Steve Winwood on Blind Faith | Don’s Tunes

 

 Steve Winwood: “By the spring of 1969 I had reached a kind of impasse with Traffic. I’d started jamming quite a bit with Eric Clapton at the Traffic cottage in Aston Tirrold and at his house in Surrey, Hurtwood. One night there was a knock at our door and there was Ginger Baker, who had got wind of a possible new group. I was all for having him in, and it wasn’t until I read Eric’s book years later that I realised he wasn’t so keen on that idea. That shows you how little we spoke about these serious situations.

“Anyhow, Blind Faith came into being. And there were immediate problems – with egos, with management and organisation. Those are all massive problems for a supergroup. The trouble is, when you start with the idea for a new group you have the whole of your life to figure out what you’re going to do, how to fine tune it and hone the act. Then, if it’s successful your next problem is: what do we do next? You get stuck for a follow-up. It’s all about timing. You have to move very quickly on to the next project and make sure it isn’t a pale imitation of the debut.

“I blame the industry in part, for putting pressure on supergroups, because you’re trying to present a product to the world at large and every minute you take is money lost as far the business is concerned. They’re so excited with their supergroup, they want more. The result of that pressure is you start making mistakes, because you can’t just throw something together.

Source: Max Bell / Classic Rock

Steve Winwood poses for a portrait in July 1969 outside Olympic Studios during recording session with Blind Faith in London, Great Britain. (Photo by David Gahr)

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Bonnie on Art [Bonnie Raitt - Don’s Tunes]

 

Bonnie Raitt: Art is not a contest, so mostly we’re just the sum of all the wonderful music and influences that we grew up with. In my case, I had a double barrel of great singing with my dad being one of the great Broadway singers. So I had a house where I was exposed with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and so many wonderful singers on that end. Then I fell in love with folk music with Joan Baez, but I would say that specifically my biggest influences were, and will always be, Aretha Franklin, and I loved Etta James’s records. In terms of the folkier side of what I do, Judy Collins was someone that I felt was so influential to me when I was first a teenager singing in my room and putting together who I was going to be. I didn’t have any plans to be a singer, but I just knew what I liked. So I would say Aretha and Etta and Judy Collins.

I’m a rock and roller, and I’m an R&B and a blueswoman. I don’t do fairy music, although I love Celtic music and sensitive music. There’s a balance between ballads and kick-ass songs. Leading a band and producing yourself and picking cool tunes and putting a show together takes a lot of thought, and a certain amount of courage. In my early twenties, if I wasn’t getting good enough at it, then people would not come and see me. Anybody who has lasted this long — I hope we get better with age. Some people are caricatures of themselves, and some people keep people coming back and keep themselves growing. Otherwise, the fans would get bored.

Library of Congress Interview

Photo: Marina Chavez

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Remembering Jimi Hendrix (November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) | Don’s Tunes

 

"I don't really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me. I know a whole lot of musicians, artists out there who hears the compliments and thinks "wow, I must have been really great" and so they get fat and satisfied and they get lost and forget about their actual talent and start living in another world.

Pretty soon I believe people will have to rely on music to get some kind of peace of mind, or satisfaction, or direction, actually. More so than politics, the big ego scene. You know it's an art of words... Meaning nothing. Therefore you will have to get an earthier substance, like music or the arts."

Dick Cavett interview (1969)

Photo: the legendary Gered Mankowitz

The Maestro : Ry Cooder on Cuba and the Essence of Music (PBS) | Don’s Tunes +

 

Ryland P Cooder - I mean just look at that Gibson

Ry Cooder: "To me, the essence of the music is the most important thing. You can get notes on tape, you can put a microphone up and somebody plays and you can get notes on tape anywhere in the world, and you can bring musicians here or go there. But unless you get the true atmosphere... The essence is in the atmosphere, it's in the place, and the people and the place. Especially in this room [Egrem Studios, Havana.] Because this room has seen the greatest Cuban musicians, including Arsenio Rodriguez. Since 1940, they've all played in this room; they've lived in this room. The piano is the same piano Ruben Gonzalez played when he recorded "Guaguanco a Todos los Barrios" in the late 70s. And if you go down to the vault downstairs, you see the tapes in the shelves, it says "Arsenio Rodríguez, 1950". All these guys, Beny Moré, they've all been there.

