Mississippi Delta & Hill Country (1978):
Bluesmen; fife-and-drum ensembles; former muleskinners and railroad tie-tampers; and tall-tale reciters. Performers include Skip James collaborator Jack Owens, diddley-bow player Lonnie Pitchford, former Mississippi Sheik Sam Chatmon, fife legend Otha Turner, and R. L. Burnside in his first film appearance. Camera by John Bishop; fieldwork in collaboration with Worth Long
Without dwelling on the complex socio-economic factors that can render a person homeless, really, Seasick Steve should have a bath, get a job and shut the fuck up. Of course, you can’t not dwell on such details; Steve’s shtick is singing about his time on the streets. Yet, 66 years old and four albums in, the former hobo ignores the abuse, the horror and the desolation that comes with not having a roof above you. Instead, Steve sings about life on the open road with no-one but his trusty hound for company.
The Howlin' Wolf Story was directed by Don McGlynn, director of Charles Mingus: Triumph Of The Underdog and many other prize-winning film biographies. It was produced by Joe Lauro, whose company, Historic Films, Inc., supplied much of the footage for Martin Scorsese's blues series on PBS. Their in-depth look at Wolf's life and music includes astounding, rare film footage and never-before-seen photos of Wolf stalking the stage at the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival, on the TV show "Shindig" in 1965, at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival, and in the Chicago clubs in the '50s and '60s.
He was born in 1904 in Rossville, TN, and was playing the guitar by the age of 14 with a slide hollowed out of a steer bone. His parents died when Fred was a youngster and the wandering life of a traveling musician soon took hold. The 1920s saw him playing for tips on the street around Memphis, TN, the hoboing life eventually setting him down in Como, MS, where he lived the rest of his life. There McDowell split his time between farming and keeping up with his music by playing weekends for various fish fries, picnics, and house parties in the immediate area. This pattern stayed largely unchanged for the next 30 years until he was discovered in 1959 by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax was the first to record this semi-professional bluesman, the results of which were released as part of an American folk music series on the Atlantic label. McDowell, for his part, was happy to have some sounds on records, but continued on with his farming and playing for tips outside of Stuckey's candy store in Como for spare change. It wasn't until Chris Strachwitz — folk-blues enthusiast and owner of the fledgling Arhoolie label — came searching for McDowell to record him that the bluesman's fortunes began to change dramatically.
When Mississippi Fred McDowell proclaimed on one of his last albums, "I do not play no rock & roll," it was less a boast by an aging musician swept aside by the big beat than a mere statement of fact. As a stylist and purveyor of the original Delta blues, he was superb, equal parts Charley Patton and Son House coming to the fore through his roughed-up vocals and slashing bottleneck style of guitar playing. McDowell knew he was the real deal, and while others were diluting and updating their sound to keep pace with the changing times and audiences, Mississippi Fred stood out from the rest of the pack simply by not changing his style one iota
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Etta Baker was a master of the blues guitar style that became popular in the southern piedmont after the turn of the century. She was raised in the foothills of Caldwell County where music was central in the lives of her family and friends. Both parents played several instruments, and Etta began picking the guitar at the age of three. "I was so small, I had to lay the guitar on the bed, stand on the floor and play on the neck," she recalled. Her seven brothers and sisters already played some instruments and soon she was making music alongside them at community entertainments and corn shuckings.
Mrs. Baker played the guitar and banjo. She rarely sang, preferring to let the instrument speak for her. Like most traditional artists, she played music for personal satisfaction and for the pleasure of friends and family. However, in 1956, her music was recorded on the influential album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians. She was also featured on a 1972 recording Music From the Hills of Caldwell County. Her popular CD, One Dime Blues, came out in 1991 to great reviews.
In her last 30 years, Mrs. Baker carried her music far beyond the borders of Caldwell County. She performed at the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Park in Virginia, the 1984 World's Fair in Knoxville, the Kent State Folk Festival, and the Augusta Heritage Festival. In 1982 she and her sister Cora Phillips were honored jointly with the North Carolina Folklore Society's Brown-Hudson Award. She received the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991.
