Topic: Kitchen Man - Bessie Smith ,, BB version

[slideaway]

hey all! having done a youtube for a while .. heres an early version of a tune I roughly copied Bob Brozmans version off his CD (different key, more guitar friendly .. male viewpoint-ised) of Bessie Smith version .. its those kind of songs you can grow into, tweaking and improving developing guitar parts as years go by, love those sort! good value .. new to youtube :-)
cheers!

[sustaireblues]

Great song slideaway!
I saw this posted on another forum this am and added it to my steal list. 

You do it well, lots of fun!

Joe

[slideaway]

Steal away brother! i stole it from somebody who stole it from somebody and ..  anyway you know the story Joe ..  I find it surprising it isnt more of a well known standard like some of her other tunes like say 'nobody knows you when you're down and out' BB did a great adaptation here i feel 
cheers!

[Rivers]

That was cool, I kept thinking 'Randy Newman'. You could ham it up a bit more in the humor department, the song could stand it.

[slideaway]

wow, that would be cool company! cheers Rivers! i'll turn the ham-o-meter to 11! hehe, they wont know what hit them

[Rivers]

Right, I'm thinking "Let's Drop The Big One" style.

[slideaway]

oh yeah!! I like it! 

[slideaway]

once more with bones! not great vid but not sure i ever saw a bones vid posted here? hhmmm

[nobro]

Sweet adaptation! I love Bessie! Have loads of her stuff. Turning the lyrics around to present them from a male perspective can be the challenging part of offering of songs that were originally presented by female vocalists. I've always endeavored to do that. It just doesn't sound right to me, to sing a song from the point of view of the opposite gender.

You've done a great job of finding the chord changes. Faithfully translating the orchestral accompaniment that some early singers often used is the more challenging part of presenting those songs.

I love the bone player! I've had the opportunity to play with a seriously radical spoon and bone style percussionist, Artis the Spoonman. He definitely takes his playing to the next level and rawks! It can become a real workout for me to acompany that kind of energy.

I found a great vintage piece of sheet music called Click-ity-Clack from 1911. The cover has a wonderful illustration on it of a minstrel type performer, playing bones. I imagine that it was quite rare to see a bones player being featured as the cover image for a piece of sheet music. It may be the only such depiction that has graced a sheet music cover.

The song, "Click-ity-Clack", must have represented a certain popularity of the idea of playing bones during the early 1900s. That is about when kitchen bands began to emerge and the idea of playing things like saws, washboards, spoons and jugs started to get more significant attention as Jug Bands or Washboard Bands.

[slideaway]

Thanks Reggie!

Imagine Bessie's voice recorded with modern mics ect. ai yi yi!! .. still sounds awesome with even without that,

love to see that sheet music someday! cool story, i didnt know that background info! very cool and versatile instrument .. i understand Bones were/are used in some trad irish music, i think .. don't know a lot about the  subject, but I suspect it was big with sailors of old, being compact and great for onboard entertainment .. i know the name comes from the fact the first ones were made of sawn off beef? rib bones! Marty has a huge collection, and it is very interesting all the different varieties/sets, woods and uses .. the ones on this recording are big heavy loud ones, good for street performance ... there are more subtle ones for indoor use .. they all have different flavours .. interesting stuff!

the only blues/ well ragtime, recording I know of with Bones is the Blind Blake number 'Dry Bone Shuffle'

[Pan]

Nice work!

For more information on bones, see this thread:

http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=1590.0

Cheers

Pan

[slideaway]

awesome thread! thanks Pan! you know, I was sure i did a search for subject some months back!??? come up blank at the time..

.. thats given me a lot to chew on

[ArthurBlake]

There's one major reasons I don't do Bessie songs, that voice, it scares the livin crap outta me that someone was that awesome
and powerful, to me it is the greatest voice I ever heard, and considering that nearly all the well known blues singers were beyond
gifted. I love the way she did this song, puts hairs standin up on the back of the neck. I once heard a Australian woman do this song
and she was jaw dropping, not quite Bessie, but still jaw dropping, I can't believe I can't think of her name (her dad is famous). One
singer I would die to hear this sung by would be Judith Durham. Great job on the changes mate.