I put on Buena Vista or whichever of these records, and I feel really great. I feel buoyant and encouraged and it brightens the corner of the day. That’s what music is supposed to do. It’s not supposed to scare you or hurt you or upset you in some crazy way. It’s supposed to make you feel encouraged and connected to something. That’s what these Cubans are really good at doing with their music; they’ve done it for themselves as a country for a very long time in a very artful, highly crafted way.

This is a hell of a deal here. Many people love Oriental music or Indian music because it has these components in it. In an entirely different way of course, Buena Vista is designed to do that as well -- to do something nice for you. This is a very positive thing. "

PBS Interview 2000

Photo by Robert Knight Archive

Ry Cooder - Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger Right (Live in studio)

"The Prodigal Son", Ry' Cooder's first new solo release in six years, is available now! Buy or stream now here: http://found.ee/RYtps

Ry Cooder’s last album, The Prodigal Son, is all America, our spiritual, hopeful voices, our raw cries and our sly provocations, voiced through the songs of the Pilgrim Travelers, The Stanley Brothers, Blind Willie Johnson, and Ry Cooder himself. This is black and white gospel church music, our own history of the spirit, sounding completely fresh and contemporary, framed by Cooder's expressive vocals and graceful, elegant guitar work. Aided by his son, drummer and chief collaborator, Joachim Cooder, The Prodigal Son is a deft commentary on our ailing moral state. This is music for these times, a fearless dive into the country’s soul and the man, Ry Cooder. For nearly 50 years, the immense scope and influence of Ry Cooder's music has perhaps been felt as much, or more than heard. As musician, producer, songwriter and sage, the Santa Monica, California native has explored music and culture from across the city, the state, the country and around the world.

Peter Green on ‘Black Magic Woman’ | Don’s Tunes

 

The inspiration for Peter Green's ‘Black Magic Woman’ – subsequently a worldwide million-seller for Carlos Santana – was two-fold: his girlfriend at the time, model Sandra Elsdon, and Otis Rush’s classic ‘All Your Love’. Peter liked to call Sandra his ‘magic mama’ and, as she now recalls bluntly and with fond amusement, when he wrote the lyrics, Peter wasn’t getting his oats: ‘I had decided to be celibate as part of some lofty spiritual quest I was pursuing at the time, and so in that second verse, when Peter sings “Don’t turn your back on me, baby,” his blues are all about frustration!’

The melody line Peter developed from the opening notes of ‘All Your Love’. ‘When I was in The Bluesbreakers,’ he explains, ‘John got me started with songwriting, and one of the things he said was that, if you really like something, you should take the first lines and make up another song from them. So that’s what I did with “Black Magic Woman”. But then it turned out sounding more like BB King’s “Help The Poor”.

Source: Peter Green: Founder of Fleetwood Mac by Martin Celmins

Photo: Curt Dahlgren

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Fleetwood Mac Peter Green - Black Magic Woman (Live Boston Tea Party) 1970

Stevie Ray Vaughan on how to play with 13s (it’s a string thing!) | Guitar

Don's Tunes

 

 With the incorporation of more Jimi Hendrix songs into his set, Stevie Ray Vaughan decided to tune his guitar down a half step all of the time, just as Hendrix had done. Detuning the instrument facilitated the move to even heavier string gauges, all the way to .013s, several steps thicker than the norm. Detuning serves to decrease the tension and make the heavy strings easier to bend while yielding a better tone and a meatier sound. Playing them required enormous hand and arm strength and a level of sacrifice in terms of ripping up his fingertips that few would be willing to embrace.

Doyle Bramhall II: He paid a price for being as committed as he was to the kind of string bending he was known for. He had a “callus kit” to make new calluses on the spot: a wallet with compartments for nail files, manicure scissors, super glue, and baking soda. He often had massive holes, like a quarter-inch deep, in his fingertips. Before shows, he would fill the holes with baking soda and put super glue over it and stick it to the other palm of his hand let it dry and rip a new piece of skin off to form the new callus. Then he’d file it down smooth so it wouldn’t catch on the strings. He was very ingenious and inventive.