Etta Baker and her husband Lee raised nine children, many of whom carry on the family musical tradition. She also worked for more than 20 years at the Skyland Textile Company before retiring in order to pursue her performing career. Mrs. Baker passed away in October, 2006 at the age of 93, having achieved international recognition for her artistry and for North Carolina's finger-picked blues tradition.
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This is the first of three episodes produced from the 2009 Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash, held at The Bowery Poetry Club in Greenwich Village, NYC, on Sunday, July 12.
The program features Steve Suffet, producer of the annual series of Guthrie concerts, Oscar Brand, and Joel Landy. Oscar, who has had a radio show devoted to the folk music scene for almost sixty years, knew Woody personally. His stories and songs about America's best known troubadour make this show special.
Greetings from the Old Fashioned Folksinger!
Some of you may know that I retired from my full-time position with the New York City Department of Education in 2003, but that I continued to work part-time, averaging one to two days per week throughout the school year. That's now finally over, since I retired from part-time employment at the end of this past June. My last day was spent watching high school students take the New York State Regents Examination in English, and then marking some of their papers once they were finished. Now that I'm fully retired I have been so busy that I can't figure out how I ever found the time to go to work!
Much of my time is occupied with music, of course. Along with Marilyn, I have been a volunteer for the Peoples' Voice Cafe, the New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club, and the People's Music Network. I also find time to perform, and as I look ahead to 2010, I see that I have quite a few gigs already lined up. Most of them are with my sometime singing partner Anne Price, although both of us also perform individually.
Here are my confirmed 2010 appearances so far:
• Sunday, January 17, 2010, 2:00 PM. Yippie Museum Cafe. 9 Bleecker Street. New York City. I will be one of about half a dozen performers in this three-hour Hoot for Peace. Admission is free.
• Friday, January 29, 2010, 7:30 PM. New York Society for Ethical Culture. 2 West 64th Street. New York City. Anne Price and I will be among a dozen performers in this concert to kick off the People's Music Network Winter Gathering, which is taking place January 29-31. Among the other performers are Emma's Revolution, the Lavender Light Gospel Choir, the Ray Korona Band, Rachel Stone, and Sally Campbell and Adele Rolider, to name just a few. Complete information is available from the PMN Winter Gathering website: http://pmnnyc.home.att.net
• Saturday, January 30, 2010, 10:45 AM. Renaissance Charter School. 3559 81st Street. Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. I will be joining Anne Price, Takako Nagumo, and Sarah Pirtle in a free concert for families and children. This concert is also part of the People's Music Network Winter Gathering.
• Saturday, March 13, 2010, time to be announced. Renaissance Charter School. 3559 81st Street. Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Anne Price and I will be giving a musical workshop on Woody Guthrie's New York as part of an all-day folk festival sponsored by the New York Pinewoods Folk Music Club.
• Saturday, March 27, 2010, 7:30 PM. Cranberry Coffee House. Unitarian-Universalist Congregation. 183 Riverside Drive. Binghamton, New York. Anne Price and I will be presenting our "Woody Rediscovered" program of Woody Guthrie's less known songs. For information please call 607-754-9437. Cranberry website:http://web.mac.com/cranberrycoffeehouse/
• Sunday, May 9, 2010, 7:30 PM. Walthamstow Folk Club at the Plough Inn. 173 Wood Street. Walthamstow, London. Come hear Anne Price and me as we return to England for our second whilrlwid tour. Our first was in October 2008.
• Friday, May 14, 2010, 8:30 PM. Orpington Friday Folk at the Liberal Club. 7 Station Road. Orpington, Kent. Our next stop is in the heart of this suburb, a little ways southeast of London.
• Sunday, May 16, 2010, 2:30 PM. FAB (Folk - Acoustic - Blues) Club at the White Hart Pub. Argent Street. Grays, Essex. Anne Price and I continue our awesome English adventure with this afternoon gig in a fine old ale house.
• Monday, May 17, 2010, 8:30 PM. Waltham Abbey Folk Club at the Royal British Legion. Brooker Road. Waltham Abbey, Essex. Anne Price and I wrap up our tour in this picturesque village on the very northern fringe of London.
