Birthdays: Bonnie Raitt

 Happy 77th birthday to the great Bonnie Raitt!

"If you’re the ingenue or the leading lady, it’s harder to age gracefully. The press starts to snipe at you after you put on 3 pounds. But when you’re the equivalent to a character actress, which is what I’d say I am, you age in a more welcoming way. I think my fans would have stayed with me if I looked like Methuselah.

Because you released nine albums before your commercial breakthrough, people have come to see you as a living symbol for endurance. Is that a role you relish?

​It comes with the territory of staying alive and keeping your work fresh. My heroes are people like B.B. King and Tony Bennett and Betty White. I really admired them for sticking with it. But the truth is, I felt successful the first time people paid to see me in a club.

Why do you think you’ve lasted so long?

​My dad told me, “Treat every show like it’s opening night, and they’ll come back and see you next time.” I earned my audience. I think if you’re just doing it to pay the bills, people are going to sense that. I’m lasting this long because fans know I mean it. "

Interview by Jim Farber

Photo: Sam Jones

Don's Tunes

Bonnie Raitt on her first Stratocaster | Don’s Tunes

 Bonnie Raitt: In college, I developed my own style. I switched to a Stratocaster – I got a really good deal in the middle of the night for $120 – and then a few years later, in 1972, Lowell George of Little Feat showed me his MXR compressor pedal. I’d asked him how he got the tone to last so long – whether it’s a ferocious kind of dirty sound, or a beautiful clean sound on a ballad, the compressor really squishes the sound and makes it last longer. The rest of it is just imitating something that you love until you feel like you’ve got it; just playing with all your heart and soul every time you pick up the guitar. I was trying to make it as close to the human voice as I could.

Source: Rachel Keenan / The Guardian

Photo: David Gahr

Bonnie Raitt & Paul Butterfield's Better Days - KMET Studio Los Angeles Ca USA 1973 | FLOPPY BOOT STOMP

 

Bonnie Raitt & Paul Butterfield's Better Days -

 KMET Studio, Los Angeles Ca. 5/27/1973

 FLOPPY BOOT STOMP

Xray Special

Bonnie Raitt & Paul Butterfield's Better Days 

 KMET Studio Los Angeles Ca.

May 27th 1973

1. Audience Applause 00:06

2. Under The Falling Sky - Bonnie Raitt.03:53

3. Love Me Like A Man - Bonnie Raitt 05:17

4. Nothing Seems To Matter - Bonnie Raitt 04:09

5. You Got To Know How - Bonnie Raitt 04:52

6. Love Has No Pride - Bonnie Raitt 04:38

7. Intro to Paul Butterfield & Better Days 00:28

8. New Walkin' Blues - Butterfield's Better Days 04:45

9. Small Town Talk - Butterfield's Better Days 05:44

10. Buried Alive In The Blues - Butterfield's Better Days 03:49

11. Broke My Babys Heart - Butterfield's Better Days 06:57

12. Highway 28 - Butterfield's Better Days 04:42

13. He's Got All The Whiskey - Butterfield's Better Days 09:23

Live in-studio performance by Bonnie Raitt and Paul Butterfield's 

Better Days at KMET-FM Studio in Los Angeles, CA on 5/27/1973. 

BONNIE RAITT SET: Bonnie Raitt - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar; 

Freebo - Fender Fretless Bass; Bill Payne - Piano; 

Chris Parker - Drums; Paul Butterfield - Harmonica on tracks 1 & 2;  

BETTER DAYS SET: Paul Butterfield - Vocals, Harmonica, Keyboards; 

Geoff Muldaur - Vocals, Guitar, Keyboards; Amos Garrett - Electric Guitar, 

Vocals; Ronnie Barron - Vocals, Piano, Organ; Billy Rich - Bass; 

Chris Parker - Drums; Bonnie Raitt - Additional Vocals on Better Days track 11.

Bonnie Raitt on playing music . . . . Don’s Tunes

 

Bonnie Raitt: 

Someone put it best when they said, You can't change the noodle, but you can change the sauce.” 

I play the way I play, just like I sing the way that I sing. I'm not a schooled guitar player, and I can't say I'm getting appreciably better, but I know how to do what I do. It's the songs that change. 

For me to play slide guitar over the Zimbabwean groove of "Hear Me Lord" [from 2002's Silver Lining] is a blast. It's the context that makes it fresh for me. On Souls Alike, the most adventurous thing I did was run my guitar through an Amp Farm wah-wah loop for "God Was in the Water.” 

Taking risks is how I keep moving forward—that and being open to hearing things in a different way. 

