Lonnie Johnson Blues Singer and Guitarist Music Guide

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Mary Lou Williams: Night Life

Mary Lou Williams is probably the most important female African-American jazz pianist. Williams was also a fine songwriter and arranger and she worked with major figures in jazz including Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Williams was born Mary Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1910.

Williams played with Duke Ellington’s band, The Washingtonians, in 1925. By the late Twenties she was pianist in the Andy Kirk’s band, “The Twelve Clouds of Joy.” While with Kirk, Williams supplied the band with the songs, “Cloudy,” and “Little Joe from Chicago.” Williams made her first recordings with Kirk in 1929/30 and recorded the piano solo sides, “Drag ‘Em” and “Night Life.” These solo sides would see Williams become a national name and brought her to the attention of Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, and Tommy Dorsey who all hired her as an arranger.

Williams became involved in the bebop movement of the Forties and wound up as a mentor of sorts for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.

In the Sixties, Williams began recording religious jazz music, and she continued recording prolifically until her death in 1981.

Williams best recordings can be heard on the following albums: “Mary Lou Williams Trio” (1944), “Signs of the Zodiac” (1945), “Piano Solos” (1946), “Black Christ of the Andes” (1964), “Zoning” (1974), “Mary Lou’s Mass” (1975), “The Chronological Classics: Mary Lou Williams 1927-1940” (1995), “The Chronological Classics: Mary Lou Williams 1944-1945” (1998) and The Chronological Classics: Mary Lou Williams 1945-1947” (1999).

Dizzy Gillespie: Salt Peanuts

The great jazz trumpeter, Dizzy Gillespie, was one of the musicians at the forefront of the development of be-bop music in the Fifties. Gillespie was born John Birkes Gillespie in Cheraw, South Carolina, in 1917. Gillespie earned the moniker, “Dizzy,” for his ebullient personality and antics while performing.

After hearing the great Roy Eldridge on the radio as a child, Gillespie decide then and there that he, too, wanted to be a jazz trumpeter. Gillespie got his start in New York City, in 1935, playing in the bands of Teddy Hill and Edgar Hayes. It was with the Teddy Hill Orchestra that Gillespie would make his first recording, “King Porter Stomp.” Gillespie stayed with Hill for one year and then freelanced with several bands for a while before finally winding up in Cab Callaway’s Orchestra in 1939. Calloway would fire Gillespie three years later following an altercation between the two men.

In 1943, Gillespie would join Earl Hines band which featured Charlie Parker and was beginning to create a new music which would become bebop. From there, it was on to the Billie Ekstine band, which also featured Parker. He would later leave the Ekstine band because he wanted to play in a smaller ensemble.

In the mid-Forties, Gillespie, Parker and other jazz musicians such as Max Roach, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Kenny Clark would meet at clubs such as Minton’s Playhouse and Monroe’s Uptown to jam and experiment. It was at these jams that bebop was born.

Gillespie would become a member of the “Quintet,” the legendary be-bop supergroup formed in Toronto in 1953, with Parker, Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach. Following his one-show tenure with the Quintet, Gillespie would form his own Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra.

Among the best of the classic sides that Gillespie recorded in the Forties and Fifties are: “A Night in Tunisia,” “Salt Peanuts,” “Hot House,” “Manteca,” “Perdido,” and “Night and Day.”

Gillespie’s best albums begin with the Quintet. His “Salt Peanuts” from the album “Live at Massey Hall” is perhaps the best moment of many brilliant moments on that live recording of the Quintet’s only show. Other fine Gillespie albums include, “Dizzy In Paris” (1953), “For Musicians Only” (1958), ”Gillespiana” (1960), “Groovin’ High” (1953).

After Gillespie had had his fill of bebop, he became interested in Afro-Cuban music. Gillespie died in 1993.

Skip James: Im So Glad

Nehemiah Curtis James was born near Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1902. James was raised just south of the Mississippi Delta near Bentonia, on the Whitehead plantation, where his mother was the plantation cook. James’s friends named him “Skippy” due to his peculiar style of dancing. Skip’s father, a guitar-playing bootlegger, abandoned his family when Skip was a young boy. 

In 1931, after years of work as a laborer, bootlegger, and sometimes musician, James entered a singing competition at a store in Jackson, Mississippi. James had just begun to play his song, “Devil Got My Woman,” when he was awarded the prize-a train ticket to Grafton, Wisconsin, and a recording session with Paramount Records.

Paramount was famous for the poor quality of its recordings, and sadly, many fine performances were poorly recorded by the label, including those by James. James recorded several songs with guitar during his first session, and eight piano songs during the second session. James recalls recording 26 sides in all, though only 18 have been found. Among the classic recordings he made at those sessions were, “Devil Got My Woman,” “I’m So Glad,” “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” “22-20 Blues,” and “Special Rider Blues.”

