Blues, Women & The Guitar

Posted on June 24, 2010 by sixstrstories

When the first blues record – “Crazy Blues” featuring vocalist Mamie Smith, recorded on Aug. 10, 1920 – sold 75,000 copies in the first month after its release, American record companies knew that they were on to something.

This success led to the recording of many great female Blues singers, including Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace and Victoria Spivey. Today, these musicians are categorized as performing “Classic Blues:” a female vocalist accompanied by as little as a pianist to as much as a multi-piece Jazz band playing songs that are, in many cases, more bluesy than actual Blues.

But, at first, with no guitar.

The first time a female Blues singer made a recording accompanied only by a guitar was on October, 23, 1923. The singer was Sara Martin, the guitarist was Sylvester Weaver and the song was “Longing For My Daddy Blues.”

By the way, the first male Blues singer/guitarist to make a record was Ed Andrews in 1924 doing “Barrel House Blues.” (Isn’t it somewhat disappointing to learn that the first male Blues singer/guitarist had such an un-colorful name?)

I would guess that there were other female-Blues-singer-with-guitar records after October, 1923, but the next one I know of was made on November 27, 1927. The guitar duo of Sylvester Weaver and Walter Beasley accompanied 14-year-old Helen Humes on “Cross-Eyed Blues” and “Alligator Blues.”

It seems that it wasn’t until June 18, 1929 (My post of that day should have been a triple header!) that a female Blues singer made a recording accompanying herself on guitar. That would be Memphis Minnie.

Memphis Minnie was born Minnie Douglas, June 3, 1896 in Algiers, LA. She recorded “Bumble Bee Blues” with second guitarist, Kansas Joe McCoy for Columbia Records in New York, NY. As a singer and instrumentalist that few Blues musicians of either gender could match, Minnie went on to have a long career in music, performing often and making records for several labels. Her last recording session was in 1959. She passed away on August 6, 1973. Check her out!

The topic of this post was inspired by a discovery I made in a wonderful book I’ve been reading: Delta Blues by Ted Gioia. In chapter 5, section 2, entitled “Let the buzzards eat me whole,” I learned about Geeshie Wiley.

Geeshie Wiley was a female Blues singer/guitarist whose “total recorded output can be heard in less than twenty minutes, and what is known about her life recounted even more quickly,” according to Mr. Gioia. What is known is that in two recording sessions, one in March, 1930 and the other in March, 1931, and both for Paramount Records at their studios in Grafton, Wisconsin, Geeshie and Elvie Thomas, another female Blues singer/guitarist, recorded six songs. On some, Geeshie sings lead and plays guitar with Elvie playing a second guitar part. On at least one, “Motherless Child,” Elvie sings lead and is accompanied by Geeshie on guitar.

Geeshie is the real standout of the two, with the songs “Skinny Leg Blues” and “Last Kind Words” being especially fine.  On her Wikipedia page, author Don Kent is quoted as saying: “If Geeshie Wiley did not exist, she could not be invented: her scope and creativity dwarfs most Blues artists. She seems to represent the moment when black secular music was coalescing into Blues.”

You can go to:  http://www.archive.org/details/Words and listen to “Last Kind Words” and see for yourself.

Also, according to the website publicdomain2ten.com, Geeshie’s recording of “Skinny Leg Blues” is in the public domain so I can post it here for you to listen to. Click on this: “Skinny Leg Blues” by Geeshie Wiley .

I hope you enjoy discovering new music as much as I do!

Posted in Posts with Audio | Tagged | Leave a comment

One Guitar, Fingerpicked

Posted on June 21, 2010 by sixstrstories

To sit in a room and listen to a good player fingerpick an acoustic guitar is a most enjoyable experience.

When there are another 9,000 or so other people in that room with you and the person fingerpicking the one acoustic guitar is James Taylor, that is magic.

I have recently had the great pleasure and privilege of attending a local show of the Carole King/James Taylor Troubadour Reunion Tour 2010. In an evening of highlight after highlight, the moments that struck me the most were those times when the only sound in the silenced arena was the sound of James Taylor fingerpicking his acoustic guitar.