Ultimately, I know there's a safety net, and that's the fact that I trust my ears and my instincts. I'll always try something different. That's how you grow, and you also don't want to be overly influenced by an inclination to dismiss something that's new. So I may do something I'm not really into—out of respect for Tchad and the musicians—but if it's not working for me after a few days of letting it sit, then I'll go, "We gave it a try, but this song is sucking." 

Guitar Player Interview 

Don's Tunes

More on Bonnie Raitt playing [with John Lee Hooker]

 

Bonnie Raitt: I taught myself guitar when I was nine, looking at the fingers of the people at my summer camp. I just played by ear, mimicking what I heard on the radio and on records. I then fell in love with slide guitar, which I first heard when I was about 14.

In college, I developed my own style. I switched to a Stratocaster — I got a really good deal in the middle of the night for $120 — and then a few years later, in 1972, Lowell George [of Little Feat] showed me his MXR compressor. I'd asked him how he got the tone to last so long — whether it's a ferocious kind of dirty sound, or a beautiful clean sound on a ballad, the compressor really squishes the sound and makes it last longer. The rest of it is just imitating something that you love until you feel like you ye got it; just playing with all your heart and soul every time you pick up the guitar. I was trying to make it as close to the human voice as I could.

John Lee Hooker called you his hero. When I watch tapes of you playing together, the love and joy jumps off the screen. Could you tell us a bit about your friendship?

When we did our recording of I'm in the Mood from his 1989 album The Healer, that's when we started to get close. We had a similar sense of humour; we would just get together and talk about this recording or that by BB King or Bukka White or Fred McDowell. He found a kindred soul in me, and I did in him. He was always one of my heroes, but he became just a man, and my pal.

For the recording sessions [for I'm in the Mood], we turned the lights down. I was platonic friends with John Lee, we didn't flirt or have a romantic thing going on, but I chose that song because it was just so incredibly erotic and alluring. I gotta say it, face to face with him in the dark playing that song ... damn! I was literally out of breath and I needed a towel after the session. We all got a big kick out of that. When he aims it at you, man, there's nobody that can play that kind of lowdown stuff better than John Lee.

The Guardian Interview

Photo: Ken Friedman

Happy 76th birthday to the great Bonnie Raitt! 🎉

Photo by Sam Jones.

"There are a lot of artists older than me! Joan Baez, Judy Collins, folk artists. I feel like a young pup compared to them. There also all those people who do jazz standards, which lends itself to growing older with grace. In blues, classical and jazz, you get more revered with age. Muddy Waters and Sippie Wallace and John Lee Hooker were these wise older people who were very non-plussed. I was hoping that I'd get like that one day, and now I am! But look at the Rolling Stones! Nobody rocks harder than the Stones. People just need to get used to seeing people rocking in their 70s and 80s. Rock music is the music of rebellion, so it sits differently when you're older, but they still rock. I have no doubt that Beyoncé will still be rocking in her 70s and 80s."

What do you think gives your career such astounding longevity?

"Incredible luck and opportunity. There were not that many women playing blues guitar then and the music industry was much smaller. I didn't have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get started. As for longevity, I had family in the business [her parents are legendary Broadway performer John Raitt and pianist Marjorie Haydock] who taught me a lot. I'm so aware of how lucky I am to get to do this and it was never lost on me when my dad felt that way. He performed throughout his life until he was in his late 80s, and he loved and knew what an honor it was that anybody, 20 people, would want to hear him sing. As for my longevity I have to thank my fans for all their loyalty. I was also lucky to get out 25 years ago and live a clear and healthier lifestyle that let me stay on the road and be healthy."

Time Magazine Interview

Don's Tunes

Bonnie Raitt - Live at the North Sea Jazz Festival 2013 

Location & Date: SUNDAY 14 JULY 2013 • NILE • , Ahoy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

SETLIST

1. Used To Rule 

2 Right down the line

3 Thing called love

4 Million Miles 

5 Come To Me’

LINEUP

Bonnie Raitt, 

George Marinelli (vocals, guitar); 

Mike Finnigan (vocals, keyboards); 

James "Hutch" Hutchinson (vocals, bass); 

Ricky Fataar (drums, percussion).

Bonnie Raitt - Angel From Montgomery | jt1674

 Speaking of John Prine covers . . . . .you know the story of Bonnie changing the words to John’s song and his response was to say well that's fine she has made a version that is pretty much hers anyway!  Might sign off the weekend with this one

Also it is worthy of noting personally that it was Nanci and Bonnie how I discovered John Prine’s work through these covers we posted the last 24 hours . . . I said well who wrote these two songs and went out and bought the Prine collection album Great Days and was hooked and bought everything ever since [and his back catalogue complete in time!] 

We miss John, we miss Nanci and bless Bonnie . . . . .carrying the flame 

https://www.tumblr.com/jt1674/799043825014292480/bonnie-raitt-angel-from-montgomery

Bonnie Raitt - at OGWT 1976 + mini profile . . . . . 38 years sober!

