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Arhoolie Records Artists
Arhoolie Records is an American small independent record label run by Chris Strachwitz and is based in El Cerrito, California, United States (it is actually located in Richmond Annex but has an El Cerrito postal address.) The label was founded by Strachwitz in 1960 as a way for him to record and produce music by previously obscure "down-home blues" artists such as Lightnin' Hopkins, Snooks Eaglin, and Bill Gaither (blues musician), Bill Gaither. Arhoolie still publishes blues and folk music, Tejano music including Lydia Mendoza, Los Alegres de Terán, Flaco Jiménez, regional Mexican music, cajun, zydeco, and Bluegrass music, bluegrass. History Chris Strachwitz immigrated with his family from Silesia in 1947, and became enamored with American regional music after seeing the film ''New Orleans (1947 film), New Orleans''. He eventually settled in the San Francisco bay area, and in 1960 he headed to Texas to record bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins, but it turned out that Hopkins was in Ber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967. Called "the nation's attic" for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the institution's 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states,States without Smithsonian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zydeco
Zydeco ( or , french: Zarico) is a music genre that evolved in southwest Louisiana by French Creole speakers which blends blues, rhythm and blues, and music indigenous to the Louisiana Creoles and the Native American people of Louisiana. Although it is distinct in origin from the Cajun music of Louisiana, the two forms influenced each other, forming a complex of genres native to the region. Characteristics Zydeco music is typically played in an uptempo, syncopated manner with a strong rhythmic core, and often incorporates elements of blues, rock and roll, soul music, R&B, Afro-Caribbean, Cajun, and early Creole music. Zydeco music is centered on the accordion, which leads the rest of the band, and a specialized washboard, called a vest frottoir, as a prominent percussive instrument. Other common instruments in zydeco are the electric guitar, bass, keyboard, and drum set. If there are accompanying lyrics, they are typically sung in English or French. Many zydeco performers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercy Dee Walton
Mercy Dee Walton (born Mercy Davis Walton, August 30, 1915 – December 2, 1962) was an American jump blues pianist, singer and songwriter, whose compositions went from blues to R&B numbers. According to journalist Tony Russell in his book ''The Blues - From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray'', "Walton created a series of memorable blues about the unattractiveness of rural life, sardonically aimed at the black migrant workers in southern California who constituted his typical audience". Biography Born in Waco, Texas, he moved to California just before World War II. He started playing piano at age 13 and learned his style from many of the ten-cent party house pianists that played out in the country on weekends. To make ends meet, he had to earn his living in the fields chopping cotton, picking grapes or cutting spinach. During this time, the musician who impressed Walton the most was Delois Maxey, who never had an opportunity to record. In 1949, Walton made his first record for the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Joe Williams
Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over five decades, he recorded the songs "Baby Please Don't Go", " Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama", among many others, for various record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. The blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (''Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story'', ''Virginia Piedmont Blues'') described Williams's performance: :When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. When he played, everything rattled but Big Joe himself. The total effect of this incredible apparatus produced the most buzz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whistlin' Alex Moore
Alexander Herman Moore (November 22, 1899 – January 20, 1989), known as Whistlin' Alex Moore, was an American blues pianist, singer and whistler. He is best remembered for his recordings of "Blue Bloomer Blues" (which he first recorded in 1929, as well as later in life), "Across the Atlantic Ocean" and "Black Eyed Peas and Hog Jowls". Early life Moore was born in Dallas, Texas. At the age of three, his family moved to El Paso, Texas but returned to Dallas three years later for his father's job, who was a professional candy maker. Although his family did not own a piano Moore learned the instrument by watching others, including a female cousin, and practicing on instruments he found around town. He also learned to play harmonica as a boy, and was a tap dancer and whistler. He took a more serious interest in playing piano in his mid-teens, although he never learned how to read music. In 1915 he performed on Dallas radio station WWR, and continued to play for tips at various ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Melvin Jackson
