Bonnie and The Blues by Michael Kilgore 1980 - Don’s Tunes

Photo by Michael Dobo, 1975

 If the blues hadn't come along, Bonnie Raitt might well have ended up as another flower-power folkie like Judy Collins, rather than the gutsy purveyor of the styles of Fred McDowell and Mississippi John Hurt. 

Raitt, the slide-guitar-playing daughter of Broadway star John Raitt, was a fan of Collins and Joan Baez until somebody gave her an album of blues at Newport when she was 13 or 14 years old. It literally changed her life. 

"It had Brownie and Sonny, John Lee Hooker, Dave Van Ronk," Raitt said in a suprisingly bright voice. Blues players ought to talk like closing time in a bar, but Raitt has just a touch of rasp in her voice, and her sentences trail off into soft obilivion. 

"We were in the middle of the so-called folk revival and the blues were getting a lot of attention ... people like Son House, John Hurt, Fred McDowell ... it just struck me like a gong." 

After listening to the album and others like it, she began playing blues instead of folk. She no longer wanted to be Judy Collins. 

At 18 or 19, she ran into Son House and Arthur Crudup and others and received further education in the heritage that is the blues. 

"A lot of people think I didn't learn about the blues until I met them (in my late teens)," Raitt says. "But I listened to the albums. I still have that (Newport) record, as a matter of fact." 

by Michael Kilgore 1980

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Rory on playing with Muddy Waters | Don’s Tunes

 

One of the most satisfying points in Rory Gallagher's career came when Muddy Waters was making his "London Sessions" recordings and invited Rory to join him on the album.

"Some of the old bluesmen are a bit suspicious of young white guitarists who are brought in on recording sessions. But Muddy was the warmest person you could meet: he used to hold up the sessions until I'd get back from wherever I'd be playing and then we'd jam into the small hours.

"I used to learn just from watching Muddy tuning up. It's a dying art what the old bluesmen are doing because by the time it's been filtered through rock it's never quite the same." 

On the road Rory likes to avoid a set pattern, but he avoids the usual amusements of the rock fraternity, especially the drugs. "I won't want to pontificate about it, but I just don't take drugs. In fact in many ways, I don't feel myself part of the rock world at all."

And there are always the unexpected happenings that break the monotony of touring and give everybody a laugh, he says.

"For example, I remember the night we played Madison Square Garden in New York with the Faces in 1972 and halfway through the first number my amplifier went up in flames. The crowd went crazy assuming it was all part of the act, and when I smelled smoke and looked around, there were all theses stagehands spraying my equipment with fire extinguishers!" 

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This article comes from the Dec.29,1978 issue of The Irish Press

Photo courtesy of Colm Henry

Terribly sad to think this was back in the days when alcohol wasn’t considered a drug of choice and poor Rory died of alcoholism in his late forties . . . . . . (N.B. working with addicts as I did I would always rather have worked with drug addicts (mostly heroin and the narcotics) so called than alcoholics, the last deaths I experienced amongst homeless clients was those who combined heroin and alcohol . . . . its fast . . . .and deadly

I think I am glad I stopped working when I did for the new invented drugs like Mcat and MDMA and Ketamine proved complex and applied to clients with multiple and complex needs, whilst the withdrawal from alcohol was one of the only withdrawals that could kill you, when medically supervised and combined with treatment and therapy, the alcoholic who remained sober was a joy to behold and AA whilst I had the reputation of being anti- >I wasn’t BTW< it being in the business of saving millions literally millions of lives through its fellowship . . . . . .those who sought recovery where some of the strongest folk I know, I’ll shut up now but Rory one of many millions last to the demon drink!

Remembering the great Charlie Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942) | Don’s Tunes

 

Remembering the great Charlie Christian (July 29, 1916 – March 2, 1942)

“He wasn’t the most imposing figure in the world, but by gosh, when he sat down to play the guitar he was something… He was way ahead of his time, and a joy to listen to.”

Benny Goodman

Christian was the electric guitar's first superstar, (he even made the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, even if it was almost half a century after his death) but he wasn't the first electric guitarist. Experiments with pickups and amplification began in the early 1930s, with the Rickenbacker company, and Christian's famous arch-top was developed by Gibson in the middle of the decade. Oklahoma prodigy Christian bridged the swing era of the 1930s to the leaner, faster, and more demandingly intricate small-group style of bebop in the 1940s, and he put the now ubiquitous sound of the electric guitar on the map.