Photo by Deborah Feingold

Bonnie Raitt: I have such a wide range of tastes, from Madeleine Peyroux to Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, the most gut-bucket country blues, Appalachian music and Celtic music. World music has always just broken my heart wide open. I love African music and guitar playing; I love South Africa and I loved Graceland. I was so happy to see so much of the incredible gift that African music can give the rest of the world, brought out by Paul Simon’s amazing success.

World music has always appealed to me, especially in my early 20s: reggae was really taking over the college scene in Cambridge with Toots and Bob Marley. I loved Oliver Mtukudzi’s music from Zimbabwe.

I’m so grateful for my 38 years of sobriety – knock on wood, one day at a time – which is probably why I’m still here just in terms of perspective, emotionally and spiritually. But also getting enough sleep and getting some exercise: I do yoga and weights with a girlfriend on FaceTime three times a week, no matter where I am. And as the world situation is so stressful and so upsetting, I don’t know what I would do if it wasn’t for being able to get out into nature and hike and be with the fellowship of my people that feel like I do about the world.

Rachel Keenan / The Guardian Interview 2025

Seems there are folks who post whole concerts of Flickennabokk! this from Alan Bershaw

"Journey back nearly half a century, with Bonnie Raitt and her band performing live at the BBC Television Center in Shepherd’s Bush, West London on March 23, 1976.  

This originally aired on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test program and was later rebroadcast several times, including here in the states by VH1 Classics.   VHS sourced copies are easily found all over the web and this show has been bootlegged to death, but this BetaCam SP copy of the BBC’s 2” master looks and sounds superior to any bootleg DVD or web version I've ever seen before.

This set is often cited as being “a live album that should exist,” and I’d have to agree, as it conveys a long gone moment in time so well, with Bonnie and these musicians in fantastic form.  The personnel and content as follows:

Bonnie Raitt - vocals, guitar 

Will McFarlane - guitar

Alan Hand - piano 

Freebo - bass

Dennis Whitted - drums

-introduction by Bob Harris

01 Love Me Like A Man 

02 Too Long At The Fair 

03 I'm Blowin' Away 

04 You've Got To Know How

05 Write Me A Few Of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues 

06 Sugar Mama 

07 What Do You Want The Boy to Do? 

08 Angel From Montgomery"

Bonnie Raitt stringing her guitar, 1973

“I had not been familiar with the country blues before,” Raitt recalls. “I’d heard the Rolling Stones and Slim Harpo and Howlin’ Wolf and even some of The Beatles’ R&B covers, but the first time I heard Mississippi John Hurt and Reverend Gary Davis and John Lee Hooker was on that record. I was 14 and every artist on there — from Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry to John Hammond Jr. — absolutely knocked me out.

“I already loved Odetta and folk music and gospel music as well, but it wasn’t until I heard that record that I was aware of the country blues. Then it became really hard to decide whether to get the new Bob Dylan or Beatles or Stones record with my allowance, or one of those country blues records. It was a good incentive to get a side job.”

“Fred McDowell taught me that you don’t have to be an older black person who lived through poverty in the South in order to play the blues,” Raitt explains. “From John Hammond to Koerner, Ray and Glover to Paul Butterfield — and all the British blues artists, even the Stones — there’s something about soul music and blues music that really cut to me. And Fred McDowell instantly appealed to something in my heart.

“I loved his sense of humour, and what I most got out of him was the passion that he played. He used to just throw his head back and lift his knee up, take that slide guitar all the way up the neck. And I would just watch transfixed, because at that point, I had only heard records. Then when I met Fred and got to see him live, I was just blown away by the power of one guy and a guitar to just hit so many emotions. I think I just fell in love with the blues as deeply as I ever was going to get with Mississippi Fred McDowell.”

Photo by Albertson, Jeff

Bonnie Raitt: People used to say you had to have - be poor and miserable to have the blues, but, you know, life is a full banquet, you know? I mean, Muddy Waters was one of the most joyous people I know. I'm sure he had got mad and had his heart broken and was poor at one point, certainly, but he didn't sing the blues with any less fervor or meaning. And I'm not going through a breakup right now, but everything I sing I Can't Make You Love Me it cuts me as deep as if I was.

So I don't think - I mean, I understand the point and I get, and I actually get asked a lot about what are you going to do when you get straight and successful, what're you going to do? But the blues are, for me, the truth and the - in the arc of a day or in a full life, you know, you're going to be miserable or forlorn or horny or bereft or angry or frustrated, no matter what level of income you're at or who you're with, you know.

So, I find that surprisingly, even though I'm better off than I was, and more stable so to speak, some of the hours of the day, I still can summon up those feelings of absolute rage and charge and loneliness and all the things that infuse the songs I do. But absolute feeling them - I feel them as real as if I'm going through them. 

