Blues / Blues Rock

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/mississippi-fred-mcdowell-mn0000898331/biography wrote:He was born in 1904 in Rossville, TN, and was playing the guitar by the age of 14 with a slide hollowed out of a steer bone. His parents died when Fred was a youngster and the wandering life of a traveling musician soon took hold. The 1920s saw him playing for tips on the street around Memphis, TN, the hoboing life eventually setting him down in Como, MS, where he lived the rest of his life. There McDowell split his time between farming and keeping up with his music by playing weekends for various fish fries, picnics, and house parties in the immediate area. This pattern stayed largely unchanged for the next 30 years until he was discovered in 1959 by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax was the first to record this semi-professional bluesman, the results of which were released as part of an American folk music series on the Atlantic label.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/robert-johnson-mn0000832288/biography wrote:If the blues has a truly mythic figure, one whose story hangs over the music the way a Charlie Parker does over jazz or a Hank Williams does over country, it's Robert Johnson, certainly the most celebrated figure in the history of the blues. Of course, his legend is immensely fortified by the fact that Johnson also left behind a small legacy of recordings that are considered the emotional apex of the music itself. These recordings have not only entered the realm of blues standards ("Love in Vain," "Crossroads," "Sweet Home Chicago," "Stop Breaking Down"), but were adapted by rock & roll artists as diverse as the Rolling Stones, Steve Miller, Led Zeppelin, and Eric Clapton. While there are historical naysayers who would be more comfortable downplaying his skills and achievements (most of whom have never made a convincing case as where the source of his apocalyptic visions emanates from), Robert Johnson remains a potent force to be reckoned with. As a singer, a composer, and as a guitarist of considerable skills, he produced some of the genre's best music and the ultimate blues legend to deal with. Doomed, haunted, driven by demons, a tormented genius dead at an early age, all of these add up to making him a character of mythology who -- if he hadn't actually existed -- would have to be created by some biographer's overactive romantic imagination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_John_Hurt wrote:John Smith Hurt, better known as Mississippi John Hurt (July 3, 1893[1][2] or March 8, 1892[3] — November 2, 1966) was an American country blues singer and guitarist.[4]
Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself how to play the guitar around age nine. Singing to a melodious finger-picked accompaniment,[5] he began to play local dances and parties while working as a sharecropper. He first recorded for Okeh Records in 1928, but these were commercial failures. Hurt then drifted out of the recording scene, and he continued his work as a farmer. Tom Hoskins, a blues enthusiast, would be the first to locate Hurt in 1963. He convinced Hurt to relocate to Washington, D.C., where he was recorded by the Library of Congress in 1964. This rediscovery helped further the American folk music revival, which had led to the rediscovery of many other bluesmen of Hurt's era. Hurt entered the same university and coffeehouse concert circuit as his contemporaries, as well as other Delta blues musicians brought out of retirement. As well as playing concerts, he recorded several studio albums for Vanguard Records.
He died in Grenada, Mississippi. Material recorded by Hurt has been re-released by many record labels over the years (see discography); and his influence has extended over many generations of guitarists. Songs recorded by Hurt have been covered by Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Beck, Doc Watson, John McCutcheon, Taj Mahal, Bruce Cockburn, David Johansen, Bill Morrissey, Gillian Welch, Guthrie Thomas and Rory Block.[6]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_John_Wrencher wrote:Big John Wrencher (February 12, 1923 - July 15, 1977), also known as One Arm John, was an American blues harmonica player and singer, well known for playing on Maxwell Street Market, Chicago in the 1960s, and who later toured Europe in the 1970s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Apple_Pie wrote:Sam Apple Pie were a British blues-rock band, of the late 1960s and 1970s, noted for having played at the first Glastonbury Festival in 1970, and for playing a role in the early careers of several musicians including Gary Fletcher, Dave Charles and Malcolm Morley

http://www.last.fm/music/Morning+After wrote:Morning After, English underground proto-punk/heavy fuzz-blues band who only released one completely unknown “Blue Blood” demo in 1971. The recording was with home studio equipment. Some of the tracks on the album sound like Blues Rock from the late 1960s and some have a more progressive touch such as Shuttah. Great & heavy guitar work that predicted much of the early ‘77 punk sound. Fuzz and wah-wah all over the album, snotty and passionate vocals, all own great compositions. The album title Blue Blood assumed a noble wealthy family and a member of the establishment but the music and lyrics are just the opposite. The music on this album is pure British Underground, electrifying, pure and raw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blackwater_Fever wrote:The Blackwater Fever are a dynamic blues guitar/drums duo, from Brisbane, Australia. The group have recently[when?] gained popularity after national radio exposure from Australian radio station Triple J, through the stations Home & Hosed segment, and their Unearthed program which gives new upcoming unsigned bands the opportunity for national exposure.

