William Brown was a man who recorded a handful of blues on Sadie Beck's Plantation on July 16, 1942 for
Alan Lomax. Once thought to be the same man as the Willie Brown who played with Son House and Charley Patton--and was immortalized in Robert Johnson's
Crossroad Blues--the consensus now is that William Brown was a different man, about
whom we know next to nothing. Certainly, the handful of recordings we have that feature him supports this. The Willie Brown who recorded
Future Blues and
M & O Blues was an archetypal Delta bluesman, with both songs being stripped down versions of Charley Patton's
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues, among others, and
Pony Blues, respectively. The
William Brown who recorded
Mississippi Blues,
Ragged and Dirty and
Make Me a Pallet on the Floor plays and sings nothing like that Willie Brown. That we know nothing about him and never heard any more of his music is one of the many tragedies of recorded blues.
[more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Aug 30, 2011 -
15 comments
I had this concept--after a strange dream, while scoping out the
I Dreamed I Saw st. Augustine tab in my just-in-case-it-disappears downloaded
dylanchords, of ...
St. Augustine as a slow moody slide in Open D ala Blind Texas Marlin. But then I got to wondering whether someone might have a chord dictionary online where a few variations on a first position
B Minor in Open D might be found. Voila! Achtung, Baby! Behold
Brian's huge chordlist collection. Oh, man, he's got your standard and open tunings on guitar plus mandolin, uke, banjos, bouzouki, pipa and lute. A living room guitarist's must have, no doubt, although a few more open tunings for pipa would have been nice...
[more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Dec 9, 2009 -
6 comments
So, about 9 months ago I started working on this compilation... Until yesterday, however, I hadn't seen a tracklist from the mysterious 10-cd set called the VrootzBox, so this is not a derivative work, however similar it may be...I should mention that not all of these songs are songs that he covered or copped licks from. Most of the music he has made mention to, though a few of the songs were recorded after his formative years and one or two he never would have heard. But they are presented to give an illustration of the styles he drew from (such as gamelan, which he grew up playing in his neighbor's back yard).
Wrath of the Grapevine: The Roots of John Faheyvia FaheyGuitarPlayers
posted by y2karl
on Jun 1, 2008 -
12 comments
And here we have a couple of YouTube productions, screensaverish animations of photos and lyrics to the original recordings:
Robert Petway - Catfish Blues and
Tommy McClennan - It's Hard To Be Lonesome. This is mostly about Petway and
Catfish Blues but you can't mention Petway without mentioning McClennan, as they ran together in their time and as both did versions of
Catfish, a song canonical in Delta Blues, recorded and performed by nearly everyone--
Muddy Waters - Rolling Stone, for example. Petway just happens to be the first person to record
Catfish, and quite possibly the person who wrote it and certainly. to my mind, at least, the person who nailed it... in the uptempo version at the very least.
[more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Feb 28, 2008 -
8 comments
Consider
Aaron Thibeaux Walker--if anyone ever deserved the title
Godfather, King or Present at the Creation, it would be
T-Bone Walker. Without T-Bone, there would be no B.B. King, Albert King, no Clarence Gatemouth Brown, no Pee Wee Crayton, Johnny 'Guitar' Watson ad infinitum to every blues guitarist whoever bent a tube amplified string thereafter. For rock and blues, electric lead guitar begins with him--he invented the language and then wrote the book and style manual, too. And he wrote the
performance manual as well--dancing, doing splits, playing guitar behind his back while alternating betwen slow and smoky after hour blues and swinging combo and jazzy big band jumps. For examples of him at the height of his powers, give these Coralized mp3s--
Cold Cold Feeling and
Strollin' With Bones--a listen.
[more inside]
posted by y2karl
on Nov 14, 2007 -
8 comments
John Fahey - Fare Forward Voyagers
John Fahey - Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Phillip XIVClips from a 2 hour performance at
the Euphoria Tavern in Portland, Oregon from 1976. Among the cognoscenti at
FaheyGuitarPlayers, the consensus is that these clips display Fahey in rare form on a very good night.
Apart from Fahey,
Bohemia Visual Music aka Mike Nastra, the contributor of these clips, provides an interesting assortment of way too hip YouTubery offerings including, among others, Spike Jones, Dimandas Galas, Gene Krupa, Tuxedo Moon, Sun Ra, Pere Ubu and the Holy Modal Rounders.
posted by y2karl
on Oct 16, 2007 -
9 comments
"If you had Bruce playing with you," Dylan wrote, in his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles, "that's all you would need to do just about anything."
