THE USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IS USED UNDER THE GUIDELINES OF "FAIR USE" IN TITLE 17 & 107 OF THE UNITED STATES CODE. SUCH MATERIAL REMAINS THE COPYRIGHT OF THE ORIGINAL HOLDER AND IS USED HERE FOR THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION, COMPARISON, AND CRITICISM ONLY. NO INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT IS INTENDED…
Guitarist and songster, was born on April 9, 1895, in the Brazos bottoms near Navasota, Texas, where he lived most of his life as a tenant farmer...
Lipscomb himself insisted that he was a songster, not a guitarist or "blues singer," since he played "all kinds of music." His eclectic repertoire has been reported to have contained 350 pieces spanning two centuries. (He likewise took exception when he was labeled a "sharecropper" instead of a "farmer.")…
Lipscomb's own rendition of "Tom Moore's Farm" was taped at his first session in 1960 but released anonymously (Arhoolie LP 1017, Texas Blues, Volume 2), presumably to protect the singer... Here’s the tune off his album Texan Songster…
Between 1956 and 1958 Lipscomb lived in Houston, working for a lumber company during the day and playing at night in bars where he vied for audiences with Texas blues great Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins,
whom Lipscomb had first met in Galveston in 1938…
With compensation from an on-the-job accident, he returned to Navasota and was finally able to buy some land and build a house of his own. He was working as foreman of a highway-mowing crew in Grimes County when blues researchers Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie Records and Mack McCormick of Houston found and recorded him in 1960…His debut release was Texas Songster (1960)…
Trouble in Mind was recorded in 1961, and released on a Reprise…This was a cover of his buudy, Lightnin’ Hopkins’ tune…
In May 1963, Lipscombe appeared at the first Monterey Folk Festival in California.
R.I.P. "Mance" Emancipation Lipscomb
Mance Lipscomb singer; guitarist born on April 9, 1895, in Navasota, TX; died on January 30, 1976, of heart disease in Navasota, TX two years after suffering a stroke…..
THE USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IS USED UNDER THE GUIDELINES OF "FAIR USE" IN TITLE 17 & 107 OF THE UNITED STATES CODE. SUCH MATERIAL REMAINS THE COPYRIGHT OF THE ORIGINAL HOLDER AND IS USED HERE FOR THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION, COMPARISON, AND CRITICISM ONLY. NO INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT IS INTENDED
John starred alone in a black & white "Saturday Night Live" (1975) sketch titled "Don't Look Back in Anger", in which he played himself as an old man visiting the graves of the other original SNL cast members, himself being the last survivor.
In an odd twist of fate,
Belushi was the first of the cast to die…
Some comedians love their characters. I don't fall in love with mine. In fact, I get tired of them very fast. You have to be willing to throw it all away—John Belushi
John Belushi on Saturday Night Live doing Joe Cocker’ With A Little Help From My Friends. 10-25-75:
Belushi doing Beethoven doing Ray Charles…
The epitaph on Belushi's tombstone (on Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts) read, "He made us laugh, and now he can make us think."
John's grave drew so many curious viewers that his casket had to be moved and reburied in an unmarked corner of the cemetery...after which Belushi's fans posted a new epitaph for him which has since become famous: "He could have given us a lot more laughs, but NOOOOOOO!"
The Blues Brothers and Ray Charles
John Belushi died of a drug overdose at the age of 33 on March 5, 1982
R.I.P. JOHN
~ THANKS FOR THE LAUGHS AND THE MUSIC
THE USE OF ANY COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IS USED UNDER THE GUIDELINES OF "FAIR USE" IN TITLE 17 & 107 OF THE UNITED STATES CODE. SUCH MATERIAL REMAINS THE COPYRIGHT OF THE ORIGINAL HOLDER AND IS USED HERE FOR THE PURPOSES OF EDUCATION, COMPARISON, AND CRITICISM ONLY. NO INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT IS INTENDED
Jan 27 1918: Blues guitarist Elmore James is born on a farm near Richland, Mississippi, USA.
In 1932, at the age of fourteen, Elmore James, also known as Joe Willie, began playing guitar for parties and dances in the Durant, Mississippi area.
By 1937 James had taken up with musicians Sonny Boy Williamson
and Robert Johnson.
James, would later echo Johnson's slide technique in his own recordings.
After Johnson's death, and up until 1939, James toured the South with Williamson working juke joints and theaters.
He assembled a band in 1939 after parting ways with Williamson.
During the late 1930s or early 1940s James began playing electric guitar. He became a master of using the distortion and sustain of this instrument to create a dense, textured sound that provided the blueprint for postwar Chicago blues.
James was inducted into the Navy in 1943. Back home, in 1945, he was sharing a room with Sonny Boy Williamson and working the local jukes.
James also began a professional partnership with his guitar-playing cousin
"Homesick" James Williamson,
They worked the blues clubs on Beale Street in Memphis.
BEALE STREET
In 1947, James backed up Sonny Boy on KFFA radio's King Biscuit Time program in Helena, Arkansas.
Helena Bank Building: Original home of King Biscuit Time
During his stint on KFFA, James fell under the spell of Robert Nighthawk, and began refining his style to reflect Nighthawk’s crying slide guitar.
Robert Nighthawk
While working clubs with Williamson in Jackson, Mississippi
James made his first record for Lillian McMurry's Trumpet Label. On August 5, 1951, at the Trumpet Studios, James cut the Robert Johnson chestnut "Dust My Broom" which reached number nine on the national R&B charts within several months of its release.
James established residency in Chicago in 1952 and formed his legendary band the Broomdusters.
While never attaining the fame of fellow Mississippi expatriates Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, James became one of the city's most influential guitarists. He recorded for a variety of labels throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, leaving a legacy of slow blues, boogies, and full-fledged rave ups that dominate the musical vocabulary of Chicago blues.
Elmore James died May 24, 1963, in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of forty-five.
Trixie Smith was born in Atlanta, GA in 1895 and worked the minstrel shows and Chitlin Circuit...
On January 20 in 1922,a blues singing contest was held at the Inter-Manhattan Casino in New York City. Trixie Smith won first place and a silver cup with her song "Trixie's Blues"
Miss Trixie Smith, was immediately signed to the recently founded Black Swan Records and started making recordings…
One of the first tunes she recorded was "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)" (1922),written by J. Berni Barbour, of historic interest as the first secular recording to reference the phrase "ROCK 'N ROLL".
Although her early reference to Rock ‘n Roll is certainly memorable, she is most remembered for "Railroad Blues," (1925) a song that featured one of Smith's most inspired vocal performances on record, and "The World Is Jazz Crazy and So Am I" (1925). Both songs feature Louis Armstrong on cornet.
She recorded prolifically between 1925 and 1929—For example:
In the early 1930s, Trixie Smith’s career took a turn to the stage and big screen--She appeared in four movies: God's Step Children (1938), Swing! (1938), Drums o' Voodoo (1934), and The Black King (1932)--and her Blues singing career waned.
She did produce seven tracks for Decca between 1938 and 1939:
A remake of Railroad Blues, re-named “Freight Train Blues” was one of them…
And the reefer smokers’ favorite, “Jack I’m Mellow” another…
Trixie Smith died in New York in 1943, after a brief illness, aged 48
R.I.P. TRIXIE SMITH—YOU WERE WAY AHEAD OF YOUR TIME!!!
