Question 1: What are some of the “things” or activities that Austrians do for fun?

Answer:

Austrians love to socialize, either at wine taverns or cafés where they hang out. Austrians love to ski, snowboard and even ice-climb in winter and hike/walk in the Austrian Alps and bicycle in Summer. They are also avid theater, concert and opera goers and even the small villages have bands, choirs, and folklore groups.

Question 2: What’s one thing the public probably does NOT know about Austria?

Answer:

Austria is over 1000 years old and up until the 20th Century was one of the world’s largest empires. Austria became a European power not by warfare, but by strategically marrying into the other royal families of Europe thereby neutralizing any enemies. A good example of this is Empress Maria Theresa’s daughter, the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who married King Louis XIV and ended up losing her head.

Question 3: Share some aspect of Austria as regards to what it has contributed to the world.

Answer:

In the field of music alone, composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Strauss, Josef Haydn, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg brought great joy to the world.

The post 3 Things We Didn’t Know About Austria appeared first on Traveling Archive.

As a bluesman who had been there and done that, Willie lived his life exactly like he wrote songs; simply, without pretension and at gut level. A huge man both in girth and talent, he became a voice for the broken man and the troubled woman. He had a genuine gift for musical arrangement and composition and is, to this day, still considered one of the blues’ most prolific songwriters. He was incredibly intuitive when it came to pairing songs with musicians and musicians with sessions, then successfully capturing on vinyl, the best from both. Just look through any of the Chess or Cobra libraries.

As a studio producer, songwriter, session player and stage performer, Dixon had few peers. His remarkable body of work remains the watermark for today’s generation of blues players. A keen ear for talent and ribald sense of humor made him versatile, but Willie’s observations of the human condition and flair for innuendo, made him legendary.

Born seventh in a line of fourteen Dixon children, Willie could trace his education and understanding of the blues directly to his family upbringing. “One of the phrases my parents used to teach me, especially my mother, ‘Think twice before you speak once, and think the third time before you act.’ And another thing she always said was, ‘Anybody can get mad, but anybody can’t get smart. It pays to get smart but it don’t pay to get mad.’ When I was a youngster I couldn’t understand it because it didn’t make sense. But today it makes sense because the world can make anybody mad.”

“Another thing, ‘If you don’t listen you can’t learn’ and those are three things in life that a person have to do to really understand and learn to enjoy life, because if people make you angry you will never enjoy it. And these are the kind of things that had a great influence on me after I got grown, even though I knew them as a youngster.” Shaking his head, he admitted, “But many a-times I done things without thinking.”

The True Facts of Life

Willie had the unique ability to relate life’s experience through his music. A twelve bar documentary of the world around him. “That’s why I wrote so many songs, because I’ve been writing about the true facts of life that exist today and what I hope, tomorrow, will be a better future. I’ve been writing songs all my life, you know? I used to walk around with a gunny sack full of songs. I couldn’t get nobody to do them. I used to sell them outright for $10.”

If there has ever been a central figure or seminal root of the blues, that list of names would begin with Willie Dixon. From a dirt-poor youth in Mississippi to the revered and respected elder of America’s only indigenous music, Dixon began his pursuit at the tender age of eight.

“I was a kid in Mississippi and we used to be outside of a place called Zack Lewis’. He had a little tavern; they called it a barrelhouse in those days, and Little Brother Montgomery would be in there playing piano with his band. We used to follow Little Brother all over town. I’d be bare-footed, running up and down the road behind them, they’d be up on a wagon bed or a T-model Ford truck and he had a piano up there. Little Brother was short and little at that time and we always thought he was a kid, but he was several years older than we was. I know every time we chased him all day long, I’d go back home and get a whippin’ for missing school and following the band all day.”

Those first short, dusty steps would begin a lifelong journey for Willie Dixon. A path he embraced with open arms and sometimes clinched fists. Occasional brushes with the law and time spent in reform school exposed Dixon to the serrated edge of life.

I’m Ready

“I used to be a fighter, you know?” I used to train at Eddie Nichol’s Gym in Chicago. Fightin’ is a hard job. Of course, I won the Golden Gloves in 1937 and I fought pro a few times. After I found out everybody was getting money but me, my management company was taking advantage of me, so we got into quite a hassle and it caused both of us to get expelled. Fights get into your system like everything else, you know? Until you finally get beat enough to give up. I got a chance to train with the ‘Brown Bomber’ (Joe Louis) down to Eddie Nichol’s gym I was supposed to go on a tour with them, but I never did go. My manager didn’t want me to get shell-shocked before I got out there too far, you know?”

Shell-shocked is the pivotal word here. As often happens with dramatic and unforeseen turns in life, Willie, while somewhat disappointed, began to contemplate his options. “After sparring with Louis, I knew from that point on, and for the rest of my life, that I wanted to be…..a songwriter. The music don’t fight back and you don’t have to be ducking and dodging and running and keeping yourself together, you know?”

Eddie Nichol’s place may have witnessed the end of Willie’s fight game, but it also provided the catalyst for his next career. A fellow musician and delta native, who was also a ringside regular, would steer the impressionable Dixon in a totally different direction. That fight fan was Leonard ‘Baby Doo’ Caston.

“He was the one teaching me about the musical things, you know? He used to come around the gymnasium where I was training and sitting around there playing guitar and singing all day. The first instrument I started on was a one-string tin can ‘Baby Doo’ Caston made for me. I had been singing bass in the south as a youngster on the spiritual side, I knew a pretty good bass line and I’d learned how to play that on one string, so it wasn’t hard for me to learn.”

As part of the short-lived ‘Five Breezes’ in the late 30’s and later “The Big Three Trio”, Dixon and Caston were fast becoming Chicago’s original blues brothers. The Windy City was experiencing post-war prosperity where jobs were abundant and high-paying. The continuous migration of southern laborers and struggling musicians along with the sudden influx of returning, cash-laden military personnel combined to make the south side of Chicago an entertainment flashpoint.

Venues materialized as quickly as the crowds. Clubs, bars and boulevards (Maxwell Street) beckoned to blues players from every region of the country, especially the talent-rich Delta. Some clubs were more prestigious than others.

“Playin’ in some of them old dives in Chicago, every night when you walked in you was lucky to get out. I could name a lot of places we used to play, you know? Like 708 when they was first gettin’ out, and they used to have a place down on Indiana they called ‘the Hole’. You’d have to look goin’ in and look comin’ out because you didn’t know whether you were gonna’ make it goin’ in or comin’ out. I remember the I Spy Lounge, that was on 43rd street. Richard Stems owned the I Spy. The Green Door was another place; they used to have a lot of those rough places. People now days don’t even know what rough stuff is. A lot of times guys you were workin’ with had their guns and things and I was more afraid of them than I was the folks out there.”

The Gospel According to McKinley

Chicago, in the late 40’s, was Mecca for blues players but their styles were diversifying and experimentation produced a new, amplified city sound. On any given night you could find Willie, Big Maceo, Sleepy John Estes, Sonny Boy, Memphis Slim, Memphis Minnie or Son House hanging out at Tampa Red’s place.

“Tampa Red had a big old room back there, he lived right up over a pawn shop on 35th and he had an old, raggedy bed sitting in the corner and a broke-down piano in another corner. Everybody could get in there and could sit on the bed or on the floor or on the piano and they’d all be in there arguing about songs, you know and making songs, like that. Lester Melrose would be in the front room and he’d always have the old lady cooking something; chitlins or something. He’d come back there, ‘What you fella’s got?’ And each one would come up with what he got.”

Creative juices flowed like hot grease down the Melrose stove. Working with Leonard Caston and Ollie Crawford at local clubs, The Big Three would occasionally find themselves on stage with another Delta musician. Willie’s personal association with this one time plantation resident would last a lifetime and their collaboration would become legendary. McKinley Morganfield and Willie Dixon were about to alter the world’s perception of the blues.

