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Posts Tagged ‘johnson’

Austrian Death Machine: Hello California/Get to the Choppa

June 1st, 2011 7 comments

AHNOLLDDDDDDDDDDD

Duration : 0:3:59

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Pete Johnson – Death Ray Boogie

March 26th, 2010 No comments

Peter “Pete” Johnson (1904 – 1967)

“Death Ray Boogie”

Pete Johnson was one of the three great boogie-woogie pianists (along with Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis) whose sudden prominence in the late ’30s helped make the style very popular. Originally a drummer, Johnson switched to piano in 1922. He was part of the Kansas City scene in the 1920s and ’30s, often accompanying singer Big Joe Turner. Producer John Hammond discovered him in 1936 and got him to play at the Famous Door in New York. After taking part in Hammond’s 1938 Spirituals to Swing Carnegie Hall concert in 1938, Johnson started recording regularly and appeared on an occasional basis with Ammons and Lewis as the Boogie Woogie Trio. He also backed Turner on some classic records. Johnson recorded often in the 1940s and spent much of 1947-1949 based in Los Angeles. He moved to Buffalo in 1950 and, other than an appearance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, he was in obscurity for much of the decade. A stroke later in 1958 left him partly paralyzed. Johnson made one final appearance at John Hammond’s January 1967 Spirituals to Swing concert, playing the right hand on a version of “Roll ‘Em Pete” two months before his death.

For more informations about “Pete” Johnson visit:
http://www.answers.com/topic/pete-johnson

Duration : 0:3:1

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Mississippi Highways and Crossroads ??

February 6th, 2010 8 comments

This is a video slideshow tribute to The Mississippi Delta region which is considered to be the birthplace of the Blues.

The most widely known legend surrounding Robert Johnson says that he sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads of U.S. Highway 61 and U.S. Highway 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi in exchange for prowess in playing the guitar. Actually, the location Johnson made reference to is a short distance away from that intersection. The legend was told mainly by Son House, but finds no corroboration in any of Johnson’s work, despite titles like “Me and the Devil Blues” and “Hellhound on My Trail”. With this said, the song “Cross Road Blues” is both widely and loosely interpreted by many as a descriptive encounter of Johnson selling his soul. The older Tommy Johnson (no relation, although it is speculated that they were cousins) also claimed to have sold his soul to the Devil. The story goes that if one would go to the crossroads a little before midnight and begin to play the guitar, a large black man would come up to the aspiring guitarist, retune his guitar and then hand it back. At this point (so the legend goes) the guitarist had sold his soul to become a virtuoso (A similar legend even surrounded virtuoso violinist Niccolo Paganini a century before.)

Seventy or so years ago, a man who was then known as Robert Johnson passed away. He was poisoned, presumably by a houseman/barkeep whose wife had been flirting with him on an August Evening. Around the same time, a king pin of the then small, homely music industry sent out a middle man to find Johnson, in hopes of striking a record deal. It took until almost a year after Johnson’s death for word to get back to the industry that Johnson was, in fact, deceased. This is not a surprise, considering that the spread of news at the time, let alone in poor black Mississippi (or really, where ever he may have taken up residence at the time), was reserved to word of mouth.

Robert Johnson is arguably the most important, influential, and respected blues artist of all time. Back in the days when Johnson was still with us, recording equipment was sparse. Johnson recorded a grand total of forty one cuts, twelve of them alternate takes.

In 1900, Bill and Annie Patton and their 12 children took up residence at Dockery Farms. Their nine-year-old, Charlie, took to following guitarist Henry Sloan to his performances at picnics, fish-fries, and social gatherings at boarding houses where the day laborers lived. By 1910, Patton was
himself a professional musician, playing songs such as his own “Pony Blues,” often with fellow guitarist Willie Brown. Within the next five years Patton had come to influence Tommy Johnson, considered one of the best ragtime-blues guitarists of the day, who had traveled to Dockery. He had also joined the Chatmon brothers who recorded using the name the “Mississippi Sheiks” at their musical jobs throughout the area.

Even though there were no juke joints on the farm, Charlie Patton and other bluesmen, drawn to Dockery by its fame, used the plantation as their base. They would travel the network of state roads around Dockery Farms to communities large enough to support audiences that loved the blues. One of these roads, Highway 61, from Memphis to Vicksburg, was immortalized by 1960s folk/rock icon Bob Dylan. This was “blues country.” The plantation was located between the towns of Cleveland and Ruleville, just south of the state prison at Parchman and north of Indianola, the birthplace of the blues guitar great B.B. King. Shops in the area sold “race records.” These were typically blues sung by women like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and produced presumably for African-American buyers. In 1929 Charlie Patton recorded 14 songs for Paramount Records, featuring his gruff voice and rhythmic, percussive plucking. They immediately became top sellers, and resulted eventually in his second recording sessions, producing 26 titles, for the ARC company in New York in 1934.

But it was Patton’s live performances that inspired and influenced fans such as Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Ed ‘Son’ House, Chester Burnett (also known as Howlin’ Wolf), and Roebuck ‘Pop’ Staples. These important artists in blues history either lived at or passed through Dockery Farms. Bluesmen Sonnyboy Williamson and Leadbelly were among ‘guests of the state’ at nearby Parchman Prison during the same era.

Besides his blues guitar playing and singing, Patton was well known for his stage moves. He danced while playing and swinging his guitar around, often playing it behind his back. These crowd-pleasing antics imitated by rock stars including Jimi Hendrix have survived today in the acts of bluesmen such as Buddy Guy.

Enjoy 🙂
Quinoacat

Duration : 0:6:48

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Doctor Ross : “Thirty Two Twenty” – (Fortune Records) Flint, MI blues!

December 17th, 2009 5 comments

http://www.myspace.com/fortunerecordsdetroit
Doctor Ross was a one man band and blues master!

Doctor Ross : “Thirty Two Twenty”
1958 Blues straight outta Flint, MI

BIO:
Doctor Ross
October 21, 1925 May 28, 1993 “Doctor Ross the harmonica boss”,

Biography by Jason Ankeny
Isaiah “Doc” Ross was a throwback to a bygone era; a true one-man band, he played harmonica, acoustic guitar, bass drum and high-hat simultaneously, creating a mighty racket harking back to the itinerant country-blues players wandering the Delta region during the earlier years of the 20th century. Born Charles Isaiah Ross on October 21, 1925 in Tunica, Mississippi, he took early inspiration from the music of Robert Johnson, Blind Boy Fuller and Sonny Boy Williamson I; primarily a harpist — hence his nickname “The Harmonica Boss” — he only added the other instruments in his arsenal in order to play a USO show while a member of the army during World War II. (The “Doc” moniker was acquired because he carried his harmonicas in a doctor’s bag.) Upon his release from the military, Ross settled in Memphis, where he became a popular club fixture as well as the host of his own radio show on station WDIA; during his club residency he was witness to a number of brutal murders, however, and swore off appearances in such venues during the later years of his life. During the early 1950s, Ross recorded his first sides — among them “Chicago Breakdown” — for labels including Sun and Chess; in 1954 he settled in Flint, Michigan, where he went to work as a janitor for General Motors, a position he held until retiring. In 1965 he cut his first full-length LP, Call the Doctor, and that same year mounted his first European tour; as the years passed Ross performed live with decreasing frequency, however, and was infamous for backing out of shows to catch his beloved Detroit Tigers on television. Upon winning a Grammy for his 1981 album Rare Blues, he experienced a career resurgence, and played festival dates to great acclaim prior to his death on May 28, 1993.

Duration : 0:2:49

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