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by S.K. Depuis quelques années, la minorité indienne est représentée par une femme, Pura Fé (Foi Pure), une musiaenne spectaculaire, connue pour être une spécialiste de la pedal steel guitar Les responsables de Sons d’hiver ont eu la bonne idée de la programmer avec celui qui est sans doute, après Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse et Geronimo, l’Indien le plus célèbre de l’histoire américaine John Trudell, fils d’un Sioux et d’une Mexicaine, défraya la chronique au début des années 1970 A l’époque, protestant contre le sort réservé à sa communauté ravagée par l’alcool et la misère, il occupa, à la tête d’une troupe de guerriers, le rocher d’Alcatraz, au large de San Francisco La police délogea les intrus sans ménagement, et harcela Trudell, bien décidée à l’écrabouiller Quelques
mois plus tard, le révolté perdit sa famille dans l’incendie mystérieux de sa maison II se retira et choisit une autre forme de lutte, musicale cette-là, avec une grande réussite En 1992, il sortit l’album Aba Graffiti Mon, remarqué pour son originalité ce mélange de poésie scandée, surréaliste, et de chants sioux mêlés de guitares lancinantes Le style n’a jamaisvraiment fait école tant Trudell, le “Bad Dog”, reste inimitable L’homme nous invite dans son tipi pour nous raconter la nature, les vieilles légendes, et il n’est nul besoin de bien comprendre la langue anglaise L’élocution presque shakespearienne de l’artiste, et son ton parfois mélodramatique suffisent à faire naître l’émotion à suggérer les images Dans le bruit diffus et vulgaire du monde actuel, la voix de John Trudell nous apporte pas mal de fraîcheur et de sérénité Un beau cours d’histoire américaine, comme le superbe festival Sons d’hiver sait en dispenser
Source: légendes_ John Trudell and Bad Dog/Pura Fé
by Cliff Bellamy DURHAM—“I’ve always had what I call a blues head,” said Pat “Mother Blues” Cohen, who will perform during tonight’s opening concert in the Warehouse Blues Series. She has sung many different styles in her career—from disco to jazz. During the 1980s, she was known as Pat “Jazzy” Cohen.
“I would do my jazz shows and I would do a blues song,” she said in a phone interview from her home near Salisbury. “That one blues song would totally upset the crowd … in a good way,” she said. “I said, Well if I’m getting this kind of response I need to do another blues song.” Eventually her entire set became blues.
When she was working in Atlantic City, N.J., a promoter who asked her to sing suggested the name “Mother Blues,” and soon the name stuck, she said. From Atlantic City, she went to New Orleans, where among other duties she was a poker and black jack instructor for a casino. She got fed up with what she called the casino’s rampant nepotism and racism in promotion practices, and began singing for events—where she honed her skills in jazz, blues, and dance styles depending upon the audience and venue.
She lost what she owned when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city’s Ninth Ward, and made her way to North Carolina, where she is now a member of the Hillsborough-based Music Maker Relief Foundation’s roster of artists. The foundation, which helps artists who play blues and other traditional music, “has been my guardian angel,” Cohen said. She credits them for matching their artists with quality performance venues. “It’s always something really positive. … They build your morale up. They make you feel like you have enough energy to fight,” she said.
For a preview of what you might hear today, look up some of the videos posted on musicmaker.org. Cohen, dressed in blue hair and flamboyant outfits, has a dynamic stage presence and a personable banter with the audience. Her voice and delivery are confident on traditional blues tunes like “Rock Me Baby” and “Let the Good Times Roll,” played in an upbeat style reminiscent of Chicago blues. On that same site you can hear how she puts her stamp on the Staples Singers’ classic “I’ll Take You There.”
The blues tradition can be heard in every style she sings, Cohen said. She has sung all her life and “as a child I used to hear blues all the time from family members,” she said. “My father was a blues lover. I had different family members who sang blues for fun … So blues can be almost like a virus—once it gets in you, you almost can’t get it out of you.”
Her stage presence is “part of my personality. I’ve always been colorful,” she said. “I went to Bourbon Street University,” she said. Performing extensively in New Orleans “made me comfortable working in front of people.”
