The Blues is life and life is the Blues. It covers from the first cry of a newborn to the last gasp of a dying man. It's the very existence." And Victoria Spivey took the blues business very seriously, from her many recording contracts to her performance schedule. These thirteen original compositions were written specifically for this recording, and range from a "No Friends Blues" or a "Slick Chick Blues" to a "Humble Blues" and even "A Sausage Blues.
Narrated by Langston Hughes, The Story of Jazz is a concise history of jazz beginning with Drums of the Yoruba, from Nigeria, and continuing to the post-WWII era of be-bop with Dizzy Gillespie's "Oopapada." Hughes delineates the various subcategories of this ever-evolving genre which includes the rag, New Orleans jazz, blues, Kansas City jazz and boogie-woogie piano, swing, be-bop, and progressive jazz. Well-chosen examples accompany each exploration of style.
On trumpet, flugelhorn and bag flute, it's Charles Cha Cha Shaw-perhaps under-billed, but certainly worthy of a good listen-laying down some post-bop, obscure and free jazz. A soulful atmosphere is provided by the likes of Ronnie Boykins on bass and Art Blakey Jr.. on drums.
This influential 1920s small jazz band played music ideal for dancing, while it's members' improvisational creativity offered listeners a new experience with every take. The Original Memphis Five is said to have recorded more records than any other jazz ensemble of it's time.
This collection of poems by Sarah Webster Fabio and Deniake is an example of Fabio's affinity for combining poetry with music. In this blues-inspired album, Fabio and her children's band Don't Fight the Feeling pay tribute to John Coltrane, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington while simultaneously building a positive collective identity for African Americans with poems like "Pride" and "Black Is."
Recorded when Ernest "Doc" Paulin was almost seventy-four years old, this album provides a glimpse into the musical life of a New Orleans marching band. The ensemble's blues-influenced repertoire includes traditional march tunes, spirituals, and pop standards, played with what New Orleans musicians call "lots of tone"-with overblown horns, and of course, at high volume!
In this collection of prose and song, Langston Hughes narrates the history of the African-American people. Beginning with the struggles associated with slavery and punctuated with African chants and freedom songs sung by Brownie McGhee, Hilda Haynes and Leadbelly, Hughes imparts the glory and triumphs of African-Americans, which include the accomplishments of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, the founding of the NAACP, the sporting legends Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis and the music of William Grant and Ella Fitzgerald.
This compilation reflects musicians' accounts of the growth of jazz, spotlighting forms they heard in New Orleans such as the march, rag, blues, spiritual and "standards. " Featured are Jelly Roll Morton's Quartet, the Johnny Dodd's Orchestra and the Red Onion Jazz Babies (with whom Louis Armstrong played), as well as the first known recording of "High Society" as jazz by the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band. Liner notes by Frederic Ramsey Jr..
The classic 1957 release from one of the greats of gospel blues, a rough diamond of hard, pure country gospel expression, at odds with the earthly concerns of the blues and yet entwined with the devil's rhythms. Listen to the splendid Moon Goes Down, the skittering guitar figures on Bad Company and classic ragtime of I Didn't Want to Join the Band for confirmation of his brilliant originality. 17 cuts total, including a couple of unreleased items.
Texan Blind Willie Johnson was one of the most successful recording artists in the South in the late 1920s, before the Depression ruined the company for which he recorded. This collection demonstrates the singer's unique ability to express his personal poetic style through the genre of religious song.
I've never had the blues, says Brownie McGhee in an interview with famed oral historian, Studs Terkel, "the blues has always had me." the trio of legendary bluesmen played, talked, and traded stories with Terkel until the early hours of the morning in the studio of Chicago's WFMT radio station, creating a historic and memorable experience. Big Bill Broonzy had the idea of putting this session together in order "to reveal the uniqueness of each man's blues as a reflection of the uniqueness of each man's life," as noted in the extensive liner notes to what would be Broonzy's last recording for Folkways Records.
Tony "Little Sun" Glover (b. 1939) is a Minneapolis-born harmonica player and singer, most notably associated with guitarists "Spider" John Koerner and Dave "Snaker" Ray during the folk revival in the early 1960s. Glover performed with Ray until the latter's death in 2002, and he still performs with Koerner on occasion. This session, recorded in 1965, is an introduction to the basics of playing blues harmonica. Glover stresses that the student should first listen to a wide range of players before attempting to play. The liner notes cover the recorded material in greater depth, as well as a discography of Glover's favorite blues harp recordings.
Pink Anderson (1900-1974) spent most of his life working as a roving entertainer in the small medicine shows that traveled throughout the South. His stage repertoire included blues, comedic songs, country ballads, and minstrel show tunes. Pink's songs were first recorded in 1950 by the folk singer Paul Clayton. Folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein heard the material, and asked the music historian Samuel Charters to find Pink and document his song repertoire. Charters subsequently featured Pink in his documentary the Blues. After a film session at his home in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the summer of 1962, Pink felt like singing, so Charters continued recording. Many of the songs on this album come from those tapes, which include Pink's friend, blues guitarist Baby Tate.
