After Uncle Bud's latest post in the "Tunes You're Listening To" thread, I just couldn't post this there, so I've started a new thread. :D
Despite my little outburst (friendly, I hope!)
especially if they include ... descriptions
Not quite country blues- but i recently took delivery of Seasick Steve's "Dog House Music". Great fun- hilbillyish / hill countryish slide / shuffle stuff. Sometimes with a battered 3 string guitar.
This guy made a massive name for himself appearing on Jools Hollands New Years Eve show a year ago and brought the house down.
The Furry disc is excellent. His Document recordings and his stuff from 1959 are priceless! I have an extra copy that I could sell on Amazon.com and get 30 dollars for, but I just don't want to sell it!
Now listening to this wonderful collection, CD1:
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Yesterday's fare was Cryin' Sam Collins.
Very interesting upon re-examination. Might spend some extensive time with this one.
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My wife is appalled, and Im slightly worried that I'm getting old and beginnning to like country music.
A 4 cd (cheapo) set of Clarence Williams
Listening wise I have now moved onto a (shock, horror, probe) copy I was given of Champion Jack Dupree, which is about all I can tell you really, other than it sounds about the same vintage as his Training Camp Blues.Can you spot it listed here? http://www.wirz.de/music/duprefrm.htm
Whoops, thought I had answered this, but maybe only in my dreams. Anyway this is the cd sleeve, or at least what I was given.Oh yes, it came free with the Orbis Blues Collection magazine series. His superb Okeh recordings. See Stefan's CJD discography.
Another "program" I enjoyed listening to last week was Document's "Male Blues Of The Twenties", Volumes 1 and 2 (DOCD-5482 and 5532). These songs were mostly recorded fairly early in the decade, with John P. Vigal's "Fowler Twist" going back to 1922. The "Blues" in the title doesn't refer to what most people would recognize as blues today, as these are primarily pop, vaudeville, and novelty songs in the "Memphis Blues" or "St Louis Blues" vein, i.e. with blue notes but not, for the most part, 8, 12, or 16 bar blues. The singers sound like they come out of the vaudeville tradition, not out of the cotton fields, and are, if anything, even more obscure than those on the "Piano Blues" series. "Sloppy" Henry might be known to some, as he appears on one of the Document Peg Leg Howell disks and has been discussed previously in the Weenie forum.
Amazing how "Frankie and Albert" can sound so different to the MJH version and yet immediately recognisable - presume Patton did his before MJH?
for what ever reason, most of my blues collection is pre - 1934, & post 1947. i think i read a long time ago that that era of blues was very cookie cutter-like, so i just never searched much of it out.
No laughing, Chuck Berry
Not surprising when you consider the musicians on them - Otis Spann, Lafayette Leake, Fred Below etc,etc.
This includes the greatest post-war blues recording - the duet with Big Walter - Evening Sun
Evening Shuffle - Johnny Shines JOB's.
This includes the greatest post-war blues recording - the duet with Big Walter - Evening Sun. Perfection in 8 verses.
Ellington at Newport. Yes, the one with the 32 chorus sax solo! Fantastic :P
One of the best kept secrets is the "burn-on-demand" service that Smithsonian-Folkways offers, officially called "Custom Compact Disc Series".They will burn out-of-print, non-released and other specialty items from their archives. You can contact them and get the catalog...
Has anyone else discovered that? For the same price as a regular CD, they will go into the vaults. Who else does that?
the old hat release "violin, sing the blues for me" hasn't left my cd player in the past week. well remastered & well packaged. great, great music!
Ditto Stuart's sentiment. I haven't heard the 'sing the blues' release yet tho.the old hat release "violin, sing the blues for me" hasn't left my cd player in the past week. well remastered & well packaged. great, great music!
It's sister CD, "Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow!," is great as well.
"From Honolulu To Hollywood"
Knowing my love of vintage Hawaiian music, a friend gave me (having paid the princely sum of ?1 for it) "History of Hawaiian Steel Guitar", a compilation on Hana Ola Records (Cord International) which, amongst other goodies, features the charming "I've Gone Native Now" by Annie Kerr. Have you heard that one Stuart?
"History of Hawaiian Steel Guitar", a compilation on Hana Ola Records (Cord International)
My daughter attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Guitar Pete Franklin -The Blues of Guitar Pete Franklin- Prestige.He's undergone some discussion and plaudits in the past check out http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?amp;Itemid=60&option=com_smf&action=tags;id=194
I'm listening to this even as I type and am reconfirmed in my belief that Guitar Pete was one of the greats.