“Muddy Waters was one of the first ones that starting doing some of my tunes, you know? I was walking around with 200 songs in a bag and nobody would do none of ’em. I’d go around and sing ’em to him, so he said, ‘Man, I like that song.’ I had a little trio called the Big Three Trio at that time; we had recorded for Columbia and also for Bullet Company. We done that song about the ‘Signifyin’ Monkey’ and ‘Wee, wee baby you sure look good to me’ and other songs.

So this ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’, Muddy Waters liked it, you know? So I started to go out there and jam with him with our trio. He told me, ‘Man I sure like that song, if you let me, I’ll record it.’ Sure enough he got with his manager. I got with Muddy over on 14th Street one night, I took the song over there and he said, ‘Dixon, I’m gonna’ do that song tonight.’ He didn’t know the song, he’d just heard me singing it.

So I took him in the washroom on the intermission, and we practiced the song. He walked out of there and he said, ‘Man, you better let me do it first, so I won’t forget it. By the time he came out of the washroom, he went on the stage and he started doin’ the ‘Hoochie, Coochie Man’ and he done it til the day he died.”

Writing music occasionally created conflicts among Willie’s friends, especially if an artist wanted, or didn’t want to record a certain song. And Dixon was the first to admit that writing the song wasn’t necessarily the most difficult part of the recording process.

“Sometime I just have the idea of the experience that people go through involving themselves in different things, and this is what I write about. And then sometime I try to find people that I feel like can properly express these things, because sometime people can express a thing better than another one… sometime. “

One case in point, ‘Wang Dang Doodle:’ “Oh yeah, Howlin’ Wolf recorded it long before Koko Taylor, but the Chess Brothers wouldn’t release it. In fact, I wrote a lot of things for people they never actually would accept and I’d have to give it to somebody else. And then ten to one after somebody else get it, then they’d like it. I used to always have trouble with Muddy and Wolf because one thought I was giving the other one the better song, you know? So I got to the place I just used a little backwards psychology on ’em. The one I be writing for Wolf, I tell Wolf, now here’s something I wrote for Muddy and that’s all I need to do. (Wolf would say) ‘Man, how come you got to give that to him, that’s better than mine.’ And vice a versa, that’s the way it worked.”

Another case in point, ‘My Babe:’ “I had a hard time in getting Little Walter to do ‘My Babe’. Two years I was trying to get him to do ‘My Babe’. He didn’t want to record it. He just didn’t like it. But after he recorded it and it started going over, it was his top running number.”

I Am the Blues

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

“Learn to respect the wisdom of the blues, because the wisdom of the blues and the blues itself
is the greatest music on the face of the earth. The blues has proved to have more wisdom and
understanding than any other music. And once you learn the wisdom of the story
of the facts of life, it gives you a better chance in all of life.
And I think that’s a great thing for people to do all over the world.”

– Willie Dixon

 ************************

American Folk Blues Festival

As the self-appointed ambassador of the blues, Willie Dixon and a few special friends began spreading the word outside America’s borders. “Memphis Slim and I started the American Folk Blues Festival. We was just working as a duet, we went to Israel and other places trying to promote the blues there. None of these blues organizations was even thinking about them at the time, but everywhere we went we talked about the blues and promoted them. Some of the people got into it before we could complete our thing. I’m glad they did, because today we’ve got the blues thing going.”

During the early sixties the American Folk Blues Festival featured some of the most recognizable names in the genre; players like John Lee Hooker, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Victoria Spivey, Otis Spann, Muddy, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, J.B. Lenoir, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams and the Wolf.

It wouldn’t be until years later that Dixon would discover the profound effect he and his friends had had on a very select group of young British musicians.

“Well when they was young, overseas, me and Memphis Slim was over there and they had their groups going, but that was before they was popular. The Stones, they was kids over there. I didn’t know one from the other because they didn’t have no name then, you know? When I was over in Europe and other places, I would give songs to everybody and a lot of kids tell you, ‘I’m gonna’ do this and I’m gonna’ do that’, and how would I know who’s who?

But when they come back years later they say, ‘You remember you gave us that song here and gave us a song there,’ well I don’t know them but they know me. Some of them gave me their picture when they was young, you know? And when they came to Chicago, a lot of them would come to my house or we’d meet in different clubs and things. How are you gonna’ remember a bunch of kids, man? As many countries as I went into and meet ’em from all over everywhere, I worked with so many different people in so many different places, I can’t remember them all no way.”

A Man with a Mission

Active for most of his life, Willie thought about retirement when he moved to Southern California, but it wasn’t to be. If anything, demands on his time increased.

“Ever since I’ve been out here, it’s been one thing right after another. I try to back off from ’em, but with the Blues Heaven Foundation I have retired away from working for myself, and by being able to reap some of the benefits of some of my own royalties that I should have got years ago. And this is why I started the Blues Heaven Foundation so I could help other people that wasn’t as lucky as me.

Not only does it try to get some of the capital that’s been owed to artists, people who been beat and cheated out of their thing, but we also help ’em to learn how to protect their songs and copyrights. We do this with donated capital and the Blues Heaven Foundation takes not a penny from nobody. I do all of my work for Blues Heaven for nothing. All the people that has passed on and their families didn’t get anything, all they had to do is prove that they are involved or in the family and they can reap the benefits of their forbearers.

You know when you feel like you’re underprivileged, and know you’re underprivileged and not getting your rights, you always want to know why? Believe it or not, (prior to the civil rights movements in the 50’s and 60’s) people didn’t know they had a black law book and a white law book at that time but today most of them know about it. It wasn’t until after the Martin Luther King era and the government ratified the 14th and 15th Amendment, that everybody had to hear us out and give us just dues just like everybody else. My chance for justice as well as anybody else’s is good today.”

Blues Heaven

“That’s the reason I’m trying to expose the Blues Heaven Foundation because you don’t have to die to enjoy the great things of life. You don’t have to get to the place where you have to have this religion or that religion, fighting over ten dollars and then tell me you’re going to a place where the streets are paved in gold. Don’t you know I don’t want to go there if you’ve been raising as much hell over a dollar here? So I figure if we can enjoy the luxuries of life here as we should, everything is here you need. They say if you went to heaven you’d get milk and honey. We got milk and honey here.

It’s just a matter of time because you see, everything have to change, everything changes. People get more experience and understand each other better, but when you haven’t been taught any of the right things, naturally you can go wrong because you’re only thinking about yourself and not others.”

With a chance to reflect on his life and given the option to change the outcome, Willie just smiled. “Frankly with the experiences I’ve had since I’ve been involved in these blues, I wouldn’t take billions for it, but I wouldn’t want to do it all over again for trillions’.”

Through his Blues Heaven Foundation, lovingly minded by his widow, Marie and grandson, Alex, Willie continues to touch the lives of disadvantaged youth and the surviving family members of early blues greats. Whether it’s assisting students through scholarship programs, donating musical instruments, or recouping lost royalties, Blues Heaven continues to educate, perpetuate, and carry out Willie’s most heart-felt wishes.

Willie Dixon lived, worked and breathed the blues. His music conveyed the depth and drive of that battered old upright bass. To use boxing vernacular, it was his combinations. He could double you over with thumping bass lines and drop you to your knees with devastating lyrics. The name Willie Dixon will always be synonymous with the blues, but to paraphrase the late Dr. King, it’s the ‘content of his character’ that we’ll all miss the most.

The post Willie Dixon: “The Pen is Mightier………….” appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Covid Scare

(Disclaimer: What I am about to say is just one opinion. I do not represent any organization. I’ll be out on a limb with this one and It may be controversial. And I don’t claim to know it all. Take it with a grain of salt.) 

