It all began with the French New Wave, which inspired the British New Wave’s Kitchen Sink Realism, New German Cinema, Japan’s New Wave, the Hollywood Renaissance; it seemed to be everywhere.

Background

The Australian film industry almost collapsed by the early 1960s, but The Gorton (1968-71) and Whitlam governments (1972-75) saved it from extinction with the funding of film production and the training of film makers through the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, which created a new generation of Australian filmmakers who were able to bring their visions to the screen. The 1970s saw a revival of the Australian film industry, producing almost 400 films between 1970 and 1985, altogether more than the entire backlog of Australian films.

The Australian New Wave was a period of resurgence, beginning in the early 1970s and lasted until the mid-late 1980s, which also led to Ozploitation, a film genre by the exploitation of colloquial Australian culture.

For me, as a young film student in Seattle, the precursor to the Australian New Wave began not with an Australian film director, but rather the English director, Nicholas Roeg. In his 1971 film Walkabout about two Anglo-Australian children, one a teenager and her much younger brother, who had lived a comfortable city life, but were abandoned by their father who had committed suicide on a road trip deep into the Outback. Struggling to survive in this unbearably hot and harsh terrain, they are saved by a young Aboriginal man, who is on a ‘walkabout,’ a rite of passage for Aboriginal males on the cusp of manhood. He teaches them to eat lizards, find water and hunt for lizards and wild game. The role is played by David Gulpilil, who at the time did not speak a word of English, which added to the film’s authenticity. The controversial nude swimming scene with Jenny Agutter still raises eyelids today. It is her rite of passage of emotional freedom.

KEY FILMS AND DIRECTORS

Peter Weir

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian mystery directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay by Cliff Green, based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay. The plot involves the disappearance of several schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic at Hanging Rock, Victoria on Valentine’s Day in 1900, and the subsequent effect on the local community. One of school girls is never found, and, the ones which were, are mystified, unable to explain what had happened.

The film stars Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse, Vivean Gray and Jacki Weaver, who reappears on screen decades later as a middle-aged crime boss in the Australian drama, Animal Kingdom, then in Hollywood’s Silver Lining Playbook.
Weir’s protagonists are generally outsiders in their own worlds, characters out of place, facing danger, uncertainty or betrayal. These figures often undergo a loss of innocence or spiritual awakening, where the camera captures their subjective states through oneiric compositions, distorted sound, slow motion, and unconventional lighting. His cinematography is atmospheric, almost bordering on surreal, creating a sense of place that becomes essential to the narrative.

Picnic at Hanging Rock was a commercial and critical success and helped draw international attention to the then-emerging Australian New Wave. It is considered one of the most iconic and defining films of the New Wave.

Other notable Peter Weir Australian films: The Last Wave (1977), The Plumber (1979), Gallipoli (1981).

Fred Schepisi

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a 1978 Australian drama film directed, written and produced by Fred Schepisi, and starring Tom E. Lewis, Freddy Reynolds and Ray Barrett.The film also featured early appearances by Bryan Brown, Arthur Dignam, and John Jarratt. It is an adaptation of the 1972 novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally.

The story is about an exploited Aboriginal Australian who commits murder and goes into hiding. It is based on actual events.
The cast, a mix of professional actors (most of them white actors) and amateurs (most of them Aboriginal actors), was described by Pauline Kael as “a triumph of casting and coaching.”

Schepisi frequently sets his plots in a historical or cultural context, with precise attention to period detail. This is evident in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1970s Australia), where he integrates authentic locations, costumes and social atmosphere to immerse the audience. His work often explores themes of redemption, isolation, and the human condition.

Bruce Beresford

Breaker Morant is a 1980 Australian biographical war drama film directed by Bruce Beresford, who also co-wrote the screenplay based on Kenneth G. Ross’ 1978 play of the same name. It stars Edward Woodward as the title character, Lt. Harry Harbord Breaker Morant, along with Jack Thompson, John Waters and Bryan Brown.

It is about a 1902 court martial of lieutenants Morant, Peter Handcock and George Witton, one of the first war crime prosecutions in British military history. Morant, Handcock, and Witton, Australians serving in the British Army during the Second Anglo-Boer War, are accused of murdering captured enemy combatants and an unarmed civilian in the Northern Transvaal. The film covers the exploration of the Nuremberg Defense, the politics of the death penalty and the human cost of total war. As the trial unfolds, the events in question are shown in flashbacks.

The film won ten 1980 Australian Film Institute Awards including: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Screenplay, Best Leading Actor (for Jack Thompson) and Best Supporting Actor (Bryan Brown). It was also nominated for an Academy Award for the Best Adapted Screenplay.

Breaker Morant remains the movie with which Beresford is most identified and has “hoisted the images of the accused officers to the level of Australian icons and martyrs.” In a 1999 interview Beresford said Breaker Morant “never pretended for a moment” that the defendants were not guilty as charged. He had intended the film to explore how wartime atrocities can be “committed by people who appear to be quite normal.”

Beresford films showcase their ability to evoke empathy and provoke thought, often blending intimate personal stories with broader social or historical contexts. His camerawork is often unobtrusive, allowing performances and story to take center stage. This is particularly evident where music, setting or period detail enhances the emotional tone.

Other notable Beresford Australian films: Don’s Party (1976).

George Miller

Mad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller in his directorial debut, who co-wrote the screenplay with James McCausland, based on a story by Miller and Byron Kennedy. Mel Gibson stars as “Mad” Max Rockatansky, a police officer turned vigilante in a dystopian near-future Australia.

Filmed on a budget of $400,000, it earned more than $100 million worldwide in gross revenue and set a Guinness record for most profitable Australian film of the year. The success of Mad Max has been credited for further opening the global market to Australian New Wave films.

Mad Max became the first in the series, giving rise to three sequels: Mad Max 2 (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

In the original 1979 Australian version, Mel Gibson spoke with a thick Australian accent. But for the American release it was redubbed with American voices to make it easier for U.S. audiences to understand. The U.S. dub also replaced Australian slang with American equivalents (e.g., “Oi!” became “Hey!”, “very toey” became “super hot”) and altered some sound effects.

George Miller’s style is defined by spectacular, practical filmmaking, archetypal narratives, thematic duality, and genre flexibility, all underpinned by a consistent empathy for his characters and a belief in cinema as a universal storytelling medium.

Philip Noyce

Newsfront is a 1978 Australian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce, and starring Bill Hunter, Wendy Hughes, Chris Haywood and Bryan Brown. The film is shot in both black and white and in color, incorporating actual newsreel footage.

Newsfront is about newsreel cameramen who are committed to finding compelling footage of newsworthy events. The film begins in 1948 and ends in 1956, when television was introduced to Australia, and follows the destinies of the cameramen’s quest within the context of sweeping social and political changes in their native Australia. I learned a lot.

Noyce often combines tight, tension-filled sequences with vivid environmental settings; urban landscapes, natural backdrops, or period-specific locales. He integrates action with deeper narrative exploration, ensuring that even the most spectacular scenes serve the story.

Gillian Armstrong

My Brilliant Career is a 1979 Australian period drama film directed by Gillian Armstrong, and starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill, and Wendy Hughes. Based on the 1901 novel of the same name by Miles Franklin, it follows a young woman in rural, late-19th-century Australia whose aspirations to become a writer are impeded first by her social circumstance, and later by an early romance. My Brilliant Career was released in Australia in August 1979 and later premiered in the United States at the New York Film Festival. It received significant critical acclaim, and was nominated for numerous AFI Awards, winning three, while Davis won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. In the United States, it received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film.

The film is regarded as being part of the Australian New Wave, as well as a piece of feminist cinema.

Armstrong’s work consistently explores women’s inner lives, relationships and the choices that shape their identities. While often associated with feminist themes, she emphasizes portraying complex individuals rather than making intentional political statements. Her films are anchored in emotional truth and psychological depth, noted for sharp story sense, meticulous design, and a strong sense of rhythm. Armstrong often uses period authenticity in historical settings, grounding her work in real locations and authentic period detail. Her visual language brings attention to music, lighting, and mise-en-scène that enhances the narrative.

The Road to Hollywood

Due to their success in Australian cinema, this led to the road to Hollywood, for big money and budgets, and bigger screen goers, many unaware that the Australian New Wave even existed.

Here are a few American films directed by these Australians:

Peter Weir: The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Green Card, Fearless, The Truman Show, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Fred Schepisi: Barbarosa, Iceman, Roxanne, A Cry in the Dark, Six Degrees of Separation

Bruce Beresford: Black Robe, Driving Miss Daisy, Tender Mercies

George Miller: Lorenzo’s Oil, Babe, Witches of Eastwick

Gillian Armstrong: Little Women (1994), Starstruck, The Last Days of Chez Nous, Mrs. Soffel, Charlotte Gray

Phillip Noyce: Dead Calm, Clear Present Danger

Stay tuned for the New Zealand New Wave.

The post There was once a New Wave heard around the World: Australian Cinema appeared first on Traveling Boy.

The man has spent a lifetime making music, or what he likes to call “traditional blues, the way it was played, the way it was made.” He has circled the globe, recording and performing with some of the most legendary names in the blues genre; yet his road can be traced right back to his roots in Mississippi.

I’ve had the privilege of sitting down with John on several occasions and I’ve always been amazed at his unlimited energy and drive. This time we spoke just prior to a show in San Diego and the conversation included his road, his music and the debut of his own daughter, Aliya; and the next generation of blues.

Is it true that you made your first instrument, a diddley bow?  “Yeah, I did.” John says. “I used some wire that came out of my grand mama’s broom or sometimes we’d burn up a car tire and get the wire outta’ there. That was the best one, the best one to make a diddley bow out of. But my uncle and cousin had one made up already and I learned from that until I started making my own. It was just one string and you’d nail it to the house or wherever you could nail it and use a bottle to get sound out of it and that’s where I started from, you know?”

Tell me about your first musical memories or when you first heard the blues? “My grandma’s record collection is where I first heard the blues and stuff like that; it was from a record, yeah. We had 78s and 45s. I had a cousin that lived down the hill from me, she had a wind-up phonograph. So my cousin had it and I’d get up in a chair like this, so I could reach it and play it. I’d play Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. Get in that chair and wind it up and listen to it play those 78 records. Muddy Waters, ‘Can’t Be Satisfied’ John Lee Hooker…” (John breaks into song) ‘…my baby got somethin’ I sure do love…my baby got something.’”

Being from a share cropping family, you grew up working? “I did, yeah. We couldn’t go to the fields until we got twelve years old, I started in the field then. But picking cotton and stuff wasn’t my…I never wanted to do that kinda’ stuff, I wanted to play guitar and be a musician. I didn’t think I could do good picking cotton or pullin’ corn; too rough for me. But I did it, yeah.”

Do you remember the first time you actually played on a guitar? “Uh, I was about three or four years old. I had a cousin who had one, it was an acoustic guitar but I don’t remember what the name was, I was too little to know. I couldn’t read then, I was too young.” But you knew you wanted to play it. “I wanted to play guitar, all my life I wanted to be a musician.”

You leave Mississippi for Chicago in 1963. “I came to Chicago when I was eighteen years old. It was great! Music was everywhere, comin’ all out of people’s houses, bands playing and rehearsing in houses. When I was growing up in Mississippi I thought all those guys that were singing the blues back then were up in blues heaven; thought they’d passed. But when I got to Chicago I found out this is where they all was…in Chicago.” (laughing) “Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed…all those guys were in Chicago.”

Talk a little about Maxwell Street. “In 1963 I used to go down there all the time, every Sunday. I used to see a guy named One Arm John (Big John Wrencher) and I knew him really well, I couldn’t figure out how he could blow that harmonica with one arm, but he was a good harmonica player. And you’d see Muddy Waters down there and John Lee Hooker. I just wasn’t familiar with all these guys because when I was in Mississippi, I was familiar with Lightnin’ Hopkins and Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup… all the old guys, Big Bill Broonzy.”