What a fabulous voice, and what muscular guitar playing and his piano playing is equally strong.
I've been listening to 1923.
It's the first year on my iPod for which I have a substantial number of songs (1920: 7, 1921: 39, 1922: 10, 1923: 119), thanks to finally getting my 13 Document Female Blues Singers discs loaded. I've just had it on continuous shuffle for the last week.
The first thing I notice about 1923 is how archaic it sounds. I suppose if I'd come to it after listening to the entire corpus of recorded music up to that time, I'd think it sounded new and modern, but I'm going backwards in time, and 1923 sounds old-fashioned in a way that even 1927 and 1929 don't. Partly that's song structure - there are a few 12 bar blues here, but what we would now call "pop" or "jazz" songs predominate. Partly, it's instrumentation - there are a lot of pianos and brass bands here. And partly, I think, it's because recording hadn't changed everything yet. 1923 was still very early in the recorded history of jazz and blues, and the record industry's obsessive search for things new and different hadn't really affected the music yet, so that a lot of the songs and styles seem like something that audiences 10 or even 20 years earlier would have been familiar with.
Because most of my music from this period comes from collections of lesser artists, I have far more music from the likes of Fannie May Goodsby and Sister Harris than I do by better-known singers. Because of this, the occasional track by the likes of Ma Rainey or Ida Cox really stands out. They were obviously a cut above the rest.
<snip>
I think one of the biggest influences on the sound and style of music from the early 20's to the late 20's was the switch by recording companies from acoustic recording to electrical recording around 1925. I think this also opened up the possibility of field recordings. In any case, it certainly opened up the possibilities for more intimate performances and sophisticated arrangements that would have been difficult to record with acoustic equipment. It is also likely, to have in turn, affected live performances.
I think an excellent example of this are the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band recordings compared to the recordings of his Dixie Syncopators period and the subsequent Victor recordings.
Anyway, that's my two cents worth. Best regards, Phil
V.A. - American Primitive, Vol. 2 (Revenant)
Incredible collection from the Revenant team.
just basking in all his fredness!
I remember hating the cover of the Immortal Mississippi John Hurt on Vanguard when it was released in '67. I thought why try to pychedelisize MJH of all people? To add insult to injury Dick Waterman's liner notes "Mississippi John Hurt,Patriarch Hippie, rubbed me the wrong way. Had they done all this when he was still alive and it could have done him some good, well OK, but after he died? It seemed like an inappropriate marketing scheme.To be fair the back liner does state that it is a extracted from a larger feature published in Sing Out.
Blind Blake - The Best OfTrack list of which can be viewed here http://www.wirz.de/music/blakefrm.htm - scroll down to the year 2000.
http://www.tompkinssq.com/fire_in_my_bones.html
"I?ve been going through my vinyl collection to see what I want to get rid of,..."
Bad move! Hang on to it, Lindy.
"I?ve been going through my vinyl collection to see what I want to get rid of,..."
Bad move! Hang on to it, Lindy.
I've been listening to eleven of the thirteen discs in Document's "Too Late, Too Late" series (discs 2 and 6 are currently out of print and so were not available in Document's current sale). The series as a whole is an interesting grab bag. You get a lot of "guys with guitars", of course, but there's also material from just about every other African American musical style from before the early 1950s - "classic" women singers with hot jazz bands, vaudevillians, singly and in pairs, comic recitations, preachers preaching, medicine show acts, sacred quartets, pop singers, string bands and jug bands - you name it and they're here. Plenty of big names: Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon, Blind Willie, etc., but also plenty of obscurities: Sweet Papa Tadpole, Elizabeth Johnson, James "Jack Of All Trades" McCain, Jack Gowdlock, Bert Howell, and the like.
Two tracks by Texas Tommy on Vol 8 are definitely of interest to mandolin players, which features prominently on both tracks. Texas Tommy turns out to be a strong unknown female singer (unless she's been traced since) singing in front of a band that the notes claim are mandolin, guitar and "brass bass", i.e. tuba. I swear I hear some kind of banjo-like instrument as well, whether tenor banjo or banjo-mandolin, strumming chords.
I was also curious to hear Hezekiah Jenkins' "Curious Blues" and "Miserable Blues" from Vol 8, and the songs may be fun as compositions though the result is less successful than the charmingly executed material like "Shout You Cats" or "The Panic Is On". For fans of vaudeville blues and terrible piano playing.
