Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue #24

 

It's time once again for another edition of Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Blue.  This makes our 24nd edition.  For a long time, this was one of our favorite themes and it dates back to FBF's early days as a weekly email sent to co-workers.  It serves as a great way to introduce new and old tunes to new and old blues fans.  

For those unfamiliar with the format, we offer a song from the early days of the blues (Something Old), a song from a recent blues artist (Something New), a blues artist covering a rock song or vice versa (Something Borrowed), and finally, someone who epitomizes the blues.....usually a legendary artist (Something Blue).  Here we go......

For Something Old, let's go way back to 1930 for "Everybody Oughta Make A Change," by Sleepy John Estes.  I first heard this tune recorded by Eric Clapton on his Money & Cigarettes album in the early 80's.  Born in Tennessee in 1899, he and his family moved to Brownsville when he was a teen.  He lost his right eye soon after when a friend hit him with a rock.  He started performing at 19 at parties and picnics while working in the fields during the day.  He was usually accompanied by harmonica player Hammie Nixon and James "Yank" Rachell, who played guitar and mandolin.  He played with both of these musicians for over 50 years.

His recording career, at least his first one began in 1929 and recorded tracks like "Drop Down Mama," "Milk Cow Blues" (a.k.a "Leaving Trunk"), and "Someday Baby Blues."  He recorded for Decca Records and Bluebird Records, and later returned to record in the early 50's for Sun Records unsuccessfully.  He was rediscovered by Bob Koester and Sam Charters in 1962, completely blind by then and destitute.  He appeared in Charters' move The Blues and later recorded for Koester's Delmark Records.

Although he was in his late 20's/early 30's when he recorded his first sides, he sounded like an older man when he sang.  A lot of the blues revivalists searching for artists in the early 60's sort of wrote him off because they figured he was dead, but he was very much alive and his later recordings were as powerful as his early recordings.  I guess he grew into his voice.  He passed away in 1977 from a stroke, but he was a big influence on artists like Robert Plant, Bob Dylan, and Taj Mahal.  His early recordings and later recordings are uniformly fine, so if you're not familiar with him, check him out.

For Something New, how about a track from one of the young lions of the blues scene, 27 year old D.K. Harrell from Ruston, Louisiana.  An amazing guitarist and singer, Harrell sang along to B.B. King when he first heard him at age two.  He sang in his church as a boy, but continued to follow the blues.  After he got his first guitar at age 12, he was writing songs by 16.  He was inspired by King and you can hear a lot of him in his music, the tone of his guitar and his vocals.  His first paying gig was at the B.B. King Symposium at Indianola, MS, where he got to play "The Thrill Is Gone," backed by King's band.

Harrell also is influenced by Albert King, Freddie King, Muddy Water and other and he has used a little bit of their style forging a distinctive style of his own.  He release the excellent album The Right Man on Little Village Records in 2023 and it won acclaim from blues fans all over.  Last year, he signed with Alligator and released Talkin' Heavy, which improved on his first release and made many Top Ten lists last year (including FBF's).  Blues fans should love D.K. Harrell's music, which is a mix of traditional and contemporary blues.  Here's "Grown Now," a single from Talkin' Heavy.

For Something Borrowed, let's stay close to the present time with a track from the B.B. King's Blues Summit 100 collection compiled by Joe Bonamassa.  If you haven't heard this set and you're a blues fan, you are missing out.  This is one of the best tribute albums I've heard because it honors its subject, is fairly reverential, and it seems like the participants are having a blast with the opportunity to acknowledge one of the true legends of the blues.

Our selected track is performed by jazz guitar legend George Benson, who actually doesn't play guitar on the track (Bonamassa and Josh Smith do a wonderful job in that capacity), but he turns in a marvelous vocal performance.  Benson was one of my first guitar heroes and the reason that I started my long journey to listening to the blues via his excellent guitar/vocal recordings throughout the 70's.  I got into jazz before I moved to the blues and his guitar work was a huge reason why.  