The clubs and bars in Chicago in the 50s and 60s were pretty rowdy places to play. “Yeah, it was insane. They’d be fighting in there or they get drunk and some of the men would get jealous because some other man was talking to his woman. I remember when Little Walter played, he was a handsome dude and the women were crazy about him, so there’d be a fight even before the show was over. Little Walter was crazy.”

Snooky Pryor told me about a place called the ‘Bucket o’ Blood’ you ever play there? “I remember that. There was a place called the ‘Bucket o’ Blood’ and we weren’t allowed to go in there. My friends…it was in Chicago and my buddies, you know I’d hear them talk about the Bucket o’ Blood and I knew where it was, but I was too afraid to go in there!” (laughing)

When you listen to John Primer’s blues, you hear influences from the Delta, there’s some funk and R&B as well. How do you get all these styles to flow through your music? “I learned when I started to play guitar and I kept learning when I came to Chicago. See, when I grew up I came up with all that music. All the blues, the old-time blues they were creating back then, everybody was playing it. That’s why I know so much old blues from way back. I’m just like an elephant; I don’t forget nothin’…I remember! I could play the blues when I was down in Mississippi but when I came to Chicago I studied all types of music.”

‘She Do the Right Thing All of the Time’ – John Primer

Tell us about your association with Sammy Lawhorn? “I got the chance to play at Theresa’s Lounge with him. I didn’t know nothin’ about Sammy and I started working at Theresa’s in 1972 and Sammy was the guitar player ‘cause Muddy had fired him. He played with Muddy for 15 years. He fired him because he’d always go onstage and get drunk and be playing, you know? He’d get drunk at Theresa’s when I got down there, he’d get drunk and I’m a rhythm guitar player and that was the worst time. When he’d get drunk, I was so nervous and scared, what am I gonna’ do?”

What did you learn from that relationship? “Oh man, I learned…7 years. He (Lawhorn) told me, ‘learn what I play, but you can’t be me.’ Learn what I play, but I won’t be here forever and you’ll be playing this. I started learning slide by listening to him.”

You worked at Theresa’s Lounge for seven years? “Seven years; seven nights a week!” With Junior Wells and Sammy Lawhorn, that’s crazy. “Yeah, Junior Wells and Sammy Lawhorn. I’d just stay in the back and watch people drink and get drunk.” (laughing) “…drinking whiskey and stuff. All the musicians hung out there, Willie Dixon, sometimes Muddy Waters came through there, Louis Myers and the Four Aces, Johnny Winter and Mike Bloomfield. They all came out and hung out there and played. I learned a lot down there. But I played with Louis Myers and Dave Myers, the Four Aces, Fred Below all those guys would come down there and play sometimes.”

How did your association with Willie Dixon’s All-Stars come about? “I was playing at Theresa’s and Willie Dixon came down and I’d be singing all the Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters stuff. I was lookin’ who is this big guy sittin’ there? I didn’t know who he was. In 1979 he needed a guitar player to go to Mexico.” (Willie Dixon’s All-Stars) Primer in his best low growl Willie Dixon impression… ‘Hey, I like the way you play. You know my stuff and I need a guitar player to go to Mexico, you interested?’ I said Yeah! ‘Do you have a passport?’ I said no. ‘Tell you what, I’ll be by your house on Monday and we’ll go downtown and get you a passport. You got any money?’ I said no. A passport cost $80 bucks, man. ‘You can just pay me.’

That late 70s All-Stars tour had some talent. “Koko Taylor, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, the guy that had the guitar strings all tied up there.” (laughing) “Larry Davis. That’s when Muddy heard me play…with them. Before they came up to play, Muddy and Dixon were back there talking and Muddy ask him (Primer in his best Muddy impression) ‘who-who’s that young man…playing that guitar…up there?’ (Primer does Dixon’s growl) ‘That’s John Primer…he works down at Theresa’s.’ Muddy responded, ‘That man sure knows my music.’ So, in 1980 when Muddy’s band quit, he called Willie Dixon and asked for me.”

You worked with Muddy till he passed? “Yeah,” John says. “About two and a half years.” From listening to Muddy when you were a child, then getting that call to come play with him…I just can’t imagine. “It was my dream; I had a dream when I was in Mississippi at about 14 years old about playing in Muddy’s band. So my dream came true. I was jumping for joy when they came down there and got me. Mojo Buford came down there.” Primer in his best Mojo impression… ‘Muddy needs a guitar player, he sent me down to ask you, did you want to join the group?’ “What? Man, I jumped for joy. Lovie Lee playing piano, Jessie Clayton was the first guy to play drums but he didn’t want to go out of town, he didn’t want to leave his wife. So I took Lovie Lee and we went and got ‘Killer’ Ray Allison and a guy named Rick Kreher; Rick is playing on my CD, ‘Hard Times.’ The last guitar players to play with Muddy Waters…was Rick and me. So, I gotta’ chance to play with Muddy, man. I was full of joy; I didn’t even go to sleep that night, waiting for Mojo to come get me.”

There are so many people that you’ve played with, but I gotta’ ask about playing with the Stones and Muddy at the Checkerboard Lounge…that’s just wildness. “That one video, it helped me out, a lot.” John remembers. “People didn’t really recognize me too much when I was playing with Willie Dixon but when I got with Muddy Waters; it really put the icing on the cake for me. The thing I learned from Willie Dixon was how to write blues. I try to write the blues the same way he did. He was a great writer and bluesman, he was the greatest. So that’s the way I try to be, I just try to keep it traditional and keep it real so the young generation can know what it was because a lot of them haven’t ever heard it before…so they can keep the blues alive for the future, you know? That’s my plan, yeah.”

Muddy Waters at the Checkerboard Lounge with the Rolling Stones. “Baby Please Don’t Go.’

You also played on James Cotton’s ‘Take Me Back’ album.(laughing) “Aw man, James Cotton was something else, man. When he’d come back in town, that’s where he’d come; Theresa’s! And they’d hang out all night and be out until daylight…Whiskey and Cocaine. I toured with him all over, Phoenix, Denver he was trip, man.”

Then came the Holt’s… “Magic Slim! It was right on time for me ‘cause Slim was another guy like Muddy; workin’ hard, a workin’ man and workin’ all the time. Thirteen years.”

Let’s talk a little about your current band and the fact that it now occasional features someone very special singing with you. “My daughter, Aliya.” You can see John’s eyes light up when he speaks of her performance in San Diego a year or so ago. “It was her debut.” He grins. “She’s was learning how to play guitar and she’s doing good. She wouldn’t tell me but she came home and told her mom, ‘I don’t want to play guitar, I want to sing! And I think I want to sing the blues. I want to be just like dad and play music, something everybody loves.’ He’s smiling again. “She can sing.” He beams. “We used to take her on tour with us everywhere…she was two or three years old and traveling around.”

Well, let me ask you Aliya…what’s it like playing with your father? She smiles, “It’s crazy!” They both laugh. “You can’t really explain it, just the major opportunities that I have. That I was born into automatically…”

You literally grew up on the road, touring with your mom and dad. “Yeah, I was in Turkey when I was three years old, I don’t even remember. But I started out touring with them way back then so it’s always been a major part of my life. I’ve always been around the music business, so it just seemed natural that I’d want to continue that.”

Although your debut on stage is relatively new, you already have studio session work on your resume, appearing on a couple of different albums. Guest vocalist credits on a Bob Corritore project and two of your dad’s records; ‘The Soul of a Blues Man’ and ‘Hard Times.’ That’s an awesome way to kick-start a career. “Well, when I was working with Bob Corritore, it was kind of crazy and chaotic just getting to the studio. Dad and I had just gotten off the plane…we had travelled to Arizona, got off the plane, got into the studio, recorded, got it done and got out of there…and that was my first experience.” Welcome to the life of a musician. “The guys are such pros and they make it seem so easy and natural. It was such a fun time and it didn’t seem like work at all.”

You sang lead vocals on the song ‘Tough Times.’ “We were in the studio with just me and my mom and my dad and all of us just hanging out, so that was just really low-stress, easy and fun for me to do. I really, really enjoyed it.”   

John and Aliya Primer ‘Tough Times.’

John, as you look down the road do you see a future with blues in it? “Well, I hope people will pay more attention to the blues, just to see what it’s all about. There’s not many people around now playing the real stuff. You can put whatever you want into the blues and I say this all the time, you cannot change the blues. You can add rock and roll players and call it blues. It’s not the real blues, but I like what they do and I’ve got nothing against it because… they’re keeping the blues alive! So I give them the respect.”

And if you had to describe John Primer’s blues. “It’s the traditional blues, the way it was played, the way it was made. That’s the way I play it. I don’t try to change it. Not just blues, but all music has got to have a feeling. My feelings come from hard times and hard living and that’s the way I play…from my heart. Everything you see me playing on stage is going to be real close to the original stuff.”

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I fondly remember Lake Geneva (Matterhorn Region) when Switzerland Tourism blew into Los Angeles on January, 2017 with the most esteemed guest, Eugene Chaplin. A man of remarkable lineage, he is the fifth child of Oona O’Neill and Sir Charles Spencer “Charlie” Chaplin, the grandson of playwright Eugene O’Neill, the brother of Geraldine Chaplin and father of actress/model Kiera Chaplin.

Eugene Chaplin in Los Angeles. Courtesy Switzerland Tourism

An artist in his own rite, Eugene directed the documentary film Charlie Chaplin: A Family Tribute and created the musical ‘Smile,’ a narration of his father’s life through his music. He’s also a recording engineer, having worked with The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, and Queen. He was in town to promote Chaplin’s World, the first-ever museum dedicated to the life and work of Charles Chaplin in the filmmaker’s former home in Vevey, Switzerland.

Back Story

In 1952 Charles Chaplin was exiled from the U.S. as a result of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s witch hunts, a disturbing period in U.S. history where Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. The committee used various charges of communism, communist sympathies and disloyalty to attack a number of politicians and other individuals, many Hollywood personalities. Chaplin was considered dangerously progressive and amoral. It was also revealed that he had never bothered to become a U.S. citizen. When Chaplin and family were departing for a trip to England, Chaplin was informed that he would have to submit to an interview concerning his political views and moral behavior in order to re-enter the U.S. Rather than fight a pending investigation by Immigration Services, Chaplin decided not to return to Hollywood. The Chaplin family, though, needed a new address in Europe. His half-brother Sydney Chaplin, suggested they visit Switzerland. Chaplin was taken by the peace and quiet of the Lake Geneva region, with its stunning lake and countryside, not to mention the attractive tax laws.

Gardening was one of Chaplin’s passions at Manoir de Ban. Courtesy photo

He purchased the vacant Manoir de Ban, a neoclassical mansion in Corsier-sur-Vevey, a wine-growing region near the banks of Lake Geneva. This is where he chose to live his remaining years with his family, from 1952 until his death in 1977. According to the Chaplin family, his 25-years at Manoir de Ban constituted his “happy years,” where he would walk in the grounds, garden, play with his children and host friends from around the globe. He also spent a large percentage of his time working on the screenplays for his films A King in New York, A Countess from Hong Kong and The Freak (which was never filmed), as well as adding music to his silent films, which he composed at the family piano. There’s a version of the Gold Rush, where he eliminated the title cards of the silent film, speaking all of the parts instead. In1964 in wrote My Autobiography at the Manoir.

Courtesy Chaplin’s World

On April 17, 2016, Chaplin’s former home and expansive grounds were officially open for the whole world to see. Rechristened Chaplin’s World – Manoir de Ban was repurposed and expanded as a museum that showcases Chaplin’s work and life as a family man in Switzerland. The goal was to allow visitors to discover the man behind the movies. The centerpiece of the museum is the three story, richly decorated Manoir, and the newly constructed Studio.