Be it the intro to “Blossom,” “Country Road,” “Fire and Rain” or “Mexico,” the sound of that one guitar filled the cavernous space and told us all we needed to know. The solo guitar break in “Shower The People” took over from an eight-piece band and the music did not sound empty. And when that one guitar, fingerpicked, accompanied the voices of James Taylor and Carole King singing harmony on “You Can Close Your Eyes,” well, that was heavenly, musical perfection.

To sit in a room and listen to a good player fingerpick an acoustic guitar is a most enjoyable experience indeed.

If you’ve had a similar experience that you’d like to write about and share, I’d love to hear from you. Just click on “leave a comment” below and write away!

Posted in Random Topics | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: A Double Header

Posted on June 18, 2010 by sixstrstories

June 18, 1967 was a Sunday. At the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California, the Monterey International Pop Festival was in its third and final day. The first two days of the festival had seen performances by many of the well known acts of the summer including: The Association, Lou Rawls, Simon & Garfunkel, Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Al Kooper, Jefferson Airplane and Otis Redding.

Sunday afternoon was devoted to a three hour performance by Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar, with Alla Rakha on tabla and Kamala on tamboura, that mesmerized the crowd of 7,000.

Sunday evening started with The Blues Project, from New York City. Buffalo Springfield played a bit later.

Then it was time for the eagerly awaited American debut of  the English band The Who. They started their set with the song “Substitute” and ended it with “My Generation,”  in a performance that climaxed with feedback, smoke bombs and a violently smashed guitar.

The Grateful Dead, down from San Francisco, came next and played what some said was the best music of the weekend.

Then came another American debut: The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Formed eight months earlier in London, England, they were introduced by the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones as “the most exciting guitar player I’ve ever heard.” The trio: Jimi Hendrix, guitar and vocals; Noel Redding, bass guitar and vocals and Mitch Mitchell, drums, played an 11-song set that included “Purple Haze,” “Like A Rolling Stone” and the finale, “Wild Thing.” For this last number, Jimi switched from his main, sunburst Stratocaster to a hand-painted Stratocaster that, not to be outdone, he proceeded  to set fire to, destroy and throw out to the audience in pieces at the end of the song.

The evening and the festival, closed with festival co-organizer John Phillips’ band, The Mamas and The Papas.

“California Dreaming,” indeed.

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend Monterey Pop, the documentary film of the festival directed by D.A.Pennebaker. The performances of Janis Joplin and Ravi Shankar alone are well worth the price of admission.

Also on June 18, in 1942, a young couple, James and Mary of Liverpool, England welcomed their first born, James Paul into the world. The young lad developed an interest in music and, inspired by Britain’s “Skiffle” craze in the mid-1950s, he learned to play guitar. In the summer of 1957, he met another Liverpool musician named John, who asked him to join his band.

The two boys formed a quartet in which Paul, soon known as “the cute one,”  played bass guitar, sang, and co-wrote songs with John. The group went on to be rather successful and well known, even though they named themselves after an insect.

Happy birthday, Paul.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 2 Comments

On This Day In Music History: “Like A Rolling Stone”

Posted on June 16, 2010 by sixstrstories

With a sharp crack of the snare drum on 4, followed by the thump of the bass drum on the “and,” the drummer, Bobby Gregg, kicks off the third take of the day, June 16, 1965 in Columbia Records’ Studio A in New York City. The electric guitars, piano, organ and bass guitar fall into place on the 1, and play the two-chord riff once, twice, three, four times before the singer, Bob Dylan, hurls out the opening line: “Once upon a time you dressed so fine…” When the song reaches the chorus, with its “La Bamba”-esque chord progression, Dylan puts an extra push behind the first “How does it feel?” and then asks again: “How does it feel?”

Bob, on electric guitar, and the band of studio musicians (Mike Bloomfield, electric guitar; Paul Griffith, piano; Al Kooper, organ; Russ Savakus, bass guitar) had started working on the song the day before, at the end of a long session. For the first take on the 15th, they played the song as a waltz, in 3/4 time. The third and final take of that day was the only complete run through of the song. On the 16th, they did 9 takes including 6 complete run-throughs before listening back and realizing that the second complete take, take #3, was it. Columbia rush released the song as a single on July 20th. It became Dylan’s first #1 record.