• Sunday, July 11, 2010, 7:00 PM. Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash at the Bowery Poetry Club. 308 Bowery. New York City. Anne Price and I will be among the featured performers at this annual round robin songfest. Admission: $8.
Other performance dates are in the works but have not yet been confirmed. For updates or if you want to book me for a performance, please visit my website:http://suffet.home.att.net
Anything else? Yes, I have extended the holiday special on my CDs purchased through CD Baby. From now through the end of January they are only $9.99 each instead of the regular $15. For details please go to: http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/SteveSuffet
"Old Fashioned Folksinger," my one and only digital download album, will continue to be $9.99 indefinitely. It contains 20 songs, so hat coms to less than 50¢ each. That's quite a bargain. You can also purchase individual songs from it for 99¢ each through CD Baby or through iTunes. Your choice.
One more thing. You can now find several of my live performances on YouTube. Please take a look: http://www.youtube.com/stevesuffet
Thanks.
That's all for now.
Peace.
--- Steve Suffet
The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale exists to collect, preserve, and provide public access to and awareness of the blues. Along with holdings of significant blues-related memorabilia, the museum also exhibits and collects art portraying the blues tradition, including works by sculptor Floyd Shaman and photographer Birney Imes.
The museum is located in the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Passenger Depot, also known as Illinois Central Passenger Depot or Clarksdale Passenger Depot, which was built in 1926 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The museum has been visited by many notable artists such as Eric Clapton and Paul Simon. The Texas-based rock band ZZ Top, especially front man Billy Gibbons, have made this museum their pet project and have raised thousands of dollars in support. The museum also focuses on educating young people interested in learning to play musical instruments.
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Wizz Jones, one of the first British Beatniks, and noted folk-blues musician, performs two of his songs and talks about his life in this documentary from 1960, which provides an illuminating glimpse of the media's view of alternative lifestyles at that time. The interviews are conducted by veteran reporter Alan Whicker, looking very much like a Monty Python parody of himself. Wizz's two songs in this clip are interesting. Both were versions of older songs, but rewritten by Wizz to mock the Burgermeisters of Newquay. The first was based on "Down on Penny's Farm" by the Bently Boys, a white country duo who recorded it in 1929. The track was reissued on Harry Smith's groundbreaking "Anthology of American Folk Music" LP set put out by Folkways Records in 1952. This was one of the most influential releases in the history of folk music, and spread like wildfire through the folk communities on both sides of the Atlantic. So it's no surprise that Wizz Jones knew of the original recording in 1960 and used it as the basis for a protest song of his own. The other song Wizz sings is based on Elizabeth Cotten's "Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie", which appeared on another Folkways LP release "Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar" in 1958. Elizabeth Cotten used the same kind of alternating bass finger-picking style, complicated by the fact that she played a standard six-string guitar left-handed, i.e. upside-down!
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Steve Suffet performing "San Francisco Bay Blues" by Jesse Fuller at the Kew Gardens Music Festival in Queens, New York City. March 7, 2009
The fotdella was an instrument invented and constructed by Jesse "The Lone Cat" Fuller, an American one-man-band musician, who needed an accompaniment instrument beyond the usual high-hat (foot-operated cymbal) or bass drum favored by street musicians. Dreaming it up in the early 1950s, while lying in bed, he set about constructing a foot-operated bass instrument. It ended up as a large upright box with a rounded top, vaguely shaped like the top of a double bass, with a short neck on top. Six bass strings were attached to the neck and stretched over the body.