The grand opening at Chaplin’s World. Courtesy Chaplin’s World

A reproduced Winston Churchill pays a visit to Manoir de Ban.
Courtesy Chaplin’s World

In the Manoir, visitors are introduced to the Chaplin family, which has been restaged with a number of its original furnishings, personal items, photographs and family mementos. Each room focuses on a particular period of Chaplin’s personal life, while the dining room pays homage to the family’s everyday routines as well as the many Hollywood celebrities who visited them.

The new interactive studio features the work of Chaplin the artist which commences with a montage of clips from his half-century of writing, directing, producing, scoring and acting in movies. He outdid himself in the 1928 film, The Circus, where he also wrote and sang the title song for a rerelease in 1969. Curiously, he doesn’t mention the film once in his autobiography. The interactive studio is followed by an exhibition of recreated scenes and sets from many of his most famous films, along with wax figures of Chaplin’s famous co-stars.

Courtesy photo

It’s almost like a theme park where guest can enter the iconic cabin from The Gold Rush, while in the middle of a simulated blizzard, sit in the famous barber’s chair from The Great Dictator (where Chaplin played two roles), or negotiating the cogs of the industrial revolution machine from the madcap scene in Modern Times.

A statue of Chaplin graces the shores of Lake Geneva in Vevey.
Courtesy My Switzerland

A stroll in the Manoir’s 10 acres of expansive green grounds is mandatory with the reward of stunning views of the Swiss Alps and Lake Geneva.

Chaplin fans can also enjoy the onsite restaurant, affectionately named The Tramp.

If you decide to spend additional time in the breathtaking Lake Geneva region, The Modern Times Hotel is conveniently located nearby.

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The applause was still dying down as 80 year old Joe Willie ‘Pinetop’ Perkins stepped off the stage at the 1993 Long Beach Blues Festival in Southern California. As someone handed him a cold drink he sauntered over and sat down next to me. 80… and he wasn’t even winded. I still gave him a few minutes to settle and replenish his fluids…okay, beer. After shaking a few more hands and joking with friends and admirers, he turned toward me as if to say, alright young man, ask away.

Armed with a manuscript of questions I started with when people first stopped referring to him as Joe Willie Perkins, and began to call him, ‘Pinetop.’

“After I made ‘Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie’ over again (originally recorded by Clarence ‘Pinetop’ Smith) on Sun’s Records back in the 50’s.”

Joe Willie ‘Pinetop’ Perkins at the 1993 Long Beach Blues Festival.
Photo: Yachiyo Mattox

As one of the few surviving early Delta players, I wanted to know what he remembered about growing up on the Paines-Deadman Plantation? He looked surprised. “Paines? (I flicker my papers like a deck of cards) Man, that’s way back there and I can’t hardly think of everything, but I’ll do the best I can with it. Paine’s-Deadman… aw man, I used to live out there. Plowed ‘a mule, picked cotton, pulled corn.“

That the reason you turned to music? “Yea man, I had to do something,’ you know to keep things going. That was way back man, in the 30’s, last part of the 20’s and early 30’s, along in there.”

What do you remember about Honey Island? “Nuthin!” (laughing) “That’s where I was born and my mother and them take me out from there before I know anything about it, you know?”

Do you recall the first time you ever heard the blues? “Oh man, I can’t hardly tell ya’ when that is. It’s been a looong time ago. That’s way back in the 20’s.”

Did you hear it in the fields? “Yea…peoples say, ‘who taught you how to play?’ Nobody! I taught myself. I had a musical talent, I guess.”

There’s really no guessing about this man’s talent. Perkin’s earliest instrument was a piece of wire stretched between two nails tacked on a wall. That one string ‘diddley-bow’ would eventually become a guitar, and a few years later, piano. “I played guitar first, and got in Helena, Arkansas and a one of them ladies done stabbed me in the arm and I can’t play guitar no more. So, that’s the way it went.”

You were just a kid (around 10 or 11) when you first played in a honkeytonk called the Old Barrelhouse? “Yea, that was in Belzoni, Mississippi. Yea, I remember that, that’s where I learned at. Every once in awhile I get on the piano, banging on it and they try to run me out, ‘Boy, get outta’ there! And no sooner it gets cooled down, I go right back on it again, you know? (laughing) The Barrelhouse Club, years ago.”

You seem to have played EVERYWHERE! Country dances, traditional picnics and fish fries; did you ever play in any houses of ill repute? “Well, I played in some houses, don’t know if they were whore houses or not. They might have been. (I swear I see a glint in his eye as he starts laughing) I played in everything. In the Blues Brothers movie and all that stuff…Angel Heart.”

From the beginning you were running with a pretty fast crowd, literally some of the all-time blues greats. Robert Nighthawk, Sonny Boy Williamson, Earl Hooker, Big Joe Williams… “Big Joe Williams? Oh man, I loved that Joe. He never did sing with me none. I love that Joe, man.” Pinetop also knew jazz vocalist, Joe Williams and remembered, “He played with Count Basie a long time. My best memory of Big Joe was he was a good singer, he was really good. I loved the way he sung.”

Tell us a little about your association with Robert Nighthawk? “Oh man, I played with Robert about four years. And what took me from Robert Nighthawk when I was over in Helena, Arkansas…we was advertising Bright Star Flour. Mr Max Moore, Interstate Grocery Man at KFFA, he heard me and told Sonny Boy (Williamson) ‘Looky here man, hey, go over there and get him. I want him to play for me.’ He loved the way I played piano. Dudlow (Robert Taylor) was playing, Mr. 5×5 (not to be confused with Jimmy Rushing) was playing then.”

Perkins played on a number of the most popular live radio broadcasts out of Helena. As mentioned, the Bright Star Flour program with Nighthawk, and of course the most prominent from that time was sponsored by King Biscuit Flour. The show featured numerous stars of the day, like Sonny Boy Williamson, Houston Stackhouse and James ‘Peck’ Curtis. I had heard that Pinetop might even have played for a third program known as, ‘Mothers Best,’ but he told me, “I never did play on Mothers Best, no… uhn..uhn.”

In the late 40’s and early 50’s, Pinetop would once again hit the tour circuit with Robert Nighthawk, eventually ending up in Chicago at the renown ‘708 Club.’ He would also back the legendary slide guitarist in the studio, on some of Nighthawk’s last recordings for Chess. Another friend of Pinetop’s, Willie Dixon produced and played bass on those memorable Nighthawk sessions.

You also ran with Earl Hooker for awhile…. “Earl Hooker? Boy, oh me and him got together years ago. He was 13 years old when we started playing together. And I was young and had nuthin’ of nuthin’! (laughing) That was way back, I was about 20 or something then, and Earl was real young. But he was in bad shape. (Hooker suffered from tuberculosis and died in an Illinois Sanitarium at age 40.) He was sent to the hospital, and every once in awhile he’d come back around and say, ‘I’m well now.’ He wouldn’t be discharged; he’d done slipped out of the hospital. (laughing) The doctor didn’t turn him loose; he’d turn his own self loose. He’d come back, ‘I’m well now!’ And no sooner than he’d get back, they’d send him right back to the hospital. So the last time, Muddy Waters heard me playin’ with him.”

North Hollywood Ca. w/ Hubert Sumlin and Big Daddy Kinsey in the late 1980’s.
Photo:T.E.Mattox

Didn’t you replace Otis Spann in Muddy’s band? “Well, in a way I did. Otis had quit him and I started playin’ in the band with him. That was ’69. 1969, so I played with him up until ’80.”

What was it like playing in Muddy’s band? “Oh, I loved playing in Muddy’s band, man. I loved it ’cause he had the ‘stomp-down’ blues stuff. That’s why I loved it.”

Muddy Waters, (McKinley Morganfield) like Pinetop, had honed his chops on a Southern plantation and both men came of age when blues were ingrained. Where music was expressed and absorbed through feelings and instinct, much more readily than the traditional student/teacher exchange. I’m thinking it was probably where the term ‘old school’ originated. Pinetop is nodding, “Oh, yea. I liked that background, the old background.”

And the blues to Pinetop Perkins… “What are the blues? Man, when you’re lonesome and your good girl quit you, you got the blues so bad you can’t sing ’em, hardly. You got ’em then, boy! And somethin’ happen to you… and you got the blues if you’re livin,’ you know?”

The ladies still give you trouble? (Now you CAN’T miss the twinkle in those 80-year old eyes and Pinetop’s smile exhibits a distinct Cheshire cat-like quality) “Well, I got too old for that. When you get 80 years old they don’t bother you too much.”

I mention that David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards once told me, he just ‘loves’ the ladies. (Pinetop instantly becomes animated, like a jolt of electricity shot through him.) “I LOVE them, but what am I gonna’ DO with them!?” he hoots. “Nuthin!’ (The backstage area erupts with laughter.) “It’s like a dog runnin’ after an automobile. If it stops he don’t know what to do with it!” (more laughter) “That’s the way it goes.”

You must know Honeyboy… “YEA, I know Honeyboy. He snuck around my MOTHER, years ago!” (the entire backstage disintegrates into pandemonium, stagehands, other performers, journalists….and Pinetop is in his domain.) “MY MOTHER!” he reiterates! “Sure did!”

(As everyone tries to regroup and recover, I daub the tears off my face and smeared paperwork; I ask how is it that some bluesmen, like himself and the ‘honorable’ Mr. Edwards, seem to have such long and productive lives. “Luck’s of the Lord!” Pinetop states matter-of-factly.

At the Palomino – North Hollywood, CA. Pinetop’s humor was legendary.
Photo: Yachiyo Mattox

You take care of yourself? “NO!” (Everyone backstage falls apart again.) And like the master of timing he is…Pinetop waits for it…. “But I do the best I can.”

I comment he looks pretty good and hasn’t changed much since we last talked about four years ago.

“I thought,” he quips, “I looked like Cheetah, you know?” (…and the crowd goes wild.) “I’m about two years older than black pepper.”

You going to keep playing blues? “I’m going to try, if the Lord spares me.”

Pinetop was working on a new solo album at the time of our conversation and still living in Chicago. I was curious if he ever ran into another Delta player that was living in the Windy City; James ‘Snooky’ Pryor? “Man, Yea!” Me and Snooky was in Germany together last month.” Although not a big fan of the travel, Pinetop admitted he did it for the bucks. “I’m trying to make some bread, man; some bean money.”

European audiences really have an appreciation of the blues and especially the originators. “Oh yea, they love it. And they know me. I’ve been all over Europe, all over Australia, and Africa and places.”

Tell me about one of the craziest or wildest clubs you ever played? “The craziest club or bar I ever played in? Well, I didn’t play, but I went to it. That’s Buddy Guy’s place, when he had the Checkerboard Lounge. I come outta’ that place and a man put a pistol in my side and say, ‘hey, get over and let me have your car, man.’ I say, ‘take the car and go ahead.’ He looks at me like I’m a fool or something. And he took me with him.”

He took your car….?? “Yea, and ME too! And we drove all around (Chicago) dropping off …dope or something, I don’t know. And when they finished, my car was empty and they said, ‘Now you can go on home.'”

Pinetop never failed to acknowledge his fans. Photo: Yachiyo Mattox

What can we look forward to from Pinetop Perkins in the future? He looks directly at me, “Well, man what’s never come out…will come up!” ….and his ever present smile, grew wider.

One of Pinetop’s long-time friends, Buddy Guy, told me a wonderful story about his piano playing protégé. “Just before Jimmy Rogers’ died, he (Pinetop) used to play with Jimmy a lot, at my club in Chicago. So I walks in the club before they start playing, and I went to say ‘hi’ to Pinetop and he took his leg and throw’d it up on the bar like this.” (Buddy hoists his leg up near the table) “I say, ‘what’s that for?’ And they had that monitor on his leg (Buddy begins to laugh)…from the police. I say, ‘who did you kill?’ He said, ‘Nobody!’ I say, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ He said, ‘simple drunk, they got me just simple drunk.’ The only time they let him come out at night, is if he was working, they wouldn’t stop him from playing the keyboard. I said, ‘you wasn’t drivin’?’ He said, ‘no, I was just simple drunk, walkin’.’

