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Max Roach - "Mendacity" A piece for our time. From "Percussion Bitter Suite" Impulse! With Abbey Lincoln, Booker Little etc and a boiling Eric Dolphy. One of my favourite Dolphy solos. http://youtu.be/ZmfJjq63Eyk
It took me a long while before it sunk in just how good Bukka White was. I think a lot of the difficulty in appreciating him is because he arrived pretty late in the scene and may have even recorded after Robert Johnson who was another bluesman who materialised decade after the blues boom. I think he is one of my favourite blues musicians from the 20's and 30's although I love Blind Willie McTell most of all. I was playing some Sleepy John Estes last week in the car - another bluesman who I think takes some listening to before you can fully appreciate him. The more I listen to these musicians, the more shocked I am that they ever managed to eke out a recording career. A lot of the music seemed to be recorded for local audiences and I think that they could never have anticipated they were producing something that would resonate all around the world. For me, country blues seems like the Cambrian Explosion of American popular music.
I saw Sleepy John Estes coupled with Hammie Nixon in Bristol (1964 US Blues tour). He was wonderful and that was probably the largest audiences he ever played to. I doubt he ever got the Elvis royalties for "Milk Cow Blues". Bukka White was also very fine.
I saw Sleepy John Estes coupled with Hammie Nixon in Bristol (1964 US Blues tour). He was wonderful and that was probably the largest audiences he ever played to. I doubt he ever got the Elvis royalties for "Milk Cow Blues". Bukka White was also very fine.
People who saw Sleepy John at the Fairfield Hall gig from that tour reported that his solo performance on that big stage was so low volume the audience leaned forward to catch it, and a pin would have been heard falling. What an amazing phenomenon the blues is! What an incredible invention by the African American black man and woman! What is it about that simple harmonic framework that has inspired so much music and been indispensable to so many genres? I happen to think the blues is as important to music as the invention of the canon would be to classical music.
I saw Sleepy John Estes coupled with Hammie Nixon in Bristol (1964 US Blues tour). He was wonderful and that was probably the largest audiences he ever played to. I doubt he ever got the Elvis royalties for "Milk Cow Blues". Bukka White was also very fine.
Sleepy John Estes, Yank Rachell & Hammie Nixon in 1964:
JB Lenoir (US Folk Blues tour also), with the equally magnificent Freddie Below, the "Blakey" of the blues. Lenoir's allegorical song, "The Whale" ...the whale lies sick, swallowed me up. You don't need to listen too hard to get which country that's about.
"No Love Dying" - Gregory Porter, from his LP "Liquid Spirit". Not really given much attention to him before now, but caught this on the radio and it really stood out as a beautiful, soulful song.
I was impressed with his band on the B&W Jazz 625, and in particular his tenor man, Tivon Pennicott, who was playing with an unusual mouthpiece. I've since worked out what it is...
all words are trains for moving past what really has no name
John Stevens Quartet - Dudu's Gone from the 1994 album New Cool. John Stevens drums; Ed Jones tenor & soprano saxes; Byron Wallen trumpet, flugelhorn; Gary C...
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