***Voodoo Blues From The Bayou- The "Voodoo Daddy" Lonnie Brooks Is On Stage -When Lonnie Brooks Rocked The Blues House-‘Lonnie Brooks”- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Lonnie Brooks performing Too Little, Too Late.

CD Review

Lonnie Brooks: The Voodoo Daddy, Lonnie Brooks (and son Ronnie Baker), Alligator records, 1997

When reviewing various blues artist over the past year in this space I have spilled much ink on places like the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, Memphis and Texas. I have spent very little time talking about Cajun country, the bayous of Louisiana or the Mississippi port town of News Orleans as sources of the blues tradition. When one thinks of the bayous one tends to think of the Cajun-centered accordion or Zydeco music. New Orleans brings to mind jazz more than the blues, except maybe some barrelhouse influence. That omission seems now to have been flat out wrong as the artist under review, ‘The Voodoo Daddy” Lonnie Brooks, amply demonstrates.

Sure, Lonnie (and on this album his son Ronnie Baker as well) has mastered basic blues lines as any successful electric blues guitarist must but his music has that little extra “funky” edge that one gets when listening to better New Orleans jazz and Zydeco music, especially that big old sax blaring out to beat the band. That is what the Voodoo Daddy brings to the table. Here it starts right out with the first track “Jealous Man” carries through to “Hoodoo She Do” the aptly named “Zydeco” and finishes up nicely with “Rolling Of The Tumbling Dice.” More on this kind of bayou-derived music, especially under the influence of Clifton Chenier who was instrumental in jump starting Lonnie’s career later. For now listen here- you can heard those swamp sounds from those Lake Charles and environs boys now, can’t you?
Watch out, watch out like crazy or those boys will take you for everything you have. And laugh about it.

"Got Lucky Last Night"

Pretend you're mean as a lion
Wild like a tiger cat
Been lovin' mem so good last night
I almost had a heart attack

chorus:
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
Played your little game and I got lucky last night

Pretend you're mean and evil
Stubborn like a Georgia mule
Been lovin' me so good last night
You had me on private school
(chorus)

Pretend you can be sweet
Pretend you can be kind
But when it come to lovin' girl
You don't draw the line
(chorus)

I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
Played a little game and I got lucky last night

I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night
I got lucky last night, tryin' to get lucky tonight


"Wife For Tonight"

Is is that string bikini?
Or the sun that's makin' me hot?
Whatever thing to cool me with baby
They gonna take a hell of a lot
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
Yeah

I'll build us a playhouse
Into my bedroom
So you can play the bride baby
While I play the groom
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight
All right...

You can come on over
There'll be no strings attached
If you like what I'm doin' to you baby
You can always come back
I feel the need for some down home lovin' tonight
Oh I could gonna pretend that I'm your husband
If you'd only pretend you'll be my wife tonight

***Out In The Mist Of Time Of The American Blues Night-“Before The Blues-Volume 3”-A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Furry Lewis performing his old-time Harry Smith American Folk Anthology-worthy blues classic, Kassie Jones.

CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)

Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 3, Yazoo Records, 1996

Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.

Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.

The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues compilation reflects all of those trends from Furry Lewis’s Kassie Jones to Memphis Minnie’s Frisco Town to Texas Alexander’s Levee Camp Moan Blues. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.

***Out In The Mist Of Time Of The American Blues Night-“Before The Blues-Volume 2”-A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Memphis Jug Band performing their old-time blues classic Harry Smith Anthology-worthy, K.C. Moan.

CD Review (The basic points made in this review have been used to review the other two volumes in this three volume set)

Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 2, Yazoo Records, 1996

Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.

Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.

The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues volume 2 compilation reflects all of those trends from the Memphis Jug Band’s K.C. Moan to Blue Lemon Jefferson’s Jack O’Diamond Blues To Golden Harris’ I Lead A Christian Life. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.

***Who Will Fill The 2000s Blues Night Air? - “Give In Kind” –A Guy Davis CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Guy Davis performing Can’t Be Satisfied.