Melvin "Lil' Son" Jackson (August 16, 1915, Tyler, TexasMay 30, 1976, Dallas) was an American blues guitarist and singer. He was a contemporary of Lightnin' Hopkins. Biography Jackson's mother played gospel guitar, and he played early on in a gospel group, the Blue Eagle Four. He became a mechanic and served in the U.S. Army during World War II, after which he pursued a career as a blues musician. He recorded a demo and sent it to Bill Quinn, the owner of Gold Star Records, in 1946. Quinn signed him to a recording contract and released "Freedom Train Blues" in 1948, which became a nationwide hit in the U.S. Jackson recorded for Imperial Records between 1950 and 1954, both as a solo artist and with a backing band. His 1950 song "Rockin' and Rollin" was recast by later musicians as " Rock Me Baby". Jackson was injured in a car crash in the mid-1950s and gave up his music career, returning to work as a mechanic. He recorded an album for Arhoolie Records in 1960, but did not resum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Ace
Black Ace was the most frequently used stage name of the American Texas blues musician born Babe Kyro Lemon Turner (December 21, 1905 – November 7, 1972), who was also known as B. K. Turner, Black Ace Turner, Babe Turner and Buck Turner. He was born in Hughes Springs, Texas, and was raised on his family's farm. He taught himself to play guitar and performed in east Texas from the late 1920s on. In the early 1930s he began playing with Smokey Hogg and Oscar "Buddy" Woods, a Hawaiian-style guitarist who played with the instrument flat on his lap. Turner then bought a National steel guitar and began playing what a later music critic called "Hawaii meets the Delta." In 1937, Turner recorded six songs (possibly with Hogg as second guitarist) for Decca Records in Dallas, including the blues song "Black Ace". In the same year, he started a radio show on KFJZ in Fort Worth, using that recording as a theme song, and soon assumed the name. In 1941, he appeared in ''The Blood of Je ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field Holler
The field holler or field call is mostly a historical type of vocal work song sung by field slaves in the United States (and later by African American forced laborers accused of violating vagrancy laws) to accompany their tasked work, to communicate usefully, or to vent feelings. It differs from the collective work song in that it was sung solo, though early observers noted that a holler, or ‘cry’, might be echoed by other workers. Though commonly associated with cotton cultivation, the field holler was also sung by levee workers, and field hands in rice and sugar plantations. Field hollers are also known as corn-field hollers, water calls, and whoops. An early description is from 1853 and the first recordings are from the 1930s. The holler is closely related to the call and response of work songs and arhoolies. The Afro-American music form ultimately influenced strands of African American music, such as the blues and thereby rhythm and blues, as well as negro spirituals. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mance Lipscomb
Mance Lipscomb (April 9, 1895 – January 30, 1976) was an American blues singer, guitarist and songster. He was born Beau De Glen Lipscomb near Navasota, Texas. As a youth he took the name Mance (short for ''emancipation'') from a friend of his oldest brother, Charlie. Biography Lipscomb was born April 9, 1895. His father had been born into slavery in Alabama; his mother was half African American and half Native American. His father left home when he was a child, so he had to leave school after the third grade to work in the fields alongside his mother. For most of his life, Lipscomb supported himself as a tenant farmer in Texas. His mother bought him a guitar and he taught himself to play by watching and listening. He became an accomplished performer then and played regularly for years at local gatherings, mostly what he called "Saturday night suppers" hosted by someone in the area. He and his wife regularly hosted such gatherings for a while. Until around 1960, most of his m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Navasota, Texas
Navasota is a city in Grimes County, Texas, United States. The population was 7,643 at the 2020 census. In 2005, the Texas Legislature designated Navasota as the "Blues Capital of Texas" in honor of the late Mance Lipscomb, a Navasota native and blues musician. Geography Navasota is located in southwestern Grimes County, Texas, east of the Navasota River (a tributary of the Brazos River). It is northwest of Houston. Texas State Highway 105 is the main east–west route that passes through the center of Navasota, leading southwest to Brenham and east to Conroe. Texas State Highway 6 passes north–south through the eastern side of the city as a four-lane bypass, leading northwest to College Station and south to Hempstead. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which , or 0.47%, is water. History French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, misguided in his 1687 attempt to locate the Mississippi River and tryi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mack McCormick
Robert Burton "Mack" McCormick (August 3, 1930 – November 18, 2015) was an American musicologist and folklorist. Biography McCormick was born in 1930 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was brought up by his mother, in Alabama, Colorado, West Virginia and Texas, as she traveled to find work as a hospital technician. Career He dropped out of high school to work at a ballroom in Cedar Point, Ohio, running errands for the musicians performing there. He later worked as an electrician, cook, carnival worker and taxi driver. In 1946, he met record store owner and discographer Orin Blackstone in New Orleans and began assisting him in researching and compiling Blackstone's multivolume ''Index to Jazz''. McCormick became Texas correspondent for ''Down Beat'' in 1949. He developed an interest in blues and began traveling and researching the lives and origins of undocumented blues musicians around the country and learning about folk traditions and customs. In the late 1950s, McCormick ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
