The successes of the breakthrough soundtrack from the film O Brother Where Art Thou? and the in-depth PBS television series Ken Burns' Jazz seem to have combined in the 2001 production of Palm Pictures' four-part TV series American Roots Music. The series touches on the development of the distinctly American styles of traditional folk, country, ...
Lonnie Johnson was best known for his tonally beautiful guitar playing, but he was also a fine singer and songwriter, and pretty adept on violin, piano, banjo, mandolin, harmonium, and bass as well. Equally at home in the blues or the jazz world (he worked with artists as raw as Texas Alexander and as polished as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington ...
This CD serves as a perfect introduction to pre-war blues for the novice since it contains fine examples of the music of 20 blues artists: Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi John Hurt, Blind Willie Johnson, Bo Carter, Blind Willie McTell, Lonnie Johnson, Charley Patton, Leroy Carr, Josh White, Leadbelly, Peetie Wheatstraw, Robert ...
With an elegant guitar style that helped bridge country blues and the more modern urban R&B sound while at the same time keeping a dialogue going between jazz and the blues, Lonnie Johnson was one of the most important guitarists of his generation. He recorded hundreds of sides for OKeh, Decca, and Bluebird between 1925 and 1945, and participated ...
This sex-based set of early blues-oriented recordings has 19 double entendre songs and a humorous (and quite profane) "alternate" version of Lucille Bogan's "Shave 'Em Dry" that still could not be played on the radio. Among the performers are Lil Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Barrel House Annie, Bo Carter and Buddy Moss. With titles such as "Sam The ...
This 20-song collection covers 1930s and '40s material in which Johnson primarily performs blues tunes, doing salty, sassy, mournful, and suggestive numbers in a distinctive, memorable fashion. His vocals on "Rambler's Blues," "In Love Again," the title cut, and several others, are framed by brilliant, creative playing and excellent support from ...
Groundbreaking guitar work of dazzling complexity that never fails to amaze -- and this stuff was cut in the 1920s! Lonnie Johnson's astonishingly fluid guitar work was massively influential (Robert Johnson, for one, was greatly swayed by his waxings), and his no-nonsense vocals (frequently laced with threats of violence -- "Got the Blues for ...
Roots n' Blues: the Retrospective presents five hours of music over four discs, covering the traditional recordings made by Columbia Records and its associated labels from 1925 to 1950. As an all-inclusive survey of American roots music, this set is an invaluable library piece and a good reference, but where this collection really stands out is in ...
This compilation, made up of duets between various all-star blues artists, is an interesting idea that unfortunately doesn't deliver. The blues' most famous partnerships (Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, Shirley & Lee, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee) are represented, along with a slew of one-off singles pairing Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Jordan, Big Mama ...
This assemblage of blues, bluegrass, mountain ballads, topical songs, and jazz shows the wide range of American vernacular music, and Smithsonian Folkways' commitment to it. Among the many highlights here are Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson's ragged and yet sleek version of "The Coo Coo Bird," Doug Wallin's creaky and breathless a cappella version ...
When producer Chris Albertson brought Lonnie Johnson and guitarist Elmer Snowden into a studio for this album on April 9, 1960, both musicians hadn't recorded in a number of years. Indeed, Snowden hadn't seen the inside of a studio in 26 years, but you'd never know it by the fleet-fingered work he employs on the opening "Lester Leaps In," where he ...
This four-disc, 100-track box set differs from most blues compendiums on a number of fronts. For openers, it focuses on the first 20 years of blues recordings, from 1924's "Barrelhouse Blues" by Ed Andrews to 1946's "Rhythm Mama" by Johnny Temple. Second, even though there are entries from artists like Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Son House ...
While rhythm & blues has a pedigree stretching back to the dawn of the 20th century, it was only in the late '30s that smaller groups began jumping with the energy of swing and the spirit of the blues. The Birth of Rhythm & Blues, a three-disc box from Golden Stars, trawls through the subsequent decade and casts a wide net over the jazz, blues, ...
This is the real deal. Raw and ready to rock, all the artists compiled here put the pedal all the way to the metal and let it rock. And when they aren't rocking, they are tearing your heart out with a sobbing ballad. Kicking off with the original version of "The Twist" by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and ending an hour later with the Drivers' ...
This three-disc set features a total of 42 classic blues recordings, some going back to the 1920s. There's no rhyme or reason to the set, except that all of the tracks are classic recordings from Bessie Smith's "St. Louis Blues" and Robert Johnson's "Crossroads," "Hellhound on My Trail," and "Kindhearted Woman Blues" to Etta James' "At Last" and B ...
Lonnie Johnson left behind so many recordings, that no single volume could possibly encompass an introduction to his sound -- that said, this 20-song compilation, made up principally of sides recorded in the second half of the '20s, augmented with a handful from the '30s and the start of the '40s, is a superb showcase for Johnson's virtuosity and ...
Fourteen cuts from the late '20s to early '30s, with Eddie Lang, Victoria Spivey, Texas Alexander, Mooch Richardson, Katherine Baker, and Violet Green. Highlights include "Uncle Ned Don't Use Your Head" and "Winnie the Wailer." ~ Barry Lee Pearson, All Music Guide
Some musicologists have compared country and the blues because of their humorous approach to life's challenges and disappointments, and one could also draw a parallel between the frankness of the blues and hip-hop's blunt lyrics--especially when it comes to relationships. Much like the hip-hoppers of the 1980s and 1990s, the blues artists of the ...
The folks at Yazoo have outdone themselves in two genres with this collection of love songs. This is a mixed blues and country release, except that it goes back to a point in the 1920s and 1930s when blues and country weren't always easy to distinguish from each other, so they fit together just fine. Solo bluesmen and white banjo pickers and ...
Other than Django Reinhardt, the who's who of jazz guitar (all acoustic players) are heard on this sampler album from Yazoo. There are guitar duets by Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang, Lang and Carl Kress (the memorable "Feeling My Way"), Kress and Dick McDonough, and the team of John Cali and Tony Guttuso. In addition there are solo performances by ...
This one of a kind CD, a never-before-released solo performance by Lonnie Johnson, features the bluesman five years before his death, playing guitar and singing in the living room of painter and friend Bernie Strassberg in 1965. The raw recording quality and solo guitar-and-voice format recall the classic Delta blues recordings of Robert Johnson ...
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