The music on this recording is at once far-reaching and intimate. It has a quality enjoyed well beyond contemporary fans of this style of music, and yet this recording gives the listener the sense of being privy to a very precise moment in music history with Memphis Slim (1915-1988) as he plays piano. Slim (born Peter Chatman) grew up listening to his father perform blues in various venues in Memphis, Tennessee. He started performing around town at a young age before moving to Chicago at 25. He is accompanied on this album- the third of his four recordings for Folkways Records - by Arnold "Jump" Jackson (drums) and Arbee Stidham (guitar). The liner notes feature a biography of Slim by music critic Martin Williams.
The blind folk, gospel and blues musician made it to New York from South Carolina and made a name for himself as the "Harlem Street Singer." a Baptist minister and a teacher, Gary Davis was also an accomplished and influential vocalist, guitarist, and harmonica player. He was seventy years old at the time of this recording. "We Are the Heavenly Father's Children" is re-mastered and re-released on If I Had My Way: Early Home Recordings(SFW40123).
Recorded in 1961, The Blues in St. Louis, Vol. 2 celebrates 1930s and '40s style Barrelhouse Blues and Boogie Woogie. Henry Brown and Edith Johnson came from very different musical backgrounds: pianist Brown was formally trained, while Johnson learned the blues by singing along with music playing in her husband's record shop. Yet, the two came together in Jazz and Blues fan Bob Oswald's recording studio, and the result is a combination of Classic Blues instrumentals and vocals like "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Little Drops of Water," often accompanied by Brown tapping his foot against the piano pedal. Musician and scholar Samuel Charters gives a first hand account of the musicians and circumstances of recording in the liner notes.
From the early blues of Son House, Willie Brown, and Charley Patton to the assertive music of the Depression, the Mississippi delta has produced songs and singers with a fierce honesty that has ensured the style's enduring popularity. This selection features a range of songs and extensive liner notes.
As a youth in North Carolina, Sonny Terry-who lost his sight during his teen years-never imagined he'd eventually find fame as a musician on record, at festivals, and on Broadway in the musical, Finian's Rainbow. This album presents Terry's fine music, and the liner notes include elaborate stories of his life.
On this album, Mary Lou Williams presents a history of jazz in speech and in music, from meditations on learning ragtime and blues as a child to performances of her own compositions, including "Night Life," which was captured on her first recording in 1930 and became a Kansas City classic.
As well as presenting a collection of first-rate piano solos from the likes of Willie "The Lion" Smith, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Art Tatum, Mary Lou Williams, Teddy Wilson, and Erroll Garner, this album stands as homage to Folkways Records founder Moses Asch, who recorded each of the tracks included here.
Recorded at four venues during Duke Ellington's first annual tour of the Pacific Northwest in 1952, these songs bring listeners to the ballrooms and armories of Oregon and Washington, where the legendary Ellington and his band had been hired to play for dancers.
In the mid-1940s, Elizabeth Cotten (1895-1987) chanced to meet composer Ruth Crawford Seeger at a department store. They began to talk, and Seeger soon hired Cotten to work in the Seeger household. It was here that Cotten became motivated to pick up the guitar again-it had been so long she had forgotten she knew how to play-and she began playing professionally in her early eighties. The material chosen for this recording includes songs and tunes from her childhood, such as "Praying Time Will Soon Be Over" and original compositions like "When I'm Gone." She accompanies herself on her guitar, strung in the usual right-handed way yet played left-handed, with the guitar upside down. This album showcases her unique style, described by Mike Seeger as "a synthesis of turn-of-the-century parlor music, blues, church songs, and a little ragtime." Liner notes include extensive selections from conversations between Cotton, Mike, and Alice Gerrard.
Charles Edward Smith, author of the album's notes, writes, "Few singers evoke as forcefully as Brownie the many-sidedness of heritage... sentiment and sex, humor and the solar plexus shots of bitter and broken, worried and lonely blues." But let Brownie's music, in all it's eloquence, speak for itself.
The life of jazz is in it's playing-in unrehearsed sessions in front of audiences or microphones, ears corporeal or mechanical that gauge the passing of time not by hands on a watch but by the birth and development of new musical ideas. Footnotes to Jazz, Volume 2 captures this process in a set of previously unreleased rehearsals by the Art Tatum Trio in 1944.
Orphaned at age 2, William Thomas Dupree grew up in the same New Orleans boys' home where Louis Armstrong first played the cornet. Continuing his music education with barrelhouse piano musicians, Dupree became known for his gritty yet soulful piano blues and boogie-woogie style. During the Depression, he started boxing for a living and earned the nickname Champion Jack, which stuck with him for the rest of his life. Here, Dupree's theme is clear: Bad women and good women. Hard times... hot hands, and hot music. Liner notes include lyrics, photos, and an introduction by Charles Edward Smith.
The piano got off to a late start in Jazz, notes Frederic Ramsey Jr., but, beginning with Jelly Roll Morton, it made up for lost time. Pianists became important in performance and composition. On this compilation, Morton, Earl Hines, Joe Sullivan, Fats Waller, Meade Lux Lewis, Mary Lou Williams and others put their blazing chops on display.
Peter Chatman Jr.., aka Memphis Slim, stomps out a "progressive boogie and blues" on the piano. Self-taught in the honky-tonk juke joints of Tennessee, he produced some of the most powerful boogie-woogie out there, with an incessant bass like you wouldn't believe.
Since his childhood as a percussionist in the Chicago Defender Boys' Band and his work with Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton's drumming and vibraphone playing have delighted audiences in person and on record. This collection includes tracks from Hamp's New Jazz Inner Circle's recording debut.
