Blues

Great performance: Freddie King – Ain’t no sunshine

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Ain’t No Sunshine is a song by Bill Withers from his 1971 album Just As I Am, produced by Booker T. Jones. The record featured musicians Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass guitar, Al Jackson, Jr. on drums and Stephen Stills on guitar. String arrangements were done by Booker T. Jones, and recorded in Memphis by engineer Terry Manning.

The song was released as a single in September 1971, becoming a breakthrough hit for Withers, reaching number six on the U.S. R&B Chart and number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Billboard ranked it as the No. 23 song for 1971.

Freddie King (September 3, 1934 – December 28, 1976) was an influential American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of “the Three Kings” of electric blues guitar along with Albert King and B.B. King.

Freddie King based his guitar style on Texas and Chicago influences and was one of the first bluesmen to have a multi-racial backing band at live performances.

Freddie King recorded Ain’t No Sunshine on his 1972 album, Texas Cannonball (re-released in its entirety on King of the blues in 1995)

texas cannonball

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Documentary: Deep Blues – A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads is a British documentary film, released in 1991, and made by music critic and author Robert Palmer and documentary film maker Robert Mugge, in collaboration with David A. Stewart and his brother John J. Stewart. The film provided insight into the location, cast and characteristics of Delta blues and North Mississippi hill country blues. Filming took place in 1990 in Memphis, Tennessee, and various North Mississippi counties. Theatrical release was in 1991 and home video release in the United Kingdom, the next year, as was a soundtrack album. A United States consumer edition came in 2000.

deep blues cover

Stewart initiated and financed the project, inspired by Palmer’s 1981 book of the same name. Palmer provided many of the insights into the background and history of the blues, as a guide to Stewart and the film narrator.

Documentary: Deep Blues – A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads:

Musicians appearing in the film are: Roosevelt Barnes, R. L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill (with Napoleon Strickland amd Abe Young), Big Jack Johnson, Junior Kimbrough (with Little Joe Ayers and Calvin Jackson), Booker T. Laury, Jack Owens, Lonnie Pitchford, Bud Spires and Wade Walton, The film revitalized the recording career of some of the musicians.

– Hallgeir

Great Song: Nina Simone – Backlash Blues

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Langston left us about a year ago.
Before he died made me promise to sing this song wherever I went, I told him that I would because he wouldn’t be around to say it anymore
-Nina Simone

Backlash Blues is the 6th track on one of my favourite albums, Nina Simone’s Nina Simone Sings The Blues.

This was Simone’s first album for RCA Records after previously recording for Colpix Records and Philips Records. The album was also reissued in 2006 with bonus tracks, and re-packaged in 1991 by RCA/Novus as a 17-track compilation under the title The Blues.

Sings the blues

Nina Simone Sings the Blues is a classic record that will stand the test of time; it is a true classic. The best version, in my not so humble opinion, is on the album Forever Young, Gifted and Black: Songs of Freedom And Spirit, a fabulous compilation released in 2006.

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Great Album: Steve Earle – Terraplane

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

“Hell, everybody’s sick of all my fucking happy songs anyway”
– Steve Earle

Terraplane is the sixteenth studio album by Steve Earle. It was released on February 17, 2015 via New West Records. Terraplane – the title is a nod to Robert Johnson’s “Terraplane Blues” (and from the 1930s Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit model) and it is Earle’s blues album. This is something he does with honor, and it’s a hell of an album, no matter what genre.

Steve Earle and The Dukes – King of the Blues /Hey Joe (House of Rock, Corpus Christi, TX on 5/10/2015):

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Dec 11: Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton was born in 1926

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984) was an American rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller’s “Hound Dog” in 1952, which became her biggest hit. It spent seven weeks at number one on the Billboard R&B charts in 1953 and sold almost two million copies. However, her success was overshadowed three years later, when Elvis Presley recorded his more popular rendition of “Hound Dog”. Similarly, Thornton’s “Ball ‘n’ Chain” (written in 1961 but not released until 1968) had a bigger impact when performed and recorded by Janis Joplin in the late 1960s.

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