In his 1971 book Bob Dylan: An Intimate Biography, Anthony Scaduto wrote: “When you heard Rolling Stone back then it was like a cataclysm, like being taken to the edge of the abyss, drawn to some guillotine of experience.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to this song, how many times I’ve put it on in the car and belted out those lyrics right along with Bob. But every time, every single time, it gets me. I get that rush, the thrill of being enveloped in perfection captured and sustained in six minutes and eleven seconds of music unlike any music before or since.

So, for you, what do you say?  How does it feel?

There are two wonderful books that I turned to to get most of the background information for this post. Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions (1960-1994) by Clinton Heylin and Bob Dylan Complete Discography by Brian Hinton.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 1 Comment

Recent Discoveries

Posted on June 15, 2010 by sixstrstories

Once upon a time, if I’d been asked, I’d have probably said that the master Jazz musician Charlie Christian was the first  electric guitarist on record. But since I’ve gotten into researching the history, including the “first recordings” of the musical genres I love, I’ve made some interesting discoveries.

What I now know is that, basically, once upon a time, I really didn’t know.

To start things off, let me first state that the very first electric guitar played on record was what was known at the time as a “Hawaiian” electric guitar. This was a six-string instrument that didn’t really look like a guitar and was played sitting down, laid across the player’s lap, the strings “fretted” with a steel bar or slide. This kind of instrument was the first commercially made electric guitar. The first successful one was manufactured by the Ro-Pat-In Corporation of California in 1931. They called it the “Electro Hawaiian.” It later became known as the “frying pan” guitar. In 1934 the company began marketing their instruments under the “Rickenbacker” name.

My interest, and therefore my research, was in finding the first person to record playing a “Spanish” electric guitar. This instrument was a normal-looking and normally-played archtop guitar with a magnetic “pickup” attached. Ro-Pat-In made their “Electro Spanish”  in 1932 and the Gibson Guitar Company made their first, the “ES-150 Electric Spanish”  in 1935.

For a while, Eddie Durham held the title.

Eddie Durham (Aug.19, 1906 – March 6, 1987) was a composer, arranger, trombonist and guitarist. He made a recording on September 30, 1935 with Jimmie Lunceford and His Orchestra entitled: “Hittin’ The Bottle.” This cut featured Eddie taking a solo on “amplified guitar.” It seems that what this means is that he played a Spanish, resonator-style guitar with a microphone either inside of it or positioned very, very close to it. Not an “electric” guitar.

It wasn’t until March 18, 1938 that Eddie cut a record playing an actual electric guitar. He did this with the Jazz group The Kansas City Five. They recorded four pieces that day: “Laughing At Life,” “Good Mornin’ Blues,” “I Know That You Know” and “Love Me Or Leave Me,” each one featuring a single-note solo played by Eddie on an electric guitar. Very cool stuff!

Recently though, thanks to a random search for “electric guitar” on Wikipedia, I discovered something “new:” Roy Newman and His Boys and George Barnes.

It seems that 16-year-old guitarist George Barnes (July 17, 1921 – Sept.5, 1977)  made a record backing up Blues singer Big Bill Broonzy in Chicago,IL, on March 1, 1938 (17 days before Eddie). The two sides are “Sweetheart Land” and “It’s A Low Down Dirty Shame.” In listening to them, the guitar solos are definitely being played on an electric instrument. Equally cool stuff.

But then the Wikipedia article says that the first Spanish electric guitar recording made “west of the Mississippi” was made by guitarist Jim Boyd with the band Roy Newman and His Boys. They cut three sides: “Hot Dog Stomp,” “Shine On Harvest Moon” and “Corrine, Corrina” on September 28, 1935 in Dallas, Texas. If you’re keeping score, that was two days before “Hittin’ The Bottle” (not really an electric guitar) and almost 2 1/2 years before young George Barnes.