It's interesting to hear Tommy trill her R's at the start of Jail Break Blues. It seems like something one would learn studying classical voice, and is certainly unusual in a blues singer. I wonder where she picked that up?
I find "Curious Blues" an absolute charmer, mostly because of Jenkins' harmonica playing and the shout of "Hot dog!" to end the song. You're right about the piano playing on both songs being barely competent, but it's so bad that I end up really enjoying it in an odd sort of way. It has the same charms as "Beans" Hambome's cigar box guitar.
I suspect it carries over from vaudeville and probably from musical theatre.
Hi dj,I think it's fair to say that most prewar blues fans got their introduction to Ethel Waters via a 1970 Biograph LP.
A good way to become acquainted with Ethel Waters is via the movie, "Cabin In The Sky", recently re-released on DVD. It's a musical with songs composed by Vernon Duke, directed by Vincente Minelli, and an all-black cast featuring Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, John Bubbles, the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Louis Armstrong and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson. Ethel Waters does some wonderful singing and Eddie Anderson has a novelty dance number that's worth the price of admission.
Jack Rose - Dr. Ragtime and his Pals - One of the "new generation" of acoustic guitarists, heavily influenced by the late John Fahey.
The late Jack Rose, too, unfortunately. Reminds me I need to listen to more of his stuff.
I've been listening to Document's "Too Late, Too Late Volume 2" this week, and it might just be my favorite disc of the "Too Late, Too Late" series. The disc opens with four songs from the pre-blues tradition (and from before the advent of recorded blues): Cousins and De Moss - Poor Mourner (1897), Jim Jackson et. al. - Jim Jackson's Affinity (c. 1908), unknown - Turkey In The Straw (c. 1905) and unknown quartet - Way Down Yonder In The Cornfield (c. 1906). Cousins and De Moss sing a duet and play banjos on Poor Mourner. It's a song straight out of the minstrel tradition. Frank Stokes would perform a related version 30 years later as You Shall. Jim Jackson's Affinity is a humorous skit with incidental music by a brass band and some singing. It seems obviously condensed from a longer tent show/vaudeville skit. Turkey In The Straw features singing, speech, whistling, and laughing by an unknown performer with piano accompaniment. It's another piece from the minstrel tradition. On can imagine it being performed in a substantially similar manner in the 1850s. Way Down Yonder In The Cornfield sounds a bit more modern, as the harmonies are a bit barbershopish. It's a medley, with one section featuring a vocal solo over the other three voices imitating a banjo, and ending with a bit of Stephen Foster. Listening to these four songs, one imagines one's self in the turn of the century tent show world of Abbott and Seroff's Ragged But Right. Then the fourth cut ends, the fifth cut begins, all of a sudden it's 1926 and Blind Blake is playing and singing West Coast Blues. The magnitude of the change in style is absolutely stunning, even after hearing it a dozen times.
There's other great stuff on this disc: The Booker Orchestra (violin, guitar, and kazoo) playing Salty Dog, Brantley and Williams and their Versatile Four singing an unaccompanied Big Fat Mamma, the Reverend Moses Mason's spirituals with strummed guitar, plus Ma Rainey, Charley Patton, some excellent Gene Campbell, and on and on. But the first four songs, and the transition from them to the fifth song, are worth the price of the disc.
I don't think it's anywhere else.
Both titles also on "Hard Dallas" (Catfish [UK] CD 173 2001 - out of "print") !Unless I'm misunderstanding your RT discography Stefan, they both also seem to be on the JSP Texas box set which I'm sure is still available....and not a bad set either.
I've been listening to Document's "Too Late, Too Late Volume 2" this week, and it might just be my favorite disc of the "Too Late, Too Late" series. The disc opens with four songs from the pre-blues tradition (and from before the advent of recorded blues): Cousins and De Moss - Poor Mourner (1897), Jim Jackson et. al. - Jim Jackson's Affinity (c. 1908), unknown - Turkey In The Straw (c. 1905) and unknown quartet - Way Down Yonder In The Cornfield (c. 1906). Cousins and De Moss sing a duet and play banjos on Poor Mourner. It's a song straight out of the minstrel tradition. Frank Stokes would perform a related version 30 years later as You Shall. Jim Jackson's Affinity is a humorous skit with incidental music by a brass band and some singing. It seems obviously condensed from a longer tent show/vaudeville skit. Turkey In The Straw features singing, speech, whistling, and laughing by an unknown performer with piano accompaniment. It's another piece from the minstrel tradition. On can imagine it being performed in a substantially similar manner in the 1850s. Way Down Yonder In The Cornfield sounds a bit more modern, as the harmonies are a bit barbershopish. It's a medley, with one section featuring a vocal solo over the other three voices imitating a banjo, and ending with a bit of Stephen Foster. Listening to these four songs, one imagines one's self in the turn of the century tent show world of Abbott and Seroff's Ragged But Right. Then the fourth cut ends, the fifth cut begins, all of a sudden it's 1926 and Blind Blake is playing and singing West Coast Blues. The magnitude of the change in style is absolutely stunning, even after hearing it a dozen times.