The Blackwater Fever were awarded Best Blues & Roots Act and the 2006 Sunshine Coast Music Festival.

http://www.last.fm/music/Hound+Dog+Taylor+&+the+House+Rockers wrote:Theodore Roosevelt “Hound Dog” Taylor (April 12, 1915 - December 17, 1975) was an American blues guitarist and singer. Taylor was best known for his raw vocal style and searing slide guitar, using a cheap Teisco guitar to great advantage.

Named after President Theodore Roosevelt, Mississippi-native Taylor took up the guitar when he was 20 years old. He made a few appearances on Sonny Boy Williamson’s fabled KFFA King Biscuit Time radio broadcasts out of Helena, AR, before coming to Chicago in 1942. It was another 15 years before Taylor made blues his full-time vocation, though. Taylor was a favorite on the South and West sides during the late 50s and early 60s. It’s generally accepted that Freddie King copped a good portion of his classic “Hide Away” from an instrumental he heard Taylor cranking out on the bandstand.

Taylor’s relentlessly raucous band, the HouseRockers, consisted of only two men, though their combined racket sounded like quite a few more. Second guitarist Brewer Phillips, who often supplied buzzing pseudo-bass lines on his guitar, had developed such an empathy with Taylor that their guitars intertwined with ESP-like force, while drummer Ted Harvey kept everything moving along at a brisk pace.

http://rateyourmusic.com/artist/elmore_james wrote:The son of sharecroppers, James grew up and learned to play the guitar in the area around the Mississippi Delta town of Durant. In 1937 he moved to Belzoni, Mississippi where he first heard the music of local legends Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson. Following Johnson's death, James and Williamson were partners for a time, playing together in southern juke joints and theaters. The two parted ways on 1939 and it was around this time that James took up electric guitar and began to develop the distortion-heavy sound which was to become his trademark.

After a spell in the US Navy during World War 2, James returned to the Delta, playing the clubs on Beale Street in Memphis and again playing with Williamson on Sonny Boy's King Biscuit Time radio program in Helena, Arkansas. His first record, a cover of Johnson's "Dust My Broom," was released in 1951 on the Trumpet label. He relocated to Chicago in 1952 and recorded for a variety of labels over the next ten years Modern, Chess, Fire, Fury and Enjoy Records among them and earned himself the nickname "King of the Slide Guitar."

Among his better known recordings are "Rollin' & Tumblin'," "The Sky Is Crying" and "It Hurts Me Too." Years of hard living and late nights in bars took their toll on James and he died of a heart attack at the age of 45. He was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame in 1992.

http://www.last.fm/music/Blind+Faith wrote:Blind Faith were an English blues-rock band that comprised Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and Ric (aka Rick) Grech. The band, which was one of the first “super-groups”, released their only album, Blind Faith, in August 1969.

Blind Faith formed in London, England, in late 1968 when Eric Clapton (ex-Cream) and Steve Winwood (ex-Traffic) were at loose ends following the demise of their former bands and began to spend time together again, jamming and working on new material at Clapton’s house in Surrey (they had previously collaborated on a Clapton project called Eric Clapton & The Powerhouse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dummer_Band wrote:The John Dummer Band also known as John Dummer's Blues Band, John Dummer's Famous Music Band, John Dummer's Oobleedooblee Band and The John Dummer Band Featuring Nick Pickett[1] was a British blues band, of the 1960s and 1970s, was noted for its extensive roster of members, including Graham Bond, Dave Kelly, Jo Ann Kelly, Tony McPhee Bob Hall, John O'Leary and Pick Withers, and for supporting US bluesmen such as Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker on UK tours.

https://acerecords.co.uk/get-it-on-the-kent-records-sessions wrote:For decades, Pacific Gas & Electric’s “Get It On” has been considered one of the lost classics of blues-rock. Released on three different labels in less than two years, it has been out of print since the early 1970s.

Not long after making this record, the group signed a big recording deal with Columbia, where their engaging blend of blues, funk, rock and soul won them international acclaim and scored them several hits and best sellers. The “Get It On” sessions presented an altogether more torrid side of PG & E, with the electrifying lead guitar of former James Gang alumnus Glenn Schwartz pushing the group’s black lead singer Charlie Allen to aggressive heights that their later work seldom achieved. This energetic selection of blues and soul standards was mostly cut live on the studio floor, with few to no overdubs – and because it was recorded in this way, I was delighted to find that there were enough alternate takes, unissued jams and finished masters to double the original running time of the album for this CD. Many of these were mixed down for this release by Ace’s good friend Rob Keyloch, who has done remarkably well in staying true to the spirit of the original 1968s mixes.

PG & E fans will be thrilled with the sound of the CD, as will they the previously unpublished live photographs from their appearance at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. The CD has been produced with the full co-operation of Brent Block (bass player) and Frank Cook (drummer/manager), and its reissue will mean that the entire early catalogue of Pacific Gas & Electric is at last available for both long-time admirers, and also the many new fans that other reissues have recently brought to the group’s table.