The band members she will perform with today are Robert Nesbit on guitar, Darryl Hutchins on bass and fellow Music Maker artist Bubba Norwood on drums. Norwood is “a great drummer,” she said. Nesbit, whom she met soon after coming to North Carolina, serves as her music director. He’s young, “but kind of like an old soul,” she said. When she first met him, “He had so many nice blues licks, and it was just interesting because they were very old blues licks, and he was such a young kid.” Hutchins “knows the blues and he knows how to become one with the music.” He’s not a fancy technician, but the blues is not about how fast you can play, “but what kind of groove you get.”
She wants the audience at today’s concert to open up and realize the blues is in all music. “Some people feel that the only blues is just the traditional Mississippi Delta blues, but all music comes from the blues,” she said. “You’re gonna hear blues in everything that I do.”
Today’s show will have “a little bit of everything,” Cohen said. She may tell some stories, and “drop a little bit of Zydeco, who knows? It’s gonna be a fun time.”
Read more: The Herald-Sun - MOTHER BLUES
Source: The Herald-Sun
by by Mark Coltrain 22 • LIVING BLUES • June 2011
June 2011 • LIVING BLUES • 23
Thomas “Nose”
Norwood
My Foot Was
Real Funky
and Strong
Thomas James Norwood goes by several names—at home it is his childhood nickname of “Bubba”, but during his years playing drums behind Ike and Tina Turner’s Kings of Rhythm in the 1960s, he became known professionally as “Nose”, which he still goes by today. Norwood is quick to say that everyone in the Kings of Rhythm had a nickname. His came as naturally as his talent for playing drums. The Kings of Rhythm are only the tip of Norwood’s impressive resume—he’s played with everyone from Little Richard to Earl Palmer, Albert King to the Monkees.
In his book Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Side Man, James Brown trombonist Fred Wesley called Norwood “the first truly funky drummer I ever played with.” Norwood responds, “When I first started learning the drums, I had a funky foot. That’s what I was basically known for was my foot. My foot was real funky and strong. Playing the double beats, playing funk mixed with New Orleans funk—drum styles. They say funk originated in New Orleans, funk was here in North Carolina too. There’s a lot of funk drummers—there’s a whole bunch of them now. Now it’s like a thing you can actually learn. The drummers are so good now, I’ve got DVDs, these advanced drummers, funk is on the sheet. Before that it was just a feeling. We called it funk because it felt good, it wasn’t straight, it wasn’t just an old plain backbeat with a straight 4/4 bass drum.”
Norwood’s Los Angeles–based band Sam and the Goodtimers was the backup band for national touring acts making stops in Southern California in the late 1960s and early ’70s. These days Norwood is back home in North Carolina, spending his time in semi-retirement leading the gospel band in his childhood church and gigging with the Music Maker Relief Foundation’s stable of colorful musicians—everyone from Cool John Ferguson to John Dee Holeman.
Thomas “Nose” Norwood was born June 20, 1942, the middle child in a family of two sisters and a mother who worked as a housekeeper for a local “rich family.” The Norwoods lived in a three-story house on Main Street straddling Carrboro and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
“We had some antique furniture, I beat it all up with limbs I pulled off the trees. I been beating on stuff ever since I was big enough to do it.”
Norwood said drumming just came naturally to him. He told a story about when he was raking leaves in his yard on Veteran’s Day when he was seven or eight. There was a Veteran’s Day parade happening around the same time, and his house was on the paraderoute. When a military band came marching by, he jumped in line and followed them to the baseball field on the University of North Carolina campus. When Norwood disappeared, his mother called the police, who soon found him sitting beside the bass drum player with the band. After that, he recalls, he would put apples on sticks and use them as mallets to pound the family wash tub.
Norwood did not have his own drum set growing up. He “borrowed” his school’s set during the summer (without anyone else knowing). He finally got his own kit around age 16 by saving money he made by working on the local milk truck and with the help of his older sister.
Norwood also played drums in his high school marching band until he graduated in 1961. During this time, he fell in with the drummer and leader of a notorious local party band that came to be a big influence on his style. “What motivated me was a group called Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts. Actually, Doug took me under his wing because he was crazy about me when I was playing the snare drum. Even as a kid when they band was playing, he would let me come up and play a drum cadence. He would let me come and watch him practice—he wouldn’t let nobody else do this.”
