Topic: CDs/Sets You're Listening To

[dj]

I just bought a bunch of CDs on sale from Document, and a rather unexpected one has caught my attention:  Blue Girls Volume 3.  Three of the artists included, Anna Lee Chisholm, Cora Perkins, and Ruby Smith, would be instantly recognizable as "blues" to a modern listener.  Their performances are pleasant, with Anna Lee Childs accompanied on "Cool Kind Daddy Blues" by Louis Lasky on guitar, flatpicking even at this early date (1924), and Cora Perkins accompanied by Lonnie Johnson on violin.  Virginia Childs sounds white, and is accompanied by Riley Puckett and possibly Clayton McMichen from the Skillet Lickers.  But the two singers who really stand out for me and keep me coming back to the disk are Eva Parker and Lulu Jackson.  Neither of these singers could remotely be called a blues singer.

Eva Parker sounds like someone who studied voice in college.  She recorded at two sessions, one in 1926 and the other in 1928.  On both she's accompanied by "unknown" on guitar, but from the similarity of playing on both dates and the very rudimentary guitar skills displayed, I'd be willing to bet that Eva herself is the guitar player.  On the 1926 session, Parker is accompanied by a very "sentimental" violin player, and on the 1928 session by the Pace Jubilee Singers doing discrete hums again in a very "sentimental" style.  Parker's repertoire consists of popular songs, "Careless Love", and one blues song. One imagines her to be the wife of a Chicago doctor or merchant, someone who regularly performed for church fundraisers and amateur theatricals.  I especially love her "I've Seen My Pretty Papa", though it always makes me think of W. C. Fields wickedly parodying the sentimental song genre in "The Fatal Glass Of Beer".

Lulu Jackson could be Eva Parker's teenage daughter, someone who learned her repertoire and guitar skills from Worrall's Guitar Tutor or some other such publication and who hasn't yet had any vocal training.  She doesn't have Eva Parker's vibrato, breath control, or sense of phrasing, but her guitar skills and repertoire are remarkably similar to Parker's - both women do "Careless Love" and "You're Going To Leave The Old Home, Jim" (Jackson does it twice, once at her first session and once again at her last). 

One of the reasons I'm so taken with these two singers is that they seem to be a window into a facet of segregation era African-American life that we don't hear very much from today: the middle class, people who would go a mile out of their way to avoid going anywhere near a juke joint.  Plus they both seem a bit of a throwback.  One imagines them fitting more comfortably at the turn of the century rather than the mid 1920s.       

[rjtwangs]

 I've been listening to the Blind Lemon Jefferson cd on Pristine Audio. I think Andrew has done a superb job considering what he has to work with...

 RJ

     

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[doctorpep]

I've been listening to Johnny Shines' "Takin' the Blues Back South", which is an excellent disc that was out of print for a while. It's the best of Johnny's albums in terms of vocals. I've also been listening to this great Lonnie Johnson box set, "The Original Guitar Wizard", which never cease to amaze me. Recently, there was a Lonnie Johnson feature on NPR, which declared that the man's recordings with Eddie Lang still sound fresh and exciting, eighty years after they were released. Of course, we can't forget the Old Crow Medicine Show's self-titled album. They are a combination of pre-war Blues and Old-Timey covers, and they also write their own songs. I highly recommend all three releases.

[Stuart]

The Proper box set "The Original Guitar Wizard" is great. I also like the 2 CD set "Blue Guitars Vols 1 & 2.

[dj]

What I've been listening to lately:  everything.

That's actually not entirely a flip comment.  I've recently finished loading all my "pre-war blues and gospel", for want of a better term, into iTunes and then onto my iPod.  It's a fair amount of music:  7766 songs, meaning I could listen for over 16 days straight without repeating a song.  It's not the Weenie Juke, but, to quote the Ink Spots, "it'll have to do until the real thing comes along".  At any rate, it took me a long time to get everything down to iTunes because I put in a ton of information to be able to sort songs into various lists.  Multiple group entries, multiple genre entries, and a comment field with recording month and day, recording location, issuing record company, and accompanying musicians, all mean that I can create a smart playlist to, say, give me all the jug band songs recorded by Victor in Memphis in the first half of 1929. 

But now that I have that ability, I find that 90% of the time I just listen to the "Pre-War Blues Gospel" bucket, all 7766 songs just on random shuffle.  It's really rather nice hearing the interesting juxtapositions that pop up, like Frankie Jaxon singing a song filled with sexual innuendo followed by a Sermon by Elder Richard Bryant, or Sam Collins followed by the swinging four part harmonies of the Four Vagabonds.  And hey, when there's no juxtaposition and I get 4 jug band songs in a row, that's nice too.  You never know what's coming next, and while it's not quite true to say "It's all good", it's certainly all interesting.

Coming up when my fingers have had a bit of a rest:  post-war, rediscovery, and revival discs.     

[dave stott]

Latest to revolve around my CD player

Jorma Kaukonen Trio - Live

Jorma and Friends -Merlefest 2008 courtesy of festival link


Dave

[outfidel]

It's been a Memphis Jugapalooza for me

[J. Baxter]

A little from column A...


a little from column B...

[dave stott]

While not exactly Blues oriented, my CD player is spinning the tunes from a guitar player from CT... caught his act a week ago

The artist is Shawn Persinger....The name of the CD is Peerless

if you like John Fahey or Leo Kottke, you will love Shawn


My DVD player is running Happy Traum's new DVD lesson on the guitar of Brownie Mcghee

Dave

[jostber]

Library Of Congress Recordings by William Brown, Bukka White, Calvin Frazier and more. Compiled by Document.

[CF]

I've been listening to 'The Complete Bukka White' on Columbia records a lot lately. It's nowhere near a complete Bukka set but has his pivotal 1940 sessions & his 1937 pairing of 'Pine Bluff, Arkansas' with 'Shake 'Em Down'. The dual guitar work on these two sides is fascinating & rhythmically mesmerizing. Bukka had a different beat going on & you can hear what the future would sound like in these two tunes.

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[Richard]

Not blues, back to jazz! I am alternating between various 4 CD sets on the Quadromainia label.. all at ?3, yes ?3 for 4 CDs in the HMV shop in Oxford Street - go buy!!! These sets are good quality and with decent liner notes, the artists I bought  include the likes Clarence Williams, Buck Clayton, Red Allen, Earl Hines, Louis Jordan, Fletcher Henderson et al there is some later stuff (that to me is 70s hahaha) but I thought I'd replace a lot of the original worn out LPs first!

[dave stott]

Smithsonian / Folkways FA2030

Brownie Mcghee
Brownie Mcghee Blues

Careless Love
Good Morning Blues
Sporting Life
Me and Sonny
Pawnshop Blues
Move to Kansas City
Betty & Dupree

[Mr.OMuck]

Yesterday's fare was Cryin' Sam Collins.
Very interesting upon re-examination. Might spend some extensive time with this one.

[jostber]

Yesterday's fare was Cryin' Sam Collins.
Very interesting upon re-examination. Might spend some extensive time with this one.

I'd really wish this could be reprinted by Yazoo, this is really hard to get a hold of. Sam Collins is a favourite.