Allman Brothers Band Albums Guide

Aretha Franklin: Songs and Albums of the Queen of Soul

Arlo Guthrie Album Guide

New Orleans Rhythm Kings Music Guide Video

Lonnie Johnson Blues Singer and Guitarist Music Guide

https://www.amazon.ca/Inconvenient-Lonnie-Johnson-Blues-Identity/dp/0271092564?crid=XG9ZG9DQWZLY&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DMn0PPgud-FIqYfwRkSFRtXK07mLtAk5Mvlod2yohbAc6lTrnflgmgA8YLChP8KpTbO9lXuAopF6TA-W9ITE0OTI4s48c39hERBMHUyLs5pSMU-cJtNhsVKXJBDbUhKvxUSeN50_0lOM-wi8Sq8nmBhhAAj1dpy_ZoZRzxupO1_vniqmP_PKHjZpGKWM8ePlvsweygTvKXeexYKf0zyrLCS85sXy54F8_RJCT7c1sJOGnfQEEYJ-mFJNOtKiUBmIss6bGSYiYHFfuH8M6lDNm4PWFZJdR7uANKJ-StA6euI.80dko2LnhQqs7ljxrv-Db1Xa1k0HPhIITID-LriNzZk&dib_tag=se&keywords=lonnie+johnson&qid=1728788116&sprefix=lonnie+jo%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-5&linkCode=ll1&tag=riron-20&linkId=eb917f4993d7ae632f5994a572416e8c&language=en_CA&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Mary Lou Williams Album and Music Guide Video

Little Richard Biography and Music Guide Video

King Oliver New Orleans Jazz Video

Led Zeppelin Albums Guide Short

Led Zeppelin Album Review Video

Original Dixieland Jazz Band-Livery Stable Blues and Other Recordings

Mamie Smith Crazy Blues Video

Art Tatum-Tea For Two Biography Video

Leadbelly Life and Music Video

Mamie Smith Life and Music Video

Albert Ammons Boogie Woogie Blues Video

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.