So then he takes me over there and sits down and said, ‘they told me to stop drinkin’, he say, ‘but Buddy’ and he had this shot of whiskey in his hand. He say, ‘if I stop drinkin…’ now this has been about 15 – 18 years ago. He say, ‘if I stop drinkin’ (Buddy snaps his fingers) …that’s IT!’ I say, ‘DON’T stop drinkin’ then, then keep on drinkin’. And about three or four years before he passed away, they had him at the club again and he came in, they was rolling him out in a wheel chair and it was raining. I say I hadn’t hollered at him, I want to holler at him before he go, and I say, ‘wait a minute ‘Top, I wanna’ say hi before you go.’ He say, ‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere, I’m goin’ outside to smoke.’ And I think he was 93 or something. And I say, ‘if you can smoke at 93, people should stop saying cigarettes are not good for you.’ (laughs)

Early in 2011, the world was Pinetop’s oyster. Although in his 90’s he was still vital, still productive and still doing what he loved the most. He had just been recognized with a ‘best traditional blues album’ Grammy for a recording he’d done with old friend, Willie ‘Big Eyes’ Smith entitled, ‘Joined at the Hip’. A memorable evening and lasting moment that embraced the man before generations of his friends, fellow musicians and fans. You have to think that the extended applause that night was not only for his music and his remarkable career, but an outpouring of love and respect for a legendary and gentle man. Thanks, ‘Top. Rest in Peace..

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David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards has been in fast company for most of his life. His running buddies have included the seminal roots of Delta Blues. Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Son House, Willie Brown, Tommy McClennan, Tommy Johnson and Robert Petway were just a few of the musicians that Edwards called friends. He’s spent a lifetime sharing street corners, working juke houses and rolling the dice with the legends of blues, both past and present.

Edwards has outlived his peers, and most of his friends, but shows little sign of slowing down. When pressed, he’ll admit to some ‘pretty good action’ as far as his guitar work is concerned, but even more impressive is his phenomenal recollection of dates, events and first-person accounts of the blues and its originators. According to Edwards, his introduction to the road began one fateful weekend in 1932 when, at the age of 17, he heard a blues man perform at a local house party. His life would never be the same.

“Joe Williams was out there playing for a country dance on a Saturday night and I went over there where he was playing. I kept looking at him and he said, ‘Can you play?’ I said, ‘I can play a little.’ He passed the guitar to me and I started to strum ’cause I had a good lick, you know? And he said, ‘Yeah, and I can learn you, too.’

So, he come to my father’s house that Sunday morning, we eat breakfast and sat around. He played guitar and he asked my father, ‘Can Honey go with me out to Greenwood?’ We were only about two miles from Greenwood. My father said, ‘I don’t care, he ain’t nothin’ to do on the farm. He can go if he want to.’ I got my brother-in-law’s guitar and followed him. I never did brought his guitar back, I kept a-going with Joe Williams.”

It would be the beginning of a journey Edwards, now in his nineties, finds more rewarding than ever.

“When I first started out with Joe, I played some in the streets, little clubs, cafe’s and joints, just everywhere, anywhere you can make something. Joe couldn’t read or write or nothin’, but he had a good mind and he could think of songs to sing. He had a good mind but didn’t have no kind of education, but he could think good and he wouldn’t forget nothin.”

In order to further his own education, Honeyboy would soon find company with another blues traveller.

“After I left Big Joe the last of ’32, in ’33 and ’34 I was with Tommy McClennan. I was around Greenwood and Tommy was around Greenwood too. Tommy and Robert Petway, we all just go in and out together. Sometime I’d work with Tommy, sometime Tommy’d work with Robert. We all know’d each other, played with each other, you know?”

While Edwards, McClennan and Petway were just getting started, one Delta elder, Charley Patton, was already considered a living legend. Patton was one of the most versatile and influential delta musicians of the era, and Honeyboy was a quick study.

“I was with Charley Patton a little while before he died in ’34. I know’d him in ’33, he was at Marigold, Mississippi out from Dockery. He was still on the farm at Dockery Plantation. He married this young girl, Bertha, that was his wife Bertha, and the year he died, in ’34 they had went to Jackson and Bertha had recorded the ‘Yellow Bee Blues.’ She sung and that was the last recording he done.”

The Sweet Life

When Honeyboy reflects on his early days in blues he has to laugh.

“Before I married, I didn’t do nothin’ but play guitar and gamble. That’s all I done. I had a gang of women’s, you know. I had two or three, they was working and had good jobs.”

Living the sweet life was nice but David Edwards was never very far from the music or the players who created it.

“I used to live in Memphis and I used to play with some of the Memphis Jug Band, Big Walter Horton, Will Shade, Son Brimmer, Little Frank Stokes and Old Man Stokes. I was young then but I know’d them all. Me and Big Walter Horton was pretty close together. I was two years older than Big Walter but he was a good harp blower ever since he was 14. I met him in Memphis, Tennessee, he was maybe 15 years old. I met him in Handy’s Park.”

Charlie Musselwhite who also credits Joe Williams and Will Shade as influences, once described himself as ‘slack-jawed’ the first time he saw Walter Horton blow. So it shouldn’t be surprising that harp players, to this day, still try to match Horton’s technique and tone. Honeyboy doesn’t think it will happen.

“Can’t do it. Both of them Walters had a good tone. Little Walter Jacobs had a tone that Big Walter didn’t have. Little Walter had like a Louisiana style, down on the bayou music but he had his own style of playing harmonica. He had a good, full sound. Little Walter had a better, fuller sound than Big Walter had, but Big Walter played more harp than Little Walter played. You understand me? He knew more riffs. But Little Walter had the best tone.”

Gone too soon, Little Walter would die from injuries suffered in a fight and Honeyboy remembers only too well, Big Walter’s life-long suffering.

“Big Walter was sick all his life. He was sickly, puney-like, you know? He drank a whole lot of whiskey. Oh, he was a heavy drinker.”

Speaking of gone to soon, Edwards spent a short period of time playing and touring with the bluesman considered by most to be the ‘King of the Delta Blues’ players, Robert Johnson.

“In 1937, Robert was 26 and I was 22. Robert was about four years older than me. The first time I met him was on the streets. I didn’t really know who he was ’cause I hadn’t ever met him, but I heard about him. I got a cousin who lived in Tunica, Mississippi, she was Robert’s girlfriend, and every time I go to see my cousin she’d tell me about Robert. ‘Do you know Robert? Robert plays guitar.’ I say, ‘No, I don’t know Robert.’ She say, ‘Robert Johnson, he goes by Robert Johnson, Robert Lonnie Johnson, he wears so many damn names, I don’t know.’ (laughing)

And so, when I met him on the streets and he was playin’ he told the people he was Robert Johnson and he had just came from Austin, Texas. That would have been the fall of 1937, and he was playin’ on the streets. A lady come up there, she said, ‘Listen sir, play me Terraplane Blues and I’ll give you a dime,’ like that. Just country people standing around drinking whiskey, listening to that music and he said, ‘That’s my record, lady.’ She said, ‘Well play it then for me,’ and he started to playing it and she said, ‘I believe that is that man’s record.’ He played it just like the record, you know.”

Tragically Johnson would be dead within a year, but David Edwards’ career was just starting to pick up speed.

“I was so fast myself, I went around a whole lot myself, but as long as he (Johnson) was around Greenwood I’d hang around with him. I’d go where he was playin’ at and we’d go to a couple of whiskey houses there in Greenwood and whore houses where they sell whiskey, you know? Two or three woman’s there at Greenwood had good-time houses, women’s be hangin’ around and men drinkin’ a lot of white whiskey and we sittin’ there playin’ for them, you know? Good time houses, good time Charlie.”

It wouldn’t be until the end of WWII that Honeyboy would finally make his first trip to Chicago.

“I carried Little Walter Jacobs with me in 1945, he come there with me in ’45. In the winter of ’45 I went back south, I was scared of the cold weather. Walter told me, he said, ‘Well Honey, he say, I ain’t goin’ back. I’m gonna’ lay around and hang around here awhile.’ He liked it up there. And I left. In ’46 in the fall I heard Walter’s records. Walter had recorded with Muddy Waters. I said, ‘That boy’s done recorded’…I say, ‘I’m goin’ back’ I say, ‘I’m going where I can do me somethin’. So when I come back Walter was hooked up with Muddy Waters.”

Everyone who heard Little Walter play, knew he was ahead of his time, but those who knew him personally realized his time wasn’t long.

“Walter could play that harp, the boy was good, but he lived too fast, too fast. He got down to Chicago and was makin’ money. He was a nice-lookin’ boy and had a lot of women’s and a big Cadillac. It went to his head.”

Throughout his travels, Edwards has witnessed both the rise and demise of some of music’s most dynamic personalities. But in his eyes, it was just a part of life on the road.

“I used to go so much, I wouldn’t stay nowhere,” but Memphis became Honeyboy central when his sisters moved to the area in the late ’40’s and early ’50’s. With family close by you could usually find him “playing West Memphis every Friday and Saturday night. I used to play with B.B.King in 1950, ’51. He was in West Memphis, Arkansas. He was broadcasting over there in Memphis at WDIA station, but he was living in West Memphis. Me and my wife used to go over there every Friday and Saturday night and I’d sit in with him. He had one little old number he’d made about Miss Martha King. He made that for Sam Phillips too, I think. Sun’s.

And I was in Memphis when Elvis Presley made his first little record there. Presley was working in Memphis driving a construction truck. This white boy got famous, he come from Tupelo, Mississippi. He made one little old number for Sam Phillips, Sun’s. It didn’t do nothin’, but when the song got out here (California) someway it made a hit when it came out here.”

The Delta-born Presley knew firsthand the appeal and heart-felt emotions of blues music and would start his career by covering some of the era’s most prolific black artists. It would be those Elvis remakes that would eventually expose a segregated white America to the music of Arthur Crudup, Willie Mae Thornton and Herman Parker.

Honeyboy remembers Elvis “shakin’ and goin’ on, but he couldn’t play nothin’. Doin’ the swing dance and people went for it and he got famous, but he didn’t learn how to play guitar for a long time. I run in on him but we never played together, I run in on him several times. I know’d him, I used to see him when he was workin’. He used to come out to Jackson Ave. sometime when he was laying steel back in 1950.”

Fifty-eight years later, Edwards is a blues survivor. His road continues to run through every type of blues venue imaginable. From small bars and clubs to huge fairground and festival events and the occasional recording studio. It’s not a lifestyle for the weak of heart and Honeyboy insists he’s going to slow down. He’s also the first to admit that the blues were here before he was and will still be around long after he’s gone.

“Blues is not gonna’ go nowhere. You take years ago when a lot of disco’s slowed the blues up a little bit. But the disco didn’t stay in long, see? And then the blues come right on back, alive, and it got worser. It got worser. There’s a lot of young people playing the blues too, now. They’re gettin’ right into it. And a lot of festivals bringin’ in some of the young people to the blues.”

The never-ending cycle of human suffering ensures that the blues, in one form or another, will always endure.

“Blues come along ways to what I’ve been experiencing because I’m old, I’ve been here a long time. Blues come from slavery time and what I mean by slavery time, the people’s used to work in the field and sing holler songs. Ohhh, Ohhhh, trying to make the day. In the 20’s they started recording like Mama Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Blind Lemon and they named it the blues.”

“In the early days, it was players like Texas Alexander and Lonnie Johnson and then they just come on in the 40’s and the blues got wide. I came up playin’ the lonesome, slow blues. There’s two or three different ways you can play the blues. You can play a slow blues, the low-down dirty blues, the Mississippi blues or you take the same blues and make it up tempo, a shuffle, up-tempo beat, you know? In the later years I worked a lot of taverns and I started playing some of the up tempo blues. Just raise the tempo on it. See what I mean? Still it’s the blues.”