Benson, at 83, is still playing in the states, but stepped back from international touring in 2024, having released an album of standards in 2024 that he originally started recorded in the late 80's, but completed it with his record label's encouragement.  Joe Bonamassa continues to be incredibly prolific with his own recordings, but even more important is his work in bringing under-recorded blues artists back, such as Larry McCray, Eric Gales, Dion, and Jimmy Hall, with new releases on his Keeping The Blues Alive Records. 

For Something Blue, here's the harmonica legend James Cotton.  Cotton was born in Tunica, MS and was mentored on the harp by Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller version) after losing his parents at a very young age.  When Williamson left Cotton to live with his wife in Milwaukee, he just gave his band to Cotton, still very young, and the band fell apart.  He started playing harmonica in Howlin' Wolf's band in the early 50's, also recording his own single for Sun Records, "Cotton Crop Blues," in 1952.

He began playing in Muddy Waters' band in the mid 50's, though Little Walter played harp on most of Waters' recordings.  By 1957, Walter and Cotton were alternating on the recording sessions.  He formed his own band in the mid 60's with Otis Spann on piano, and they performed both blues and R&B tunes, adding a horn section for some tunes.  Cotton was one of the few blues artists who really crossed over to the rock audience during this time, recording with Buddha Records and appearing at numerous festivals.

In the 80's, he recorded for Alligator Records, where this track comes from, a dynamite version of Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Ain't Doin' Too Bad."  The album this track comes from, High Compression, was a cool album that was part traditional and part contemporary.  Incidentally, Bland and Cotton found out that they were half-brothers shortly before Bland passed away.  There's a great documentary about Cotton, Bonnie Blue:  James Cotton's Life in the Blues, which can be seen on Tubi TV that you should check out if you're a fan of blues harp.  Cotton remained active, despite losing his voice due to throat cancer, until shortly before his death in 2017.  Even though he couldn't sing anymore, he could still blow the back off a harmonica.

500 Posts!!

When I started this blog in February of 2010, I honestly never figured I'd still be working on it sixteen years and 3 months later.  I never even considered that we might reach 500 posts, or 1,000,000 views (we passed that number a couple of weeks ago), but here we are.  

I don't really have a big anniversary post planned or anything...... just taking a look back at how Friday Blues Fix came to be.

The real origin of the blog was actually a group email from work.  Around 2007 or 2008, I started sending a audio file or two to a couple of my co-workers who also enjoyed the blues on Friday mornings.  Word got around and others asked to be included to the list, and soon I was including people who didn't work with me, so it got to be a pretty good-sized list of folks.

Sometime, along the way, I started including little information tidbits about the songs and the artists responsible.  Since I listened to the blues a lot and read about the blues a lot, it wasn't that big a deal....I could usually knock an email out in a few minutes and everyone seemed to enjoy the information I was providing.

Near the end of 2009, I got an email from one of my bosses (who was on the Friday Blues Fix email list) saying that IT was complaining about file sizes being sent, which is kind of funny now, given the size files that go through emails these days, so he told me that I needed to stop sending them after the one that I had worked on for that Friday.  At that point, the Friday Blues Fix email group concluded with little fanfare and hubbub.  

While I was doing the emails, one of my co-workers, Brent Parks, said that I should consider starting a blog about the blues.  He had started a few websites about different subjects, one of them being about the blues (he was a fan, too), and he thought it might be fun for me to try.  For starters, he just attached some of my CD reviews from Blues Bytes and that was pretty cool.  For kicks, I decided to do a Ten Questions with Larry Garner, who I had been corresponding with via email, and he included that on his site.  I later recycled it as one of FBF's earliest posts back in 2010.

Also for kicks, we sat down and worked up a Friday Blues Fix ezine of sorts which included reviews, interviews, and blues news items.  We never got past setting it up as a Word document prototype at the time and I kick myself for not keeping a copy of it because it would have been neat to see some 16 or 17 years later, but I haven't been able to track it down.  