Christian had the briefest of recording careers - barely two years. Tuberculosis claimed him in 1942, aged 25, but not before he had blazed a trail that not only inspired generations of guitarists (in both pop and jazz music), but also significantly influenced the development of the bebop revolution.

Photo: © Popsie Randolph/Donaldson Collection—Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Gabriel Gier (from Budapest points out)

"Gibson made the first real electric guitar with the horseshoe pick up ( even called the Charlie Christian pick up) which converted acoustic sound into electric signal. Previous pick ups only amplified acoustic sounds which don't make a guitar electric. So in this light we could say that Charlie Christian was the first real electric guitarist"

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Swing Top Bop (1941) Charlie Christian

Remembering Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) | Don’s Tunes

Woody Guthrie

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie is arguably the most influential American folk musician of the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his folk ballads, traditional and children’s songs, and improvised works, often incorporating political commentary. Woody Guthrie is closely identified with the Dust Bowl and Great Depression of the 1930s. His songs from that time period earned him the nickname “Dust Bowl Troubadour.”

Photo: Eric Schaal/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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This Land Is Your Land - Woody

All You Fascists Bound to Lose - Woody

So Long (It’s Been Good to Know Ya) - Woody

His son and the Farm aid ensemble ( who many can you spot?) 

Arlo leads - This Land Is Your Land

Birthdays : Happy 78th birthday to Ronnie Wood, born in Hillingdon, Middlesex on this day in 1947. How can it be now? | Route / Don’s Tunes

the scallywag hisself!

“We were in Chicago,” he remembers. “I got a call from Bill Wyman and he said, ‘Woody, come to my room, I’ve got some people you might like to meet.’ So I walked in and there’s Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Junior Wells.” Wood recites the names like a prayer.

“So I’m just sitting there soaking up the atmosphere. It was mind-blowing. Muddy always put the emphasis on Rolling Stones. And he called Mick ‘Micky Jaguar’.” Wood throws back his head and laughs. Little Richard, he says, would call him up whenever he was in London. “He’d say, ‘Hey, come and play with me.’ I loved that. I thought that was the greatest honour.”

Then there was Chuck Berry. “I was looking at some photographs recently that made me realise we were actually living together for a bit, somewhere, I can’t remember where it was; we were just on this silly adventure. My mind erased all that time together.” He laughs. “I think I was up in the clouds too much.”

Interview: Mick Brown / The Telegraph

Photo: Gentileza.

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How Can It Be?

Ron Wood

Before he was a Rolling Stone, a Face, or a member of the Jeff Beck Group, Ronnie flew the nest aged just 17, with his first band, the Birds. Here is his 2015 version of their killer track, 'How Can It Be?’

Route

Girl From The North Country - Bob Dylan - Don’s Tunes

 Girl From the North Country was recorded at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City on April 24, 1963.

Bob Johnston had produced Bob Dylan’s previous album, Blonde on Blonde, and also took the reigns on Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison. When the two came together for Nashville Skyline, Johnston hoped that an entire album between the two would be recorded. In a way, it was, as Cash and Dylan recorded 15 songs together during a busy session. However, it was only ‘Girl From The North Country’ that actually featured on the final record.

The track tells of a mystery woman and both Cash and Dylan sing of their longing for her. The song had first been written by Dylan when he visited England late in 1962 when he had been completing his second album. Many Dylan fans have deliberated on who the mystery woman in the song really is, with some suggesting it could have been any of his former girlfriends, Echo Helstrom, Bonnie Beecher or Suze Rotolo.

When Dylan was in London, he met folk revivalist Martin Carthy who exposed him to several traditional English folk songs, which Dylan used to inform ‘Girl From The North Country’. Carthy also showed Dylan his own song ‘Scarborough Fair’, and he used the lyrics and melody to inform his track, including the line “Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine”.

The song arrived on 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which Cash, of course, greatly admired. When the opportunity came for Cash to collaborate on one of his favourite Dylan songs in 1969, he simply couldn’t resist, and by offering his deep vocals to the track, contrasting with Dylan’s crooner-like singing employed on Nashville Skyline, he helped to deliver the song’s theme of long-lost love with all the more fervour.

Source: Tom Leatham / Far Out

Photo: Don Hunstein, Don Hunstein Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, the Freewheelin' session, New York, 1960

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Canadian TV?

Girl From The North Country - Bob Dylan (Live 1986) - lovely harmonica on this one Bobby!

Best audio not the film from Johnny’s TV show

Jimi and The Blues (contd) Jas Obrecht | Don’s Tunes

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, in a London recording studio, October 1967. In the background (right) is bassist Noel Redding (1945 - 2003) possibly being shown how to tune it!? (sic!) play it who said that!?. 