David ‘Honeyboy’ Edwards is a living, breathing piece of American history. A National Treasure who sums up his life as a blues journeyman, philosophically.

“Blues is a feeling. You can start playing the blues and the feeling comes down on you sometime. It’s a feeling, from the heart. Mine. And when I was young, I used to start playing the blues and I’d play a couple of numbers and I’d get right up and put up my guitar case and start to walk, go catch me a ride and go to the next town. They wouldn’t let me stay nowhere, that’s what the blues do for me. I wouldn’t stay no where, that’s why I went so much. I’d be here this week, and next week I’d be somewhere’s else. That guitar just kept me goin’, wouldn’t let me stay.”

Lucky for us.

The post Honeyboy Edwards: A Witness to the Blues appeared first on Traveling Boy.

Porotos Granados is the national dish of Chile. The basic ingredients — pumpkin, cranberry beans, corn and tomatoes — are all indigenous to the New World, pre-dating the arrival of Europeans.

Vegetarians will be delighted to find that there are no meat products in the dish, and that the recipe is heart-healthy and absolutely delicious. A popular summer dish in Chile, you can prepare this recipe year-round, substituting with white or navy beans.

You can also spice it up a bit by using a hot green chili pepper, seeded and minced. Sometimes it is garnished with sweet basil. Keep in mind this is a stew – sometimes called Chilean Bean Stew in English – and like all stews the recipe can vary to your liking. I once devoured the sublime dish with a family who served it with a fried egg on top.

Serves 4-6.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 cup pumpkin, peeled and cubed (acorn or butternut squash can be substituted)
• 2 cups fresh sweet corn kernels
• 1-2 cups water
• 1 large tomato, chopped
• 2 cups beans – shelled fresh cranberry beans (again, you may substitute with white or navy beans)

Preparation:

1. Simmer the fresh cranberry beans gently in water for 30-45 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan and add the onions and garlic. Cook until translucent. Add paprika, pumpkin, tomato and corn, stirring until vegetables are soft and fragrant.
3. Add 1 cup of water, covered for 5-10 more minutes. Add the beans (and more water if necessary) and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until pumpkin is very soft and begins to fall apart and thicken the stew. Simmer even longer, uncover to thicken the stew, or add more water if a thinner stew is desired.

Buen apetito!

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May 10, 1946 – April 19, 2026

Story and pictures by author.

Waking to the news that Dave Mason had passed set off a flood of memories for me. Fifty years became yesterday recalling my first tour through Asia as a young Navy journalist. One of my very first assignments for Armed Forces Radio in Tokyo was to seek out and interview touring musicians for broadcast to our troops stationed overseas. As luck would have it, Dave Mason was just wrapping up his tour through Japan and after I reached out, he graciously agreed to sit and talk.

To say that Mason was an exceptional musician, singer-songwriter and stage performer is factually correct, yet an understatement of massive proportions. And it wasn’t an act that was just Dave Mason; he wasn’t flashy or attention-seeking, just straight forward and down-to-earth. ‘This is what I do so let’s just play and enjoy the time we have.’ Case in point – Mason performed and recorded with literally, EVERYONE! Iconic collaborations with Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell, Fleetwood Mac, and of course, Traffic…you get the point. And yet in our conversations when pressed on those accomplishments, he’d just smile. “Well, that was just the 60s in London…everybody was just hanging out…the Beatles, the Stones. We’d all hang out together or be in a club somewhere together.”

Make no mistake Dave Mason was different, but what made him legendary was his generosity. He would contact Armed Forces Radio every time he came back through Tokyo just to say hello, come on the air and talk about his tour or new projects directly with our men and women in uniform throughout the Far East. He didn’t have to, he just did. The following interview came from two of those encounters; the first in 1977 and again in 1980.

Let’s go back to the beginning for you, that area of the UK map around Birmingham-Worcester produced an incredible amount of musical talent. “It started in Worcester which is only 25 miles from Birmingham and Jim Capaldi lived about 12 miles away in a place called Evesham. Mick Ralphs who played with Bad Company lived about eight miles from me. Robert Plant and John Bonham come from Kidderminster, about another ten miles away.”

Tell us about the Jaguars. “The Jaguars was the first band, when I was 16. It was mostly all just instrumental; Shadows stuff, the Ventures and things like that. And Jim (Capaldi) was in another group called the Sapphires. He used to do a great Elvis Presley with the black shirt and the pink tie and the white jacket.”

When I look at your touring schedule, it’s unreal. What is it about the road; do you still enjoy it or ever tire of it? “Yeah, you need to keep touring. I like to tour anyway, because I like to play to people. I don’t like the traveling, but I like to play and it keeps me in touch with what’s going on with audiences. Especially, there’s a lot of people who grew up with me, you know together, the same ages…so I think it’s good to keep going out there letting everybody know once they get past thirty, they don’t have to stop rock and rollin’!” (laughing) “It’s okay to have a good time, folks!” (laughing) “In fact the keyboard player that’s playing with me now, is Mark Stein who used to be with the Vanilla Fudge. And we do ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ on stage. We’re going to go and rehearse this afternoon and I think we’re going to add ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy’ to the set too, I think.”

It seems your playbill has no limitations. “About a month ago I was in New York and I got to meet this guy, Tom O’Horrigan who did all the choreography for ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ and the original ‘Hair’ and the Lenny Story. And I’m going to put together a musical collage and the title of the show is going to be ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy.’ It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, to put music and dance together with a group and music. Not to make a point just something to enjoy.” (laughing)

What do you remember about the Basement Floor, wasn’t it like a cottage or rehearsal space? “The Basement Floor, that was when Traffic was first starting and we used to go to London and this guy, Paul Medcalf…on the original ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy’ cover there’s a guy leaping around with the white Kabuki face, that was him and we’d go down to London. He was just a struggling artist then and a few nights we’d be sleeping on the floor.” (laughing)

Prior to Traffic, you and Jim Capaldi had a project, ‘Deep Feeling?’ “Oh yeah, a couple of years before that, actually…we used to do a lot of Nina Simone songs and Oscar Brown, Jr. songs. Very obscure stuff for those days. Martha and the Vandellas stuff, Bob and Earl the Harlem Shuffle, things like that. They go way back.”

Also in those early days, is it true you did some ‘roadie’ work? “Yeah for a couple of months, I was.” And didn’t you play on a few Spencer Davis recordings, ‘I’m A Man’? “Yeah, I’m singing on that and in fact I’m singing on ‘Somebody Help Me’ with Steve, ‘I’m A Man,’ ‘Gimme Me Some Lovin.’ And Traffic was happening then, it was more or less starting.”

Traffic was so groundbreaking for its fusion of Jazz and Psychedelic Rock n’ Roll. “Yeah, it was. It was kind of strange because that was the first group that I, once that I started writing; the things that I was writing about were not the things I’m writing about now. They were the hit songs at the time for the band and it caused a little rift which eventually led to them not wanting me to be in the band anymore so that’s why I left. I don’t know, my things they said were a little too pop-oriented. But I wasn’t even thinking of it that way, I figured if you’re out there making music for the people you might as well make things you can enjoy. I don’t know, sometimes people try to be too hip. I like music to be happy, just have a good time.”

Do you feel your solo efforts reflect more of that? “Yeah, I just sort of talk about or sing about things that everybody goes through, but this isn’t the end of the world approach to things.” (laughing)

When you left Traffic the first time, you started producing more? “Yeah, I did ‘Music in a Doll’s House’ the Family’s album. They were definitely a cult following and it was all done on four-track, that whole thing. Yeah, that was 1968 and I knew all those guys and they wanted me to do the album so I thought it would be a good chance for me to learn that part of the whole thing, you know?”

You worked on some of that generation’s most inspired and iconic sessions…The Stones ‘Beggars Banquet…’ “Well, that was just the 60s in London, which was great. Everybody was just hanging out…the Beatles, the Stones. Anybody that was in that place and we’d all hang out together or be in a club somewhere together and I just got to know all these people. That’s how playing with them came about, you know? Hendrix and I used to hang out a lot. We’d sit up all night and play. Actually, ‘All Along the Watchtower’ came out of listening to that Basement album (Bob Dylan) that he put out with ‘The Mighty Quinn.’ And the John Wesley Harding album was out and we were listening to that at somebody’s house one night; me, Jimi and Brian Jones and he wanted to do ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ That’s when I wasn’t with Traffic and Noel Redding had left Jimi’s band and I was actually going to play bass with Hendrix and the band, but management put a stop to that.” (laughing)

What is it with you and management? (laughing) “I have a thing with all middle men. They become the mouthpieces for things, you know? Probably should have nothing to do with what really should be happening. I don’t know, they just want to protect their interests, I guess.”

Let’s talk about ‘Feeling Alright?’ “That came about pretty easily. I was just trying to write the simplest song I could and the simplest was just two chords that just kept changing back and forth; which is what the song really does. Musically, that’s why I wrote it, lyrically was to do with a lot of other things.”

Seems everybody has recorded that song, from Joe Cocker and Three Dog Night to Mongo Santamaria and Gladys Knight. “I know. I know! I wish I’d have been older and wiser and kept the publishing on it!” (laughing)

After Stevie Winwood left Traffic, didn’t you get together with the other members briefly? “Yes, Mason, Capaldi, Wood and Frog (laughing) ‘Wooden Frog’ was the name of the band. (Keyboardist Mick Weaver was Frog) That was a real short-lived thing.”

You wanted to mention something else about Hendrix? “There’s going to be another movie coming out on Hendrix from the Albert Hall in London. We did the show with him and there’s a sequence with me playing with him on that, and Chris Wood, too. I think that’s coming out next year sometime. I’d like to see it, I haven’t seen it. A blast into the past as Hendrix would say.”

(Editor’s Note: That film ‘The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at the Royal Albert Hall was recorded February 24, 1969.)

Gram Parsons. “Yeah, we played together. Gram, when I first moved to L.A. in ’69 and he introduced me to Cass Elliot. Everybody would go and hang out at her place, you know? That’s how that album came about. She lived on Woodrow Wilson (Laurel Canyon) in fact it was the house that Ringo had that just burned down last year. So, that’s gone.”

Can you talk a little about Delaney and Bonnie. “Well Delaney and Bonnie was when I first went to America, the person that was managing me then, was managing them. I wasn’t doing anything so I went and played guitar with them. It was on that tour in ’69. Clapton wasn’t in the band, he was with Blind Faith. Delaney and Bonnie were the opening act for Blind Faith.”

You release your debut solo album, ‘Alone Together’ in 1970. “I don’t remember too much about doing that album. (laughing) I really didn’t know what I was doing, I just wanted to make an album, you know? All these people like, Leon Russell, Larry Knechtel, who else was on there, Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner and so many. All these guys were up from Tulsa, they were all the session guys and then they all became famous, which then split all of them up, which is what happens. Everything’s fine until success comes and then for some reason it just all goes…psthfft. But I guess that’s just the way it goes.”

You did a few shows with Cass Elliot and then the album. “We did just two dates with Cass, really, and the album. We did a couple of shows, one in New York and one in L.A.”

Your productivity in 1971 was amazing. ‘Welcome to the Canteen.’ There were live recordings from the Troubadour in L.A. and the release of ‘Headkeeper.’ “‘Welcome to the Canteen’ again was when I was back in England. I thought we could give it one more shot and put the band back together again. And ‘Headkeeper’ was really something I didn’t want out. That was a record company trip. It was an unfinished album; it was supposed to be a double album. One original studio album and one live album and we ended up putting one side live and one side studio but they were all unmixed tapes, they weren’t even mixed. They took some rough copies and slapped an album together and threw it out there. There are some good things on there, but I never got to really finish it. I really wanted it to be a double album.”