Again, thanks to the internet and a website called Internet Archive (www.archive.org), I found a downloadable recording of the “Corrine, Corrina” cut. And, since the site says that the recording is in the public domain, I can share it with you. Listen and enjoy: “Corrine, Corrina” by Roy Newman and His Boys, featuring: Jim Boyd.

There you go. The guitar solo comes in after the second verse. It sounds like an electric guitar to me. (But then, how would you describe the sound of an electric guitar?) If you listen closely, you can hear Jim playing walking lines behind the vocals and other soloists throughout the rest of the recording. Very cool indeed!

Charlie Christian, by the way, made his first recording with the Benny Goodman Sextet on October 2, 1939. On that day, he made the legendary recording of “Rose Room.” Also cool and very highly recommended.

So: who was the first electric guitarist on record? Now you know, too.

Posted in Posts with Audio | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: Les Paul

Posted on June 9, 2010 by sixstrstories

Les Paul, guitarist and inventor, was born Lester William Polsfuss on this day, June 9, in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

When I hear the name Les Paul, the first thing I think of is the Gibson guitar that bears his name. I picture a solid body electric with a small, round-ish shaped body, yellow/orange- colored sunburst top, two humbucking pickups, a tune-o-matic bridge that is seperate from the “stop” tailpiece and the neck, capped with a black headstock, three tuning pegs on each side and the trademark white Gibson logo, top and center. Also, having played one once, I know that the guitar is heavy: the body being made of mahogany and maple. 

The original “Les Paul” guitar was designed mostly by Gibson’s Ted McCarty with a debateable amount of input from Les, but definitely inspired by an instrument that Les invented in 1941 called “The Log.” This instrument, according to Les himself, was called “The Log” because: “It was made from a solid 4 x 4 inch piece of wood with a neck, and to make it look like a guitar we clamped on a pair of wings cut from the side of an old guitar.” (Guitar Player Magazine, May 1973) When Les presented this prototype to Gibson in 1946, “They politely ushered me out the door.” In 1950, with Les near the peak of his recording career, Gibson not only sought his input in the design of the new guitar but an endorsement deal that resulted in the instrument bearing his name.  

The reason behind the solid wood, by the way, is to increase the sustain of the guitar’s notes. With “The Log,” Les once said: “You could go out and eat and come back and the note would still be sounding.”

The “Les Paul” guitar was first marketed in 1952 by Gibson Guitars to compete with the “Telecaster,” a solid body electric that had been introduced by the Fender Electric Instrument Co. the year before. The “Les Paul” is still being made and is Gibson’s most popular model.

The guitar players that I connect with the “Les Paul” and who definitely took advantage of its sustain and distinctive tone are Jimmy Page, Duane Allman and Keith Richards. Keith was the first famous British guitarist to buy and use a “Les Paul,” doing so in 1964. 

The other thing I think of when I hear the name Les Paul is an album I own entitled: Chester & Lester. Recorded and released in 1976, it features country guitarist Chet Atkins and Les Paul playing wonderful, casual-sounding arrangements of 10 jazz standards. It also marked the coming-out-of-retirement of Les, who had had a very successful recording career from 1945-1964. Chester & Lester won the Grammy Award in 1976 for “Best Country Instrumental Performance.” Les told Guitar Player Magazine in December 1977: “You could have knocked me over. I don’t know why they called it country, though. Hell, there wasn’t a country cut on it.”

Les Paul passed away on August 14, 2009 in White Plains, NY.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 1 Comment

Once & Again: Dave Rawlings Machine

Posted on June 5, 2010 by sixstrstories

Last summer, on Sunday, August 2, 2009, to be precise, Dave Rawlings Machine kicked off the day’s music at George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 in Newport, RI, with “Diamond Joe.”

It was 11:30 in the morning under the tent that covered the Harbor Stage. The duo: singers/acoustic guitarists/banjo players/songwriters David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, had performed the day before on the main (and much larger) Fort Stage as the “two-piece band called Gillian Welch.”  This hour-long set featured David on lead vocals, more songs by him and lots of his incredible guitar solos, played on his trademark 1935 Epiphone Olympic guitar.