Give In Kind, Guy Davis, Red House Records, 2002

A couple of years ago I spent no little cyberspace “ink” on the question of who would carry on the folk tradition that the folk revival artists of my generation, the generation of ’68, “discovered” back in the day. You know artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Eric Von Schmidt and Dave Van Ronk and others digging into the American song book provided by Harry Smith, the Lomaxes and the Seegers to preserve Woody Guthrie and stuff even further back down to the hills and hollows of Appalachia (I know I am supposed to write hollas but there you have it), down to the southern delta plantation moans, down to backwater Mississippi juke joint groans after a hard Saturday night of love, fights and headaches, and out west, out west where as Thomas Wolfe stated, the states are square to gather in the cowboy and farm traditions found in the great migrations to the coast, west coast of course. I came up with a few candidates like Keb Mo’ and Carol Hemmings then just to make my point.

I am now trying to take that basic point and pose the question here of who will carry out the great American blues night tradition started back in the early part of the 20th century (as least the part we know about from recordings and radio) and which produced great music from Charley Patton, Son House, Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt and the like on through to Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf , Ike Turner, and Taj Majal. That last name mentioned not by accident as the artist under review, Guy Davis, consciously or not, and I think consciously, owns at least a debt of gratitude to Taj for breaking some ground for him in the blues milieu.

Needless to say Brother Davis (Guy, not the late great Reverend Gary, okay) plays a mean guitar as on Good Liquor and Loneliest Road That I Know, can use his vocal abilities to belt out such songs as Six Cold Feet Of Ground and Watch Over Me and get down to that gospel church, Jehovah we are coming root of the blues on God's Unchanging Hand with the best of them. Eric Clapton, Mick and Keith and the rest of the British invasion guys mad to the high heavens for American blues move over a little. Guy Davis is in the house.

***Out In The Mist Of Time Of The American Blues Night-“Before The Blues”-A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Henry Thomas performing his old-time blues holla classic, Run, Mollie, Run.

CD Review

Before The Blues: The Early American Black Music Scene: Classic Recordings From The 1920s and 1930s, Volume 1, Yazoo Records, 1996

Out of the back of my 1960s teenage bedroom the radio was blaring out a
midnight blues version of Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years complete with harmonica-devouring accompaniment by Wolf himself (a fact, the almost eating part, not visually known to me until much later when I viewed his epic work via YouTube) on the American Blues Hour coming over the airways from sweet home Chicago (sweet home of the modern electric blues that is). Earlier in the program Muddy Waters, prince regent of the electric blues just then, had held forth with his band (made up then, and at various other times, with sidemen like Otis Spann and Junior Wells who would go on to their own blues hall of fame-like careers), with a sizzling version of Mannish Child. Ya, those were the primo hell-bent devil’s music blues days. No question.

Well not quite no question for that show, or for this review. The show had started out with a three card Monte of Dupree’s Blues, first by Lightnin’ Hopkins on electric, Brownie McGhee on acoustic and Willie Walker doing an a cappella version (which is included in this compilation) from out of the mist of blues times, or the depths of the American music night. At least of the stuff that has been recorded. That is important because prior to radio this material was handed down mostly through the oral traditions. That tradition got reflected in the Dupree’s Blues example because although the basic melody and theme were the same throughout the narratives were somewhat different. And that too reflects the blues tradition, and before the blues, the roots of the blues which is what this compilation (and two additional volumes) concentrates on.

The blues, for the most part, was a quintessential black music form as it developed out of the scorched dry plantation fields of the post- Civil War Jim Crow South, out of the moans and groans of the black church Sunday and out of the hard drinking, hard fighting, hard loving, hard partying Saturday night acoustic music (had to, no electricity) night before sobering up for those Sunday church groans. And while it occasionally moved to a respectable dance hall or movie house concert hall (segregated, no questions asked) before the age of radio that is where it developed kind of helter-skelter. This Before The Blues compilation reflects all of those trends from Rube Lacy’s Mississippi Jail House Groan to Mississippi John Hurt’s Stack O’Lee Blues to the Seventh Day Adventist Choir’s On Jordan’s Stormy Banks We Stand. So the next time you hear the Stones’ covering Wolf’s Little Red Rooster or Mississippi Fred McDowell’s Got To Move you know where it came from.

***Out In The Kazoo-Driven 1920s Night- The Time Of The Cannon Jug Stompers- A CD Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Cannon Jug Stompers performing Big Railroad Blues to give a flavor of the old-time jug music.