(Photo by Bruce Fleming/Getty Images)

 

“Jimi would split the speakers apart, put my 45s on the turntable, and play along on his guitar,” Al Hendrix remembered. “He’d try to copy what he’d heard, and he’d make up stuff too. He lived on blues around the house. I had a lot of records by B.B. King and Louis Jordan and some of the downhome guys like Muddy Waters. Jimi was real excited by B.B. King and Chuck Berry, and he was a fan of Albert King too. He liked all them blues guitarists. We also had a radio and a television on Yesler. I didn’t see Jimi pay too much attention to the radio, but he liked to lay on the floor or sit on the couch and watch TV. Usually when I came home from work, he’d be sitting there with the TV on, and then he’d be playing along to the stereo during commercials. When the program would come on again, he would watch that again.” (Jimi’s passion for records continued throughout his life. At the height of his fame with the Experience, he had a collection of close to a hundred albums, including several each by Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Mayall, and Bob Dylan.)

Two of Al’s Muddy Waters 45s—“I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Rollin’ Stone,” both issued by Chess Records—left such a lasting impression that Jimi played the songs throughout his career:

In addition to Muddy’s virile, no-notes-wasted approach to the guitar, Jimi was influenced by the Chicago blues great’s singing style, perfectly exemplified by “Mannish Boy”:

A half-dozen years later, as the Jimi Hendrix Experience played their first gigs in London, British blues fans were quick to notice the similarities. As John McLaughlin noted, “Jimi was singing like Muddy Waters. Jimi had that thing, had the sound. It was almost part talking, part chanting. And he had the timbre, that sound that Muddy’s voice had. So, by the time he hit, people were just like, ‘Wow, Jimi, beautiful!’” The Experience recorded live versions of “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Rollin’ Stone” (renamed “Catfish Blues” in a nod to its opening line) for the BBC. In concert, Jimi easily displayed his mastery of the stop-time pacing of “Rollin’ Stone,” and then rocketed into space, figuratively speaking, with jaw-dropping extended solos highlighted by perfect string bends and machine-gunning chordal passages

- Jas Obrecht

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https://blog.line6.com/.../jas-obrecht-how-jimi-learned.../

John Mayall on Sonny Boy Williamson | Blues Blast Interview 2016 | Don’s Tunes

Amazing notes from one of my first musical mentors . . . . . Maestro Mayall!

John Mayall: “Sonny Boy Williamson was my idol of course as opposed to Little Walter who was amplified harp. I lean more towards the acoustic harp the way Sonny played it, and Sonny Terry, people like that. So, I got on really well with him as well as anybody could really because he was definitely a very cantankerous character.”

While Clapton had a contentious relationship with Sonny Boy Williamson having recorded a live album with Sonny Boy as at 17-year-old guitarist with the Yardbirds, Mayall had a much more cordial friendship with the Delta blues giant.

“I might have been dissatisfied with my own attempts being far short of the idols of the songs we were covering, people like Otis Rush and Freddie King,” Mayall told me in 1994. “We were in awe of these people and Sonny Boy Williamson. Our attempts seemed rather feeble by comparison. We were developing our own style. And yet to me I was trying to learn those licks. Being a different person, of course, they came out differently.”

 “We were all doing the best we could, and we loved he music, but we hadn’t understood really the roots of it sufficiently enough to be convincing or whatever, but he was glad to get the opportunity to get an audience, but he didn’t really have too much respect for the Yardbirds, so he made it quite known that he didn’t appreciate them, but Sonny Boy was a cantankerous character, and luckily he enjoyed talking to me, so we got along pretty well.

“He took me down to the Hohner Harmonica Headquarters in London,” recalls Mayall today, “and he got me fixed up with (harmonica) keys that weren’t really available to the public. He was very helpful. They weren’t available to the public in certain keys, and if you tried to find out how he did it you wouldn’t be able to find it. He had Hohner make them up in those particular keys. They weren’t for general distribution. I came away with those I needed.”

Don Wilcock / Blues Blast Interview 2016

Photo by ARTCO-Berlin/ullstein bild

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Jeff Beck first sees Jimi Hendrix! | Don’s Tunes

 

here . . . . .  

Jeff Beck: “I’d like to get back to that Jimi Hendrix Experience type of approach,” he says. “The way that Jimi played, you didn’t miss the keyboards. It was all heavy and powerful. It just suggested power through the drummer, which I like. I love the sound of a big three-piece.” 