After arriving from a Monday night meeting, I was informed that my daughter (who lives with us) might have Covid. Apparently, one of her friends she had celebrated New Year with had tested positive.

You hear about these things all the time but reality doesn’t really sink in unless you live with someone who has Covid. My first responsibility was to inform everyone I had contact with since New Year. Of course that started a chain of concern among my friends. Then I worried about confinement. Wondered if I needed to wear a facemask even inside the house … even while I slept. Wondered about touching the door handles, the dishes, the refrigerator, etc. I thought about setting up a fan directed out the window to blow out any Covid particles in her room.

This was the last thought before I went to bed. No surprise, I had a nightmare about alien lifeforms that replaced its host after contact. It was like the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” It chased me and my family around. I asked myself “why fight it? What was the worst that could happen? Die? And then what? I’d go to heaven.” (My faith was strong even in my dream). So I stopped running. It caught me. But I didn’t really die. In fact. I just became untouchable. That’s when I woke up.

I figured Covid is like the alien trying to take over our bodies … take over our lifestyle. I also thought about the conspiracy theories about the news media, the so-called scientists, big pharma and the politicians. Some people are cashing in on our dilemma and continue to instill fear to keep their money flowing. Of course there are many other theories out there. One thing’s for sure: whoever told the lies (or backed the lies) will not admit their mistakes. For me that’s what is really frustrating. Where is justice? Can’t blame them —-  why stop the lying when there are no consequences?

I learned about Omicron (being more contagious but less deadly) a week or so after it was identified. The spread was rapid but there were zero deaths (today there are only maybe 10 deaths related to Omicron out of the millions who contracted it in the whole world). Most didn’t even need hospitalization.

Many thought I was absurd. Many thought I was irresponsible to spread that lie. It’s been maybe 2 months now and the data seems to back my belief. (Let me know if your data proves otherwise). Many now say this is actually a blessing in disguise because people who contract it develop an immunity. (Immunity and not vaccine is the real solution). This immunity will spread and this could end this Covid pandemic. Good news for us. Bad news for the profiteers.

May I suggest, we listen to who and what people in the news are saying. Keep our lie detectors on and we will easily spot the money and power-hungry profiteers. Then ask ourselves why we  still listen to them. How many times have they been proven wrong? Fool us once, shame on them. Fool us twice … well, you know.

My daughter seems to be back to normal. I had a slight headache but I shook it off. Everyone at home seems to be normal. I have a Covid test tomorrow. I going not for myself but for others … to make sure I am safe for them.  I still wear a mask when I am out in public. I’m still careful. But I’m not scared. Are you still scared?

TGIF people!

Raoul

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Meg of Whittier, CA. for this joke.

Video of the week

Not so fast. Are you really safe wearing that facemask? Thanks to Mike of New York for this disturbing video.

Parting Shots

Thanks to Peter Paul of S Pasadena, CA for these cartoons.

The post Musical Retrospective appeared first on Traveling Archive.

I know what you’re thinking, how does that even happen?  “I ended up playing in Russia.” Sue says.  “Due to my friend, the fabulous guitar player Laura Chavez… Laura was Candye Kane’s last musical partner. Laura and Candye met The Jumping Cats (Russian musicians) in one of the Baltic countries and highly recommended that I get in touch. Through the miracle of Facebook, Vladimir Rusinov and I became friends and I eventually ended up with a gig in Moscow at the Roadhouse Blues Club, and one in St. Petersburg at the Port Arthur Jazz Club.”

And why Russia? “I was planning on just taking a vacation there, not really playing.” She says. “But my tour director Laura Barbanell, who is Russian, managed to connect me with several other groups, including a band called the Hot Engines and a world class vibes player, Alexei Chizhik, both who I sat in with. We also called all the swing dance groups we could think of in Russia and by the end of the trip, we had quite a following. It also helped that I was on the trip with a dozen swing dancers from San Diego.”

Tour dates in Moscow and St. Petersburg? That’s pretty impressive for a blues woman whose musical roots run so deep through the Texas panhandle. “I was a child of the cold war ‘duck and cover’ days, and to be in Red Square was mind boggling.”

Can you talk a little about your family? “My mother’s family was from Texas and they grew up in Chillicothe, Texas.” Sue says. “It was the depression and eventually all but one sister moved out West. The older brother went to New Mexico and all the sisters moved to California. So they entertained themselves by playing music. My grandfather played fiddle, like Turkey in the Straw kind of fiddle and was a square dance caller. And all of his children were in the swing dance era. My grandmother taught them all how to play piano, my mother played drums and my uncle played trumpet, and they all played piano.”

Sounds like you were destined to play music. “Yeah, you were expected to play or expected to participate, anyway. And that’s what the family did.”

It was a ten year old Palmer attending Vacation Bible School with a neighborhood friend when she first heard the boogie played on piano. Sue says that chance revelation rapidly became an obsession, “I played all the time, I did it for hours and hours when I was little, that’s the key. You have to do it so much that the left hand is mindless.”

With so many musical and generational influences Sue ultimately created her own “kind of swingy blues or bluesy swing” that continues to integrate and underscore her undying love of the big band era. “I really didn’t start thinking of it as a profession because my mother said it was a hard life. (laughing) And I think it meant you couldn’t go to the bathroom when you needed too, when you were on the bus, on the road. I mean, they didn’t really know what it was like. My parents didn’t understand self-employment. My mother was like Rosie the riveter. She worked at Solar and my father was in the Navy from ’41 to ’61. He was in Pearl Harbor.”

Who were some of your earliest influences outside the family? “Probably Elvis, I listened to his piano player over and over, like a hundred million times a day…and Ray Charles because he was really big in the early 60’s. When I was in the 8^th grade I started playing by ear. I took piano lessons for about 5 years, like from 7 to 12 or something. But then I started playing by ear and listening to things on the radio. I listened to Duke Ellington, Count Basie and everybody.”

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

        “I’m basically a swing musician. I knew I was going to lose a gig once when she said,
‘Can you try not to swing?’ I couldn’t! So, I lost the gig. I couldn’t do it.”  

                                                                                                        – Sue Palmer

 ************************

Did you start out in garage bands? “No and that’s one of my regrets. And that I didn’t join the high school band, I could’ve picked up sax or something real easily. But they were too dorky. (laughing) I didn’t like that. I was stupid. You know, I would play at my friend’s houses. But the boys didn’t want to play with me. They may have wanted to play with you if you could sing or were real sexy or something but I wasn’t really like that. (laughing) I just kept playing; I played all the time, when I was supposed to be studying.”

But you did stay in school… “I went to college out here at San Diego State. I was a political science major. (laughing) And it wasn’t until I graduated that I started meeting people and continued to go (to school) because the job I got was so… nothing… clerical. I had more status as a student. I started meeting people that were better musicians and because of the time it was, the late ‘60s early ‘70s people needed you for benefits. And the women’s movement started and I was really interested in that and all the talk of being free and the hippies…and I started doing benefits with this friend I met and that’s how I started developing. Then I got a band together called Ms. B. Haven with Sharon (Shufelt) and April (West) and we recorded a 45 in the late ‘70s.

Was that your first band? “Well, we had a little trio called Pearl Tapioca before Ms. B. Haven. That band was very democratic, there wasn’t like one style of music. We were all different; all right it’s your turn, okay your turn. It would be like practically disco and then country, it was funny. And then I had a band called Tobacco Road.”

Tobacco Road made you a household name, followed by critical acclaim and music awards. “It was a good band… April and Sharon were in it. We met in the late ‘70s. There was a band called Stones’ Throw which was a really popular, fun trio and Sharon started playing drums with them for a while and they did a lot of harmonies and vintage jazz. Molly Stone was in it and Phil Shopoff. And I was in Pearl Tapioca with Molly for a little while and my friend Dayna who lives around the corner… then I was in a band with Candye Kane.

