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Preserving Country Blues through Education, Performance and Technology.
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Craig Ventresco Plays the Guitar |
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Written by bluesmiked
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 Craig Ventresco Plays the Guitar is the latest CD by, you guessed it, Craig Ventresco. Craig is a San Francisco-based guitarist who came to real prominence when he was lifted off the street corner by filmmaker Terry Zwigoff to record the soundtrack for the film "Crumb." He is known for his encyclopedic knowledge of late 19th and early 20th Century rags, pop and vaudeville tunes, jazz and blues. He manages to rediscover long lost music from old 78s, piano rolls, cylinders and manuscripts. I think most Weenies are familiar with Craig's unique style of playing with a flatpick and ring finger, so I won't go into that. There are a fair number of Craig's videos on YouTube where you can experience his amazing playing.
As one would expect, the songs on this CD are an eclectic collection, many, if not most, were new to me. After some digging on the internet, I found a bit of the history behind some of these tunes. Where Craig got them is anybody's guess. Here’s a brief sample of what's on the CD:
"The Blues Have Got Me", by Roy Turk and Abner Silver, was first recorded in 1924. I found a brief clip of Warner’s Seven Aces doing it for an album called Jazz From Atlanta, 1923-1929.
"Take 'Em To The Door" is a tune written by Henderson-Rose-Davis, performed in 1925 by Gus Van and Joe Schenck. Apparently they were a comedy duo, and the song has piano accompaniment.
"Downhearted Blues" was recorded by Bessie Smith in 1923.
"Low Down Blues" is a Eubie Blake-Noble Sissle tune from 1923. I found a version of it by Eddie Heywood and the Blues Singers on a Document CD.
I credit Todd Cambio of Fraulini Guitars for introducing me to the artistry of Craig Ventresco. While sitting in Todd's workshop, discussing music, he asked me if I'd heard of Craig. I hadn't, and I'm now grateful we had that talk.
Listening to this CD is how I imagine it must have been for those folks lucky enough to have heard Blind Blake or Broonzy playing live for a party or dance. Craig plays this music the way it was meant to be played – rough, raucous, aggressive. There's a rawness, a liveliness, to it that you just don't hear in a lot of folks who play this music. His playing is not genteel. It's real.
I got my CD directly from Craig, which, as far as I know, is the only place it can be purchased.
And it’s a Fraulini Guitar that Craig is playing on this CD. So we got that going for us.
www.craigventresco.com
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Barely in Time for the Holidays |
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Written by WeenieCampbell
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 It is a pain. Console yourself this Christmas with these Weenie favorites, hand-picked by members who either have them or want them.
Better to Give than Receive Dept.:
Bring This Home to Mama. Stay out of jail by supporting the Music Maker Relief Foundation holiday gift program. You can be rewarded with calendars, CDs, and DVDs for donations made to this foundation that supports musicians rooted in the Southern musical tradition.
Books
Devil at the Confluence - The Pre-war Music of St. Louis, Missouri - by Kevin Belford. Artwork, photography and history of blues in St. Louis, plus a CD from Delmark including recordings by Barrelhouse Buck, Speckled Red, Roosevelt Sykes, Big Joe Williams and more.
Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues - by Paul Oliver. The latest from the always interesting blues author.
Chicago Folk - Images of the Sixties Music Scene - Ronald D. Cohen, Bob Riesman, and Raeburn Flerlage. Raeburn Flerlage photos of old-time, blues revival and folk revival musicians.
Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues - by William Ferris. Based on interviews with James Son Ford Thomas, Willie Dixon, B.B. King and others, includes a CD/DVD.
Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont South - by Patrick Huber. Not blues, but certainly of interest to many here.
CDs
Texas Sheiks - Geoff Muldaur, Suzy Thompson, Stephen Bruton, Johnny Nicholas, Jim Kweskin, Bruce Hughes and Cindy Cashdollar bring us some great stringband blues.
Mary Flower - Bridges. The latest from this consummate picker includes a wide variety of blues, rags and roots songs with guests playing banjo, piano, fiddle, mandolin, accordion, tuba, clarinet and more. Tim O'Brien appears.
Dom Flemons - American Songster. One third of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, multi-instrumentalist Dom Flemons has a new solo CD out.
East River String Band - Drunken Barrelhouse Blues. Strangely dressed New Yorkers play prewar favorites. With guests Pat Conte, Dom Flemons and Eli Smith. Singin' with guitars, banjos, ukuleles, fiddles, mandolins, harmonicas, kazoos, quills, jugs - only missing a bowafridgaphone. Plus artwork by R. Crumb.