Some of the highlights of this performance (which was, to me, one of the highest-lights of the two day festival) were the songs “I Hear Them All,” “The Bells of Harlem,” “Method Acting/Cortez the Killer” and a long and mesmerizing version of Bob Dylan’s  “Queen Jane Approximately.” The stunningly-pure beauty of the blend of their voices and their perfectly played guitars was at times nearly overwhelming.

Thanks to NPR being on hand to broadcast, record and archive the festival, I was able to download the show when I got home and burn it to a CD. Listening to and reliving that Sunday morning concert has been one of the most dependable joys of the past year.

Last night, Friday, June 4, 2010, to be precise, Dave Rawlings Machine kicked off the show at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, NH with “Monkey and the Engineer.”

The duo has become a quintet, augmented for most of the night by the addition of Ketch Secor on harmonica, fiddle and vocals, Morgan Jahnig on upright bass (both from the band Old Crow Medicine Show) and Gabe Witcher on acoustic guitar, fiddle and vocals.

Some of the highlights of this two-set, two-and-one-half hour show were the same as the Newport Show and it was such a thrill to again hear equally-awesome versions of “Method Acting/Cortez the Killer” and “Queen Jane Approximately.” But the first chills of the night came when “I Hear Them All” segued into “This Land Is Your Land.” And there were others: the unrecorded David/Gillian duet “That’s The Way It Will Be,” the full quintet versions of “Sweet Tooth” and “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)” and Gillian’s featured number “Look at Miss Ohio” that continued the string of shivers down my spine.

But saving the best for last, “The Weight” (by Robbie Robertson and the Band) was an inspired choice for an encore and featured the finest ensemble playing and singing of the night. Each of the four singers had their turn at a verse and then joined together on the classic chorus and the last (“Catch a cannonball…”) verse in absolutely heavenly harmony.

There is nothing like live music, especially music played and sung like this. The recorded music by these artists is pretty good, too. Highly Recommended.

What a way to start the summer!

Posted in Random Topics | 1 Comment

Summer’s Here

Posted on June 4, 2010 by sixstrstories

Summer, the season, may still be sixsteen days away, but my summer vacation started yesterday. And, after seventeen years of school (starting with Mrs. Nixon’s Kindergarten in Newfields, NH) and thirty-five years of teaching, I don’t know what summer without a vacation is like. Poor me, huh?

This summer will be up to its “same old tricks,” but it does feature something new: this blog. With time to explore the possibilities of WordPress and figure out how to use them, I’m hoping to expand my offerings. I will keep you posted on all the anniversaries of birthdates, recording dates, release dates and major historical events in the world of folk, blues, country, rock & roll and jazz that I am privy to. Looking over the “calendar” that I have assembled and continually add to, June and August look good but July is overflowing with cool stuff. It’s gonna be fun.

So, I hope you keep checking in on sixstr stories over the months ahead. Please post a comment when you are so inspired (big thanks to all of you who already have!) and feel free to pass the link on to your friends.

“Good music doesn’t get old”

Talk to you soon.

P.S.: The title of this post comes from a song I wrote and recorded on my CD “There Are (Songs To Be Sung).” Listen: “Summer’s Here” by Eric Sinclair. I hope you enjoy it.

Posted in EFS Music | Tagged | 1 Comment

A Splendid Time Is Guaranteed For All

Posted on June 1, 2010 by sixstrstories

On June 1, 1967, I was in eighth grade at St. Michael’s Parochial School in Exeter, NH. I might have been thinking about graduation, but more than likely most of my thoughts were more about  Alice, a girl in my class that I was kind of starting to like.

I was not thinking about the new Beatles’ album.