You reach the end of Tobacco Road, what happened? “Well it probably would have still been going, but the real star of Tobacco Road was a guy named Preston Coleman, an African-American who was a hipster in the ‘40s and when he got with us it gave us total legitimacy. It went away because I went off with Candye and Preston had a stroke. It was a horn band, sax and clarinet, trombone and trumpet and no guitar, piano, bass and drums. We worked all the time, like three gigs a day on the weekend, one time I did four, I played all the time. I quit my day job and got a keyboard in 1987.”

How did you first meet Candye Kane? “I actually knew Tom Yearsley, Candye was married to him then and we all played at the Belly Up. It was a giant scene in the ‘90s and in the ‘80s too. He was playing in the Paladins and I was in Tobacco Road and we played every Happy Hour Wednesday for about five years or so and we all knew each other. So he had mentioned to Candye that he thought I would be a good person for her to hook up with. Her youngest son, Tommy was a baby so she was interested in getting a record deal and going on the road and doing the whole thing, but he was too little. When he got to be about three, she thought she could do it, so he (Thomas) suggested she check me out for part of the band. She invited me to play at a NOW benefit because she was a big feminist at Palomar Junior College. So I said yes and that was how we met and started becoming friends. She got a band together and we played at the Belly Up. The Sunday Happy Hour or something and it was like ‘boiinng’ as soon as we started… crowded! It was special, yeah.”

Did you and Candye hit it off personally as well as professionally? “We would have the most interesting conversations because she had come from a way different background than me. She had been a sex worker and I was this little middle-class girl from Point Loma. (laughing) The way we came to our beliefs, some we would disagree on, but some things we were like, ‘Oh wow, that’s interesting!’ We would agree on things, but she had come to it from a whole different place. Assumptions that weren’t true… we figured out things, it was really interesting. And we had a good connection on stage. And for almost 10 years, pretty much the whole ‘90s. And she was a fabulous performer and she brought it out in me. Because I wasn’t that much of a performer, I just played, you know?”

But your chemistry on stage literally took you around the world. “Oh God, France loved her, you know? And me too, because of the beehive, they liked all that. They do that; the state subsidizes art, performance art.”

Did you realize how special the shows were at the time? “It was huge. (laughing) My relatives always said if you went to Europe that was the big time. I mean one time we played for 20-thousand people, and there was a hill, and then another hill. Full… packed. Often we played for eight or nine thousand, and little tiny dives and everything, so you can keep making money.”

Those years must be very special to you? “Oh, fantastic, it made me look like I had a career, a defining moment. One of the stories we liked to tell, we used to play in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Zoo Bar.  This country is so huge and that guy gets so many great acts in this tiny little town, because you have to stop somewhere to sleep. It’s a tiny little place and they’re really nice people, they treat you well and it’s intimate. So we’re playing there and we’re on the road and she (Candye) would get jealous because I was getting so much attention for my beehive. So she got this little pastiche, a hairpiece, not as big as a beehive. We’re performing and she was a total nasty girl and we were doing ‘All You Can Eat’ or one of the long songs and I had on a short dress and fishnets and I was going to take a solo on the piano. While I was taking the solo she decided to do this thing where she pretended to put her head down between my legs… she wasn’t really doing anything she just had her head down in that area. And she’s not coming up. (laughing) And I’m going, ‘Uh, I’m just tryin’ to take a solo, Candye!” And she goes, ‘I’m stuck!’ (laughing) The pastiche thing got stuck in the fishnets. (laughing) So finally she got out and it was pretty funny.” (laughing) You never knew what was going to happen with her and we would all just play along.”

Good times. “I had her when she was still in her thirties.” Sue remembers. “I was only in my forties. She was fat and full of it. It was the beginning of her journey ‘on the road.’ We got the Antone’s record deal and slept on floors, it was exciting.”

How did the record deal come about? “She knew how to do this, I didn’t. I knew I could find gigs in San Diego but to get out… that’s why I wanted to hang with it because I could see she was driven. We went to SXSW and played and she had some connections because of the Paladins, so that worked, it worked. People come from all over the world (for SXSW) and that’s how we got to Europe because a guy from Norway saw us so we toured Norway a few times. And then a guy from France saw us. And that lead to an agent/manager that connected us all over.”

You leave Candye and take a break… “Let’s see I quit her band in July of ’99, I had given notice and she was mad at me, so it kind of came suddenly. It was coming and she knew it too. And then we got back together because I got breast cancer. She couldn’t handle that. I knew I had to take care of some personal things and I wanted to make my own album. I wanted to reintroduce myself and get a band together and the album ‘Motel Swing and Boogie Woogie’ came out in January of 2000. April and Sharon, Jonny Viau, Deejha Marie and Earl Thomas and it eventually morphed into a sound that I wanted. Steve Wilcox and I had played in different configurations even before Candye. After playing with him so much in that band, it’s like my left hand we don’t even think about it. We do duos even, little party things and stuff.”

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Guitarist Steve Wilcox concurs. “I’ve known Sue probably close to 30yrs.” Steve says. “In the 80’s I was playing with Kats Caravan. We played at Patrick’s a lot back then. Sue’s band Tobacco Road played at Croce’s Top Hat. On breaks we’d step out into the little alley behind Patrick’s to get air and watch Tobacco Road and they’d do the same thing. Sue & I really clicked. I was raised on Boogie Woogie. My Dad loved Boogie Woogie piano and we had lots of recordings around our home. Classics like, ‘Beat Me Daddy Eight To The Bar,’ other recordings from the great Freddie Slack on 78’s were played a lot! Boogie Woogie piano has always knocked me out, so getting to play with, hang out, and tour the world with the Queen of Boogie Woogie was great!! We had a blast!!! (STILL do for that matter). We also have very similar tastes when it comes to song selection and stylistically we fit very well together.”

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Let’s talk a little more about your style of play; can you describe Sue Palmer’s music? “Well, it’s kind of swingy blues or bluesy swing. I’m basically a swing musician. I knew I was going to lose a gig once when she said, ‘can you try not to swing?’ (laughing) I couldn’t! So I lost the gig. I couldn’t do it. (laughing)

You incorporate so many different styles of play in your performances. You do stride, boogie, barrelhouse… “I do twenties and a lot of thirties stuff and someone told me the Speakeasy thing is back in style, it’ll probably last five seconds but… I spent the whole ‘80s playing ‘20s music. (laughing) Tobacco Road did all that stuff and I love it. It’s very pianistic, and April likes it because the trombone was prominent. And we just did it on one of the Hornblower boats and we have a New Years gig doing it.”

Swing dancing has become very popular in San Diego as well as around the country, especially to your style of blues and swing music. “Yes, thank God for them because they’ve kept me in business for years now. It’s becoming door gigs. It used to be, we’ll pay you this much, now the poor bar owners can’t afford to put themselves out there. Like Croce’s went out of business, because she said people didn’t want to pay for the music.”

You said you took swing dancers to Russia with you but not your regular band. How was it working with musicians from Russia? “The Jumping Cats learned all my songs and arrangements and were fantastic.” (Authors Note: There are several You Tubes videos available online of Sue Palmer and The Jumping Cats) Sue adds. “I am hoping they will come to San Diego: Vladimir on guitar, Nicolai on bass, Ksenia on drums, and Olga on vocals.  This was the first time a band featured me and learned my material, which is somewhat of a turning point for me. I was there for two weeks.”

The current political climate between our countries is not really all rainbows and unicorns, what kind of reception did you get from the Russian audiences? “The audiences were fantastic – I have a picture of everyone in the room taking a picture…at the same time! One fan remembered me from the Candye Kane days and had me signing about 15 posters. I had to take pictures with fans afterward at the St Petersburg gig for an hour and a half!!!”

