In May of 1952, during the sessions for what would be Little Walter’s first release under his own name on Checker Records, he and the band recorded two takes each of both ‘Juke’ and ‘Can’t Hold Out Much Longer’; the latter would be chosen as the B-side. Little Walter and His Night Cats Little Walter: […]
I recently had cause to take another look into Fleetwood Mac’s recording of ‘Need Your Love So Bad’ and the amount of information that is available now, as compared to what I had been able to cobble together when writing my books, (going back more than twenty years ago) is striking. The new information, while […]
Otis Spann w/ FM ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business’ Otis Spann was born on March 21, 1930 into a musical family (his mother played guitar, his father, piano), in Jackson, Mississippi. His informal schooling on piano began around the age of eight, under the supervision of a local musician named Friday Ford. By fourteen he was playing […]
Cuby + The Blizzards and Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac Eddie Boyd was already a veteran bluesman when he first went to Europe as a performer with the American Folk Blues Festival ’65. He had first recorded under his own name in 1947 and when a successful but often contentious seven-year stint with Chess records ended […]
“Sherman, set the controls on the Way Back Machine to Chicago, the Chess Studios, January fourth, 1969” All books, whether fiction or non-fiction serve as “time machines”, allowing us to vicariously experience the ancient, or recent past; speculative futures or imagined worlds and realms. “Fleetwood Mac in Chicago January 4 TH 1969 – The Legendary […]
Part One “Danny was outstanding – he had a guitar style that was totally unique. I seem to remember him playing this Watkins beginner’s guitar and yet making these wild sounds that reminded me in a way of Lowell Fulson… I was desperate to record him but I didn’t think his band had what it […]
I am not sure how the song first crossed the Atlantic, but the first to cover it in England (to the best of knowledge) was Alexis Korner and Blues Incorporated on the “Red Hot From Alex” LP in 1964 Based on Herbie Goins’ vocal and the comparatively more conservative tempo used, it would appear that […]
Mike Vernon first spotted Kirwan, all of seventeen at the time, playing guitar in a trio called Boilerhouse, with Trevor Stevens on bass and Dave Terrey on drums, “…I seem to remember him playing this Watkins beginner guitar yet making these wild sounds that reminded me in a way of Lowell Fulson… I was desperate […]
At the time that Eddie Boyd joined the 1965 American Folk Blues Festival tour of Europe he had been playing professionally for more than thirty years. He had recorded his first session as a leader almost twenty-years earlier and in the ensuing decades had released records on nine different labels. The labels had become progressively […]
The B-Side: ‘Rambling Pony’ The fourteen-year difference in age between John Mayall and the nineteen-year-old Peter Green at the time of Green’s joining The Bluebreakers was a lifetime in terms of life experience. Green moved into the same apartment block as Mayall on Portchester Road in Bayswater, west London, and the two bonded over Mayall’s […]