James was only paid 40 dollars for his efforts, and as the recordings were made during the height of the depression, only a few sides were ever released. Disillusioned with the music business, James quit and turned to religion. Little is known about his life during the 33 years between his Paramount recordings and his rediscovery in the mid-Sixties.

James played his first show in 33 years at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. His performance was a brilliant one and it seemed that his powers were still completely intact despite his long lay off. Many believed that James performance at the festival topped all others who appeared.

Despite his huge popularity at Newport, James did not have a recording deal. When Cream recorded “I'm So Glad” on their Fresh Cream album, James, now ailing, used his royalties to get into a good hospital in Washington, DC, where he could have the surgery that extended his life by three years.

James recorded the excellent albums, “Today!” (1966) and “Devil Got My Woman” (1968). James died in 1969, in Philadelphia.

Booker T and the M.G.’s: Green Onions

Booker T and the M.G.’s was the house band for Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, and as such they appeared on virtually every single that Stax released during its heyday in the Sixties and early Seventies. The band can be heard backing Stax’s star vocalists on recordings by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Carla Thomas and others.

The band consisted of Booker T. Jones on organ/piano; Steve Cropper on guitar; Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass; and Al Jackson on drums. This versatile and talented ensemble was equally comfortable providing accompaniment for blues or ballads, rock, or R&B. In addition to providing Stax singers with a backing band, they released instrumental singles under their own name including “Groovin,” Hip Hug Her,” “Time is Tight,” and their biggest hit, “Green Onions.”

With the addition of the Memphis horns, the band also recorded instrumental tracks as the “Mar-Keys.”

In the early Eighties, the surviving members of the band, Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn were members of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi’s Blues Brothers band and were featured in the movie, “The Blues Brothers.” They returned with Ackroyd in “Blues Brothers 2000.”

The band recorded several fine studio albums in the Sixties including “Green Onions” (1962), “Soul Dressing” (1965) and “Hip Hug Her” (1967), but “The Best of Booker T and the M.G.’s” (1968) may be all you require.

W.C. Handy The Father of the Blues

William Christopher Handy will forever be remembered as “The Father of the Blues.” It was Handy who was most responsible for taking this regional folk music of the American South and turning it into another form of popular American music.

Handy was working as a popular minstrel bandleader when he heard blues music for the first time while stopping over in the Mississippi Delta. Handy would eventually write the first popular blues songs, “Memphis Blues,” ”St. Louis Blues,” Yellow Dog Blues,” and “Hesitating Blues.”

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, in 1873. His father was pastor of a church in a nearby town. Handy’s upbringing was strict and his pious father viewed secular music and anything associated with it as instruments of the devil. It was with much secrecy then, that young W.C. Handy purchased his first instrument, a guitar. When his father found the guitar, Handy was instructed to return it. Handy moved on to organ and eventually acquired a cornet, the instrument with which he would be forever associated.

Handy joined a local band as a cornetist during his teens-a fact that he kept hidden from his parents. During the 1890s Handy traveled around Alabama in various bands playing the minstrel music that was popular at the time and working odd jobs to make ends meet. He eventually became the leader of the Mahara’s Colored Minstrels and toured The South with that band for three years.

From 1900-1902, Handy was recruited as a music teacher at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes. Handy’s frustration with the college’s emphasis on European classical music and apparent lack of appreciation for American styles led to his resignation from his post.

Handy quickly rejoined his old band and set off on the road again. It was while on tour with the band in the Mississippi Delta that Handy heard the blues, a music that he described at the time as “the weirdest music I had ever heard.” Handy studied the blues as played by locals during subsequent visits to the Mississippi Delta, and by the time Handy and his band had relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1909, the blues was part of his repertoire. Handy wrote what is often coined as the first blues song, “Memphis Blues,” as a theme song for a Memphis mayoral candidate, Edward Crump. The song was originally titled, “Mr. Crump.”

Handy wrote subsequent songs with “blues” in the title such as “Beale Street Blues” and “St. Louis Blues” and became one of the first African-Americans to become wealthy by publishing songs. Handy moved his publishing business to New York City, in 1917, and set up offices in Times Square.

In early 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band had made the first jazz recording with a side titled, “Livery Stable Blues.” Handy organized a band called Handy’s Orchestra of Memphis to make his own recordings for Columbia. The resulting sides contained music that was closer to blues than that which was recorded by jazz bands. Handy was not enamored with this new music, jazz, and tried to stick to tradition.

Handy recorded for various labels from 1917 to 1924 and recorded versions of his own songs, “Memphis Blues,” “Yellow Dog Blues,” and “St. Louis Blues,” among others. Handy’s renditions of these classic tunes are not considered as classics of the era, but they are of tremendous historical rather than aesthetic interest.