Sounds like you could become our new Boogie Ambassador to Russia; do you think you’ll go back? “Music is definitely an international, peaceful language of joy…Yes, I would go back. The music was wonderful and reminded me of our common humanity, not our reasons for being enemies.”

The post Sue Palmer – Unleashes Boogie Détente appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Surviving members of the Muddy Waters Band – just one of the highlights of the ’93 Long Beach Blues Festival. Photo: T.E. Mattox

A Delta blues overload most certainly, but the highpoint for me was the opportunity to sit for a few minutes with Robert Jr. Lockwood and talk briefly about his life, the music and his amazing longevity in the blues. It started with the most obvious topic, growing up around the mythical King of the Delta Blues Singers; Robert Johnson. Lockwood was often referred to as the stepson of the legend, but he was adamant about their relationship.

Was your mother married to Robert Johnson? “No, she was not!” Lockwood said. “My mother lived with Robert Johnson.” Was that your introduction to the guitar? “No, there were guitar players all over the country out there where I was born.” Lockwood was born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas March 27, 1915 and he smiles when he adds. “Well, I guess Robert Johnson was my choice, but I knew a whole lot of other guitar players.”

What were your first memories of Robert Johnson? “He followed my mother home. And she couldn’t get rid of him.” (laughing) He was so young when he passed. “I don’t know how old he was when he died. He was a young man, yeah.” Why do you think he remains so popular? “Why?” Lockwood repeats. “The reason he’s so popular today is because he was before his time.”

Did you learn a lot from him? “He was my teacher.”

Your road is filled with blues elders, when did you first meet Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller)? “I first met him when he came to my home in 1929.” Did you play on the street with him for awhile? “Yeah, around Arkansas and in Mississippi.” When did you start on ‘King Biscuit Time’ on KFFA? “That started in 1940. SonnyBoy had that first.”

In the 1950s you moved to Chicago, tell me a little about Roosevelt Sykes? “Well, I don’t have a favorite story, but he was a very nice man. We was like brothers, yeah. I worked with Roosevelt’s band about, close to two years. We did quite a bit of moving around, yes.”

You also worked with Eddie Boyd. “Yeah, I worked with Eddie about four years.”
Muddy? “You got everybody on there!? How’d you find all that stuff out?” (laughing)
I told you, I was a fan! (laughing) “Well, I played a little bit with Muddy’s band, not a lot. But I done a lot of recording with him.”

Sunnyland Slim? “Sunnyland and me had a trio together and a 4-piece together.”

The blues have taken you all over the world; you’ve toured in Europe and weren’t you one of the first blues players to tour in the Far East? “I was one of the first to go to Japan. My first trip to Japan was Tokyo and Osaka.” Did they give you a nice reception? “A lot better than America!” (laughing) “You trying to get me in trouble?” (laughing)

Johnny Winter once said he believed audiences overseas have more respect for American blues and American blues players because they don’t have as much access to it as the U.S. does. So, European and Asian blues fans show more appreciation for it when it comes their way.

Robert Jr. just smiles and says. “They treat me pretty good in the States, but they treat me better outside the States.”

Did you know Charlie Christian? “I never got a chance to meet him, I heard a lot about him and we were doing some of the same type of things when he was living, but Charlie was a horn player and a lot of people don’t know that. Yeah, he was an alto player.”

I didn’t know that. Do you play other instruments? “I play bass and piano a little bit.”

Tell me about the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ in Cleveland? “Ohhh! That was a little small place when I first started and tried to put a band together, I worked down there.”

Any rowdy clubs you can recall? “I don’t know…what do you mean by rowdy? 90% of the clubs have fights, how can I pick out one?” (laughing)

Can you describe Robert Jr. Lockwood’s blues? “Un-uh! My blues is so wide, my blues runs in every direction.”

Any new recordings what can we anticipate from Robert Jr. Lockwood? “I intend to do some more recording in the near future with about 9-pieces. And it’ll be jazz, too!” That’s great; jazz isn’t really new to you, is it? “Well, I’ve been playing it practically all of my life! There’s not a big difference between jazz and blues, because blues comes in all forms.”

You knew Willie Dixon? “He was a very good friend. I worked for Chess for 17 years.”

Robert Jr Lockwood on stage in France. Courtesy Lioneldecoster, Wkimedia Commons

At this festival they recreated KFFA’s ‘King Biscuit Time’ radio with Pinetop Perkins, Rufus Thomas and host, ‘Sunshine’ Sonny Paine; will you continue to perform with them? “I’ll help them out if they need it.” Do you like playing festivals? “It’s alright, it’s all work…it’s all work.”

And the man was nothing if not productive. Talking with producer, friend and fellow musician, Bob Corritore, he remembered a number of wonderful memories and time spent with Robert Jr. Lockwood. “I first met Robert in probably 1977 or ’78?” Bob says. “It was when the Paradise Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma had just opened up. I was going to college there, and Robert Lockwood whom I’d been a fan of for years at that point…from the Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson records…and he was playing in Tulsa for three or four days. So I went…everyday! I sat with him on breaks and he just kind of took me in as an adopted blues child. And that was the roll I would have with him for the rest of his life.”

Bob Corritore and Robert Jr. in studio. Photo courtesy of Dick Rice

You produced the album, ‘The Legend Live!’ “I got to take him into recording situations five times, which I feel good about!” Corritore says. “Robert was so disciplined, every time he came into town he’d ask me to bring him a practice amp so he could work on his music. He practiced every day, and he did pushups every day to stay in shape. He was filled with discipline and if you think about it, he had learned that style of Robert Johnson as a young man and that style was so physically involved, you had to have so much co-ordination between playing the bass notes and the melody lines spontaneously and he studied that every day. In the process he added his own embellishments and he actually made it more decorative than Robert Johnson had done…and I so admired him for that.”

As we wrapped up our conversation with Mr. Lockwood I asked if he’d ever thought about retirement. “It’s too late for me to retire!” He laughed. Did you ever work outside of music, other jobs? “No, no, no. I don’t know what I would have done. I started playing when I was eight years old. I started playing music at eight, yeah. So, I ain’t done too much work!”

We lost Robert Jr. Lockwood from respiratory failure November 21, 2006 at the age of 91. According to Bob Corritore the funeral held in the city of Cleveland was truly befitting “a statesman…a King’s sendoff.”And that is as it should be.

The post Robert Jr. Lockwood: ‘My Blues Is So Wide, It Runs in Every Direction’ appeared first on Traveling Archive.

James Cotton was born into a Mississippi farming family in the middle of the summer, 1935. As the youngest of eight children, his prospects in the Tunica cotton fields held few opportunities beyond hauling water buckets for laborers or endless hours on a plantation tractor seat in the sweltering Delta sun. Fortunately for all of us, fate and a fifteen cent harmonica placed James in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

It was an uncle who would coerce the young Cotton to walk up to, and play his harp for, radio personality Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) Then there was the small radio spot that turned into a recording session in Memphis for Sam Phillips in the pre-Elvis era of Sun Studios. Oh, it gets better… Junior Wells would quit Muddy Waters’ band in the middle of a southern tour, forcing an immediate search for a replacement harp player. That search ended in Memphis, when Muddy met James. A meeting that began a musical collaboration and friendship that would last decades.

Soft spoken unless it concerned his music and extremely humble, Cotton rarely talked of his awards, Grammy nominations, or his status on the worlds blues stage. He was just a bluesman and his focus remained solely on his music. Our conversation took place backstage at a club in Southern California in the late 80s and began with his early influences in music.

“I used to listen to people.” James said. “Like Memphis Minnie and Charlie Patton. And it was Sonny Boy who kinda’ taught me how to play the harp. Sonny Boy #2, Rice Miller.”