The two knew each other through Norwood’s young sister, whom Doug Clark used to date. Clark even took Norwood to Hot Nuts gigs at the Universities of Alabama and Georgia in addition to hometown romps around Chapel Hill. According to Norwood, Doug Clark was training him to take his place in the Hot Nuts in the event Clark was drafted. But when Clark didn’t pass the military’s entrance exam, Norwood saw his opportunity with the Hot Nuts vanish, so during his senior year of high school he formed his own party band—the Scepters—with members of a rival high school marching band from Durham.
The Scepters were a five-piece band (two singers, guitar, bass and drums) who covered popular R&B hits of the early 1960s. Norwood also booked the gigs, and the Scepters got popular enough in their six months of existence that they opened for Hank Ballard and the Midnighters on a date in nearby Hillsborough.
It was also during Norwood’s senior year that Ike and Tina Turner had a gig nearby. “Ike Turner came to Durham. He had a very good drummer from Washington, D.C., named TNT Tribble Jr., and he was professional. He was so good they had him on the placard. But the only thing, anytime that they had some time off to learn new songs, he [Tribble] would go home, so they couldn’t advance. Couldn’t learn nothing because the drummer’s the most important part of your band. He would go home to D.C. They wanted somebody that wasn’t going to be running back and forth. They heard about me. I wanted to go big. I’d been to a couple of shows—James Brown show in Durham, Fats Domino—I’d done seen and that was what I really wanted to do was be a professional drummer.
“Doug [Clark] had the name—Ike was looking for a drummer, so he asked for Doug, but Doug recommended me because he knew that’s what I really wanted to do. So he told me about it and I went out and rehearsed one day and was gone the next! One rehearsal!
“And let me tell you something—this is very important: I used to go to the music store and buy albums. I’d never heard of Ike and Tina Turner before. I went to buy an album I’d heard by Fats Domino and I seen Ike and Tina Turner—I said I ain’t never heard of them before but I was just curious so I bought the album and I took it home. Anytime I buy something I listen to it and on my little homemade set I play with them. I kind of liked what they were doing so I learned the
songs—bam—you see the scenario? So when I auditioned I knew half the songs. I didn’t play them all that well but I played good enough to do a show and impress him. He put forth that much patience because he could’ve got a better drummer. He saw I was young—that he could teach and that’s what he went for.
“But first he had to come and talk to my mother because I was a kid. Him and Tina both came to my house and told my mother they’d take care of me, she didn’t have to worry. I hadn’t turned 18—he got me just before my birthday. School turned out the eighth of June and I was gone around the ninth and my birthday was the 20th of June, so I turned 18 on the road.
“That was ’61. It was so quick! We had a movie house and our house was right around the corner. So when I passed by there all my friends was standing outside the movie house—I was waving at them [laughing]. Our first job was in Nashville, Tennessee—that’s where we was on our way to the next day!
“When I first joined the band, he wouldn’t let me hang out with the musicians. Tina would take me to the movies. They didn’t want me to get into—you know how older musicians are. They watched over me—they really raised me.”
Norwood had to grow up fast on the road. He says he was under a lot of pressure, especially that first year, trying to learn as much as possible as fast as possible. He also spoke of a time when he almost left and came back to North Carolina after particularly rough gig in Houston, but Norwood decided to stay. By the end of his first year with Ike and Tina playing five to six gigs a week and learning mostly on stage, Norwood started to establish his own musical identity.
“I became so good that they were talking about me in Vietnam! What made me so good, if you was a drummer I could listen to you—I could play what you play and put it with what I got and play your gig my way. That became one of my weapons.
“I used to walk into clubs and drummers would drop they drum sticks. Then they’d have to get up and let me play. They’d see me and say, ‘Holy…let him come over here.’ If they wouldn’t then the bandleader would do it—let James sit in, let him show you something.”
Eventually Norwood started hanging out with his bandmates who, like Ike and Tina, took him under their wing, introducing him to other styles of music like jazz, in person and through recordings. Norwood said he hung out with many of Turner’s horn players who were “superstar professionals” with long reputations that preceded them wherever they traveled.
After an uncertain start in a studio in New Orleans, he became an in-demand studio musician in Los Angeles when he wasn’t traveling during the mid-1960s, mainly because he spent so much time practicing his craft.
In those early days, though, Norwood said he was probably on the road 90% of the year, doing rough one-night chitlin’ circuit gigs.
“I’ve seen fights—I went through the rough set. Not the good clean show set, 45 minutes and you’re through. I have seen people actually get killed—almost. I’ve been in places where people come in shooting in Texas—it was good for that. I have seen a whole club burned down in Lubbock, Texas. Like Dallas, Texas, the Empire Room—fights.