Some of our favorites record labels and record sellers are having some holiday specials too:
Arhoolie Records has revamped their website and to celebrate are offering a 30% discount on orders of 3 or more CDs/DVDs. A good time to complete your Mance Lipscomb collection, pick up some Robert Pete Williams, Smoky Babe or some vintage vinyl.
Document Records currently has a big gospel sale, with few sinners thrown into the mix. Here are several you might want to consider:
Gospel Classics DOCD-5190 has Blind Willie Davis, the Louisville Sanctified Singers and others.
Memphis Gospel 1927-29 DOCD 5072 includes the wonderful Lonnie McIntorsh.
Country Gospel 1946 - 1953 DOCD-5221 - the funky slide guitar of Sister O M Terrell, plus the Two Gospel Keys.
Banjo Ikey Robinson 1929-1937 JPCD-1508-2 - For those who have been following the Banjo Ikey lyrics thread.
Charlie McCoy 1928-1932 BDCD-6018 If you don't have it, you need it.
Texas Field Recordings 1934-1939 DOCD-5231 Not on sale, but who cares - this set includes the complete recordings of the great Smith Casey and the complete recordings of Pete Harris.
Black Secular Vocal Groups Vol 3 1923-1940 DOCD-5604 There are four discs of Black Secular Vocal Groups on sale for Weenies who would like to explore the vast variety of stuff that was being recorded around the edges of the blues. Vol 3 has the Gulf Coast Minstrels doing a couple of tent show skits, the Seven Musical Magpies doing alpine yodeling over a vocal imitation of a calliope, The Nonpareil Trio doing secular songs in a Jubilee style, and groups like the Hipp Cats, the Lewis Bronzeville Five, and the Four Blues doing tight harmony small group vocal swing. An outstanding and varied program!
And for those of us who are holiday music curmudgeons: Blues Blues Christmas Volumes 1 and 2, two double-CD collections of Christmas obscurities with notes by Jeff Harris.
Roots and Rhythm is having a sale on all JSP box sets. Here's a few you might have overlooked:
Shake That Thing! East Coast Blues, 1935-1953 contains complete Ralph Willis, Dan Pickett, and all but about four tracks of Gabriel Brown
Detroit Blues - Blues from the Motor City contains Calvin Frazier, John Lee Hooker and Sampson Pittman.
Blind Boy Fuller, Volume 2 includes, in addition to the two discs containing the second half of Fuller's recording career, two discs devoted to the complete works of the Cedar Creek Sheik, Roosevelt Antrim, the spectacular Virgil Childers, Sonny Jones, Rich and Willie Trice and Floyd "Dipper Boy" Council, among others. Highly recommended.
Atlanta Blues - Big City Blues From The Heartland includes the complete Julius Daniels, Curley Weaver cuts under his own name (including the previously unavailable session from the '50s), and Peg Leg Howell, among others.
DVDs
Memphis Blues Guitar, Texas Blues Guitar, and Introduction to Chord Theory and Chord Voicing - John Miller - three (!) new instructional DVDs by John Miller from Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop.
The Land Where the Blues Began - 30th Anniversary DVD - with hours of bonus material, most of it musical performances.
The New Lost City Ramblers: Always Been a Rambler - Arhoolie. The story of this influential group of musicians. A must for fans of the music traditions of the American south.
Calendars
Blues Images Classic Blues Artwork from the 1920s Wall 2010 Calendar - Will the economy kill this calendar? Buy one and keep 'em coming.
R. Crumb's Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country 2010 Wall Calendar - based on the trading card series.
Swag
Pick up some posters and t-shirts with classic blues artwork at Blues Images.
And don't forget Weenie Wear. All purchases help support WeenieCampbell.com.
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Blues Images 2010 Calendar |
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Written by Weenie Campbell
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 Last Go Round?
Once again, Blues Images have come out with a calendar full of period artwork from our favorite era to remind us it is not 1929. Or is it?
Collector-in-Chief John Tefteller writes in this year's edition that the 2010 calendar could be their last if business doesn't pick up. The CDs accompanying these calendars have been one of the only vehicles for country blues fans to hear some of the latest finds from 78 collectors, like the Blind Blake record "Night and Day Blues/Sun to Sun" reissued last year. This year, there are two versions of Blake backing Irene Scruggs on "Married Man Blues" - not available elsewhere to our knowledge. Other tracks include Robert Wilkins, Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Skip James, Ida Cox, the Mississippi Sheiks, Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, Ramblin' Thomas, Frank Palmes (gotta be Jaybird Coleman), Henry Townsend and more.