By Tony Rounce

http://www.saprecordings.com/amgc.html wrote:They loved the blues, but hated its popular, generic practitioners. It was the motivating factor for the Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir. That, and Judd Palmer's and drummer Pete Balkwill's acceptance of an opening slot for Canadian bluesman Lester Quitzau despite not having a band. You see, Palmer played slide guitar in Calgary country-folk band Great Uncle Bull. They would have made a good opener, but they broke up. He talked bassist and fellow Bullsman Vladimir Sobolewski into doing the gig. Sobolewski, in turn, called hotshot guitarist Bob Keelaghan from punk-blues-unsane-abilly combo The Puritans, knowing he shared Palmer's love for early blues and country. Keelaghan wasn't busy because The Puritans just broke up, too. Sobolewski knew this because he also played in The Puritans. In one week with three rehearsals, they put together a set and played the gig in January of 2001. Then people kept asking them to play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuby_%2B_Blizzards wrote:Cuby + Blizzards – also known as Cuby & the Blizzards are a Dutch blues group, founded in 1964 by vocalist Harry Muskee, and guitarist Eelco Gelling.During the 1960s, the band's mixture of sound, drawing upon a variety of genres which included blues and rock and roll, gave them a pioneering sound which was completely different from any other Dutch band in the same time period, using the name Peter & the Blizzards. The spelling of the name varies, with 'Cuby' also written as 'QB' and the ampersand (&) also written as 'and' or '+' and the 'and' sometimes left out. The spelling 'Cuby + Blizzards' was used on the first albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYKRnWSJT10 wrote:Born in April 1891, between Edwards and Bolton in southern Mississippi, Charley Patton was the scrawny child of sharecropper parents. In 1900, his family moved 100 miles north to the Delta and the Will Dockery Plantation. There Patton fell under the spell of guitarist Henry Sloan and would follow him to gigs. By 1910, he had become proficient as a performer and songwriter, having already composed "Down The Dirt Road Blues," a slow drag called "Banty Rooster Blues," and his theme song "Pony Blues."

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/dirty-blues-band-mn0000907551/biography wrote: Artist Biography by Bruce Eder

The Dirty Blues Band was a white blues outfit best known as the stamping grounds, for a time, for Rod Piazza and Glenn Ross Campbell. The group was spawned in Riverside, CA, from a convergence of members of a handful of notable local outfits -- their rhythm section, John Millikan (drums) and Les Morrison (bass), were high school classmates who'd previously played in the L-J's, whence also came keyboard player Pat Moloney. The L-J's had started out playing jazz in 1964, but by the end of 1965 had evolved into the Mystics, a much more blues-focused outfit, whose ranks included Bob Sandell on rhythm guitar and Rod Piazza on lead vocals and harp. Their main influences were such British Invasion bands as Them (whose "Mystic Eyes" had provided their name), the Animals, the Yardbirds, and the Rolling Stones -- although nominally a blues band, their sound was really more an amalgam of blues and R&B as done by those groups

That all changed when Piazza and a couple of his bandmates went to a performance by the Byrds at The Trip in Los Angeles, where the opening act was the still mostly unknown Paul Butterfield Blues Band. What they saw and heard that night convinced the Mystics, especially Piazza, that they had to switch over to playing a purer form of blues. They ceased being the Mystics, taking on the name House of DBS (meaning Dirty Blues Sound) in 1966. There followed a lot of gigs in and around Los Angeles, where they honed their new sound and also lost their original lead guitarist, Jeff Ray -- in his place, Piazza recruited a friend of his from a band he'd once hung out with, the Misunderstood, named Glenn Ross Campbell. the Misunderstood had broken up and he was available and willing, and once he joined, the group's sound fairly blossomed, as Campbell became known for stretching out on his solos and improvisations for long minutes at their shows.

Stone Dirt
By the summer of 1967, with the beginnings of a serious rock music press, the House of DBS was getting proper coverage, and by the end of that season, they had a management and production deal with Lee Magid, who was best known in the business at that time as the manager of singer Della Reese. Magid produced their debut album and sold it to ABC Records, also facilitating a name-change to The Dirty Blues Band. Their self-titled debut album appeared in early 1968 on the ABC imprint Bluesway, and although the members weren't entirely happy with the results of the two days of rushed recording, they seemed to have a promising future ahead of them. The military draft then reared its ugly head, and suddenly Millikan, Morrison, and Sandell -- the group's whole rhythm section -- were called up. Campbell exited by choice a little while later, seeing no future for the group. Ironically, they did carry on, however, with Rick Lunetta (guitar), Greg Anderson (bass), and Dave Miter (drums). That group, augmented by trumpet man Freddie Hill and saxmen Jimmy Forrest and Willie Green, got a second album together, entitled Stone Dirt. But by the end of 1968, even that second lineup had collapsed, and all concerned were pursuing solo and new group projects. Piazza and Campbell were the most visible alumni and, indeed, their presence in the band accounts for a significant part of the interest in their work, on the part of people who never did get to hear the original albums.