“We played a club, I think it was in Midland, Texas, and [Ike] actually drop-kicked a guy in his eye—it was a short stage and he was trying to run his hand up Tina’s dress and Ike drop-kicked him and his eyeball fell out—his eye was hanging out of his socket. We had a fighting band.”
Norwood has more than violent stories about Ike Turner, however. “But [Ike] was smart. We was in San Francisco—no gigs, we were at the hotel. He got on the plane and went to New York, got a record deal, got money up front, came back, paid everything. Never missed a payday with this man.
“All that’s missing and I hate that because he had to leave with that—he left this world like he was a sorry person. That man was smart. He needed more recognition than what he got. I’m sorry that it happened to him that way.”
Norwood got to visit Carrboro only when he had gigs nearby—which was a total of three times during his seven-year stint with Ike and Tina. Despite that, Norwood never burned out. In fact, he enjoyed it because he was more into his music than ever. “I didn’t even sleep, I was a country boy traveling all over the country with girlfriends in a lot of cities.”
The year 1968 marked changes for the drummer. According to Norwood, the members of Ike’s band asked for a $10 raise each, and when Ike told them to wait until they had another hit, the whole band quit. Norwood was the last one to leave. Afraid to disappoint Turner, he made an inglorious exit, falsely claiming that his allergies made him unable to travel and then hiding in a nearby movie theater when Turner came looking for more of an explanation.
Not only was Norwood afraid of disappointing Turner, who was like a father to him, but he also didn’t feel up to the challenge of having to relearn how to play with an entirely different outfit of musicians. Instead, Norwood was hired for a series of gigs with Little Richard, whom he’d met through Turner and had played with briefly a couple of years prior.
After the uneventful stint with Richard ended, Norwood landed back in Los Angeles, where a two-week gig with Major Lance immediately fell into his lap, and he joined up with some members of Ike and Tina’s old band to co-found Sam and the Goodtimers: Ernest Lane, Clifford Solomon, Willie “Jitterbug” Webb, Mack Johnson and Sam Rhodes. The Goodtimers “became the band to call on for any professional jazz, rock ’n’ roll, or pop gigs—if you came to L.A. and you needed a backup band, we were the band!” Because of his good reputation, Norwood continued to do a lot of studio work during this time as well.
Within a year after they started performing, Sam and the Goodtimers got a bizarre but lucrative offer to play with the Monkees. “We was playing in a club called the Soul’d Out—we became their house band. The Monkees had one year of contracts—this is the first time they broke up—they had a year of contracts to fulfill. It was Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Mickey Dolenz—Peter Tork wasn’t on this trip. One by one, they rode us around in their limousine [laughs]—talking about how they was interested in us. They wanted to go out with a backup band to fill these last contracts, so they gave us a price we couldn’t refuse. Everything with them was first class. Playing with them we never walked in the airport, never stepped on ground, it was always carpet—carpet to limousine. Step off the plane, you on carpet, you walk the carpet to your limousine. That was the greatest experience—not musically—just the treatment.
“Let me tell you something funny, they had a parade in Charlotte, [North Carolina] we had to be in the parade. The Monkees was in front of us and we was in cars behind the Monkees, sitting on the outside of the cars. The Monkees had passed by and when it got to us, these little kids said, ‘The Monkees? Who is this? Well, that must be the gorillas!’ [laughs] I mean it was so funny, I never will forget that as long as I live.”
After his stint with the Monkees, life returned to normal, albeit still busy, for Norwood. Sam and the Goodtimers got their regular club gig back for a few years and on his off nights—Mondays—Norwood played a regular jazz gig at the California Club with a guitarist and an organist. Norwood even patched things up with Ike Turner and did a few sessions with him at the legendary Bolic Sounds. Sam and the Goodtimers broke up for good in the mid-1970s.
In the early 1970s Norwood played a brief stint with the Johnny Otis Show and married one of Otis’ backup singers, Joyce Cannon, with whom he had two children—one son and one daughter. Norwood also played regularly with the pop group the Friends of Distinction for several years. When the Friends of Distinction dissolved in the mid-’70s Norwood began his slow drift back east, finding work as the drummer in a country-rock house band called Butch Honeybone at a casino in the small mining town of Globe, Arizona. After Honeybone went their separate ways in the late 1970s, Norwood briefly met up with some friends in St. Louis from his days with the Kings of Rhythm.