There's other great stuff on this disc: The Booker Orchestra (violin, guitar, and kazoo) playing Salty Dog, Brantley and Williams and their Versatile Four singing an unaccompanied Big Fat Mamma, the Reverend Moses Mason's spirituals with strummed guitar, plus Ma Rainey, Charley Patton, some excellent Gene Campbell, and on and on. But the first four songs, and the transition from them to the fifth song, are worth the price of the disc.
Gene Autry 1929-31
(https://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fecx.images-amazon.com%2Fimages%2FI%2F51YW662SWTL._SL500_AA300_.jpg&hash=9358b113b64bdd39d2ff46a28d7bea7b813e3f58)This made me smile. The cover photo was taken by Frederic Ramsay in Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi. Texas? Texas? Oh well it amused me. ::)
Texas Black Country Dance Music 1927-1935
This made me smile. The cover photo was taken by Frederic Ramsay in Woodville, Wilkinson County, Mississippi. Texas? Texas? Oh well it amused me.
Doctor Clayton - Complete Recorded Works 1935-1942Which reminds me, there's some interesting, if ancient, reading on the good doctor here http://www.wirz.de/music/claydfrm.htm - scroll to the bottom of the page.
Lindy, thanks for that but I don't think my cats-wisker will tune in that far!
I have moved on\sideways and am now with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.. some good Bashful Brother Oswald in there one is if a little selective!
Listening to Larry Johnson's 'Fast and Funky' album.
Mississippi John Hurt - Last Sessions. Somewhat of an odds and sods album, but has always been a favourite.
You wouldn't have the DOCD- catalog numbers handy by any chance?
just finished listening to this wonderful cd. texas blues, 1927- 1935 on document records featuring the complete recorded works of, coley jones, bo jones, little hat jones, oak cliff t-bone (walker) and willie reed. if you dont have this cd, in your collection already you can buy this one with complete confidence.Speaking of this CD has anybody noticed that Stefan has recently added a Little Hat Jones discography http://www.wirz.de/music/jonelhfrm.htm which has a scan of the booklet notes?
jostber, how is the Arhoolie set? What's the Skip James like?I think this box set is amazing, with mostly blues greats on CD 1 and 3, and folk and jazz artists on CD 2 and 4. There are some really worthwhile unissued songs here, especially those by Big Joe Williams, Fred McDowell and Mance Lipscomb are beautiful. The Skip James recordings are all unissued, and are mostly piano songs. The song Sea Walking Jesus he dedicates to his father and is an great and impassioned perfomance. Another fine performances on this set are those by K.C.Douglas, Lonnie Johnson and Lightning Hopkins.
(if anyone tried to post to this topic in the last 30 seconds, my apologies. A slip of the trackpad had me momentarily lock it.)
V.A. - Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts
QuoteV.A. - Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts
Who are the artists?
And, have just returned from the UK with a nice Xtra boxed double LP set of The Rural Blues, tomorrow for that I think!
And, have just returned from the UK with a nice Xtra boxed double LP set of The Rural Blues, tomorrow for that I think!Stefan's 'under construction' Xtra discography http://www.wirz.de/music/xtrafrm.htm has this, the RBF original and a later revamp. Scroll down to 1966.
various artists - harry smith's anthology of american folk music volume 4 (revenant)
Lonnie Johnson's RnB stuff from A Life In Music, Selected Sides. Don't know if I'm just in a particularly receptive mood, but it's really knocking me out. Inspired by finally hearing 'Tomorrow Night', which was a complete revelation, given that I only knew vaguely of his later work. Some of these tracks have me close to tears, they're so smooth and Lonnie has the most beautiful voice and it just feels right, you know?
