09-10-2018 BLUES:MiX # 33 blues songs from the BLUES circle 1959-1965

Brownie McGhee

09-10-2018 BLUES:MiX # 33 blues songs from the BLUES circle 1959-1965 # Brownie McGhee, Curtis Amy & Paul Bryant, Bill Jennings / Jack McDuff, Josh White, Big Joe Williams, Sunnyland Slim, Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson II, The Rolling Stones

B L U E S   M U S I C

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1959-1965

Folk-blues singer-guitarist whose long-running partnership with harp-man Sonny Terry was already legendary by 1950s revival time. Brownie McGhee's death in 1996 was an enormous loss in the blues field. Although he had been semi-retired and suffering from stomach cancer, the guitarist was still the leading Piedmont-style bluesman on the planet, venerated worldwide for his prolific activities both on his own and with his longtime partner, blind harpist Sonny Terry. 
Brownie McGhee
Poor Boy 4:40
Walking Blues 3:42
Brownie's Blues 4:25
How Long 4:04
from Brownie McGhee Sings the Blues 1959
Piedmont blues singer and guitarist Brownie McGhee's voice rings clear over his strumming about love, cheating, and remembering his friend Big Bill Broonzy.

A good soul-jazz and hard bop tenor and soprano saxophonist, Curtis Amy enjoyed a busy period in the '60s, then dropped out of sight. He had a strong tone and nice, lightly swinging style...
Curtis Amy & Paul Bryant
Paul Bryant - The organist and pianist, whose cool sound was a key component in the burgeoning L.A. sound, appeared on eight albums and performed around the world. 
Searchin' (Paul Bryant) 8:48
The Blues Message 8:43
This Is the Blues 8:25
from The Blues Message 1960
The Blues Message is an album by saxophonist Curtis Amy and organist Paul Bryant recorded in 1960 for the Pacific Jazz label.
Curtis Amy - tenor saxophone   Paul Bryant - organ   Roy Brewster - valve trombone   Clarence Jones - bass   Jimmy Miller - drums

Bill Jenning's sound has been compared to Tiny Grimes with a hint of early Charlie Christian. A peer of Billy Butler, Jennings played with Louis Jordan in the late '40s and early '50s. He also recorded R&B sides with Leo Parker and Bill Doggett.
Bill Jennings / Jack McDuff
A marvelous bandleader and organist as well as capable arranger, "Brother" Jack McDuff has one of the funkiest, most soulful styles of all time on the Hammond B-3. His rock-solid basslines and blues-drenched solos are balanced by clever, almost pianistic melodies and interesting progressions and phrases
Enough Said (Alvin Johnson) 6:45
Billin' and Bluin', Pt. 1 4:47
from Enough Said  / Glide On 1959 / 1960

Josh White began as a Southern bluesman but eventually evolved into an eclectic, urbane artist.  To many blues enthusiasts, Josh White was a folk revival artist. It's true that the second half of his music career found him based in New York playing to the coffeehouse and cabaret set and hanging out with Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and fellow transplanted blues artists Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee...
Josh White
Good Morning Blues 4:48
Mean Mistreater 4:59
T.B. Blues 4:43
from The House I Live In 1960

Big Joe Williams may have been the most cantankerous human being who ever walked the earth with guitar in hand. At the same time, he was an incredible blues musician: a gifted songwriter, a powerhouse vocalist, and an exceptionally idiosyncratic guitarist.
Big Joe Williams
Highway 49 (Chester Burnett / Big Joe Williams) 3:52
TiaJuana Blues 3:19
Arkansas Woman3:14
from Blues on Highway 49 1961
One of Big Joe Williams's better releases, Blues on Highway 49 is a tense, gritty set of roadhouse blues. Williams's stinging playing and singing brings out the best...  - he shows exactly how Delta blues could be updated.