You’ve performed with so many artists over the years, is there anybody you’d really like to play with that you haven’t had the opportunity as of yet? “God, a lot I suppose! Most of the people I want to play with are a little out of my league, I think. I don’t really think of myself as a musician at all. I’m very limited in terms of what I can do on guitar. I go for a sound; I know how to put it all together to make up a whole thing. Jim Krueger is what I would call a guitar player (laughing) with my band. He’s a great guitar player; I don’t really think of myself that way at all.”

Michael Jackson played on your album ‘Old Crest on a New Wave.’ “They put out ‘Save Me’ with Michael and they hit the R&B charts with it too.”

How did that even happen? “Well, I gave him an award with Bonnie Pointer on the American Music Awards, and that’s where I met him. And he was in Studio B in the Studio where I was cutting this record and we were doing this track and I needed somebody to hit a high note, so I thought I’ll just go ask him if he wants to sing on it. He said, ‘Sure, I’d love to sing on it!’ He just popped in out of the session, stood there and bopped away. It sounds like a real odd combination, but it works.”

Let’s go back just a minute because the last time we talked you had just released your sixth solo album “Let it Flow.” That album was on the Billboard charts like 49 weeks and the track ‘We Just Disagree’ peaked at #12 in the U.S. “That was a good album, a big album.”

Then the album before that ‘Certified Live’ I think you mentioned had been mixed aboard a ship? “Yeah, we mixed the album on a boat. Yeah, we took a boat for ten days down to Mexico, anchored near an island somewhere. It was great, it was perfect. No phones, no one to bother you, no hassles.” (laughing)

Mike Finnigan played on your latest album too. He was touring with you the last time you came this way. Finnigan has also been playing with Les Dudek and Jim Krueger in DFK. It’s like six degrees of Dave Mason. “Dudek wrote one of the last songs on the album, ‘Get It Right.’ I played with Les before and Finnigan is playing with Stephen Stills now. He’s been playing with him for a couple of years. Finnigan had a real good time over here.” (Tokyo) “A big six foot Kansas boy. (laughing) It was funny; I never thought he would enjoy it as much as he did, but he loved it over here in Japan. I don’t know how he got on the beds at the New Otani…I imagine his legs hanging off the end of the bed!” (laughing)

Last thoughts on Old Crest on a New Wave. “I really tried to make something that was appealing or commercial if you want to use that word, but not selling out. Simple and just back to the guitar and the band playing, just make it fun…just fun. It’s just everybody’s got to have a point. Whatever happened to just having fun? (laughing) I don’t know, you know? I guess when I was 17 or 18 it was more important to do that, then. Now it’s just, let’s make some music and have a good time, you know?” (laughing)

Speaking of creativity, is it easier to write music now? “Well, it used to be easy. I think it was easier when I had something to prove to myself, when I was younger. It doesn’t matter that much now, there’s a lot of good songwriter’s around and there’s a lot of good songs. I just like to perform and I like to play and I like to sing good songs. And if someone has a good song that I can relate to, I’d love to do it. Its like ‘We Just Disagree’ it could have been something I could have written. It fit right in the framework of Dave Mason. I don’t feel like it has to be all my material at all. Every one can’t be a great song.” (laughing)

When you prepare for recording, what’s the mindset? Wired up? Laid back? Hectic? Crazy? “All of that! (laughing) You know, all of those things.”

You’ve spent decades now as an artist, seeing all the changes taking place in the performing arts and music industry, what do you think the future holds? “I don’t know, I mean…I don’t know where it’s all going quite honestly. (laughing) It’s going down the toilet. (laughing)

But you’ve been doing it so long and so successfully…“But also that’s why I don’t have the pressure of having to constantly be on ALL the time. There’s always going to be a point that I can always make a good song and put it out. I like to do things that are timeless, I don’t know. That’s what I feel is important, more than making the money, more than having the fame if you can make a piece of music that leaves people feeling something. It’s like when I put out ‘Alone Together’ I used to get a lot…” Dave pauses to reflect. “When you write a song and go into the studio and you put it onto tape and the tape goes onto the wax and the wax goes into a piece of cardboard and gets sold…I would get letters from guys who were back from ‘Nam and goin’ nuts and they’d tell me, ‘boy I’d put on one of your songs, man and just sort of…’ Dave just shakes his head. “You know that’s, to me, it just made everything…something like that makes it feel it’s worthwhile. To know that a little relief can be brought in that hellhole that somebody sitting out there…from just something that I did. So that makes it really worthwhile.” Dave grins. “Or that somebody could fall in love, two people fall in love…it’s like when anybody has a certain song that happens at a specific time of your life so you relate and you can always go back to that moment.”
They’re playing our song. “They’re playing our song! (laughing) Right! Like those old classic movies, they’re playing our song! (laughing)

After this tour, what’s next for Dave Mason? “I’ve been through a lot of hassles with business and stuff. I’ve got to get back to myself a little bit. It’s been fourteen years of keeping this up, you know? And there’s not that many people around that have been doing it as long as I have. And it’s been hard, you know? So I have to try and just pace it so I don’t lose myself somewhere along the line. I’m going to try to put this show together for Broadway. The Beacon Theater, they’re going to let me use to do the show, so I want to put this together. I want to take the time to get back to writing a bit more and I think I’m going to be coming out this way (Tokyo) more. All I’ve been doing is playing in America for the last ten years and nowhere else. I’d like to go to some other places and then come back here and work in the Far East a little bit more. From here maybe jump off and go to Australia where I’ve never played. Just go to some places where it’s new for me. So going to some fresh places would be good for me. Sort of rejuvenate myself a little bit.”

As these snippets of time reflect, Dave Mason was not only a skilled and talented musical storyteller but a kind and caring individual. Long after these conversations, Dave continued to give back to the military community. In 2015, he co-founded ‘Rock Our Vets’ with Ted Knapp in support of veterans, their families and the families of fallen first responders. He also collaborated with the non-profit organization WVFV – Work Vessels for Veterans that provides direct services in support of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thank you Dave: for your heart, your humanity and the soundtrack of our youth. Rest in Peace.

The post Memories of Dave Mason appeared first on Traveling Boy.

The good news: I was given the opportunity to interview the legendary Chicago bluesman, Otis Rush around the mid 90s. Even better news: I had to pick him up at Los Angeles International Airport, do the interview in route and deliver him to his hotel. Obviously, I would need a blues accomplice that would willingly face the 405 freeway during ‘Rush’ hour traffic, then careen into and out of LAX at a peak time, just for the privilege of cruising with Otis Rush. I made one call to long-time blues friend and renowned L.A. musician; Preston Smith.

Little did Mr. Rush realize as he deplaned the relative security of his 707, that he was about to come face to face with real ‘Double Trouble.’ The commute from the airport to his hotel would include a pair of inquisitive blues freaks that wanted to grill him on every historical detail of his storied career. Although seemingly resigned to the fact, I’m pretty sure he began experiencing a few reservations, and almost certainly imagined a number of ‘bluesman abducted’ scenarios, as he haltingly approached Preston’s vintage soccer mom van. After words of encouragement and reassurance, Pres hit the gas and appropriately, blue smoke poured from our ‘limo.’ I turned toward the strapped-in blues legend and hit my record button.

Born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, was your family musical? “My uncle was into music.” Otis said. “It wasn’t planned, just played around the house, you know? That was enough for me. My brother’s all had guitars, but they didn’t play.”

I was surprised to learn you started with harmonica first. “I did start with harmonica first.” Why the change? “Well the guitar was laying over there and I got the harmonica in my hand. So I want to try the guitar, right? I wasn’t doing too great with the harmonica.” (laughing)

Too much competition? “Not at that time. There wasn’t no Little Walter and stuff like that. I never heard the Howlin’ Wolf blow the harmonica, I never heard Junior Wells. It was just me.”

Do you remember when you first heard blues? “Well I listened to the radio all the time. I listened to Western music, you know country music. Eddy Arnold…and the bluegrass boys and all those guys. Aw man, I listened to all of them.”

“Well, I remember crawling on my stomach like a snake trying to keep from gettin’ shot, up in there.” (laughing) “I remember that!”

—- Otis Rush on bar crawling in Chicago

Who do you think influenced you most in your style of play today? “Well I heard John Lee Hooker, see? Then I heard Muddy Waters after I came to Chicago. Muddy was the first guy I saw on the bandstand, and I said, ‘well this is for me’, you know? And they were sounding very good and I felt like I had to do the same thing…to get me going.”

Any others? “All the guys, Howlin’ Wolf…Little Walter. That was after I arrived in Chicago. Chicago was uh… I was really excited, you know? Because I had heard these guys on stage and I said well I gotta’ do something. I was working a day job and I quit the day job to make $5 a night. But like I said it was Muddy! That’s the guys I kept my eyes on. Little Walter, I began to watch him, Willie Mabon, Willie Dixon.”

What kind of work were you doing outside of music? “Oh, I was working at a steel mill, packing house, different places to pay that rent.” (laughing)

Your style of play and association with Cobra label mates is often referred to as Chicago’s ‘West Side Sound.’ “The public came up with this, not me. You know they had the West Side, South Side and North Side. They started naming it Chicago Blues. I don’t know, Chicago Blues, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York who cares… its Blues, you know? I helped some of the guys get started, like Magic Sam. Magic Sam and Buddy Guy… and like I said, Junior (Wells) was already out there. There’s a lot of guys I helped man, I don’t know, I don’t know their names.”

Let’s talk a little about the clubs of Chicago. Do you remember your first? “It was at 2711 So. Wentworth, Club Alibi. That was where I got my first start. $5 a night.” (laughing)

I remember a story Charlie Musselwhite once told me about bumping into you at a rowdy night spot called the I Spy Lounge. You knew that place, right? “Yea, yea, yea, I do! Well, I remember crawling on my stomach like a snake trying to keep from gettin’ shot, up in there.” (laughing) “I remember that!”

After hearing Musselwhite’s stories about patrons carrying butcher knives, meat cleavers, and the ever popular ‘hogleg’ hidden under shirts or tucked into waist bands, it didn’t come as a huge surprise when he said he too had ‘run into’ Otis while on hands and knees as they both scampered for the exit. Charlie further relayed that Otis had told him, the I Spy was probably the roughest club in Chicago, and if Otis thought that, then it was probably true.

Otis is nodding and with a huge smile across his face, starts to laugh again. “It were rough! Me and my bass player met each other, you know the bar was round…and I’m crawling on the floor trying to get to the front door. And who do I meet but him.” (laughing) “On the floor!” (laughing) “Yeah, they was shootin’ up in there so we was trying to get out.”

You must know Charlie pretty well. Otis is still smiling and nods. “Charlie is a swell dude. Really swell.”

You started as a solo performer. “I’ve always had my own band. I’ve always played lead, but I’ve always had my own group.” And Rush’s bands have always featured stellar musicians. “At some point I had Fred Below, you know the drummer? Louis Myers, Dave Myers. Junior Wells played with me. A lot of other guys, man.”

Looking at some of your recordings, you’ve always seemed to feature some pretty talented guests. Duane Allman for one. “Yea, he was a guitarist on this, (Mourning in the Morning) he was playing second guitar. Luther Tucker was on some of my albums…and shows, you know?”

How did you come to know Duane Allman? “That was through Nick Gravenites, Nick and Mike Bloomfield.” They produced that album. “Yes, so they had them all set up and waiting for me.”

Could you tell us a little about your first recording session at Chess? “I remember it was me, Willie (Dixon) I think Brother Montgomery on piano sometime, Leake sometime. Leake… Lafayette, you know? Different people. That was in the ’60’s at Chess. In the beginning who I recorded for was Cobra, that’s the old stuff, that’s who I started out with in the very beginning, then Chess, then Duke.”