Among the limited compilation albums that may be found on Handy’s recordings are “Father of the Blues” (1980) and “Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey” (2003).

Scott Joplin: Maple Leaf Rag

Scott Joplin, born in Linden, Texas, in 1867, was a pianist and the most popular artist of ragtime music, the forerunner of jazz. Only Joseph Lamb, among ragtime performers, could rival Joplin’s omnipotence. At the height of ragtime’s popularity, print was the only medium for mass distribution of music, and ragtime compositions proved very popular among amateur musicians. “Maple Leaf Rag,” first published in 1899, sold over seven million copies and remains Joplin’s most popular work.

As player pianos became widely available in the early 1900s, piano rolls became another way of distributing ragtime music. Piano rolls, which were fed into the player piano, triggered the motion of the piano keys, allowed a performance to be accurately reproduced on any player piano at any time. Joplin made a number of piano rolls in 1916 with the selections, “Maple Leaf Rag,” “Magnetic Rag,” “Pleasant Moments,” “Something Doing,” and “Weeping Willow Rag.” Through these piano rolls, it is possible to hear the music just as Joplin played it at the time they were produced.

Joplin considered himself a classical composer, and sought to elevate ragtime to the status of a respectable art form. Fortunately, pianists such as Jelly Roll Morton and James P. Johnson would pull it back by improvising variations that defied Joplin’s limitations for the music. This improvisation ultimately led to the creation of jazz.

Joplin died in 1917, just as jazz was first being recorded and beginning its infiltration of the American mainland.

Joplin’s music can be heard on several compilations of piano roll recordings.

Captain Beefheart: Mirror Man

Captain Beefheat, also know as Don Van Vliet, was one of the strangest artists in the history of rock music. His music might be off-putting for those whose tastes are limited to the mainstream, but for the initiated, his quirky and often downright bizarre music is a source of infinite amusement. Beefheart has been critically-praised for decades for his highly original music which incorporates rock, blues, and avant-garde jazz. Beefheart was always supported on recordings by various versions of his “Magic Band.”

Born Don Glen Vliet, Beefheart started out with childhood friend Frank Zappa in local groups such as The Omens and The Blackouts. Around this time he added “Van” to his name and was thus named Don Van Vliet. His colorful moniker, “Captain Beefheart,” came from Zappa who observed that he sang as if he had a “beef in his heart.”

In 1965, the first Magic Band was formed. They played blues and R&B, both covers & original material, and scored a contract with A&M Records with whom they released two singles. The first, “Diddy Wah Diddy,” became a minor hit, but the label discarded them anyway.

In 1967, Beefheart and the Magic Band landed a contract with Buddah Records and recorded their brilliant debut, “Safe as Milk” (1967). The album was rooted in blues and R&B, and while containing moments of slight weirdness like the track, “Electricity,” the sound of the band was still palatable to mainstream listeners.

This changed with the release of the great and sometimes controversial, “Trout Mask Replica” (1969), Beefheart’s masterpiece. It is one of the strangest recordings in the history of popular music. The music is a synthesis of pure avant-garde jazz and rock almost devoid of melody and harmony, featuring songs not so much sung, as croaked by Beefheart, whose voice, at the best of times, could be described as grating. As such, the album is unlistenable for mainstream music fans, but it is over-flowing with creativity and humour.

Beefheart would continue to release albums for the next 15 years which followed in a similar vein. The best of Beefheart’s post-Sixties work is: “Lick My Decals Off, Baby” (1970), “Mirror Man” (1971), “Clear Spot” (1972), “Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)” (1978), and “Doc at the Radar Station” (1980).

Beefheart, one of the true originals of rock music, died in 2010.

Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

Drummer Art Blakey and his band, The Jazz Messengers, are the pioneers of a jazz sub-genre called “hard bop”. Hard bop takes the fundamentals of be-bop and adds elements of rhythm and blues. The idea behind hard bop was to make be-bop music more danceable and perhaps, more palatable to mainstream music fans.

Art Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1919, and by the Fifties, his virtuosic and incessant drumming would put him at the forefront of the be-bop genre along with Dizzy Gilliespie, Thelonious Monk and others.

In 1954, he formed the band, The Jazz Messengers, which became a training ground for up and coming young jazz musicians. New Orleans trumpet prodigy Wynton Marsalis would get his professional start as a member of the band. Among the best of the Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers albums are “A Night at Birdland” (Volumes 1-3) (1954), “The Jazz Messengers” (1956), “A Night in Tunisia” (1957), “Drum Suite” (1957), “Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk” (1958), “Ritual” (1959), “Moanin’”(1959),  “The Big Beat” (1960),  “Mosaic” (1961) “Free for All,” “A Night in Tunisia” (1961), and “Indestructible” (1965).