Surprise favourite Songs revisited - MIKE HERON - Singing The Dolphins Through (Echo Coming Back)

Singing The Dolphin Through 

MIKE HERON

for my friend Phil as we were talking about the ISB and Scientology connections and the perennial worry I had about such a sinister brainwashing cult of money and nonsense (see Cyril Vosper’s Mindbenders) . . . Phil who has an encyclopaedic  taste in music and relates to a good story song and this seems to be such . . . .a lovely climber from Mike Heron that he does so well, the chorale at the end is so worth waiting for and 'Echo Coming Back' should have been a MUCH bigger album IMHO!

 

Kristen Hersh - Hysterical Bending [Hips and Makers] | jt1674

 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/802910813045276672/kristin-hersh-hysterical-bending

David Gilmour - I Can’t Breathe Anymore | jt1674

 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/802836129552449536/david-gilmour-i-cant-breathe-anymore

Low - Fearless [A Lifetime of Temporary Relief] | jt1674

 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/802835563998822400/low-fearless

Another Holiday Gift - A Folder Of Holiday Tunes | So Many Roads

 Like Christmas come early . . . . . 

Speedy has made us a festive gift  (alongside his ‘main present’ of the entire ROIOs of Led Zeppelin (there’s a reason - go there and find out . . . . . )

Another Holiday Gift - A Folder Of Holiday Tunes

it is over 300 Christmas festive rock n rock and music generally thats 15 hours of Festive Frolics!

You HEARD me 15 hours! of Tinsel Time!

“You seem to be under the misapprehension that I know what I’m doing?” Leon Russell | Don's Tunes

 

Leon Russell worked with Joe Cocker and, most famously, led the English singer's band on the classic 1970 tour “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.” The list of bands and timeless songs he worked on is almost endless. He played on the Beach Boys classic “Pet Sounds” and with a variety of musicians including Frank Sinatra and the Monkees. He toured with the Rolling Stones. He was also part of George Harrison's "Songs for Bangladesh."

Russell also had a long solo career. He released his first album in 1970, the self-titled “Leon Russell.” The album featured one of his best-known songs, “A Song for You,” which has been covered by Andy Williams and Elton John.

"You’re under the misapprehension that I know what I’m doing and I really don’t," he told The Blues magazine in 2014. "I don’t know what motivates me – it’s a way of life, I’m always recording, I’m always on the road. There are so many things still to do in the future. There is never a shortage of things to keep me busy."

Photo by Jim McCrary/of the legendary Redferns

Don's Tunes

Fleetwood Mac - Before The Beginning [Then Play On] | jt1674

 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/802837399564681216/fleetwood-mac-before-the-beginning

Stevie Ray Vaughan - his National Steel Duolian | Don's Tunes

Stevie Ray Vaughan believed that his 1930s National Duolian guitar was once owned by Blind Boy Fuller. The guitar was given to him by a roadie, Byron Barr, who bought it in 1981. 
SRV claimed the guitar was a 1928 dobro, but the supposed serial number (C704) indicates it’s actually a Duolian—a model that wasn't manufactured until 1930.  

Regardless, the guitar was said to be a favorite of SRV and a prized possession. He was known to take the guitar with him on tour, regularly playing it backstage and in his free time. 

He can be seen holding this guitar on the cover “In Step” album. 

The only "known" recording of SRV using this guitar was on "Oreo Cookie Blues" on Lonnie Mack's "Strike Like Lightning" CD. 

Photo by Stephanie Chernikowski

Sonny Terry - Lost John

 Some early Sonny on his own . . . . . what a joyous sound!

Sonny Terry - Lost John

Remembering Dickey Betts (December 12, 1943 – April 18, 2024)

When did you first become interested in playing music, and who were some of your early influences?

Dickey Betts : (Laughs) I was actually playing music before I was in the first grade. My dad brought home a ukulele for me. My dad could play just about any stringed instrument, but he was a fiddle player, which was his main instrument. He was really a fine bluegrass player. Back then we called it "string music." Bill Monroe kind of coined that phrase "bluegrass," because he called his band The Bluegrass Boys. So, my uncles all played, and my dad played, so when I was about four-years-old, I started playing little tunes on the ukulele, and started playing in the jam sessions when we'd get together on weekends a couple of times a month.

So I went from that to a mandolin, and I started playing banjo for a while, and after that I went to guitar. I didn't start playing guitar until I was sixteen. I had started getting interested in rock and roll and hot cars and girls, things like that. But as soon as I started playing guitar I studied everything that Chuck Berry did. And back then Chuck Berry was what Jimi Hendrix would be to the late sixties, that real different guitar sound. If you think about it, nobody bent strings and made sounds like Chuck Berry did back during the fifties.

Definitely one of the true guitar innovators.

Yeah, I mean, he had that loose tuning, and nobody knew what loose tuning was back then. I mean everybody sounded like Duane Eddy or The Ventures. (Laughs) Anyway- then I met a guitar player from Boston that could get that Chuck Berry sound, and I looked at his guitar and he had an unwound 3rd on there-which, everybody does that now, but then, it was a wound third string, and you couldn't get that Chuck Berry sound with that. That was my early influence and introduction, Chuck Berry.

And then I started playing a lot of The Ventures stuff along with that, and started studying B.B. King and Freddie King. I loved Freddie King when he came out with "Hideaway." It knocked me out. I had everything Freddie King did, and played a lot of his tunes. By then I had my own bands together. When I was seventeen I went on the road for the first time with a circus show. We had a tent on the midway, like at the state fair, and it was called "Teen Beat." (Laughs) And we was the band! And the barker you know, he'd come out and tell all of these outrageous lies about how the band had just been on The Ed Sullivan Show. (Laughs) You might have missed 'em, but they were there! It was like a side show on the midway. We did about twenty shows a day, these little thirty-minute shows. And we'd jump off of the top of the amps and do splits. And I could do the Chuck Berry duck-walk. It was kind of a little quick show. It was called The World of Mirth Shows. And I learned how to talk carny talk, which was like, if I was going to say "Michael" I would say "Me-a-zee-a-zikle." They put "z's" and "a's" all in the middle of words and you can't understand 'em. It was quite an education.

After that I came home and forged my birth certificate and started playing night clubs. I got more into a lot of the real old blues stuff. I had a friend here in town that was kind of an oddball. He already knew who Lightnin' Hopkins was, and Muddy Waters, and all of these people. He said, "Hey man, Chuck Berry is like pop. You've got to listen to some of the real stuff!" Then he showed me all of these real old players, he had all of these 78's and stuff. I got educated that way. I just met a lot of good people along the way. And then Lonnie Mack came along. He was like a ray of sunshine. There was just so much Beach Boys and that big sound from Philadelphia, (sings) da-do ron ron ron, da do ron ron." (Laughing) Then Lonnie Mack came out, and I played every damn thing he put out, you know. I don't play anything like him now, but back then I studied him. And I kind of got my shake from B.B. (King). Learning how to get that tremolo the way he does. And I never really studied Django Rhinehart, but I think every guitar player listens to and gets influenced by him. And I love Charlie Parker. I put my Charlie Parker stuff on and just listen to it. I don't try to learn any licks or nothing, I just put it on and enjoy it. Of course, when you're younger, you just put it on and learn it lick by lick.

Interview by Michael Buffalo Smith

Photo: Kirk West

Don's Tunes