I read that you’ve been credited for playing some of the first electric bass. “Well, me and Willie D. Warrens. We brought electric bass to Chicago. See they didn’t have it up there; they didn’t have no electric bass. Muddy Waters and them was using second guitar, just for bass. Me and Willie D. Warren’s was the one’s that got the bass going. We ran our strings down, the bass strings, giving it a bass sound, different from the guitar tuning. We ran it down and we was the hottest thing in Chicago. Musicians… Stars was coming by to see where we was getting this sound from. Say, ‘you got two guitars up there, how you do this?’ So, about 6 months later everybody had it. They didn’t ask where it come from, they just started playing it.”

Seems to me you should’ve received a little more credit for it. “They was in a hurry man, (laughing) It’s true. Some of them say, ‘Otis, how’d you get this sound?’ Some of them ask my bass player. But true, all of them in a hurry.”

Rush’s music has been recorded by a host of players and musicians; Zeppelin, Mayall, Clapton to mention just a few and almost every rock and roll guitarist in the past half century credits Rush as an influence. That includes Clapton, Page, Beck, Santana… That must make you feel good. “Well it makes me feel real nice. But I’ve got a lot of ground to cover, yet. A lot of work to do.”

Can you talk a little about touring and life on the road. “I’ve been here, home, back, in and out, you know? The only time I do three or four weeks, or a month is when I go to Europe or Japan.”

Let me ask you about some of your blues playing peers and you tell me what comes to mind. Muddy. “Well, Muddy…I didn’t go to his house, I just knew him from the stage and from going to the clubs and he’d come by where I play sometimes, that’s it. I didn’t know him too well, but they was nice peoples.”

James Cotton. “I knew James before he got with Muddy, before he started playing with Muddy. Yea, he was trying to get a gig. Otis Spann, too. Yea, we used to go to clubs together, trying to get gigs. Muddy hired a harmonica player, then he wanted a keyboard and Spann was there.”

Little Walter. “Walter was playing with Muddy when I came to Chicago. And after I got here he broke out on his own style. ‘Juke’, yea, that was… That changed a lot of things? Sure did, sure did!”

George ‘Harmonica’ Smith. “We started out together. He was tough man, you know? He was great on the harmonica, nice dude and he moved out to Los Angeles. He could blow, man.”

Willie Dixon. “Well, Willie sort of helped me get started with Cobra. Before I recorded the first record I didn’t know Willie too well, we just played at the 708 Club. Him and Eli come by and asked, ‘did I want to record?’ I said, ‘Yes!’ you know? Imagine me, hearing myself, playing back a record on me! It was really exciting, the first record.”

John Lee Hooker. “Well I knew him from records in the South. I met him after I got to Chicago. At different places, out here in Los Angeles, I met him at the San Francisco Festival. We played on the same show in Chicago for a week. Albert King for a week. Little Milton for a week. We all goes the same route. It’s the blues, right? If I don’t see the guys on this show, maybe the next show we’ll meet up. If not, two or three shows later. When we’re out of town we’ll meet up. Some of us, then the other’s going the other way.”

How about some of the earlier guys, Robert Johnson or Johnny Shines? “They’re great musicians, you know? I can’t take anything away from Robert or Johnny, they’re all great musicians. Make that known, I love all the guys. And we’re all trying to do something for the blues.”

Anybody I didn’t mention? “I think you mentioned them ALL!” (laughing) “There’s lots more but I can’t think of them. You got Buddy Guy, Jimmy Johnson, they’re great guitarist’s man, great vocalist’s. Little Jimmy Johnson up there in Chicago.”

What is it about the blues that seems to take people so early? “I don’t know, man. It’s just life. You know, life? I feature the blues but I play some of the other stuff too. And I love it, I love it all.”

What are the blues to Otis Rush? “Trouble! Troubles!” (laughter) “Double Troubles! Double troubles, believe me the blues…if you get ’em right, you got the Blues! They come from that woman, and financially… Needs…and you know, Love.”

The show that night at the Music Machine on Pico in West L.A. was unforgettable. And when he broke into ‘Double Trouble,’ I just had to smile when he sang the line, ‘Bad Luck and Trouble has taken me…’

If you want to hear Otis Rush at his best, I’d recommend ‘The Essential Otis Rush’ for his early work with Willie Dixon at Cobra. Then follow his timeline into the 1970’s with ‘Right Place, Wrong Time.’ His sessions with guitarist/producer John Porter and pianist, Bill Paine of Little Feat in the 90’s culminated in one of my favorites, ‘Ain’t Enough Comin’ In.’ And then there’s Rush’s ‘Any Place I’m Going’ which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album/Recording in 1998. Enjoy.

The post Otis Rush would have turned 92 in 2026 appeared first on Traveling Boy.

John Nemeth is a busy guy. He and his band, the Blue Dreamers, tour constantly and rarely leave the road. But when they do it’s just long enough to feed the heads of their rabid and enthusiastic fan base. Personally, I’ve witnessed multiple Nemeth shows in both intimate and festival settings and not once have I ever seen a patron stagger away without a face full of grin. So when word came down that a new recording was in the works, my grin got wider. “I was under pressure to get my new music out.” John says. “These days you have to put something out every other year. It takes so long to do a full scale production and publicity and it takes some serious capital. So I mixed up the new music (Feelin’ Freaky)and sold it only from the stage for a year. I did not advertise it or promote it. It boosted ticket sales and gave the fans a great raw in the flesh record.”

So the CD ‘Feelin’ Freaky‘ that I’ve had in my car for the past six months has been… upgraded? “We reformatted the album,” John says. “The band really wanted to change some things in the mix and make it vinyl ready. So we remixed it and put the sparkles on it. To make it ready for vinyl we had to re-master it and the result is a super Hi-Fi 180 gram platter. The original album idea did not have my name or album title on it. I loved it but the marketing folks said no way. So we redid the album art and added a lyric book including a fold out jacket with pics from the sessions.”

And the final consensus? “I love it!” John professes. “This has been such a long time coming and is a huge milestone in my career. ‘Feelin’ Freaky’ (Memphis Grease Records) is an all-original album from the deepest reaches of my bag, produced by Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars, Black Crowes, Phil Lesh and The Word) and performed by the Blue Dreamers along with the grooviest staples of the Memphis Scene.”

The 38th Blues Music Awards are coming up and if my math is correct you’ve received no less than nineteen nominations since your Best New Artist debut in 2008. Once again you’re on the short list for the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year. How does that happen? “I think a lot of my entertainment style is very old school,” John says. “It’s very ’40s and ’50s driven, but I let the music do the talking. And when the songs done, then I speak. But I don’t use a song to be a vehicle for just fanfare, that’s not what I’m in it for. I’m in it for staying true to the song and playing it like the record. That’s my gig. And that’s a lot like B.B. King, so in doing that, that’s how I’ve gotten the nomination for that kind of award.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

“It’s just got a funky culture about it, you know? That feel in the music is the feel of the city. It’s the people; it’s everything about that town.”

– John Nemeth on why he loves living in Memphis

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

How would you describe John Nemeth’s music? “John’s music,” he grins. “John makes up a vocal line and a melody and all of a sudden you’ve got something like,” he breaks into song. ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When you got it good, don’t nix it. If you take it straight, don’t mix it. Don’t go looking for love when you got it, if it ain’t broke.’ What I sing has a groove to it and I take this to the band and I say, ‘band this is going to be something a little different than you’ve done before and I want you to play right with my groove. When you play right in my groove, then you’re right in my wheelhouse. It’s a common misconception that it’s just the melody, but no it’s the melody and the phrasing of the melody and that’s what I love about all the great blues guys, that great delivery.”

John Nemeth and the Blue Dreamers. Photo: Yachiyo Mattox

You would be hard-pressed to categorize Nemeth’s music into one genre; his live shows can glide through slow blues and contemporary soul ballads only to turn, twist and torque fans into a frenzied, funky dance sweat. There seems to be no limits or restraints to the Nemeth sound. According to John, there’s a perfectly good reason for that. “I started off my career in a town that didn’t care what you played so long as it was good music. My first gig was actually outside of my hometown, an even deeper culture out there in the sticks. I started playing at this place called the Grubstake Saloon in Horseshoe Bend, Idaho. The guy hired me and said, ‘listen I want you to play outlaw country, I want you to play Credence, Chuck Berry and whatever else.’ So the ‘whatever else’ was blues. We learned from playing the hits to these folks and how to make your songs work like hits. I mean now the music industry is in such a bizarro place, you know? A guy like me… the music business is so conservative they just don’t go that freaky like they used to. Old guys back in the day… the old guys would say, ‘Wow, this is something new, have you ever heard anything like this? Well hey, we got it first, we’re putting it out. What happened to that? You wonder why the music business is failing, it’s because people are too afraid to try something new and fresh.” John pauses, “And going fresh, means going back to the old days.”

Last year I caught you at Gator by the Bay in San Diego and you were on stage with Johnny Vernazza and Roy Rogers, did you meet them in the Bay Area? “I met those guys in Idaho. I’d never even seen them play. There’s a bar called the Blues Bouquet. You know I’ve been to a million bars in America, and I have to say the Blues Bouquet was one of the most beautiful bars in the whole United States. It had a bar that was probably one hundred and fifty feet long. I’d never seen anything like it and all mirrored out and beautiful patina on it. The bars are where it’s at, I played five nights a week and these guys came through there. I used to see Johnny V with Norton Buffalo all the time. Because Norton Buffalo had a wife from Nampa, Idaho, he used to come up there all the time. How cool is that? And I remember the strangest thing, man. I’m playing harmonica out back and Norton walks out and he says, ‘Hey man, how are you playing that harmonica?’ And I said, ‘Well, I curl my tongue and use it to block out the other holes.’ And he says, ‘Man, I recognize that. That’s exactly how I play.’ I said, ‘No way!’ And nobody plays like that, it’s like you and me, brother.” (laughing)

L to R: Johnny Vernazza, John Nemeth and Roy Rogers. Photo: T. Mattox

I know you haven’t been playing with Roy and Johnny a lot, but when you got together on stage, it really felt and sounded like you’d been touring for months… “That is a pure creative moment up there. We talked about what we were going to play and we put the set list together right back behind the stage. You know what it is, we all listened to the real old blues…that feel, that attitude about it. We’ve listened to all those same cats and that has seeped into our soul.”

What took you from the Bay Area to Memphis? “It just got too expensive. I had a baby girl and everything, everywhere is going up. If you’re a working musician that’s never had a hit, well you’re never gonna’ make it playin’ music in the Bay Area. That’s just the way it is, man. I mean, you have to have some major success to hang in there. So I told my wife that we’re gonna’ need to move and she says, ‘Well, where are we gonna’ go?’ I thought for a moment and said, ‘I think we should go to Memphis.’ So we flew out there and checked it out for a week and if we liked it we were gonna’ get a place. And we both really liked the city, it’s just got a funky culture about it, you know? That feel in the music is the feel of the city. It’s the people; it’s everything about that town. It’s why Johnny Cash still has that same element that Otis Redding has. Don’t cheat the backbeat; it’s very hip-driven music and every facet you can drive with your hips.”

The original music you create has such a familiar feel to it, how do you approach song-writing? “Spontaneous.” He says. “There’s no real getting worked up to do something but I force myself to be aware of when it’s time to go. Like, hey baby not today… song coming. And I get right in it. I’ll get about 75 percent of the song done and then the last 25 percent, that’s what takes a month or two with some serious thought about it and that’s the difference.

A previous project, ‘Memphis Grease‘ received amazing accolades from both critics and fans; you had to be happy about that. “That was a great record, man.” He grins.

