We’ve added a new category to our blogroll for Festivals. So far, we’ve got the Chicago Blues Festival (June 5-8) and the Congressional Blues Festival (April 23, Washington DC). We’ve also included a link to Festival Preview, a website that reports on music festivals across the country.
If you’d like us to list your event, please send an email to electrifiedblues@gmail.com
Technorati Tags: blues, music festivals
The winner of the first Electrified t-shirt giveaway is Danny Morrison, who told us about Pete Karnes, a harp player who played with John Lee Hooker, among others. I couldn’t find too much about Pete on the Internet, other than that he was a staple of the Portland Oregon blues scene, and had a pretty terrible auto accident in 2004. Perhaps Danny will pop in and tell us more….
Anyway, I did find a 2006 podcast from Portland that includes one track from the Pete Barnes Blooz Band. Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: Pete Karnes, blues
Jimmie Lee Robinson performing Boss Man, from the DVD Extras of Electrified
Jimmie Lee Robinson (1931- 2002) was a lifelong resident of Chicago whose musical career was truly bracketed by Maxwell Street. He started playing guitar on Maxwell Street in the 1940s when he was still in his teens, and in 1998 he joined the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition and dedicated himself to the effort to save what then remained of old marketplace. Among his contributions to the cause: the protest song The Maxwell Street Tear Down Blues and two lengthy protest fasts, one in 1998 that lasted 62 days and another in 2000 for 81 days.
Jimmie Lee played with just about every Chicago bluesman, and woman, one can think of, starting with Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy in the late 40s. In the 50s, he formed his first band The Every Hour Blues Boys, played with Elmore James and eventually joined Little Walter’s band. He left Little Walter in the late 50s and recorded a few singles of his own.
In the ’60s, he worked with Willie Mabon, Sunnyland Slim, Mighty Joe Young, Shakey Jake, and Howlin’ Wolf and went to Europe as part of the 1965 American Folk Blues Festival with John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, Big Walter Horton, Big Mama Thornton and Eddie Boyd. By the 70s though, he had opened a candy store on Chicago’s South Side, and only played part-time, pretty much abandoning his music by the 80s.
Encouraged to return to the blues in the late 80s, he appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival in 1991 and 1993, and eventually recorded his first full-length album, Lonely Traveler released on Delmark in 1994. In the last decade of his life, he mostly performed as an acoustic solo artist, and contributed his energies to the efforts to save Maxwell Street.
Resources:
Technorati Tags: Maxwell Street, Jimmie Lee Robinson, Boss Man, Chicago Blues
In our Electrified t-shirt giveaway — details here — we asked you to tell us who your favorite blues artist is and why. There’s just over a week left to enter, and we’d really appreciate your help in spreading the word about the giveaway and Notes of the Urban Blues. Leave your comment here, on the original post or on your own blog. If you do it on your own blog, which we’d love, please leave a comment here. When I use the random number generator to pick a winner, it helps to have everything in one place.
I found my dream blues team on YouTube yesterday: Muddy Waters, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy at the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival. Here’s a clip from YouTube.
Technorati Tags: Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Montreux, Electrified, Chicago blues
Guest post by David Blakey, Webmaster of BO DIDDLEY-The Originator
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Cats like me, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Memphis Minnie, Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter Jacobs, all of us came to Maxwell Street. This is the backbone and the roots of what everyone is listening to today. It started right here.”
Rock legend Bo Diddley was speaking in Chicago in 1997, prior to a benefit concert for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
The unique sound and style that Bo Diddley honed in his teenage years playing for nickels and dimes in Chicago’s bustling Maxwell Street market, has resonated right around the world.
One of the founding fathers of rock & roll, his unique look and sound, mixing Chicago electric urban blues with elements of Latin-American, hillbilly, spiritual, African and calypso with a whole lot more of his own feelings, were a major source of inspiration for an army of British Invasion bands in the 1960s. Bands like The Animals, The Downliners Sect, The Kinks, Manfred Mann, The Pretty Things, The Rolling Stones, Them, The Who and The Yardbirds.
Today, Bo Diddley receives fan mail and requests for signed photographs from countries as diverse as Australia and Belorussia. On the Internet, YouTube and MySpace carry videos and tracks by bands from Argentina, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Poland and the UK, performing Bo Diddley’s songs and tributes that pay homage to the world-famous Bo Diddley beat.
The story of Maxwell Street and the urban blues that Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Little Walter transformed into what we now call rock & roll, is truly of global importance.
I don’t know any city that has anything like Maxwell Street,” said Bo Diddley. “People come from all over the world to see Maxwell Street. When I am overseas, people ask me about Maxwell Street. What do I tell them now?”
Thanks to the remarkable work of writer/director/producer Phil Ranstrom and his dedicated team, they can now watch “Cheat You Fair” and “Electrified.”Two movies about Maxwell Street that document the story of an incredibly important era in American music. A story from Chicago that the whole world needs to hear. And don’t forget… Bo knows.
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If you’d like to contribute a guest post to Notes of the Urban Blues, please email us at electrifiedblues@gmail.com
Technorati Tags: Bo Diddley, Maxwell Street, Chicago blues
Another website I must share with you all: Dead Blues Guys.
At first it seems a bit morbid. A website devoted to collecting and sharing photos of the final resting places (FRPs) of deceased blues musicians. But once you start clicking around, it’s pretty addictive. You can’t help but look for your favorite dead blues guys.
One of my favorites, Junior Wells, died just over 10 years ago. Phil Ranstrom was lucky enough to capture some of his memories for Electrified shortly before Junior passed away.
Here’s a clip that I found on YouTube of a very young Junior performing Hoodoo Man Blues.
Technorati Tags: Junior Wells, Chicago blues, Hoodoo Man Blues
Today’s Chicago Blues posted the clip of Little Walter shown at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony Monday night.
The clip includes interviews with a number of Little Walter’s contemporaries, including the late Junior Wells and Jimmie Lee Robinson, both of whom are also in Electrified.
Technorati Tags: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Little Walter, Chicago blues
Little Walter was among those honored at last night’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in New York. One of the best, if not the best, blues harmonica players of his generation, Little Walter was inducted into the Hall of Fame due to his influence on rock & roll.
We can only imagine where his career might have gone had it not been cut short by a street brawl in 1968.
According to his Wikipedia entry, these clips of him backing Hound Dog Taylor and Koko Taylor on a Danish television program in 1967 are his only known filmed performances.
Hound Dog Taylor, Wild About You Baby
Koko Taylor, Wang Dang Doodle
Technorati Tags: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Little Walter, Chicago blues
Over the past few weeks as we’ve been building Notes of the Urban Blues and starting to spread the word about Electrified, I’ve had the privilege to discover many wonderful blogs, websites and forums dedicated to the Blues. They have all been added to our blogroll in the sidebar, but I’d like to tell you about a few that have been tremendously welcoming.
Squeeze My Lemon, Today’s Chicago Blues and Blues Underground Network all wrote posts about the film or our film clips on YouTube.
The moderators of BluesWire and The Blindman’s Blues Forum were very helpful in getting us started as a member of their communities.
I urge you to check out these wonderful sites. Thanks, guys.
Technorati Tags: blues
On March 4, 1837, Chicago received its official charter from the state of Illinois. This event was commemorated this week on the blog This Day in Jewish History with an extensive entry about the history of Jews in Chicago.
Technorati Tags: Maxwell Street, Jewish history, Chicago