Norwood had crossed paths with Albert King during his days with the Kings of Rhyhm in the ’60s but it wasn’t until the 1980s that the two played together. Norwood moved to St. Louis in the mid-1980s to do some gigging with former Kings of Rhythm guitarist Herb Sadler. Shortly after Norwood arrived, Sadler found out that King needed a reliable drummer and recommended Norwood—the deal was sealed. Norwood toured with King’s band off and on for about three years in the mid and late ’80s, traveling around the United States and Scandinavia. Norwood said he knew of King’s work as a bluesman but remains asmatter-of-fact about this gig as any of this others: first and foremost, playing with King was a job. The two weren’t close—when asked if he considered himself a friend or colleague of the late King, Norwood said, “Neither. I was his drummer.”
When he left King’s band in the late 1980s, one of his uncles told Norwood that if he did not come back to spend some time with his mother before she died, he might live to regret it. That argument was persuasive, so a prodigal son returned to Carrboro.
Unfortunately, Carrboro and Chapel Hill are a far cry from the vibrant jazz, blues, and soul scene of Southern California, so Norwood had to return to manual labor. He found jobs at the University of North Carolina doing housekeeping and landscaping throughout the 1990s but rarely shared his background in music with his co-workers and peers there.
Norwood occasionally picked up gigs with small groups—mostly gospel—around Durham until he got heavily involved with the gospel band in the church of his youth—the First Baptist Church of Carrboro, North Carolina, with whom he still performs.
In 2008, Norwood met up with Tim Duffy of Hillsborough, North Carolina’s Music Maker Relief Foundation through another local music enthusiast, Peter Kramer. Norwood played his first Music Maker gig on New Year’s Eve in Durham. Since then he’s backed up many of Music Maker’s artists. “You got some that really don’t have no time to them like Captain Luke. Cool John plays with them a lot and the bass player, Sol—I stick with them. I make them stick with whatever we put down; I make it concrete because I’m the drummer. I’ll stick to whatever they are putting down—even if it gets to the point where they have to get a little wrong and I’ll do that too. I’m not there to change nothing; I do the best I can.
“Being a professional musician, I know what different rhythms are about. That’s all you have to do. It ain’t like you have to live
that, you just have to know what music is about, and that’s where I’m at.”
Source: Living Blues Magazine
by Dave Peabody Not your average Puerto Rican/Tuscarora Indian slide guitar playing blues woman.
Click here to download the article!
Source: fRoots Magazine
by Cliff Bellamy HILLSBOROUGH, NC—British rock veterans Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton are giving something back to the American blues music that influenced and nurtured their sound.
Townshend—who used to smash guitars on stage for theatrical effect years ago—has donated a signed Gibson SG guitar that will be auctioned off to benefit Hillsborough-based Music Maker Relief Foundation.
Clapton, who in the past has supported Music Maker programs, also made a charitable gift of 5,000 British pounds to the foundation as a challenge to blues fans to contribute to the organization, said Tim Duffy, president of Music Maker.
Townshend’s guitar will be auctioned off during the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, which heads out Jan 22-29. (The Caribbean cruise is sold out, but for waiting list information, visit http://www.bluescruise.com.) Fans can make a bid on the guitar even if they are not on the cruise. To make a bid, send an e-mail to Denise Duffy at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call (919) 643-2456. Bidding starts at a minimum of $4,000, Duffy said.
Clapton made his donation to encourage music fans to contribute to the silent auction that also will take place on the cruise, Duffy said. Fans who do not go on the cruise can still bid on that auction as well, he said.
All proceeds from the guitar auction will benefit Music Maker programs. Music Maker provides grants and other assistance to blues musicians, and musicians who play other forms of traditional American music. In addition to grants, Music Maker also gives the artists opportunities to perform, and makes recordings of the artists available for sale.
Townshend has donated a guitar to Music Maker previously, Duffy said. He first met Clapton and Townshend in the mid-1990s. Taj Mahal, another supporter of Music Maker, introduced him to Townshend. Both Townshend and Clapton have supported the organization with endorsements. Both contributed quotes to the cover of the book “Music Makers: Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America.”
“The reason these guys are doing it is to inspire others to support elderly Southern artists,” Duffy said, “and God bless them for doing it.”