Didn’t you live in Sonny Boy’s house? “Six years!”

How did that happen? “Well, Sonny Boy was on station KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. He had a fifteen minute program everyday from 12:00 to 12:15. I used to listen to it every day. We get out in the field with the radio and listen at that.

My uncle, me and him drove tractors together. He taught me how to drive a tractor when I was a kid. We was getting three dollars a day for driving a tractor. Get paid $36 every two weeks.

So he’d taken me to Helena to meet Sonny Boy. I told him I was orphaned, my uncle told me to say that. I walked up to him and he talked to me, you know? Me and him (Sonny Boy) got to talking, so he took me in. My uncle talked to him also when he seen it was working, you know?”

After your move to Memphis, other than Sonny Boy, who else were you playing with? “Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Love… I played with quite a few people down there.”

Any special memories of those Beale Street years? “Somebody stole my harps one day, that’s what!” (laughing) Somebody stole your harps? Who stole your harps? “I don’t know man. They were hard to come by, too! You couldn’t make no money… I had about ten of them. They ripped me off!”

Did you play a lot on the streets? “Yeah I played on the street a little bit. Not much because I was lucky enough to be in a band with Sonny Boy and we were working pretty good.”

Some folks refer to the blues as a comforter, you ever feel that way? “Well, blues do a lot of things for you, you know? Sometimes they make you sad, sometimes they make you comfortable.” What do they do for James Cotton? “They do a lot of things for me. They make me… they make me cry.” They make you cry? He nods, “Sometimes they make me cry.”

You moved to Chicago in 1954? “Had a job with the late, great Muddy Waters. Muddy brought me to Chicago. He’d been on tour, down through the South and Junior Wells left the band. Muddy was looking for a harp player and he heard about me in Memphis. So when he was coming up from Florida, he came through Memphis and asked me if I wanted a job.”

What was it like playing in Muddy’s band? “Well, I had a beautiful time playing with Muddy. I had the pleasure of working with Muddy twelve years. I had a really good time; he was like a father to me. I learned a lot of things in that band.” Like what? “He was doing a lot more recording than Sonny Boy was. A lot about the studios, things like that.”

One of my favorite albums is Muddy at Newport in 1960. You and Muddy with Tat Harris, Otis Spann, Andrew Stevenson and Francis Clay. What do you remember about that recording? “Well, I got fired the same day!” You got fired? “We did a song called, ‘I Put a Tiger in Your Tank.’ Muddy forgot the words to it and I played the lines and he said I played it wrong!” Did that happen a lot? “About a dozen times, but I always got hired back. I was lucky. I was always trying to do more, you know? Trying to make it better. A lot of things I was doing, by me being younger, Muddy didn’t understand.”

What were regular recording sessions like? “It was beautiful in the studio. But I guess he’d been doing it so long, when I got with him, you know?”

Chess provided a good environment? “Chess had got hip to the blues, man. I have to say this about the Chess brothers. I’ve never been in the studio where they recorded harmonica like the Chess brothers did. They were good at that!”

What do you suppose made them so different? “I don’t know some magic they had with those buttons back there.”

You had recorded at the famed Sun Recording Service in Memphis too, didn’t you? “I did four sides for Sun. This was before Elvis Presley or anybody like that. I did the recording in 1950, but I think it come out in ’51. Uh, I did four sides for them… ‘Straighten Up Baby,’ ‘Oh, Baby,’ ‘Hold Me in Your Arms’ and ‘Cotton Crop Blues.’”

You think you can still find copies of them? He just smiles, “Cost you a lot of money!”

You knew Little Walter? “Little Walter was a beautiful cat, man. I had the pleasure of working in Chicago with him four or five years before he died. I don’t thinks nobody will ever be better than Little Walter. I think he’s so far ahead of his time, you know?”

During the 60s, you played a lot of Fillmore dates. “Well, we probably worked at the Fillmore’s more than any band I know. Fillmore East, Fillmore West, Fillmore East… man, we did that so much till I thought I was going to die between San Francisco and New York!” (laughing) You know that those venues and events introduced blues to a whole new generation of fans, that’s quite the legacy. “I don’t even worry about things like that.” He shrugs. “I just want to be a good musician, do the best I can with it.”

Any one particular Fillmore event that stands out for you? “Yeah, I worked a date with Janis Joplin at the Fillmore West and we were managed by Albert Grossman. And then Monday she was in the office and said, ‘Look, I want to work with this guy again, he makes me work like hell.’ She said, ‘I can’t play around whenever he’s working, so I have to work!’ So, I did quite a few dates with Janis Joplin.”

Are you still having fun playing? “The music does as much for me as it does to the people out there. It makes me get up and go, too.”

How long have you been on the road? “40 years!” Ever get you down? “Well, when it ain’t fun no more, that’s when I quit. I’m certainly not getting rich, so when it ain’t fun, I’ll have to go home then.”

James went home March 16, 2017, he was 81 years old.

The post James Cotton: Super Harp appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Luther Tucker loved the blues. Born in Memphis in 1936 his path in life seemed pre-destined when he moved to Chicago in the early 1940s. His mother played piano and she would eventually introduce young Luther to some of Chicago’s most legendary bluesmen. Luther remembers, “It was very exciting. My mother took me over to the club of Mr. Big Bill Broonzy, he had a club over on the Southside, and my first introduction to the blues was Mr. Muddy Waters.” That meet and greet would leave an indelible mark on Luther’s direction. When we sat down in the late 1980’s, Tucker was touring with the James Cotton band behind Cotton’s ‘Take Me Back’ album.

You’ve been around the music a very long time, what are the blues to Luther Tucker? “The Blues will never die, everybody’s got the blues. I had some pretty good times and some pretty rough times and it’s all in life, every day brings a change.” And when pressed, the most memorable of those two, were of course, “the good times; I had the pleasure of recording with some very famous musicians; Mr. Little Walter, Mr. Muddy Waters, Mr. Sonny Boy Williamson and Mr. James Cotton also. It was a pleasure having the opportunity to express my feeling toward the blues. I loved every minute.”

You were part of Little Walter’s band in the 50s. “He was quite some character, a very lively fellow, outspoken sometimes. A very beautiful musician, he had a beautiful talent for the harmonica. He was one of the best at the time.”

You’re currently playing with James Cotton on the ‘Take Me Back’ tour. And you’ve backed on guitar some of the greatest bluesmen that ever lived. Muddy loved you, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and more recently Kim Wilson and Charlie Musselwhite? “Yes, I’ve played with Charlie. About ten years ago I was in his band, for maybe about a year and a half. He’s a very fine musician.”

Let’s talk a little about your road. “In my younger days, I enjoyed running up and down the road, you know? It was exciting to see different cities and the different atmosphere. It was great, but now that I’m getting older, I want to settle down and kick back!” (laughing) “I’ve been living in California for the last 22 years since I left the James Cotton blues band. I think Marin County is my spot. I’m trying to get away from that snow!” (laughing) “I lived in Chicago for 29 years.”

Bet you have some great Chicago club stories? “It was very exciting. When I was getting started my mother took me over to the club of Mr. Big Bill Broonzy, he had a club over on the Southside, 37th and Cottage Grove and my first introduction to the blues was Mr. Muddy Waters. He was playing at this club, Mr. Sunnyland Slim was playing piano, Mr. Robert Lockwood, Jr. was playing guitar and they had some little fella’ named Shorty, he used to be with the band, this was years ago, like 1951 or something like that. And my mom introduced me to these gentlemen playing in this nightclub, Mr. Muddy Waters, Mr. Sunnyland Slim and Mr. Robert Jr. and I loved the way they sound, you know? And I said, ‘Hey, I’d like to be a musician, I like that sound and I’d like to be a part of it.’ That helped me make my decision and my feeling toward the music and it really kept me outta’ trouble, too. I used to run up and down the street, you know? Young and nothing to do, but that gave me something to do, and I started practicing.”