"When I saw Jimi, we knew he was going to be trouble, and by ‘we’, I mean me and Eric (Clapton) because Jimmy (Page) wasn’t in the frame at that point.” I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating,” he continued, humbly revealing his envy. “He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you’, but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs. 

I don’t want to say that I knew him well, I don’t think anybody did, but there was a period in London when I went to visit him quite a few times,” Beck added later. “He invited me down to Olympic studios, and I gave him a bottleneck. That’s what he plays on Axis: Bold As Love. We hooked up in New York and played at Steve Paul’s club, The Scene.”

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The Rolling Stones - songs looked at closer | WILD HORSES - DON’S TUNES

"The story of ‘Wild Horses’ goes back to the very late ’60s, but the song wasn’t released until 1971, even though it was recorded in 1969. Keith Richards had written the song with the intention of it being about missing his new son, but Mick Jagger took it over and changed it to be about a relationship that had burned out. Such drama has never been out of the ordinary for the Stones. The fact that they overcame everything and produced a masterpiece like “Wild Horses” took the song to burden with all of the aforementioned difficulties, is a testament to their talent, chemistry, and unfailing ability to rise above all of the chaos, both self-induced and otherwise.

As history has it, the Stones managed to record three songs in three days at Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama in December 1969, which included “Wild Horses” (along with early takes of “You Gotta Move“ and “Brown Sugar”) Keith Richards, whose first child Marlon was born in August 1969, started writing this somber ballad after feeling guilty about leaving the boy behind while on the road.

Keith in his book Life : “It was one of those magical moments when things come together. It’s like “Satisfaction”. You just dream it, and suddenly it’s all in your hands. Once you’ve got the vision in your mind of wild horses, I mean, what’s the next phrase you’re going to use? It’s got to be couldn’t drag me away.”

Richards basically composed the chorus and the music using a 12-string acoustic guitar to really bring out the melancholy in those chords. He then gave the song to Mick Jagger, his writing partner, who finished the verses. And that’s when the song started to diverge from Marlon and possibly head in the direction of Marianne Faithfull, Jagger’s on-and-off-again lover at the time.

In the liner notes of the 1993 Stones compilation Jump Back: The Best Of The Rolling Stones, Jagger remembered his contributions to “Wild Horses”. Mick remembered, ““I remember we sat around doing this with Gram Parsons, and I think his version came out slightly before ours,” Mick said. “Everyone always says it was written about Marianne, but I don’t think it was; that was all well over by then. But I was definitely very inside this piece emotionally. This is very personal, evocative, and sad. It all sounds rather doomy now, but it was quite a heavy time.”

Throughout the entire song, that heaviness permeates the air. It can be heard in Charlie Watts’ thudding fills, in the languid guitar strumming of Keith Richards and Mick Taylor, and Richards’ perfectly pitched electric solo. When Ian Stewart asked to stop playing the sad chords on the piano, Jim Dickinson filled in. With his weariness and frustration blending seamlessly with his unwavering devotion to the wayward girl he is addressing, Jagger, for his part, keeps his histrionics in check and plays it straight.

Source: Rolling Stones Data / Marcelo Sonaglioni.

Photo by Gerard Malanga (yes THAT Gerard Melanga)

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The Rolling Stones - Wild Horses (From "GRRR Live" - Newark 2012)

Remembering the great Stevie Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) - Jas Obrecht | Don’s Tunes

Scuttle Buttin - Live at Montreux 1985 

Vaughan co-produced Texas Flood with his Double Trouble bandmates–bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton–and Richard Mullen, who also engineered the sessions. I met up with Mullen at Austin’s Arlyn Studios in 1996, while he was engineering and co-producing Eric Johnson’s Venus Isle album. During a break, we spoke about the Texas Flood sessions. “Ninety-eight percent of all of Stevie’s records were done straight live,” Mullen explained. “Stevie was relatively fearless in the studio. He was a real performer in the sense that he didn’t think too much about the technical things. Once he got out there and started playing, he was just enveloped in the music. You could see that when he played live, and he wasn’t any different in the studio. If he was into it, you’d see him do his little dance steps all over the studio, just like he was playing for 10,000 people. There were hardly any overdubs at all. Just about the only overdubs were vocals and an occasional rhythm part over a lead, but the basic guitar parts on the studio records were all done live. And they were almost always judged on Stevie’s performance. If someone in the band made a bonk but Stevie played great, we’d say, ‘Well, that’s it. Let’s just go with that.’

- by Jas Obrecht

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Stevie Ray playing acoustic blues . . . . .