Townshend is known principally for his songwriting and distinctive guitar sound in The Who. He was the force behind their ground-breaking release “Tommy.” Since 1980, he has pursued a solo career, personal projects including publishing, and occasional tours and reunions with his Who colleagues.
Clapton has always acknowledged his debt to the blues. In 1994, he recorded a tribute to bluesman Robert Johnson, titled “Me and Mr. Johnson,” and in 2000 he recorded “Riding with the King,” with B.B. King, who also influenced Clapton’s guitar playing.
Music Maker began in 1994, helping musicians in the Winston-Salem area, before moving to Hillsborough in 2001. Its stated mission is to help “the true pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern music gain recognition and meet their day to day needs. We present these musical traditions to the world so American culture will flourish and be preserved for future generations.”
Musicians receiving help from the organization must play music rooted in a Southern tradition, be 55 years or older and have an annual income less than $18,000.
Source: Herald Sun
Los músicos de la Fundación Music Maker llevan por el mundo las raices de la música americana
by Gema Jimenez
Se trata de una organización que lleva 14 años trabajando con el objetivo de preservar las raices de la música americana: el blues, el gospel y el folk. Estos artistas llevan la música en la sangre. Han tocado en la calle y también con los más grandes, como B.B. King. Ahora están en España dentro de su gira europea.
Go to the source to see a video of the Music Maker Blues Revue performing in Spain!
Source: RTVE.es
by Steve Jones Freedom Creek
Mudcat
Music Maker Relief Foundation
http://www.musicmaker.org/
12 tracks
I was driving home one day and Mudcat was on Sirius/XM radio’s BB King’s Bluesville. I was intrigued by his vocals and made a mental note to find out more about him. Our next Crossroads Blues Society meeting was the next day, and one of the newly arrived CDs was this one so destiny, déjà vu or whatever it was forced me to volunteer to review this CD. I’m very glad I did.
Danny “Mudcat” Dudeck is a mainstay on the live Atlanta music scene. His and the band’s blend of Piedmont blues, gospel, bawdy humor and just great musicianship make for quite the fun listen. This, his ninth release, features Danny with three buddies recorded (as Tim Duffy notes on the CD) “one fine summer morning in the hills of Carolina.” Dave Roth on standup bass, Eskil Wetterqvist on drums and Lil’ Joe Burton on trombone along with Dudeck serve up a creative mix of traditional and original acoustic songs. Tim Duffy at MMRF has put together a fine little CD here with Mudcat and his buddies that every fan of acoustic blues needs to hear.
The title track starts off the CD. Mudcat’s busking style and slide work get the listener engrossed at the onset and take them for an enjoyable ride. Burto’s trombone adds a unique and very cool punctuation to the songs. He opens the next song “San Antone” with a burst and then Dudeck gets into a lilting melody. Dudeck wails in the chorus, “Somehow how tequila proceeded before my eyes open, and my mind blown again”, giving us an interesting visual image. He continues on the heavy drinking them even more in the next cut, “Empty Room Blues”, were he grunts and groans over an impressive guitar picking solo. In “I Want to Know” an uncredited gospel group with piano backs up Dudeck. He and the singers give a gut wrenching performance; Burton wails on his solo, too.
They go into some old fashioned bawdy humor with double entendres, unfinished lines and then obvious rhyming lines (usually quite dirty). “Big Bamboo” sings about how the plant pleases “one and all” in a variety of double entendres. In “Red Light” they get even more down and dirty with their unfinished thoughts. “Peter Rumpkin” continues in that vein a few tracks later. “Rattlesnake” again uses the double entendre. These cuts are both funny and musically well done.
A cool cover of James Brown’s “Try Me” gets respectfully done acoustically with some harmonies by the band members adding to Mudcat’s vocals. Another strong trombone solo further sells this one. “I Want to Know” and “Keep On the Sunny Side” are two other covers given a good treatment.
I thoroughly enjoyed this album. Mudcat’s vocals are gritty and strong, his slide work and guitar picking is great and his band is equally up to the task of delivering strong perfromances. Roth and Wetterqvist are solid backbones to this effort and Lil’s Joe adds so much with his trombone work. These guys would be a blast to see live but until you can do that I recommend listening to this album!
Source: Crossroads Blues Society
by Alana Harper, PRI's Studio 360 This story originally aired on PRI’s Studio 360. For more, listen to the audio.
