Anyone hear like blues?

@glitterbag,

Quote:

Don't forget some of the great blues artists that were women,...

Quite true. Also true that I tend to overlook them sometimes. That said, Memphis Minnie is one of my favorite "bluesman" of any gender. Here's a gal that helped make Jerry Lee Lewis famous, Big Maybelle:

PS: That's not Maybelle dancing, just singing. They didn't call her "big" as an ironic way of saying she was "tiny."

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@FBM,

As that video discloses, Rosetta was born in the very small (pop. about 650 today, 450 in 1900) delta town of Cotton Plant, Arkansas. As I mentioned in a prior post, that's also where the great Peetie Wheatstraw was raised. Quite a bit of talent coming out of one small town. Just "co-incidence?" Maybe not.

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@layman,

I doubt it's a coincidence. I used to sit on the sidewalk in the summers and listen to the old guys playing their guitars. This would've been in the 60s and 70s. I tried to learn blues guitar but after years of sucking at it, I gave up.

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@layman,

I have several CD's of Saffire, the Uppity Blues women. I think they were mainly known on the East Coast of the US, but they wrote a lot of original music they did in a bluesy style. I saw them once at the Rams Head in Annapolis a while back. They are no longer performing, the piano player unfortunately died and the other two did not replace her, instead they retired. The keyboard player could really pound those keys. Check them out on YouTube or Amazon, unless you already know who they are.

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@glitterbag,

Thanks. I had never heard of them before. I checked out their tune "Bitch with a Bad Attitude." Very good! Lyrics, music, and "attitude," all of it. Humorous, too, of course.

Don't know the origin of their name, but "Saffire" was the name of the wife of Kingfish (or somebody) in the old "Amos and Andy" program. As I recall, Saffire didn't take no ****.

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Another classic tune from the '20's, since covered by everybody and his brother. Performed by the highly influential "Mississippi Sheiks," which was composed mainly of members of the Chatmon family (I will come back to them another time).

Needn't come a-runnin
holding up your hand...
I can get me a woman....
quick as you can a man...
But now she's gone...
and I don't worry...
I'm sittin on top of the world.

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@layman,

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I still get confused about categories - blues or gospel - but I guess if there's religion in it, then it's classed as gospel?

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@vonny,

Great find, Vonny. This tune (walk right in) was revived and covered by some group (don't ask me who) as a "beatnik" tune sometime around the late '50s, early 60's.

Quoting some excerpts from the notes posted at youtube:

Quote:

Born on a plantation at Red Banks, Cannon moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi, then the home of W. C. Handy, at the age of 12. Cannon's musical skills came without training; he taught himself to play using a banjo that he made from a frying pan and raccoon skin. He ran away from home at the age of fifteen and began his career entertaining at sawmills and levee and railroad camps in the Mississippi Delta around the turn of the century.
Although their last recordings were made in 1930, Cannon's Jug Stompers were one of Beale Street's most popular jug bands through the 1930s...He returned in 1956 to make a few recordings for Folkways Records. In the "blues revival" of the 1960s, he made some college and coffee house appearances with Furry Lewis and Bukka White.[3] He also recorded an album for Stax Records in 1963, following the chart success of "Walk Right In", with his fellow Memphis musician, Will Shade, the former leader of the Memphis Jug Band.

Will Shade ROCKS!

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@vonny,

Quote:

I still get confused about categories - blues or gospel - but I guess if there's religion in it, then it's classed as gospel

?

Yeah, that's pretty much it. Gospel, traditionally, consists of "spirituals" commonly sung in church services--always with a religious theme.

However, bluesmen like Blind Willie Johnson blurred the distinction somewhat:

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@layman,

Quote:

However, bluesmen like Blind Willie Johnson blurred the distinction somewhat

Sister Rosetta Thorpe, as featured in the video posted by FBM, played "gospel" music in a distinctly blues "style." But it was still gospel.

Many bluesmen would incorporate gospel tunes into their repertoire. Big Bill Broonzy, for example:

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@FBM,

Wow.

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@vonny,

Good tunes, Vonny. Minnie Wallace, who recorded with Will Shade and the Memphis Jug Band (singing the "old folks" tune), also recorded under the name "Memphis Minnie."

This is another "Sonny Boy Williamson" type of deal. Lizzie Douglas (who recorded the "rooster" tune) also recorded under the name of Memphis Minnie. She is the one called Memphis Minnie, these days. But you will still see many claim that they are the same person, which they ain't.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

Wow.

She was something else, eh?

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@FBM,

Yep.

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Here's a tune by the great harp player, guitarist, and song writer, Jimmy Reed, who has had his tunes covered a million times over, including several by the Stones.

The intro here includes a discussion of the song title. Reed couldn't read or write. When he was first asked by his producer if he had ever written any songs of his own, Reed said "No." Later, it came out that he had, though, "made a few songs up."

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@layman,

Here's one by Eddie Taylor who played guitar on some of the most successful of Jimmy Reed's records.

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Anyone hear like blues?

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