Source: Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Alan Paul & Andy Aledort

Remembering the blues legend John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) | Don’s Tunes

 

Remembering the blues legend John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001)

“You can’t handle success if you ain’t paid some dues. Some of them get the big heads, the ego-trip — you can’t talk to ’em. If you got it the hard way, you know how you got it. You appreciate the people that put you there at the top. You look at your public. They is the one that put you where you is at. That’s why I’m always takin' time out to talk to my fans, have a little drink with them or whatever”

(NME, 1976)

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

Don's Tunes

 

John Lee Hooker & The Groundhogs perform I'm Leaving (The Beat Room, Oct 05, 1964) 

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Susan Tedeschi on her Roots : Craig Shelburne Interview | Don’s Tunes

Susan Tedeschi: I played acoustic growing up, starting at 14 or 15. My dad gave me one of his old Martins when I was about 15 for Christmas one year and I cried because I was so excited. I wrote a bunch of songs on that, and that’s when I first started songwriting. I didn’t play electric guitar until I was about 22 or 23. I had graduated college at 20, so I was out of college for a couple of years before I ever picked up a guitar, other than acoustic. I was playing acoustic at shows but it was more folky and songwriter-y kind of stuff.

Then I fell in love with blues. I had some friends who used to play at Johnny D’s in Somerville, Massachusetts, every Sunday for the blues jam. They needed singers so they asked me to come down, and then I realized, “Well, shoot, this would be a great place to try out playing the guitar.” There weren’t a lot of people there and it was pretty chill, so that’s what I did. I would go down and sing a few tunes, then I’d start playing rhythm. I never really soloed for the first couple of years on electric. I just wanted to learn to learn how to play rhythm and play along with stuff so I could try to accompany myself while singing.

I played along with a lot of Freddie King and Johnny Guitar Watson and Otis Rush and Magic Sam – and I fell in love with blues. I wore out Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog record and Koko Taylor and all sorts of stuff. I fell in love with it and I realized, “This is what I want to do. I want to be Freddie King and Johnny Guitar Watson!” It’s funny because I did a tour with Etta James and she asked me, “Who are your influences? Who do you want to be?” I said, “I want to be Johnny Guitar Watson.” And she said, “Ah! That’s who I want to be!”

Craig Shelburne Interview

photo by David McClister 

Don's Tunes

Now I have said before I am less han convinced by Susan’s husband Mnsr Trucks but I do seriously prefer Susan’s playing, she seems just more authentic and Derek’s slide I am critical of. 

Hey ho! Nice to feature something that doesn’t hide her light under a bushel of other stuff for once

Susan Tedeschi - It Hurts So Bad (Live at Farm Aid 1999)

Stevie Ray Vaughan - From the biography Texas Flood The Inside Story [by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort] | DON’S TUNES

Speaking of sobriety . . . . Here Staveie Ray on seeing his songs and lyrics from a different perspectice once he got clean 

Photo by Alan Messer

Stevie Ray Vaughan: One thing I’ve noticed [after getting sober] is that songs I used to sing at people, I should have been singing at myself. At least I think that way. I hear the words more now, and different songs mean different things than I used to think they meant, too. To put it mildly, a lot of blues tunes have to do with resentments, big-time!

Take “Cold Shot.” I used to sing that at certain women that I’ve been involved with over the years. Even though I didn’t write it, I had in my head the way I related to it. Since I sobered up, I realized that I left; I was the one who gave the cold shot. And it hurts when you realize that you’ve hurt somebody, as opposed to, all this time, you’ve been telling yourself how bad they’d hurt you. A lot of times, if I stop and look at it, those words could really be telling me that I hurt myself. There are also other songs that are kinder than I thought. They make me feel better than I knew.

Source: Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan

by Alan Paul & Andy Aledort

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble - Cold Shot (Live From Austin, TX)

What better way to start the week!

Some Stevie Ray in his prime!

Dr John’s New Orleans Swamp - Soundstage Chicago (Don’s Tunes explores the Voodoo schtick)

Dr John New Orleans Swamp - Chicago Soundstage (check out Dr John’s entrance!

Dr. John was session player for Sonny and Cher, Buffalo Springfield, and other pop acts, but he also wanted to make his own music. With other New Orleans transplants, he recorded his first album, Gris-Gris, in 1967. It was named after the term for the charms, amulets, and incantations used by voodoo believers that were meant to fend off evil. As shadowy and murky as the swamps, Gris-Gris — and its centerpiece, eight minutes of eerie, lurking chants called “I Walk on Guilded Splinters” — embodied the way Dr. John took his hometown’s musical heritage to new outer-space dimensions. Dr. John mixed in funk, psychedelia, field hollers, Latin rhythms, and rock & roll, a template that would continue for decades.