First FBF post - February 12, 2010 

That's about as far as we got for a little while until one weekend early in 2010, I finally decided that I'd give it a try.  I got into Blogger and started puttering around with a site, doing a lot of trial and error until I had it like I wanted it.  In setting up a blog, I wanted to have something in place that (1) I enjoyed doing and (2) would be a solid source of information for both old blues fans and new ones.

One of the things that really helped me in doing the blog was that I had been listening to the blues faithfully for almost twenty-five years, and by that time I had covered a lot of ground.  As I've said, I really enjoyed The Blues Brothers and the music that they played, so they led me to a lot of music that I'd never heard before.  I think they led a lot of blues fans to the music during that period.

I had started leaning more into the soul, R&B, and blues-rock veins with Stax soul, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds after music started becoming more computerized and sterile in the mid 80's, but I've always liked to trace things back to their beginnings, so I managed to unearth a lot of great blues from the 50's, 60's, and 70's, and later on from the 20's, 30's, and 40's.  

I had also read whatever I could find about the blues......as I've said many times, Peter Guralnick, Robert Palmer, Stanley Booth, Bill Ferris, Robert Gordon, Dick Waterman, and many other authors were indispensable sources of information for me.

Thanks to Bill Steber for allowing me to use his pictures for the blog header.

Another source who provided me with a lot of information many years earlier was a man from Houston named Jim Shortt.  I met Jim on the old Blues Access message board - Blues Access was an excellent blues magazine that, with Living Blues, provided me with a lot of information about old and new artists and that message board was just wonderful to a relatively new listener.  At the time, I was listening to a lot of Excello blues and that's how Jim and I connected.  Jim knew a lot of the folks that I listened to and he also introduced me to the world of Duke and Peacock Records.  He knew many of the artists who recorded on those sessions and he had endless stories about those guys and many others.  I had started writing album reviews for Blues Bytes in 1999 and he was a big help to me in learning how to write reviews.  We also exchanged mix CDs back and forth of our favorite artists (his were much cooler than mine).

Unfortunately, Jim passed away in 2008, a year or so before I decided to start this blog.  I'd like to think that he would have probably contributed a few posts himself in the early years, like my friend Joe Goff, who I met through work.  He contributed a couple of posts about B.B. King and Robert Nighthawk in the blog's early years.  Sadly, I've lost track of Joe because he changed jobs several years ago, but I know he's still listening to the blues somewhere in a big way and I'd welcome any additional posts he'd like to contribute.

Over the years, we came up with several recurring topics, such as Ten Questions With....., Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Five Discs You Might Have Missed, the Mount Bluesmore series, etc.....  We also did some profiles on blues legends, took a look at some of the great blues labels, looked at various blues songs, including a couple of my Blues Fix Mix discs that I compiled for friends and family.  I plan to revisit some of those topics because I think people enjoyed them.

It was always a lot of fun to try and figure out what to write about each week.  There was so much material to work with.  Friday Blues Fix managed to publish every Friday for over seven years, until things just got too hectic in my everyday life.  We had taken on some additional family responsibilities at home that took a lot of extra attention and that extended into some other family issues that developed along the way, so that, with work responsibilities took up most of my blogging time.  I managed to crank out a few posts over the years and I was able to continue writing reviews for Blues Bytes during my spare time, so I wasn't completely away.

After a few fits and starts over the last couple of years, I'm hopeful that Friday Blues Fix is finally settling back into a groove.  I appreciate those visitors who have stuck around through all the fits and starts, and welcome any new visitors to the blog who have showed up in recent months.  I know that the blog is sort of an archaic way to communicate these days, but hey, I still listen to CDs so I'm sure there are others out there who still like to do things "the old way."  Please be patient with us and stick around.....there's more to come, I promise.

Also, thanks to everyone who helped guide me into and through this process for their invaluable advice, suggestions, criticisms, and praise.

Cool Blues News (and Reviews) You Can Use!!!