Can you talk a little about working with the Bo-Keys? “Well, I tell you what, working with the Bo-Keys is great! A-number One is the baddest drummer on the planet. He has been mimicked ever since, I don’t know, ’66, ’67? He’s the guy that invented the straight beat and how you can work around it. I mean you can listen to AC-DC and you hear Howard Grimes. Howard Grimes is the guy on all the Al Green music. He’s the rhythm behind makin’ babies. Howard Grimes is the man. When I cut the record and went out on a coast-to-coast tour with Howard Grimes, that’s when I had a shift in my understanding of things… knowing that most of my music is based around Memphis. I’m a big fan of Memphis music and that whole region right there.”

I gotta’ ask about your fashion sense, you’re the only guy I know who wears coveralls to play. It’s the ultimate working man’s wear. “You know the suits just kept getting tighter! Living in Memphis is difficult, when I’m off the road I have friends and family visiting and they want to eat fried chicken and bar-be-cue. And man, the best bar-be-cue in the world is in Memphis. Trust me, I’ve played all the bar-be-cue joints and I’ve eaten at the ones that don’t have music and I’m a connoisseur, look at me. That’s why I’m in the coveralls. These are so nice and I can sleep in these, too. They are so comfortable to sleep in, some nights I just turn the TV on and watch the Warriors play or the Grizzlies, it’s beautiful.” (laughing)

Nemeth and Deanna Bogart on Rosarito Beach, Baja Mexico 2016

You’ve played with so many people; let’s talk about a few of your musical pals…Junior Watson. “Tell you what; Junior Watson is probably one of the greatest talents I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with. Junior can play anything and make anything his own. He is a master, he is a master and that’s why he is loved around the world. He’s a beautiful spirit and a big pain in the ass sometimes, but you got to pay a price for something in this world. Junior Watson is well worth it, he’s the greatest.”

Anson Funderburgh. “That was the gig where I really learned to sing the blues. I was filling in for Sam Myers because he had throat cancer. Man, it was the biggest job I ever had to fill, and I mean there’s no filling it. Sam Myers had groove and wisdom beyond my years, but I thought it was really cool that Anson gave me a shot to sing with that great band. He in turn helped me out and produced my ‘Magic Touch’ record which was my first big record for Blind Pig. He’s a great guy and he’s got a wonderful family… a calm and creative cat.”

Rick Estrin. “Oh man, I love Rick Estrin, I love Rick Estrin’s songwriting. I love his wit and humor; I’m a big fan of Louis Jordan and Nat King Cole, that jive-style of songwriting. Rick is a master at writing great songs. I’ve done the ‘Booty Song,’ If you dig it, ‘Don’t Do It.’ His version of ‘My Last Meal,’ I’ve done ‘Dump That Chump,’ and ‘Smart Like Einstein.’ I’ve done, ‘I’ll Take you Back,’ and ‘Side Stuff.’ He’s been a huge help for me.”

Another harp master, Charlie Musselwhite. “Oh, I love Charlie Musselwhite. Talk about a guy that has the guts to re-invent his own way of playing blues harmonica and it’s fabulous.”

Living in Memphis, you must hear a lot of great musicians and players. “I get to go see this great guy, Earl the Pearl. He plays every Tuesday and Saturday and he has members of the Hi Rhythm Section backing him up. They’re just a fabulous band and they respect him so much. And he can play the most simple, beautiful blues and he can sing so simply and beautifully and in such a groove and that’s exactly what Charlie Musslewhite has too. He has that calm and guts to play some wildly, harmonically beautiful stuff. He paints a real soundscape for the audience.”

Musselwhite came up during an era that featured a whole host of harp players including Paul Butterfield. “Oh, another great harmonica player, Paul Butterfield was another great guy. All those guys have rubbed off on me so much. I didn’t get to work with Butterfield, but I did get to work with Elvin Bishop and that’s pretty close. I don’t know how many records I did with them. Elvin has a hell of a groove, Elvin can make people feel wonderful. It’s a constant joy up there when Elvin is playing. Even the hardest hitting stuff has this positive energy flowing out of it and that’s an amazing skill. And Elvin Bishop was a part of that sound and a part of shaping the landscape of the Seventies. Those guys had a lot to do with how people understand groove now. You know, Sam Lay and I think Jerome Arnold was the rhythm section in that band… Wow!“

Nemeth surrounded by friends and fans. Photo: Yachiyo Mattox

Any parting wisdom you’d care to share? “Don’t be afraid to have a good time and don’t second guess yourself. If you have the notion to go out and listen to some good music and dance and have yourself a good time… just do it! Even if you’re starting to feel a little tired, go out there and you’ll feel better than you’ve ever felt before… or maybe in a long time. And the rest of your week will be better and better. So just get out there and see some music, hear some music, move to some music, its part of being human.”

Check out John Nemeth’s remixed, reformatted and remastered CD ‘Feelin’ Freaky‘ scheduled for release on May 19th this year. And for a great night of live music and entertainment peruse www.johnnemeth.com for tour dates and times near you. Rest up, ’cause you’ll need it.

The post John Németh garners four more Blues Music Award nominations in 2026 appeared first on Traveling Boy.

“The blues,” according to John Hammond, “is the most honest way of looking at life. It’s reality but with humor and the deepest feeling. Blues is not like sadness, blues is like…depth. Like the sky is blue, like the ocean is blue, it’s forever.”

A musical philosophy that John’s fans embrace every time he takes the stage. His style reflects an earthiness, a richness that’s steeped in blues tradition. When he speaks of the early masters, you can hear the admiration in his voice. So it really comes as no surprise to learn Hammond, like most of his blues predecessors, honed his chops on the street.

“That’s where I started playing professionally. That was 1962. I played on street corners and little coffee houses, at picnics. Anywhere I could get heard. When you’re starting out, you’ll play for whoever will listen.

Blind Boy Fuller, a lot of the guys, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Blake, all these guys were street players and this is a tradition that goes back as far as time.”

Time, as far as the Blues are concerned, started when John turned seven.

“I remember hearing Big Bill Broonzy and Josh White, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. I grew up in New York City in the 1940’s and 50’s. In the 1950’s there was a disc jockey named Alan Freed and he played a lot of R & B, blues influenced, what became rock and roll. Guys like Ray Charles, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry. Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. Those were my earliest musical discoveries…that I latched on to.”

Hammond, the son of legendary record exec and talent scout John Henry Hammond, seemed intent on becoming his own bluesman, his own way. He took a giant leap in that direction in 1963 at the Newport Folk Festival.

“In the 60’s that was the biggest gathering of folk artists and about the most prestigious thing. I’d been playing for about a year and I was invited to play there. It was a tremendous honor and I happened to do very well that day. It led to a lot of good things for me.”

The resulting album catapulted Hammond into the national spotlight. His music features the traditional instrumentation of harmonica, guitar and vocals, yet he seems more than comfortable exploring multiple, regional styles and varied techniques in his performances. A potpourri if you will; from Texas and Mississippi country blues, some bottleneck slide, maybe a sampling of ragtime with a bit of Eastern seaboard Piedmont, John pays homage with every set he plays. It’s little wonder why he became a ‘bridge’ between early Delta players and the then, modern-day folk performers. A bond that grows ever stronger when Hammond reflects on the originators that became mentors. There’s a respect, almost a reverence, when he talks about the man known as the ‘King of the Delta’ players, Robert Johnson.

“Well, I would say in terms of my actually playing the guitar and playing professionally, I’d say he (Johnson) was my inspiration. I’d heard a lot of the country blues artists and I thought he was like the synthesis of all of them. He had styles of Lonnie Johnson and Blind Boy Fuller. He had obviously heard everybody and he had come up with his own style. He was just a phenomenal player.”
John Hammond in concert

Over a career that now approaches five decades, Hammond has recorded and performed with some of the most talented and significant musicians of the last century. His impressive body of work (I lost count after more than two dozen albums) is truly a living aural history of America’s Blues. If you ask John about favorites he just smiles.

“I worked a lot of gigs with Sam Hopkins. He was a really dynamic player. I was very impressed with the fact that he was a solo artist and could put so much emotion and feeling into his playing. His voice was so powerful, he was just a mesmerizing artist.”

Another bluesman that John considered larger-than-life was John Lee Hooker.

“When I first heard John Lee, I guess it was 1956. I imagined him to be probably seven feet tall and ate like whole chickens for dinner and stuff. It was a tremendous surprise when I met him and saw he was about five foot five and a really slender guy. But when he opened his mouth to sing, this incredible, incredible voice spanned the ages.”

In the early 60’s a blues contemporary, Michael Bloomfield, introduced Hammond to Muddy Waters as well as a couple of studio players who were working to make a name for themselves.

“I recorded twice with Michael. I made an album in 1964 called, ‘So Many Roads’ with Michael, Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson and Rick Danko. I met Michael the first time I went to Chicago in 1961. I was hanging out and saw a blues festival at the University of Chicago and I met him there. We just became friends immediately. We were both blues fanatics, but Michael knew ALL the guys. I mean Michael jammed with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and everybody. To meet Michael was like an introduction to the entire Chicago scene. He was a wonderful guy. He was a friendly, wonderful man and I miss him a lot.”

(Gone too soon, Bloomfield was found dead in his car from a drug overdose in San Francisco, February 1981. Michael Bloomfield was just 37 years old.)

Hammond’s own reputation as a bluesman was continuing to grow and it wasn’t long before other musicians began to recognize his talents. John Mayall would become one such believer.

“On my first tour to England, I was fortunate enough to be on a show with him (Mayall) in South Hampton. We just, sort of, started talking. He had never heard of me and I had never heard of him. We became friends right away. He had a band at that time, that included Eric Clapton and Stevie Winwood and oh, God, just about who’s who in the British rock scene. This was before they had become big stars. We sort of hung out and we did a little tour together. We got invited to do a TV show called, ‘Ready, Steady, Goes Live’ and they backed me up as my band. It was really phenomenal.”

Hammond’s musical collaborations, both then and now, have been all encompassing. Not only has he played and toured with Mayall and Clapton and recorded with Spooner Oldham and Duane Allman, but for a short period early in his career, shared the stage with a young guitarist named Jimmy.

“He called himself Jimmy James then. Unfortunately it was just about a two-week time span that I got to know him. He played with me and we put a little band together in New York at a club called Cafe A-Go-Go. It was there he was discovered and went off to England and became a big star.”

It didn’t take long for the rest of the world to recognize the phenomenal talents of Jimmy James, only you and I got to know him as….Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix.

The British connection also played a significant role in Hammond’s ‘I Can Tell’ album sessions.

“The Rolling Stones were in New York. I had met them, they had come to hear me play at the Village Gate and then I went over to England. I was very good friends with Brian Jones. Brian was wanting to play harmonica on the session, but I said, ‘No, I’m playing harmonica.’ And Bill (Wyman) said, ‘Gee, I know you don’t play bass.’ So Bill played the bass on it. It was a real super session. Artie Butler on the piano, Bill on the bass, Robbie Robertson on guitar, me on guitar and Charles Otis on drums.”

A Grammy Award-winner, John takes great pride in his craft but places an even higher value on his friendships. And his friends run the gamut from the late Roosevelt ‘Honeydripper’ Sykes to legendary harmonica ace, Charlie Musselwhite.

“Charlie played the finest harmonica, and still does to this day. He’s one of my idols and a great friend of mine.”

The road continues to twist and turn for John Hammond. The miles have taken him from street corners to international music festivals, from roadhouses to supper clubs. But when it comes to status, nothing holds a candle to the performances at New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall.

“It is a thrill. It’s one of the most beautiful theaters that there is…in the world. I mean you look up and there’s five tiers of golden balcony. Your knees tremble, literally your knees tremble.”

But Hammond, the journeyman, remains rooted. He’s a realist who candidly admits to playing some of the lesser known venues.

“A lot of the clubs I played, where I wondered, ‘what the hell I was doing there?’ I really was fortunate that there wasn’t holes in my head.

Always the essence of diplomacy, “I don’t want to mention any names,” the legendary bluesman laughs, “because I may have to play there again.”

The post The Journeyman: Plumbing the Depths with John Hammond appeared first on Traveling Boy.