I'm with you here, Lonnie Johnson's King recordings from the 40's and 50's are classic stuff all over.I may have recounted this elsewhere but in the 70s I purchased King LP 958 entitled Lonnie Johnson Sings 24 Twelve Bar Blues. There were 24 tracks listed on back sleeve and again on labels (12 tracks per side). However, when it came to playing the LP King had managed the feat of 24 tracks by deleting all of Lonnie's guitar breaks. Here follows the entire LJ King sessions and as you'll note many of the items on LP 958 were previously unissued and have only been released in this bastardised form.
King had managed the feat of 24 tracks by deleting all of Lonnie's guitar breaks.
I've been listening to the first four Yazoo LPs. Well, not exactly the LPs... For years I've looked at Stefan Wirz's Yazoo discography with nostalgia, longing, and regret - nostalgia for the LPs my friends and I had way back when, longing for the ones we never had, and regret that there were Yazoo LPs that we never would have had because we knew that, say, blues from St. Louis (to take one example) was just not interesting (yeah, kids can be pretty stupid). Finally it occurred to me that, since I had most of the songs that made up those LPs in my collection now, and could easily fill out the few I didn't have by purchasing a song or two online, I started to make iTunes playlists from Stefan's discography, one for each Yazoo LP. It's worked out really well, in that it puts together lists of songs that I wouldn't necessarily have done on my own and gives me a new (or old!) way of approaching the music. I highly recommend it.
National Steel featuring our very own Marshcat ;)And our own LewyC aka Lewis Cohen.
Rambling Thomas - Hard Dallas pn Catfish, Nice sound on this collection.
Daddy Hotcakes.His recordings for Charters were originally destined to be on Bluesville BVLP1080 in 1960s but never happened. They didn't see the light of day until 1984 released by Folkways under the title The Blues in St. Louis. Vol. 1 (FW 3814). From memory John Cowley in Blues Unlimited gave the LP a lengthy, informative and well considered review. The liner notes to the LP have since been reproduced in Charters's Walking a Blues Road (p.89-94).
I'd never heard of him! Recorded by Sam Charters in St.Louis. Downloaded this from the Folkways site. Very entertaining stuff recorded in a domestic setting and none the worse for it. The local shoeshine technician plays harp on a couple of tracks!
What's on it?
What's on it?
I believe it is this one:
http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Rain-Dont-Fall-On-Me-Country-Blues-1927-1952/release/2632849 (http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Rain-Dont-Fall-On-Me-Country-Blues-1927-1952/release/2632849)
Robert Johnson Centennial box set, and I can even understand all of the words this time. Reminds me of being a school boy with the old lp on the turntable. Got the LP for renewing my DownBeat subscription in the '60's sometime.
Not listening to, just inquiring, if anybody has or listened to Memphis Blues Caravan: Vol. 2 ... I wanted to know if it's any good?
Fire In My Bones: Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel 1944-2007.
Yowza. This is an exciting set. So much good stuff.
Has anyone heard the follow-up?
Time to invest in a turntable Jeff!?
I have several releases on the Mississippi label, and they are excellent.
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I believe these recordings were made by Axel K?nster who along with Ziggy Christmann recorded the Living Country Blues USA series.
...Just picked up the LP at my local used record store for !0 bucks....great record!...
Babe Stovall! Herb Quinn! Eli Owens!
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Yazoo's St. Louis Town 1929 - 1933.
Bo is keeping me moving along today.
Thanks for reminding me of those RBF LPs, O'Muck. You're right, there's some good stuff there, well-programmed. I'll have to make playlists of their pre-war reissue LPs.
I believe many of these RBF LP's, including Sleepy John Estes, are still available (albeit as CD's) from Smithsonian Folkways.
And then I heard Sleepy John Estes and realized that Sonny Boy must have listened to him a whole lot!)
St George was a George Paulus thing I think. He put out a great cd on John Wrencher on that label.
I've had the Gary Davis Stinson for more than 40 years ...
Still - if Rev. Davis is interesting to you, I recommend giving this album another chance... if you can tough out Patton or Lemon recordings, this album is CAKE.
I've had the Gary Davis Stinson for more than 40 years ...
Al, do you have the 12inch or 10inch Stinson?
Thanks for the link, Stuart, disheartening though it is. The playing on this record is just amazing to me... it's sad to hear that the original 10 inch is just as poor sounding and suffers from poor engineering all around.
Still - if Rev. Davis is interesting to you, I recommend giving this album another chance... if you can tough out Patton or Lemon recordings, this album is CAKE.
Just recently I fell in love with the playing and singing of Lemon Jefferson.