A trio of young African-American musicians are re-inventing banjo music for a new generation.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops have been getting a lot of attention for being young African-American musicians embracing and re-inventing old-timey Americana. The string band has just released an album called “Genuine Negro Jig.” They’ve also performed with blues legend Taj Mahal, and appeared in a Denzel Washington movie.
This spring, the Chocolate Drops joined other creators and fans of their style of music at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, in the mountains of North Carolina. The gathering, held at Appalachian State University, saw intellectuals and banjo enthusiasts celebrating the legacy of the banjo and African American culture.
The members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops—Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson—met at the first Black Banjo gathering in 2005. According to the band’s website, the three initially got together as a tribute to Joe Thompson, a black fiddler in his 80s with a short bowing style inherited from generations of family musicians. Thompson inspired Giddens’s playing style, which she calls “beating the banjo to death.”
“We started out playing for square dances, country dances ... you gotta get their attention and make them want to move,” said Giddens.
The banjo, which has its roots in Africa, has long been associated with music styles dominated by whites. This began in the 1940s and 50s, when whites in blackface used the banjo in their minstrel acts. Through time, the music grew beyond the minstrel shows—due in part to to virtuosos like Earl Scruggs—and became the form commonly seen today.
The organizers of the Black Banjo Gathering want to educate both blacks and whites about where the instrument and the musical tradition originated. Groups like the Carolina Chocolate Drops have reclaimed the banjo, but for them, it’s all about the music.
PRI’s Peabody Award-winning “Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen” from WNYC is public radio’s smart and surprising guide to what’s happening in pop culture and the arts. Each week, Kurt Andersen introduces you to the people who are creating and shaping our culture. Life is busy—so let “Studio 360” steer you to the must-see movie this weekend, the next book for your nightstand, or the song that will change your life.
Source: Public Radio International
by Andrew Dansby Two years ago the Carolina Chocolate Drops came through town to play the International Festival. At the time the string band — multi-instrumentalists Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson — drew as much attention for the fact that its three members were black as it did for the vibrant versions of old string-band songs that made up its first album, Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind. Most stories included explanation of an African-American acoustic music tradition that was largely based around the banjo.
Having established itself, the band seems able now to talk more about music than race. The new Genuine Negro Jig features the trio threading new original material and more contemporary fare (covers of songs by Tom Waits and Blu Cantrell) through some traditional tunes.
Uniting it all is the band’s curiosity and interest in the rudiments of song (old or new), as well as its formidable chops. With acoustic instruments and accoutrements such as bones, jugs and kazoos they’ve honored the songster traditions of stylistic diversity and cross-generational interpretation. Flemons talked about the band’s approach to making music.
Q: For an old song, Trouble in Your Mind seems to fit the times. I guess that’s the thing about bad times songs ...
A:That’s the thing about a lot of these songs, they have universal messages. They can cover great lengths of time, just because of the themes. Bad times always end up coming back at some point. But good times roll, too.
Q:Your Baby Ain’t Sweet Like Mine made me wonder what happened to that genre of baked-goods-as-metaphor-for-sex songs?
A:Y’know, I don’t really know what it is, it also appears a little in Cornbread and Butterbeans, where sex in the song is really taken very lightheartedly. It’s kind of like the throw-off to the side instead of being the full focus, which tends to be the case in a lot of modern songs, where it’s the big focus.
Q:You guys seem to unravel a lot of time-honored preconceptions about old music. But do you feel region has more to do with older music forms than race?
A:Oh absolutely. But that’s a thought people don’t particularly spend much time with. It’s something that once I went to the South, being from Arizona, I really understood what it was about. There are vastly different sounds and accents and everything based on the part of a state, from one county to another. The way people talk and eat, it’s different, and that sort of stuff comes across in the music, too.
Q:Slapping legs, playing bones, blowing on jugs: Your record is a reminder you don’t need a $2,000 guitar and an expensive amp to make music.
A:No, sometimes you just need to look around your kitchen.
Q: So what exactly does playing bones require of you?
A:(Laughs.) That’s the million-dollar question. It’s such a simple instrument but it’s very hard to pinpoint down. You see European influences from it, African influences from it. The castanets have the same function. Sometimes you look beyond the physical instrument and find it’s more about the function.
Q:Do you know from what creature your bones came?
A:The ones I play came from a cow.