Did you ever play out on the street? “I went to Belgium about five or six years ago and I did it for fun. In the piazza’s to see how exciting it was… and it was beautiful.”

You’re originally from Memphis? “That’s where I started from. I left Memphis when I was about eight years old.” Memphis is known as the ‘home of the blues.’ “I’ve always had thoughts to go back there and check it out just one more time, maybe someday I will.”

You worked with John Lee Hooker a few times? “Aw, he’s another beautiful musician. I worked on two or three of his albums, something like that. It was a pleasure playing with the gentleman. He was a very fine gentleman and very fine musician.”

Your road has taken so many directions; do you feel good about how things have turned out? “Well, I’m still learning. Right now, I’m learning how to learn.” (laughing) “And it feels great. I’m learning how to be a musician and it’s so beautiful to be playing music. I’m learning more each day, practice makes perfect.”

This tour with Cotton you are playing both clubs and theaters? “About half and half and each time it’s different. It’s a good feeling and it seems like every crowd enjoys it more, until the next crowd, and then the crowd after that, it’s just beautiful. We opened for John Lee Hooker last night.”

After this tour, you head back home? “Yeah, each one of us has our own band, mine is the Luther Tucker band and we’re in Marin County.”

The fact that you meet Muddy so early in your career, what do remember the most from that Chess era? “He was a very beautiful musician; he really made an impression on my music playing. It was always a pleasure playing and recording with him.”

How about Willie Dixon? “He was in the studio almost every time I was in there. Every time you look around, Mr. Willie Dixon was there. He was a great producer and wrote a lot of good blues. He wrote for Muddy, he wrote for Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson and so many people.”

You also worked with Otis Rush. “Yes, I played with him about three years. He’s a very fine musician. I love his voice.” And you knew Sonny Boy Williamson II? “Yes, I had the pleasure of recording with him. Quite some harmonica player and had a feeling for it, too. Blues with a feeling? Nobody could do it like Little Walter!” He smiles. “Nobody could do it like Mr. Little Walter.”

How about Big Walter, Shakey Walter Horton? “He was one of the greatest, just like Little Walter. Unfortunately, some people have bigger appetites than the others.”

One more, Otis Spann. “Oh, he was quite some piano player. I worked with him with Mr. Muddy Waters, Mr. Sonny Boy Williamson and Mr. Little Walter. He recorded with quite a few musicians. He and my mom used to sit down at the piano and play together and that was some playing… I’ll never forget that. It really got me interested in playing. My mother she played piano, one of those unknown musicians, you know? That’s the way it goes sometimes.

We lost Luther Tucker from cardiac arrest in June of 1993, he was just 57 years old.

The post Luther Tucker – Everybody’s Got the Blues appeared first on Traveling Archive.

It’s been almost 30 years now since I ran into Carey Bell. He was touring through Europe and was gracious enough to sit down and talk for awhile about his friends, his life in music and the road he travelled. Immediately after our conversation, in his typical workingman’s approach, he stepped on stage and proceeded to blow everyone in that Italian theater against the back wall. He was a remarkable talent and genuinely funny human being.

Born in the winter of 1936 and raised on a farm in Macon, Mississippi, Carey Bell Harrington grew up working hard. He laughs, “Damn sure did!” I heard you taught yourself harmonica? “Yeah! I got one for Christmas and started blowin’ on it.” Your mother sang in church, do you think that was your first musical influence? “Yeah, I guess so. That’s what they all say.” He laughs. “I haven’t the slightest idea, you know? 

What was life like for you in a small community like that? “There wasn’t too much to it, I just didn’t want to work on the farm, so I ran away. I learned how to play the harmonica and when I thought I was good enough, I went to Chicago.”

Talk a little about working in Bobby Shore’s Tavern in Meridian? “Oh yeah, that was great! It was a restaurant and a tavern and I was selling bootleg, moonshine whiskey.” (laughing) “But I drank too much! (laughing) Were you playing blues there? “No, Western and Country music and that was great, too! Yeah, that was the first thing I learned but after blues came along, I got into that.”

You grew up around Lovie Lee. “Yeah, he’s still hangin’. But working with him I felt it was too slow because I wanted to get up real fast, you know? Who were some of the people you listened to on the harmonica? “You mean the people I liked?” I nod. “Oh I listened to Sonny Boy, Big Walter, Little Walter, Sonny Terry, Jerry McCain, Junior Wells, James Cotton. They were playing way before I was…Cotton is old as Moses!” (laughing) “Junior, too!”

Like most bluesmen of the era, Bell would busk on street corners; sometimes alone, sometimes with others. “Yeah, I played with a band, Robert Nighthawk, Honeyboy Edwards… shoot, a lot of peoples.”

You played in a place once called the Cadillac Baby Bar with Little Walter, what was that like? “That was okay.” What did you do? “Nuthin’!” (laughing) C’mon, running with Little Walter had to be a high point in your career? “No, it wasn’t.” (laughing) “You see when I went to Chicago I was too young to get into the clubs, I had to go in the back door. I had to sneak around and people would sneak me in.”

I had always heard that Little Walter Jacobs was a scrappy little guy and would fight anyone at the drop of a hat, but Carey set me straight. “Naw, everybody tells that same lie.” Then he says. “Well, I guess he would if somebody would jump on him, but everybody have to defend themselves, you know? There was no doubt that he was an unbelievable harp player. “Yeah he was, he’s gone but he’s still has stuff out, it’s still great stuff.”

I was looking at some of the people you’ve played with and it’s unreal. You’ve played with Big Walter, Earl Hooker, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters… and the list of venues, what was the rowdiest club or bar you’ve ever played? “The only place I remember was a house party in Mississippi. They got to fightin’ and I went up under the house.” (laughing) “Yeah, under the house, the guitar player got in his car and left. Yeah, people got beat. That was about the rowdiest.”

Charlie Musselwhite and Otis Rush both told me about a place called the ‘I Spy Lounge’ in Chicago? “I didn’t hang out in the ‘I Spy’ that much. I always heard about all the fights and stuff going on in there, that’s one of the reasons I didn’t go in there!” (laughing) You and Charlie Musselwhite are pretty good friends. “Yeah, we used to hang out together, every day almost, every Sunday playing on the street. He’s crazy, though.” He’s settled down now a little bit, haven’t you? “No!” (laughing) “I just ain’t as fast as I used to be!” (laughing)

You toured a great deal with Willie Dixon’s All Stars. “Yeah, he’s a good friend of mine. I was his main man. We used to cook in the hotel, and we’d get busted for it.” (laughing) “Hot dogs, pork chops, potatoes.” You mean like a hot plate in the room? “I had one of those big, old Hoover electric frying pans and we had a good time. They told us to quit but then the hotel manager would sit down and have a bite with us. Willie was good at starting a conversation. After we finished the guy would leave and tell us, ‘Well, you guys don’t do it every day or just put something at the bottom of the door so the smell doesn’t go all over.’ You know those white potatoes and onions you could smell them a country mile…” (laughing) “And the band wouldn’t help round up food with us; we’d sneak off to the grocery store and they’d be sleeping and when they’d wake up they’d smell the food and Willie would lock the door and wouldn’t let them in.” (laughing) “Oh, we had great fun!”

You’ve been on the road a long time, you ever tire of it? “Un-uh!?” Carey shakes his head. “It’s my life…I love it! You know why?” He smiles. “I don’t want to work!” (laughing) Isn’t it tough sometimes? “It ain’t like work!! Man, work would KILL me! If I had to go back to work punching a clock and here come somebody telling me, ‘How come you’re late? I’m docking your money. Well, you’re fired!’”

