in the nineteen year old Miles, who had been
drumming for Wilson Pickett. Bloomfield
had recently completed the production of a session for James Cotton and he
decided then that his new band should have a horn section. I have no idea how tenor saxist Strazza was
chosen but Doubleday was referred to them by Jazz guitarist Larry Coryell.
Prior to this album, they did the soundtrack to the
movie The Trip, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Susan Strasburg and Bruce
Dern, written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman, all about an LSD
experience. Bloomfield still wanted a
baritone saxophonist and Herbie Rich came on board in time to make their first
gig June 16th or 17th at 1967’s Monterey Pop
Festival. I was fortunate to be there
Sunday so I know they did not play that day.
This
segment is not complete and I have not even proofread it. I ran out of time or I would have at least
given a few more notes on Bloomfield, and for all of that I apologize, but it is
not like this i`1``s a short read.
Enjoy the show.
*************************
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.
*************************
HideawayCountry Boy
Wash Out
Have You Ever Loved a Woman
San Ho-Zay
See See Baby
Just Pickin’
I’m Tore Down
Butterscotch
I Love the Woman
High Rise
You’ve Gotta Love Her with a Feeling
Sen-Sa-Shun
Freddie King 36mins
Killing Floor
Groovin’ is EasyOver-Lovin’ You
Texas
Wine
You Don’t Realize
Another Country
Easy Rider
The Electric Flag 32mins
3 untitled songs
Andy
Mazzilli JJ’s 2002 19mins
Remington Ride
Dust My BroomIt’s All Right
The Same Blues
Living on the Highway
Palace of the King
Goin’ Down
Freddie King 28mins
Lester Leaps In
Sentimental JourneyJay’s Boogie
I Cover the Waterfront
All Night Long
She’s Gone
Ruth’s Rock
Joe Houston 18mins
Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie
I’m Sober NowPinetop’s Blues
Clarence “Pinetop” White 9mins
Big Legged Woman
Woman Across the RiverKey to the Highway
Freddie King 15mins
No comments:
Post a Comment