This week, FBF offers a bit of news and a couple of reviews for blues fans to check out........

A few months ago, some videos showed up on YouTube and few people were even aware of it.  Ted Giola wrote about them on his Substack page, which attracted a lot more attention.  According to Giola, sound restorer Nick Dellow managed to get his hands on a shellac master "test pressing" of Robert Johnson.  The disk was made in 1940 from the original metal parts by George Avakian, a young producer at Columbia Records who was a big jazz and blues fan.  They were left forgotten in Columbia's storage facility at Bridgeport, Connecticut.  The YouTube video that Giola was describing was Take 2 of "Cross Road Blues," recorded by Johnson in San Antonio in 1936 (Take 1 was the track that was released).  Check it out below.  The sound quality is just amazing!

Here's Take 1 of "Come On In My Kitchen," also recorded by Johnson at San Antonio in 1936....Take 2 was the released take.  Again, the sound quality is just amazing.  The original pressings that most blues fans have on CD or LP are pretty clear, considering their age, but these really bring out the qualities of Johnson's guitar work and vocals even more.  I'm hopeful that there are more of these sides to be heard and that Dellow will share them.  You can check out his YouTube page for more even more classic blues recordings remastered and updated.

Last weekend, we were able to catch Tab Benoit and Samantha Fish during their recent visit to the MSU Riley Center in Meridian, MS.  Both did a good job, but I would give the edge to Ms. Fish.  They both had a great rapport with the audience, but I think her guitar work was more dynamic and daring and she had a bit more variation in her set list.  A lot of folks I talked to felt differently about it (I think this was many of the attendees' first exposure to Samantha Fish), but, hey, that's the way it goes.

Here are a couple of Friday Blues Picks for you to check out.....

Rick Vito - Slidemaster (MoMojo Records):  I've heard several of Vito's solo releases.....he's been a member of Fleetwood Mac and Mick Fleetwood's Blues Band and played on numerous sessions with Bonnie Raitt, John Mayall, John Fogerty, Christine McVie, Leon Russell, Boz Scaggs, Bob Segar (that's his slide guitar solo on "Like A Rock"), and many others.  Slidemaster is an all-instrumental album and it features new songs by Vito mixed with some older tunes that he remixed and remastered, plus several choice covers, including two by Fleetwood Mac founding member Peter Green.  Vito covers a lot of ground on these tracks, all of which are firmly rooted in the blues.  His slide work is beautiful, almost singing on several tracks, and the two Green covers may send blues fans unfamiliar with the early edition of the band scrambling for their recordings.  Definitely a must-listen for fans of guitar, especially slide guitar.

Eliza Neals - Thunder In The House (E-H Records):  Neals is a Detroit-based vocalist with an appropriately soulful delivery.  She is also a great songwriter, having learned at the feet of the legendary Motown songwriter Barrett Strong.  I've listened to her last seven releases and she continues to improve with each subsequent album.  This is her strongest effort to date....she co-produced with Michael Puwal, who provides superb guitar work throughout the album, and she also provides all the vocals on the disc, lead and background, with effective and impressive results.  With great songs and powerful vocals, plus a dynamic stage presence, Eliza Neals deserves to be heard by blues fans.  She's a real talent and this is an album that blues and blues-rock fans will enjoy.

A Night to Remember - Kingfish and Mathias Lattin Live!!

Photo by Paul Busby

Last weekend, my brother and I were able to catch a couple of young blues stars in action at a venue 25 miles away.  I haven't gotten to see a lot of live shows in the last ten years due to events that unavoidable, but things have gotten better in recent years.  There have been some great shows at the MSU Riley Center in Meridian, MS, which is about thirty miles from home, and the Ellis Theater in Philadelphia, MS, which is about 25 miles away.

The Ellis was opened in 1926 as a movie theatre until the late 50's and later repurposed for live performances.  It was revitalized and reopened in 2022 as part of Philadelphia native Marty Stuart's Congress of Country Music.  It has hosted a variety of live acts during that time in the country and blues genres....one of the first acts to play the Ellis was the North Mississippi Allstars and my wife and I saw Dorothy Moore there a couple of years ago.