Bruce Langhorne has quite the
discography. And a
hot sauce, to boot. And he's led quite the life. Here is Richie Unterberger's interview with Langhorne in Parts
One and
Two. And
here he talks with Unterberger about working with
Mimi and Richard Fariña.
On a personal note, I will add that his hot sauce is hot indeed. Will buy it again.
posted by y2karl
on Apr 13, 2007 -
6 comments
Here is the
Mississippi John Hurt Blues Foundation, the website, which is the creation of one Frank Delaney of Spokane. There's a great deal of guitar related material and a page of mp3's by fans, which includes several interesting originals by one Fred Bolden, a grand nephew. I always knew he had a son who played guitar and wondered why no one had ever tried to record him. Now there is a grand nephew playing, if nowhere near as sublimely as his great uncle, in roughly the same style.
Here is an interview of John Hurt from 1963, courtesy of Stefan Grossman's guitar video empire. It is a real delight.
Consider this a follow up to this
post. Not all of the links there are good. The
Mississippi John Hurt Guitar Tab Book, for instance, is now available only in
PDF format but well worth the download. And here is
an illustrated discography of John Hurt by another Stefan, Stefan Wirz, a subject of yet another
post back in the day.
posted by y2karl
on Oct 4, 2006 -
19 comments
For murder ballads, here's your
Mississippi John Hurt's Louis Collins and your
Grayson & Whitter's Ommie Wise. Then, for some early white blues bottleneck guitar, here's your
Frank Hutchison's K. C. Blues. Not to mention
Charley Patton's Screamin' And Hollerin' The Blues. All courtesy the Internet Archives
78 RPM tag. where there is way more--like Bix Beiderbecke's first record,
Davenport Blues, Louis Armstrong's
Ain't Misbehavin' and Geeshie Wiley's
Last Kind Words, among many others. Then, for more,
Nugrape Records has an
mp3 page. The standout there, at least for me, is Gus Cannon's
Poor Boy Long Ways From Home. As for their namesake, the Nugrape Twins, well, the Archive has the mp3 of
I've Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape. And don't let me omit mentioning
PublicDomain4U. They have
Mississippi John Hurt's Frankie, for one.
Tyrone's Record and Phonograph Links will lead you to more 78 RPM goodness. And don't forget the inestimable and erudite vacapinta first
directed us to
Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine.
posted by y2karl
on Aug 25, 2006 -
48 comments
...Record collectors are typically thought of as irascible loners, but in the Washington of the ’50s and early ’60s, there existed a group of scruffy young blues and folk fans who could’ve given the Illuminati a run for their all-seeing eyes. They thought of themselves as the guardians of a tradition the rest of the world had either forgotten or misinterpreted. They adopted fake names. They invented strange mythologies. They hatched plans to bring their favorite historical figures back from the dead--or at least back from the commercial oblivion to which the music biz had consigned them. But most of all, they inspired admiration and awe. Though they never used the term themselves, this bunch of vintage-78 obsessives was known by others as the East Coast Blues Mafia.
The Thong Club
via FaheyGuitarPlayers
posted by y2karl
on Jul 13, 2006 -
20 comments
John Hurt: Although it was not John (wrong sex anyway) who through a gentle voice and pleasant demeanor (yet he had this about him too) served as my primary impetus to play the guitar, it was nevertheless he, and others who played like him - but mainly he who provided me with my first technical model (emotional model to some extent also) for playing the guitar. He was the first I heard who played in the three-finger, non-choking, "picking" style, and he was one of the best. He was in his quiet way, a very great man, and I deeply mourn our loss of him. John Fahey
Mississippi John Hurt"I just make it sound like I think it ought to" (more
→)
posted by y2karl
on Feb 8, 2003 -
41 comments
John Fahey - American Primitive Guitar. I got an e-mail from a listener about a John Fahey song I played on my show today and it prompted me to revisit his website. I've been listening to him ever since '67 or so. He died last year due to complications during a coronary bypass operation--I realized again today how I miss him. (more inside)
posted by y2karl
on Mar 22, 2002 -
14 comments