NPR Interview

Bonnie Raitt: "I got a record when I was fourteen called Blues At Newport 1963, which was on the Vanguard label - the Mecca for folk music fans," she reveals. "It was a treasured Christmas present. And I had never heard country blues before. So I sat in my room in Los Angeles and taught myself to play; I never took guitar lessons. And to this day I use the wrong finger. But John Hammond was the first time I heard slide guitar. I soaked the label off a cold medication bottle and put the bottle on my finger. I knew about barring and open chord, and I just used this pill bottle. I learned by ear. It wasn't until about six years later that I saw someone playing bottle-neck guitar, and by then it was too late to change my style." 

"It was pretty amazing from the minute I met Son House," she coos. "I was writing letters to my friends in California. I mean, I already felt pretty lucky being my father's daughter, and I knew Doris Day and all these Hollywood people. It was just a completely different world to have this young, white, middle-class kid from California hanging out with these gods of music like Muddy Waters. It's a fairytale, and it's the greatest gift of my life. It's not just hanging out with them musically, but they're my friends." 

- Jerry Erwing interview 

Photo by Michael Putland

Bonnie Raitt: "I'm just one more kid who learned how to play the blues from being a fan, my gameplan was just to follow my blues and jazz exemplars. Stay true to your art, do the best shows you can, keep going, don't worry about commercial success, and when you're 70 years old people will still want to come and see you.

One constant that will never go away is the audience connection. I've experienced that when I've been in the audience. All of us love being there with the people we love. As a performer, I've been doing this for 50 years. 

I've never sold many records. I'm an artist who is standing where I am today because of the live loyalty and excitement and the magic that happened through repeat performances for those audiences. You cannot duplicate it over the internet or even on a record. 

Photo from The Patriot Ledger

Bonnie Raitt [with Lowell George, John Hammond Jr. & Freebo] - Hempstead LI NY 1972 | Floppy Boot Stomp

Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George, John Hammond Jr. & Freebo - Hempstead LI NY 1972

Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George, 

John Hammond Jr. & Freebo 

1972-10-17

Ultrasonic Studios 

Hempstead LI NY  

CD 1

01. Intro   

02. Love Me Like A Man     

03. Under The Falling Sky    

04. Talk     

05. Love Has No Pride     

06. Talk

07. Going Down To Louisiana

08. Talk

09. Can't Find My Way Home

10. Tuning

11. Big Road

12. You Got To Know How

13. Talk

14. A Apolitical Blues

CD 2

01. Talk

02. Come Ride In My Automobile (Cut)

03. Talk

04. As The Years Go Passing By

05. Watch My Pony Ride ?

06. I Can't Be Satisfied

07. Sky Is Crying

08. Tuning

09. Honest I Do

10. Talk

11. It's Too Late

Bonnie Raitt - Guitar, Vocals

Lowell George - Guitar, Vocals

John Hammond Jr. - Guitar Vocals

Freebo - Bass, Vocals

EARLY RAITT

If you don’t have this one it really is a treat and if you download it 

remember to leave the guys a message about it and how it downloaded 

and whether you appreciate the facility!

It isn’t Rocket Salad!

Bonnie Raitt - Richland Woman Blues [The Lost Broadcasts] | Le Ramassuers De Mégots

Richland Woman Blues

Recorded at the Rainbow Room, Sigma Sound Studios, Philadelphia February 22, 1972

early early early bonnie lassie lets start the week with some uptempo Bonnie!

Le Ramasseur De Mégots

Sippie Wallace and Bonnie Raitt | Don's Tunes

Sippie Wallace was born Beulah Thomas in Houston, Texas. By her teens, she was performing with other family members in New Orleans’ notorious Storyville District. After the authorities closed Storyville in 1917, Sippie went back to tent shows. She was one of the female vocalists who cashed in on recorded Blues, in the wake of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues.” Signed by Smith’s label, Okey Records, Wallace soon became the company’s top-grossing singer. She not only wrote many of her songs, but she also played piano on some of her records. Like most of the Blues divas of the 1920s, Wallace stopped recording after 1929. Following a few years organizing her own tours of dance halls and gin joints, Wallace retired to a career teaching and performing church music. Ron Harwood, a 16-year old Blues researcher, brought Sippie out of retirement in 1965 and acted as her agent and manager for the next 22 years. One of those who admired–and covered–several of Wallace’s songs was Bonnie Raitt; in fact, one of those tunes, “Woman Be Wise,” became Raitt’s first major hit, and Wallace toured with Raitt between 1972 and 1985.

Don's Tunes

Now these two look like a whole heap o’trouble to me!

Source: George Lamplugh

Photo by Thomas Weschler