Q: Is it difficult to acquire such an instrument?
A: No, it’s pretty easy. One fellow told me, “To do bones, all you gotta do is throw them on the roof and they’ll bleach themselves.” That’s what bones will do if you leave them out in the world. Sometimes I’ll show people how to play them and they’ll drop them and say, “Oh no!” I tell them not to worry. It’s just bones.
Q: So are you a pack rat?
A: Oh yeah. (Laughs.) I got a ton of books and everything else, music and things, laying around all over the place. ... And it’s not just recordings. We’re starting to delve into sheet-music songs. Genuine Negro Jig is something Rhiannon got from a sheet of paper and adapted based on that sheet. There’s a whole new aspect of music out there that hasn’t been researched as much as it could be. With more people getting interested in it, hopefully more will be uncovered. I’m hoping in a few years we’ll see people younger than us playing this music. Hopefully they’ll run us over.
Q:It’s curious who gets lost and who doesn’t. Bessie Smith gets lovingly anthologized, and the Spivey Sisters, who came from this area, have barely any digital presence today.
A:Yeah, there are so many like that. I recently got into another singer from Texas that I found at random, Maggie Jones. The record didn’t have any sort of title, it just said “Maggie Jones.” My granddad is from Pinewood, Texas, so there’s a personal thing for me with what I grew up with. Some of these Texas artists happened to be the the first stuff I was drawn to. My granddad talks just like Leadbelly, he’s a country creature. He’s why I got into so many East Texas people, which is my favorite genre of songster. Texas’ history is so vibrant. It depends who you talk to, Texas is the most well-known unknown secret in American music.
Source: Houston Chronicle
The Pepsi Refresh Project, a groundbreaking effort that funds ideas, big and small, that can refresh the world, announced that the Sustaining Roots Music Community Project (SOOTS) received the most votes in May and is on track to be collectively awarded a $5,000 grant to organize a Benefit Blues Revue concert, and to help introduce younger generations to the community’s traditional music. In 2010, Pepsi is awarding more than $20 million to ideas that will move the world forward. Anyone can submit an idea at http://www.RefreshEverything.com and each month the public decides who wins.
Americans voted for over 1,000 ideas from May 1 through May 31. With the May ideas’ votes tallied, Pepsi is working with partners at Global Giving and GOOD to ensure that each idea qualifies to receive funding. Once approved, each idea will have the opportunity to be put into action.
“The Sustaining Roots Music Community Project is special because it shows young people taking an interest not just in learning about our community’s musical history, but also in preserving that history for future generations,” said Julie Trahin, Pepsi Bottling Ventures. “We look forward to the concert SOOTS will be putting on to benefit the Music Maker Relief Foundation as part of its Pepsi Refresh grant.”
Voters to http://www.refresheverything.com/soots agreed that the idea from SOOTS was a compelling one. SOOTS has experience in this area, having orgnaized four benefit concerts, raised $9,000 and united diverse communities through song and dance since its inception in 2006. The twofold goal of supporting aging musicians and engaging younger audiences promises to please everyone in the community. SOOTS will begin by organizing a Benefit Blues Revue featuring Piedmont Blues musicians, the proceeds of which will benefit the Music Maker Relief Foundation. The concert will be professionally filmed and recorded to preserve the local arts for future generations.
The Pepsi Refresh Project is an evolution of the Refresh Everything initiative Pepsi launched in 2009, which showed the brand as a catalyst for optimism. In 2010, Pepsi is funding ideas that will move the world forward in six categories: Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods and Education. The Pepsi Refresh Project will feature significant social engagement around people and the power of ideas.
To implement the project, Pepsi has partnered with three organizations dedicated to making a positive difference in the world: GOOD, a leading platform for thought and action revolving around pushing the world forward; Global Giving, an online marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them; and Do Something, the largest non-profit teen charity.
“The SOOTS Community Project achieves two important goals: first, to assist elderly Southern blues artists, and second, to introduce young people to this traditional musical genre,” said Rebecca Rigal, Pepsi Refresh Project Arts & Culture Ambassador. “Through a filmed and recorded concert, among other activities, SOOTS will achieve both of its goals.”
The Pepsi Refresh Project can be found at http://www.RefreshEverything.com or find more information on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/refresheverything and Twitter, @Pepsi or #pepsirefresh.
Source: Raleigh Downtowner Magazine
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