All Weenie Campbell members are encouraged to support this much appreciated Blues Images endeavor and keep the calendars coming. You can order from the Blues Images site, Red Lick, Roots and Rhythm and Amazon (order using the Amazon search boxes on the Weenie Juke page and Weenie gets a cut), to name a few places stocking the calendar.
You can also order previous editions of the calendar at the Blues Images site. And while you're there you can buy posters of the Beale Street Sheiks, Victoria Spivey, Sam Collins and others, plus t-shirts of Patton, Lemon and Blake. |
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Fetch It! - Steve Cheseborough |
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Written by Andrew Mullins
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 Fetch It! - Steve Cheseborough
Independent
Portland-based musician and author Steve Cheseborough has put together a strong set of country blues for his latest CD, Fetch It!, which was released in January. The author of the guidebook Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues, Cheseborough is a part-time blues historian, but never comes across sounding like one on this CD. He takes a laid back approach to the music that is very appealing - it's always a pleasure for the listener when the performer sounds so relaxed and sure of their material. Just sit back and enjoy.
The record opens with "Hear Me Talking to You", an arrangement of a Ma Rainey song with a beautiful melody that provides the title for the CD in its lyric, "you got to fetch it with you when you come." The pace sets the tone for much of the rest of the disc. Cheseborough adapts the song - originally played by a jug band - for solo guitar in Vestapol tuning to great success. His arranging talents are in evidence throughout the record, but particularly on Little Brother Montgomery's "Vicksburg Blues", a slow blues that transfers surprisingly effectively from piano to guitar, and the wonderful Georgia Tom Dorsey song "Been Mistreated", which sounds a little like it's gone through a Bo Carter machine.
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Written by Weenie Campbell
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 It rose, it rose, it rose from the dead
It rose, it rose, it rose from the dead
It rose, it rose, it rose from the dead
And the Juke shall bear my spirit home.
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Just in Time for the Holidays |
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Written by Weenie Campbell
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 The past year or so has seen a number of new releases from members and friends of the Weenie Campbell community. We've collected them here as a few gift ideas for your holiday season. Talented Weenies and Weenie favorites have their own kind of joy to bring to the world. Here is some music to save you from relatives who insist on spinning Josh Groban's Noël or the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas yet again. Along with a couple other suggestions. Let us know if we've missed your release. Share the list with friends and relations who are stumped each year when shopping for a country blues fiend. Or buy yourself a present.
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This Old Hammer - John Miller |
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Written by Andrew Mullins
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 This Old Hammer - John Miller
Orb Discs Orb-1010
This Old Hammer is John Miller's first solo blues outing in over three decades, so one can understand how some people may have been getting a little impatient waiting for this record to appear. His LPs made for Blue Goose in the 1970s are highly regarded -- and nearly impossible to find. Shortly after those albums, John was off exploring different musical directions, with projects over the years ranging from jazz to bluegrass to world music. While those who have had the opportunity to see him perform live in recent years have been able to catch tantalizing snippets of this new blues album at a gig or workshop, finally that music is gathered in one place.
(I should say in the interest of full disclosure that I know John and have studied with him at the Port Townsend Country Blues Workshop for years. Like a lot of people, a great number of them his fellow musicians, I admire his talent and the depth of his knowledge of country blues styles. But given the strength of this album, any possible bias I might have seems irrelevant to me.)
The overall creative approach taken on This Old Hammer is to reinvent country blues originals that have caught John's ear over the years. As he explains in his notes for the CD, "I wanted to retain particular aspects of the songs that I was starting with, but always to be introducing different elements, as well -- perhaps a new melody, different lyrics or a new harmonization, in addition to, in every instance, a different accompaniment." The other element that I think is at least in part being reinvented here is an approach to solo blues guitar playing. John is an extraordinarily creative guitar player in several genres, so it was unlikely that he would stick to tried and true guitar formulas and vocabulary when he is a master at creating his own. Still, these are some startlingly fresh and thoughtful arrangements. Sometimes he will exploit different tunings and positions on the guitar to achieve sounds and textures that open the genre up, while at others he just dazzles with what can be done with a few chords in standard tuning. All of it, however, is in the service of solid music, never simply to appear flashy or impress.
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