While working on the album, Dr. John came up with a plan for his live shows that would transport Mardi Gras to the stage. Working with producer Harold Battiste, he concocted the idea of a “Dr. John,” named after a 19th-century Louisiana voodoo priest and jack-of-all-mystical-trades. “I was just tryin’ to hustle album deals, just tryin’ to hustle money,” he said in 1997. “The Dr. John thing was just a concept, a one-off thing.” Ronnie Barron was supposed to play the character onstage, but when he declined, Rebennack donned the headdresses, feathers, and beads himself. “Nobody else could have done it like he did,” says Aaron Neville. “He brought it to life.”

The persona was even wilder onstage: Someone Dr. John called the Chicken Man would bite off the heads of live poultry while nude dancers paraded around. (In St. Louis, the band was busted and Dr. John, as bandleader, was arrested.) “I was trying not to make him self-conscious by looking at what he was wearing,” says Bonnie Raitt, who saw one of those early shows and later toured with Dr. John. “I hadn’t been exposed to the voodoo side, so I brought a whole lot of ‘whoa’ when I met him.”

Source: David Browne / Rolling Stone

 

Photo By Barry Feinstein

Dr John - “Big Chief” with Professor Longhair, Earl King & The Meters 1974

Keef on Willie [Dixon that is!] | Don’s Tunes

 

“I can’t say enough about Willie Dixon,” said Keith Richards. “I mean, what a songwriter! To me, that’s one of the names. When I was getting into the blues, it was, ‘Who wrote this?’ I was looking at Muddy Waters records, and who wrote it? ‘Dixon, Dixon, Dixon.’ The bass player is writing these songs? And then I’m lookin’ at Howlin’ Wolf: ‘Dixon, Dixon, Dixon.’ I said, ‘Oh, yeah, this guy is more than just a great bass player!’ And let’s face it: He was an incredible bass player. You know, that would be enough. But he’s the backbone of post-war blues writing, the absolute. Personally, I talk of him and Muddy in the same breath, and John Lee [Hooker], come to that. You know, gents. These guys don’t have to prove anything. They know who they are. They knew what they could do. They know they can deliver. Willie, to me, is a total gent and one of the best songwriters I can think of. Willie Dixon is superior.”

Source: Jas Obrecht's Music Magazine

Photo: Derek Ridgers

Don's Tunes 

Remembering the blues legend Big Bill Broonzy (June 26, 1893 or 1903 – August 14, 1958) | Don’s Tunes

Although he struggled throughout his life to produce a sufficient income, Big Bill Broonzy played an integral role in launching the global popularity of Southern blues. Born to sharecropper parents on June 26, 1893, in Scott, Mississippi, Broonzy grew up in Mississippi and Arkansas. As a child, he experimented with homemade guitars and fiddles and, by the age of 15 proved he was skilled enough to play at special occasions. During the next five years, he mastered his unique vocal techniques and guitar skills that would assist him in his career which began after a stint in the U.S. Army in World War I.

In 1920, Broonzy moved to Chicago to work as a professional musician. He had some luck landing live performances for mostly Black crowds at Chicago nightclubs. In 1926 he made his first recording with Paramount Records, playing backup guitar for local blues artists Cripple Clarence Lofton and Bumble Bee Slim. By the early 1930s, Broonzy was finally given the opportunity to record under his own name for the Melotone, Oriole, and Champion labels. By the end of the decade, he was the top-selling male blues vocalist on the Perfect and Vocalion labels and established the widely known Bluebird Beat Chicago Blues sound while recording with the Bluebird label. By this time, Broonzy was no longer a solo performer. He began to play with small groups that incorporated the piano, trumpet, saxophone, and sometimes a rhythm section.

By 1945, Black musical tastes were moving away from the blues toward jazz and popular music. Broonzy, however, found and exploited the growing interest of whites in blues. By the late 1940s a new generation of white blues lovers praised him for his spectacular performances with fellow blues and folk musicians Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, and Sonny Terry. In 1951, his popularity reached Europe when, at the age of 58, he performed blues music at the London Jazz Club. He returned the next year to perform with Mahalia Jackson and continued to make appearances in England in 1955 and 1957, as well as in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia.