I’d moved past the Beatles by then. I had several singles I’d bought back in 1964 after seeing them on Ed Sullivan and I had the albums Something New, Something New and Beatles ’65. (These were American Beatles albums, having no relation to the albums that the band was releasing in England. This was something I didn’t realize for many years.) My new favorite group was the Rolling Stones, the bad boys of rock & roll. I’d bought the albums Big Hits: High Tide and Green Grass and Aftermath. Later in June of ’67, I bought Flowers and brought it over to Alice’s house so that she could hear all these great songs that I was really excited about and… she mostly just giggled. In retrospect, she was probably justified because I now know that the rest of the world was listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I did finally buy a (vinyl) copy of Sgt. Pepper, but I don’t remember when. (It has the Apple label, so it must have been in the ’70’s sometime.) The song “With A Little Help From My Friends” became a staple of my performing repertoire all through the 1980’s and when I was a member of Merseyside, a Beatles cover band in the early ’90’s, we did the whole triptych of  “Sgt. Pepper/Little Help/Lucy In The Sky.” (And we rocked.) Finally, on 09/09/09 I was at Bullmoose Records in Portsmouth bright and early to buy my (remastered and repackaged) first CD copy. It sounds amazingly fantastic, revealing even more of the remarkable detail of this incredible work of art. Highly recommended.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the eighth album that the band released in the four years and eight months of their recording career. According to the book The Beatles: Recording Sessions (1988), December 6, 1966 was the day that recording started on a song for the album. That was: “When I’m Sixty-Four,” a song that they’d written years before and used to perform at gigs to fill in when their equipment broke down. The last recording for the album was on April 21, 1967 when they recorded the spoken gibberish that was meant to be heard after the huge piano chord ending of “A Day In The Life” as the record player tone arm tracked the record’s groove right to the end. (It is on the CD.) While recording the songs for Sgt. Pepper, they also recorded “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” which were released as a single.

So, they went from their first record, the single “Love Me Do”/”P.S. I Love You,” released in England on October 5, 1962, to the album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” released world-wide on June 1, 1967. As Mark Lewisohn wrote in the Recording Sessions book: “What surely stands out most of all is the Beatles’ sheer progression to this point in time.”

Happy first day of June.

Posted in Random Topics | Tagged | 1 Comment

On This Day In Music History: T-Bone Walker

Posted on May 28, 2010 by sixstrstories

One of the first concerts I went to was an evening show of the Boston Globe Jazz Festival in early February, 1969. The artist on the bill that I was most excited about seeing was B.B.King. Though I was months away from purchasing my first B.B.King album (Live and Well, bought at 2:30 am in a Times Square record shop), I was an avid reader of Down Beat magazine and knew much about the King of the Blues.

In just about every interview of B.B.King I’ve ever read, especially those over the years in Guitar Player magazine, B.B. always mentioned the influence that T-Bone Walker had on him. That’s how I first heard about the Father of the Electric Blues Guitar.

Aaron Thibeaux Walker was born in Linden, Cass County, Texas on May 28, 1910. On December 5, 1929, under the name Oak Cliff T-Bone, he made his first recordings singing and playing acoustic guitar: “Trinity River Blues” and “Wichita Falls Blues” for Columbia Records. In the late 1930’s, he started performing with an electric guitar and in July of 1942 made his first recording singing and playing electric: “Mean Old World Blues,” this time for Capitol Records. His biggest hit came in 1947, “Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad),” recorded on September 13 in Hollywood, CA for the Black and White label.

B.B.King described the sound of T-Bone Walker’s guitar as “the prettiest sound I think I ever heard in my life.” He also said: “I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today, from the first record I heard. He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record…He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an electric guitar.” Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix also both owed much to T-Bone, not only in their playing but in their stage act and showmanship as well.

If you’ve never heard T-Bone Walker, may I recommend a few titles? First, of course, the hit, “Call It Stormy Monday,” and then try “T-Bone Shuffle” and “T-Bone Jumps Again,” the later a jumping-indeed, full band instrumental. The songs “I’m Gonna Find My Baby” and “That’s Better For Me” feature guitar solos in their introductions that are full of classic T-Bone guitar licks and that great sound.

In the All Music Guide to the Blues, Bill Dahl wrote: “No amount of written accolades can fully convey the monumental importance of what T-Bone Walker gave to the Blues.”

T-Bone Walker passed away on March 16, 1975 in Los Angeles, CA.

Posted in On This Day In Music History | Tagged | 1 Comment