A seminal figure in post-War Chicago blues, and pianist to many legends of the scene. Exhibiting truly amazing longevity that was commensurate with his powerful, imposing physical build, Sunnyland Slim's status as a beloved Chicago piano patriarch endured long after most of his peers had perished. For more than 50 years, the towering Slim had rumbled the ivories around the Windy City, playing with virtually every local luminary imaginable and backing the great majority in the studio at one time or another.
Sunnyland Slim
I'm Prison Bound (Brownie McGhee) 3:26
Slim's Shout (Ozzie Cadena / Sunnyland Slim) 3:54
Shake It (Big Joe Turner) 3:05
Decoration Day (Sonny Boy Williamson II) 4:41
from Slim's Shout 1961
You wouldn't think that transporting one of Chicago's reigning piano patriarchs to Englewood Cliffs, NJ would produce such a fine album, but this 1960 set cooks from beginning to end. Sunnyland Slim's swinging New York rhythm section has no trouble following his bedrock piano, and the estimable King Curtis peels off diamond-hard tenor sax solos in the great Texas tradition that also mesh seamlessly...

Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup (also known as "Pop" Crudup) (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1976) was a delta blues singer and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for writing songs later covered by Elvis Presley (and since covered by dozens of other artists)...
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup
If I Get Lucky (Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup) 3:05
Give Me a 3220 (Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup) 2:51
Rock Me Mama (Or Mamma) (Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup) 2:58
from The Definitive Collection 1941-62, Vol. 1

Regarded as the last of the great Chicago harmonica players, he was an impressive stylist and a leading practitioner of postwar blues harmonica. He was one bad dude, strutting across the stage like a harp-toting gangster, mesmerizing the crowd with his tough-guy antics and rib-sticking Chicago blues attack. Amazingly, Junior Wells kept at precisely this sort of thing for over 40 years; he was an active performer from the dawn of the '50s until his death in the late '90s.
Junior Wells
Two Headed Woman (Willie Dixon / Junior Wells) 2:41
I Could Cry (Junior Wells) 3:10
Calling All Blues feat. Earl Hooker (Earl Hooker / Junior Wells) 2:34
So Tired (Junior Wells) 2:13
from Calling All Blues - The Chief, Profile & USA Recordings 1957-1963
Following his recorded debut as a leader for States Records, Junior Wells signed with Mel London, producing a number of sides for the producer's Chief and Profile imprints. Perhaps best-known for his spectacular harmonica playing, this period, documented on Calling All Blues, saw Wells emerging as an outstanding vocalist as well. A consummate performer with a firm grasp of the range of emotions the music can produce, Wells wrings every drop of feeling out of the lyrics. The singer growls, shouts, howls, moans across these 24 tracks...

Highly-regarded blues singer and harmonica player, an unpredictable character, and a major figure of Chicago blues. Sonny Boy Williamson was, in many ways, the ultimate blues legend. By the time of his death in 1965, he had been around long enough to have played with Robert Johnson at the start of his career and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Robbie Robertson at the end of it. In between, he drank a lot of whiskey, hoboed around the country, had a successful radio show for 15 years, toured Europe to great acclaim and simply wrote, played and sang some of the greatest blues ever etched into black phonograph records. 
Sonny Boy Williamson II 
Help Me (Sonny Boy Williamson II) 3:10
Nine Below Zero (Sonny Boy Williamson II) 3:31
Trying to Get Back on My Feet (Sonny Boy Williamson II) 2:09
Close to Me (Willie Dixon) 3:03
from More Real Folk Blues Rec: 1960-1964 (1967)
His delivery was sly, evil and world-weary, while his harp-playing was full of short, rhythmic bursts one minute and powerful, impassioned blowing the next. His songs were chock-full of mordant wit, with largely autobiographical lyrics that hold up to the scrutiny of the printed page. Though he took his namesake from another well-known harmonica player, no one really sounded like him.

1964 - Sonny Boy Williamson II and club compère Bob Wooler
at the Cavern Club, Liverpool, UK,  Photographer Peter Kaye

The premier British rock band for over half a century, creators of the sound and style imitated by countless groups. 
The Rolling Stones
Everybody Needs Somebody to Love  (Bert Berns / Solomon Burke / Jerry Wexler) 2:58
What a Shame  (Mick Jagger / Keith Richards) 3:05
Little Red Rooster  (Chester Burnett / Willie Dixon) 3:05
from The Rolling Stones, Now! 1965
Although their third American album was patched together (in the usual British Invasion tradition) from a variety of sources, it's their best early R&B-oriented effort. Most of the Stones' early albums suffer from three or four very weak cuts; Now! is almost uniformly strong start-to-finish, the emphasis on some of their blackest material...

The Rolling Stones - Every parents nightmare in America.