Cannon’s Jug Stompers: The Complete Works: 1927-1930, The Cannon Jug Stompers, Yazoo Records, 1989

So Jim Kweskin took a few jugs, a few washboards, a few kazoos, a penny whistle, maybe a couple of fiddles, and a washtub with a string and pole, got some friends like Geoff Muldaur, and Maria Muldaur (nee something else like Donato) to play the damn stuff (and sing too) and created jug music from scratch in the 1960s folk minute night. No, one thousand times, no. The folk minute was about “discovering” roots music. You know stuff from the hills and hollows of Kentucky, or some old labor songs from the 1930s hard class struggle, or some sea island s congregation spirituals from god knows where in outer Georgia (the United States Georgia, okay). So like Bob Dylan, Eric Von Schmidt, hell even Dave Von Ronk, they all torn up the backwoods, or at least the dusty Greenwich Village old records stores, and went hunting for some sound that would satisfy their roots needs (and provide a little cash in the coffeehouse crazed night). And Cannon’s Jug Stompers along with the Memphis Jug Band (and, as it turned out, about seven different state Sheik bands, you know the Mississippi Sheiks, and so on) were must hears if you wanted to replicate any old time jug sound.

Of course the Cannon Jug Stompers didn’t work the Cambridge folk scene back in the day, way back in the day, or some cozy Village club and certainly not some North Beach blow-out be-bop joint but worked the carny shows, the juke joints and the back road houses of the south to very segregated audiences. So while some black guys (and a few women) were wilding the joint up in café society New York or New Orleans with the latest high white not jazz riffs these brothers were working cheap street. So be it. Listen up to Big Railroad Blues, Cairo Rag, Pretty Money Blues and a few others and you won’t worry so much why you don’t miss the jazz notes. And be glad, glad as hell, that Harry Smith, the great American Folk Music anthologist whose anthology all the old folkies (including the afore-mentioned Jim Kweskin Jug Band members) knew by heart including them in his work.

***Out In The Be-Bop 1970s Night- A Slice Of Life Snapshot Of The Push For The Great 1960s Breakout

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) performing Where Do The Children Play?

Harold and Maude, Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort
Some films, especially coming of age films of either the political or social kind, do not age well. That is the fate of the early 1970s cult classic of sorts, Harold and Maude. This was a film that some friends of mine in Cambridge would queue up for on a weekly basis, and gladly, at one particular theater that played the film and only that film for about a year. See, that was the time of the great attempted late 1960s break-out (and extending through, roughly, the mid-1970s) from the confines of bourgeois society and the tracked career path by all kinds of people and teen angst and alienated Harold (played by Bud Cort) seemed a kindred spirit. And was then. Maude (played by Ruth Gordon), needless to say, was everybody’s grandmother dream, if only compared to harsh grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, don’t’ do this or that, and by the way your hair is too long, mother reality. And if you like slightly zany (no, not weird) little old ladies in tennis sneakers. And you should.

The premise of the film certainly had appeal, teen angst, big time teen angst by the distraught Harold trying to, against his stiff middle class background and his monster mother’s well-laid plans for his future, fight for his place in the world (or in the next world in his faux fascination with death and funerals) and old age angst (happy angst, if that is not an oxymoron) by the bubbly Maude. By the end of the film old Ruth is able to bring Bud around to seeing that life, his life, is worth living, and living, warts and all, aches and pains once gingerly shrugged off and all . Well, ho hum for that premise now, now that some of us are approaching old Maude’s age.

What is false here, maybe not as false as some things we have learned along the way in this wicked old world but false nevertheless, is Maude’s aged sage wisdom. The truth, the bitter truth, is that the wisdom we acquired was not done in old age but picked up in our youth and we have been living off that, chipping away at the edges, ever since. What still holds up, and holds well, is the sound track music of Cat Stevens’ (now Yusuf Islam) great songs like Wild World and Where Do The Children Play? Wordsworth had it right- “to be young was very heaven.”
********
Where Do The Children Play? Lyrics

Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam)


Well I think it's fine, building jumbo planes.
Or taking a ride on a cosmic train.
Switch on summer from a slot machine.
Yes, get what you want to if you want, 'cause you can get anything.

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you roll on roads over fresh green grass.
For your lorry loads pumping petrol gas.
And you make them long, and you make them tough.
But they just go on and on, and it seems that you can't get off.

Oh, I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?

Well you've cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air.
But will you keep on building higher
'til there's no more room up there?
Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?