Last weekend the Ellis hosted Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, one of the rising stars of the blues.  About 12-15 years ago, my good friend Joe (who wrote a few posts here in the blog's early years) sent me a video one Monday morning.  He had traveled up to Clarksdale and had checked out the blues at Ground Zero.  The email said, "This guy is supposed to be 13 years old......unbelievable!!  They call him Kingfish."  The video, which I can't find now, just blew me away.  I mean, he looked like a pre-teenager up there, but he was playing guitar like a seasoned vet.

It's been really neat to watch this young man develop and show  up on television and videos across YouTube.  His albums for Alligator were great, especially the Live in London release in 2023, mainly because it showed him in his natural element, live performance.  In September of last year, he released Hard Road on his own Red Zero label (FBF reviewed it last fall) and I think it was his best studio release yet.

So, yeah, I was a little excited for the opportunity to see Kingfish in a live setting.  I've heard so many stories about him over the years that I grabbed up tickets the day that they went on sale back in January.  At the time, I didn't realize he would have anyone opening for him.  Last week, they announced that Mathias Lattin would be opening, which excited me even more.

(Note:  While I do take photos....all of the ones below......I don't usually record the music to share because #1 the sound is usually distorted, so you can't really hear it, #2 I'd rather hear it and experience it first-hand instead of playing it back later, and #3 because I feel kind of guilty doing it..... I guess that goes back to the What's Happening TV episode where Rerun tried to illegally record the Doobie Brothers' concert 😉)

The Houston-born Lattin won the 2023 International Blues Challenge and Best Guitarist.  He was 20 YEARS OLD, the youngest to ever win both awards.  He began playing around Houston when he was 12 and joined The Keeshea Pratt Band, who won the IBC in 2018.  He released Up Next not long after he won the IBC and it was one of my 20 favorite albums that year, along with Kingfish's Live in London.  Lattin, now 23 years old, was recently signed to Red Zero Records, so hopefully, we will be seeing a new release from him soon.

The theatre was packed when Lattin took the stage, backed by his longtime bassist and drummer.  They turned in an excellent 45 minute show, playing five or six songs.  Lattin is a triple threat as a songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist.  He played some great guitar that reminded me a lot of other Texas guitarists I'd heard over the years, but with his own distinctive touch.  He's also a great vocalist and the audience really enjoyed his back-and-forth with them.  He was certainly comfortable on stage and confident as a performer and my brother and I both figured he would be a hard act to follow.  He and his band did a marvelous job.

Kingfish followed after a short break and it was an incredible show.  He performed several songs from his Alligator releases and a few from Hard Road and it was pretty amazing.  His band also did a fine job....their bass player was relatively new to the band and he was an absolute monster.  Their regular keyboardist didn't make the show, so Buddy Guy's regular keyboardist Dan Souvigny sat in.  

Kingfish's music has continued to evolve over the years and while most of the guitar clips you've heard from him over the years are of him just shredding, you really need to check out his recordings for the big picture.  He's been incorporating different musical styles into his blues beyond rock, such as funk and soul on all his albums, but it's really evident on Hard Road.  All of those styles were present during his show.  His playing has such feel..... it's so far beyond that shredding that some people associate with him.  His guitar playing is like an extension of his soul and serves as his voice as much as his own voice does.  He left it all on the stage.....well, except for that 10-15 minute segment where he walked out and played in the audience, stopping about five feet from where we were standing.  

Mathias Lattin came out and joined Kingfish for the encore and they had a playful headcutting contest that was a lot of fun, not just for them but for the audience who stuck around.  I'm really excited about the future releases on Red Zero from both of them, and singer Dylan Triplett, another Red Zero signee.  

All in all, the show was one that I won't soon forget, actually one of the best I've seen in a long time, and I hope that I get the chance to see them again soon.