What kind of work did you do, outside of music? “Oh man, shoot. I worked in junk yards, nursing homes; washing cars…you know that work? I put on a rubber suit at 7 o’clock and wouldn’t get through till 5 in the evening, keeping that yellow suit on. It was yellow. They had those little pads you stick your hands in. Man, I used to say if I ever get out of this here… man that was something else.”

Describe Carey Bell’s blues? “I just DID!” (laughing) “I just did!” (laughing) “The first wife I had, we moved from Mississippi to Chicago with Lovie Lee and a whole band. I didn’t know the city and I had to go look for a job and at that time that had old junk carts that they pulled through the alley picking up scrap and stuff. Her mother’s old man built me a wagon to pull. Now, I had been plowin’ with a mule in Mississippi and man, when I get to Chicago they go and make a mule outta’ me! Owww!” (laughing) “Un-Uh! They put me out! Yeah, that’s when I met Honeyboy (Edwards). Honeyboy took me in. If it hadn’t been for Honeyboy I’d probably woulda’ been dead or something, or in jail!”

You’ve played with everybody, do you have a favorite session or recording that you truly enjoyed? “My favorite was with Muddy, the London sessions. Oh, we had great fun. With Sammy Lawhorn and I can’t remember the other guys. Only three of us left Chicago and went to London and they had musicians there in London. They were big guys but I can’t recall their names.” That album was loaded with talent including Rory Gallagher, Rick Grech, Stevie Winwood, Mitch Mitchell and many more… I totally understand why it was your favorite. Other than the talent, what made it so special for you? “Muddy was funny. They didn’t want to give me no whiskey. Muddy said, ‘you don’t give that boy no whiskey, he ain’t gonna’ play!” (laughing) “You better go out and get him some. It was real funny. And we’d lay up in the hotel all day and do the session at night. It took us a week. In the hotel, we’d order anything we wanted, Champagne… anything we wanted and we didn’t have to pay for it.”

The results speak for themselves.

We lost Carey Bell in Chicago on May 6, 2007 from heart failure. He left us with an incredible library of music. (Check him out — Carey Bell; I know you’ll like it.)

The post Carey Bell Blues appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Covid Survivor

It was the second sleepless night for my sister. What started as a mild fever had escalated to a classic case of Covid 19. Her doctor was no help. He was textbook-trained but he had no first-hand experience with the disease. Sis couldn’t sleep in a normal postion because of the constriction in her lungs. She was told to lay on her stomach but that didn’t work. Standing up was not a solution either. How can you sleep while standing up? Heading for a third night of difficulty she got a phone call from my daughter (a nurse who works in the red zone). My daughter told her about flowler’s position — sleeping at an angle. (SEE DIAGRAM). That’s what saved the day…. (I mean) the night. Later on, my daughter gave her more tips that led to her full recovery. I’m so glad for my sister’s health and so proud of my daughter. You can read my sister’s full testimony as well as her husband’s at TravelingBoy.com. Pass this on. This may save someone’s life.

I’d like to salute our frontliners in this pandemic. I can only speak about my daughter but I’m sure this is the routine of every frontliner. She’s on her feet all day wearing her full plastic armor of face mask, plastic shield, cap and gloves. She trained herself not to scratch her nose or wipe her eyes. There are 60 doctors and nurses where she works. Despite their precaution, only my daughter and 2 other nurses have not yet had Covid. (I guess masks are good but it is the vaccines that are the game changers). She goes home after a full shift but she does not enter the house yet. She has to change in the garage, wrap her scrubs in a bag, go inside to take a bath. Only then, can she hug her kids and her husband.

You are blessed if you live here in America. The vaccines have reached millions already. Infection rates have dipped. My heart goes out to many more countries that still wait for the vaccines to arrive on their shores. Americans get the dosage free. In other countries people have to purchase it (if they are available at all). At least there is a light at the end of this dark tunnel. Let’s continue to pray for this generation.

TGIF people!

Raoul

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
 his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning;
 great is your faithfulness.  — Lamentation 3:22-23

BTW, if you need an oximeter, please let me know. A subscriber of my TGIF emails bought one and was given a spare. He is selling the other one cheap.

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA for sharing this pun.

Video: Aging Wife

Thanks to Lee of Alhambra, CA and Craig of Texas

Video: Dolly Parton’s Assault

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, B.C.

Erratum: According to Snopes, last week’s video of a VW Korea Flying car was fake. Sorry about that. Thanks to Rey of Simi Valley, CA for pointing it out to me.

Parting Shots

Thanks to Tony of Los Angeles, CA

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, B.C.

Thanks to Naomi of North Hollywood, CA

The post Amazing Puns appeared first on Traveling Archive.

A New Day in America

First of all, thanks for your concern about my health last week. The short of it was my blood pressure went up and the meds took it down too fast for my body to adjust and got me nauseus. I was bed-ridden from Friday afternoon until Monday evening. Even now I still feel woozy. Not used to this because I rarely get sick. Anyway, getting better everyday.

The mood in the White House changed on Inauguration day. The smiles and grimaces in people’s mouths 4 years ago switched places. The mainstream media was filled with festivity while the alternative news outlets were relatively quiet and behaved.

I listened to the speeches with objectivity (at least I think I did). And I realized inaugural speeches have some things in common.

1. All incoming Presidents are in disbelief that they are actually going to control the world.
2. They have generous hearts and promise they will be the President of all people and not just the ones who voted for them. And they promise to unite the parties.
3. They promise complete transparency.
4. The whole family of the elected officials are there in attendance and sometimes we get to see the whole kaboodle for the first time and in all their fashion statements.
5. The first family’s dirty laundry are not usually displayed … yet. No one wants to spoil the party.
6. It’s mostly always cold and the sun only starts warming the place near the end of the ceremonies. I ask myself, why not choose a warmer season? Why does it have to be in the first month?
7. But above all, despite the hostility of the elections, there is awe that America’s constitution is still preserved. Few countries can say they have a peaceful coup d’etat.

I for one wish all the best for the new President. I think everyone should give him a chance. Whether one is in the winning or the losing side, we are all still Americans. I like to believe we love our country and want what’s best for future generations. Our facts and our approach to success is just different.

Some say a good egg is cooked “over easy” and some like it “sunny side up.”  If you’re the cook, you decide what’s for breakfast. And if you don’t eat the food, you starve.

I like the video Don shares below. It shows how one instrument and different skills can create beautiful music.

Be safe, be healthy, and remember: Cooperation is always more powerful than competition. TGIF people! God bless America!

Raoul

“If GRACE depends on our cooperation, then it is no longer GRACE.”
— Martin Luther

Joke of the Week

Thanks to Mel of Washington, DC  for sharing this joke.

Video: The Operation

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, BC

The memories this video invokes.

When I was lying on the gurney while being wheeled into the operating theater at 7 am for my quad bypass the anesthesiologist was standing at the door and stopped me to ask what my name was.  After I replied he said. “Good morning, Mr. Copeland.”  Then, looking down at his clipboard, he continued, “Ah, yes, you’re in for the sex change operation.”

I didn’t really laugh at that moment but have done so many times since.  And I’ve often wondered whether he was trying to gauge by my reaction just how much juice to put into my drip. –– Don

Video: Bolero On One Cello

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, BC

Never really cared for Ravel’s Bolero. It became so popular after it was featured in the movie “10” with Bo Derek that I cringed every time I heard it. I once read that it is being played somewhere in the world every 15 seconds.

So I was surprised that this clever single-instrument performance could capture my interest, but perhaps it’s because it’s a parody and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Hope you like it. –– Don

Parting Shots

Thanks to Rodney of Manitoba, B.C.

Thanks to Mel of Washington, DC

Thanks to Mel of Washington, D.C. for these last two jokes.

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