The first dictionary to list the word is the short glossary "For Characters Who Don't Dig Jive Talk," which was included with Harry Gibson's 1944 album, Boogie Woogie In Blue. The entry for "hipsters" defined it as "characters who like hot jazz."[5] Initially, hipsters were usually middle-class white youths seeking to emulate the lifestyle of the largely-black jazz musicians they followed(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)The song was "Handsome Harry the Hipster," and the performer was Harry 'The Hipster' Gibson. Harry sang of things I had vaguely heard discussed by my ex-hipster elders - "chicks," "mellowness" (being stoned), and of that mysterious thing called "jive." That's the way I had been told that "vipers" (drug users) talk. "Handsome Harry" - described in the song not only as a "hipster" but as a "flipster" and a "clipster" - "digs those mellow kicks." He's a gangsta who'll "hype you for your gold," is "the ball with all the chicks," and is "frantic and fanatic, with jive he's an addict." And with an addict's natural evasiveness, Harry ended each verse with a shrug and verbal denial: "Well, I don't know, I
Once there were thousands of licensed Granny Midwives throughout the South. Now there are none. Who were they? Where did they go? Because of segregation, many Americans knew nothing about natural home birth with experienced Grannies like Margaret Charles Smith who learned from each other and could deal with breech deliveries, multiple births and other situations with no medical instruments or drugs. Miss Margaret's mother tells of saving a one-and-a-half-pound baby by making an incubator out of a cardboard box and hot water bottles.
Miss Margaret successfully attended over 3,500 home births without a single maternal death, worked a farm like a man and triumphed over the advesities of Jim Crow, poverty, lack of education and the slavery of sharecropping. "I've been through the wringer," she says of living in Greene County, Alabama, a Ku Klux Klan stronghold where, according to Ralph Abernathy, "racism was so entrenched that winning the right to vote there was more historic than man's walk on the moon."
A note from Mohsen Namjoo:
It's difficult to talk about oneself especially when it is easy to be misinterpreted and the misinterpretation can be widely spread through contemporary communication tools. In fact it seems that there is no one who wants to listen to you talking about yourself. We have also learned that the interpretations of the audience about one’s art work are not less valuable as than the intention of the author him/herself.
So, I make it short. I was born in year 1976 in Torbate-Jam and started to study Iranian classical traditional singing with Nassrollah Nasseh- Pour at the age of 12 and this process continued until I was 18.
Just like every musician, my dream was to find a place in the professional field of music. Finally and after years of catastrophe, it’s only been for a few years that music has become my ONLY profession. My works (over 100 pieces) are the result of nearly 18 years of engagement with music. The source of this music and poems is the immense Iranian culture and history. These pieces of music and lyrics refer to, and find their meanings from Iranian culture which consists of four hundred years of battle between modernity and tradition.
Whenever I've wanted to laugh at the contradictions in my society I use the laughter and playfulness of the blues scale and its singing style. I blend it with the Iranian scale and singing style. Then whenever I’ve wanted to cry and express my sadness I direct the Iranian singing style towards blues or find refuge in reciting poems. ( more of Mohsen Namjoo on einhod blog...)
Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage To The Crossroads
A Film By Robert Mugge
This superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country. What Arkansas native and former Memphis stalwart Palmer knew, and Mugge captured on film, was that the blues was not only alive but still intimately woven into the daily lives of rural blacks.
Palmer, a former rock musician and Memphis Blues Festival cofounder best known for his bylines in The New York Times and Rolling Stone, had already chronicled the saga of Southern blues in his seminal book that provides the film's title. He's an astute guide, and Mugge underlines this role by pairing him with British rocker Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), whose avid interest in the music makes him an effective foil.
(thru Blues Town)
Cast: :"Big" Jack Johnson Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes Junior Kimbrough Jessie Mae Hemphill R.L. Burnside Booker T. Laury
Lonnie Pitchford Jack Owens Bud Spires Jessie Mae's Fife and Drum Band Wade Walton Dave Stewart Robert Palmer - Narration
Tracks:
Memphis blues / Booker T. Laury
Jumper on the line / R.L. Burnside
Bouncing ball / Jessie Mae's Fife and Drum Band
You can talk about me / Jessie Mae Hemphill
Junior, I love you (All night long) / Junior Kimbrough
Heart broken man ; Ain't goin' to worry about tomorrow / Roosevelt "Booba" Barnes
Catfish blues ; Daddy, when is mama comin' home? / Big Jack Johnson
The devil ; Hard time killin' floor blues / Jack Owens and Bud Spires
Johnny stole an apple ; If I had possession over judgement day ; Come on in my kitchen / Lonnie Pitchford.