Source: Erin Sullivan / Black Past

Photo: Big Bill Broonzy poses for a portrait in the mid 1950's in New York

Big Bill Broonzy - Key To The Highway

Big Bill Broonzy 1957: 3 Songs

Big Bill Broonzy 1957: Glory Of Love

Dr John on Gris-gris . . . . . . | Don’s Tunes

 

(Photo by Laura Levine)

Ahmet Ertegun found out about the Gris-Gris album only after the recording was complete. The strange sounds he heard did not sit well with him. Dr. John tells the story: “I was doing a session for Bobby Darin when Ahmet Ertegun walked into the studio looking for me. ‘Why did you give me this sh*t? How can we market this boogaloo cr*p?‘ He wasted about 15 minutes of Bobby Darin’s studio time just yelling at me. And I’m thinking ‘Oh, this record is never going to see the light of day.’” But Say what you will about Ertegun, money was not his only motivation. The man had an ear and passion for music, and he agreed to release the album.  

The stage performances that followed helped make the album a minor counter-culture hit: “It was a show in the New Orleans tradition. We were lucky with it, because all those love-ins and be-ins and freak-ins were happening at the same time. I got Chicken Man and some other guys that did a real voodoo show. That was too much for some people, so I toned it down when I began promoting the record. Basically, I kept the snake dancer and the backup singers and a small version of the band”. It was enough to secure Mac Rebennack four more album recordings with Atlantic. His music changed and took a different direction over the years, but the gris-gris psychedelic vibe of his debut album still remains the most enduring for me in his rich catalog.

Source: Music Aficionado

Don's TunesFull Album here

THE WOLF : Howlin' Wolf performs "I'll Be Back Someday” | Don’s Tunes

 

Howlin' Wolf performs "I'll Be Back Someday" from the American Folk Blues Festival.  

Sam Phillips:

"When I heard him, I said, ‘This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies’. He was about six foot six, with the biggest feet I’ve ever seen on a human being. Big Foot Chester is one name they used to call him. He would sit there with those feet planted wide apart, playing nothing but the French harp, and I tell you, the greatest show you could see today would be Chester Burnett doing one of those sessions in my studio. God, what would it be worth to see the fervor in that man’s face when he sang. His eyes would light up and you’d see the veins on his neck, and buddy, there was nothing on his mind but that song. He sang with his damn soul."

Don's Tunes

  

 

Remembering Jack Bruce (14 May 1943 – 25 October 2014) | Cream - White Room (FAREWELL CONCERT 1968) | Don’s Tunes

Cream in 1966, Ginger Baker Eric Clapton And Jack Bruce

There had always been problems between Ginger and myself. We're kind of like brothers. When it's nice it's great, but then sometimes, as with siblings, it can go really wrong. He took it upon himself to fire me from the Graham Bond Organisation, although he wasn't the band leader [laughs].

He said I was playing, "too busy." I think I was just finding myself and a style very much influenced by James Jamerson, people like that who played melodically. I was interested in trying to take the bass guitar out of the rhythm section. I was also influenced by jazz: Scott LaFaro, Charlie Mingus, the sort of people I looked up to. So yeah, I probably was playing a lot of notes. He didn't quite agree with that [laughs].

What's your favorite Cream song?

Bruce: Probably, “White Room.’’ The inspiration for the music came from meeting Jimi Hendrix and his approach to playing. In fact, he came to the recording session of that in New York and said to me, "I wish I could write something like that." I said, "But it comes from you!" 

Interview By Jim Clash, Forbes   The Complete Interview Forbes Mag - Jim CLASH


Photograph: Associated Newspapers/Rex

Don’s Tunes

WHITE ROOM - CREAM (Farewell Concert 1968)

[Poor Eric never quite got how to play the Wah-wah peddle!]

Remembering the blues legend Robert Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) | Don’s Tunes

If there is a mythic figure in the blues, it's Mississippi Delta musician Robert Johnson. Johnson only recorded 29 songs in the late 1930s, and he died at the age of 27. But his uncanny styling of traditional tunes and innovative guitar work influenced not only his fellow blues men, but a generation of rock musicians, too. And if there is one song that captures the mystery of this legendary figure, it is "Hellhound On My Trail," a haunting tale of a man pursued by the devil.

"Hell Hound on My Trail’ was among the deepest and darkest of Robert Johnson’s legendary blues masterworks. Together with ‘Me and the Devil Blues’ and ‘Cross Road Blues,’ it provided future generations with a disturbing vision of a blues poet haunted by spirits, doomed to die before he would ever see the fruits of an alleged deal with the devil. Johnson’s lyrics are subject to more worldly interpretation, too, but whether he was singing of escaping from a creature from hell or from the ‘hell hounds’ used by Parchman Penitentiary guards to track escaped prisoners, there is no doubting the harrowed and forsaken depth of Johnson’s performance.

Illustration by Robert Crumb