Venue: Blue Note
Performer: LATE NIGHT GROOVE SERIES: J. VIEWZ
Start Time: Saturday, Feb 21, 12:30 am
Price: BAR: $8.00 TABLE:$8.00
Description: FEATURING:
Jonathan Dagan, compositions/beats/electronics/guitar
Noa Lembersky, vocals
Urijah, vocals/trumpet/guitar
Yonadav Halevy, drums
Daniel Koren, keyboards
Israeli producer Jonathan Dagan's award winning project arrives for one late night set at the Blue Note. Going from Breakbeat to Jazz, Electro & Reggae - Jonathan and the the 4-piece Live act of J.Viewz features unique combination of live instruments, Vocals, electronic drumbeats, live drums and Turntables.(from Gothamjazz)
Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997) was a singer-songwriter, born in Texas to a life on the road. Van Zandt was master of the small, intimate folk performance, such as the July 1973 show that became Live At The Old Quarter Houston, Texas, the double album on Tomato Records. As the Austin Chronicle writes of the re-released CD, “Alone with a guitar, he hushes the crowd with his visionary tunes that are by turns haunting and eccentric, yet filled with beauty and dark shadows.” Despite chronic battles with alcoholism and depression, his songwriting displayed a sense of humour and introspection, truth and beauty.
People were always telling Townes he needed to lighten up in his performances, that he was too dreary. Two of his earliest songs were talkin' blues songs that were really good and he'd usually put one of the other in every set to lighten things up. He also tried to tell jokes, which he wasn't too good at. His best one was about a cop who sees a drunk walking down the street. He says, "Hey, Buddy, you're a little loaded, you aught to go get some coffee". The guy says, "Man, I sure am glad I ran into you officer. See, somebody just stole my car." The cop says, "Where was the car when you last saw it?" The guy says, "Right on the end of this key." The cop looks at the key and says, "Well, go two blocks down to Station House #4 and report it to the desk sergeant." The guy says, "Thanks, officer. You been a big help. I'm headed that way right now." The cop looks down at the guys pants and says, "Hey buddy, before you go, you better zip up your fly." The guy looks down at his pants and says, "Aw man, they got my girl too."
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Double-entendre \Dou"ble-en*ten"dre\, n. [F. double double +
entendre to mean. This is a barbarous compound of French
words. The true French equivalent is double entente.]
A word or expression admitting of a double interpretation,
one of which is often obscure or indelicate.
Odetta she was born Odetta Holmes sang at coffeehouses and Carnegie Hall and released several albums, becoming one of the most widely known and influential folk-music artists of the 1950s and 60s.
Her voice was an accompaniment to the black-and-white images of the freedom marchers who walked the roads of Alabama and Mississippi and the boulevards of Washington in quest of an end to racial discrimination.
Rosa Parks, the woman who started the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, was once asked which songs meant the most to her. She replied, "All of the songs Odetta sings."
Odetta sang at the August 1963 march on Washington, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement. Her song that day was "O Freedom," dating back to slavery days.
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The iconic image of Anita O'Day is from “Jazz on a Summer's Day," shot at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, where she showed up for her afternoon set in heels, an audacious bonnet and a slinky black dress, treating the crowd (some of whom looked somnambulistic) to a white-hot “Sweet Georgia Brown." O'Day was high as a kite - probably, she says, in one of the many interviews that punctuate “The Life of a Jazz Singer." Despite her substance abuse, there was an incredible strength to O'Day, who refused to compromise her art (while never calling it such) and lived a jazz life at a time when women didn't. (read more...)
Albert Collins was a moderate vocalist, but instead an incredible and extremely magnificent guitarist with a rel iable phat and juicy Fender Telecaster sound. With his peculiar, original and funky guitar trademark Collins quickly established himself as one of the worlds leading blues guitar players, together with fellow guitar colleagues as B.B King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and Albert King. Between 1958 and 1971, Collins mainly recorded instrumental Texas blues influenced by artists as T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, Lightning' Hopkins and various jazz musicians. It would take until the mid 1970s before he finally stepped up in front of the microphone for the first time.(for more...)
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