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Bob West (radio Host)
Bob West (March 27, 1942 – July 31, 2016) was an American ethnomusicologist, radio host, musician, and record producer. He became involved in radio in 1966 at KRAB Radio in Seattle. Lorenzo Milam, who heard him as a guest on another KRAB show, asked him in 1967 to host a weekly jazz and blues show on KRAB. A year later, West made his first field trip to Memphis to record Furry Lewis and Bukka White. In 2001 he founded Arcola Records in Seattle to create and distribute CDs of his field recordings. Early life and education West began his interest in jazz and blues at an early age, with his musical interests coming from his father and mother, who collected records. His father, Frank, appreciated blues players, and favored such bands as Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher Henderson, and Earl Hines. However, it was his mother, Taimi, who really liked the blues, especially Peetie Wheatstraw. After graduating from high school in Seattle in 1960 West, learning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Furry Lewis
Walter E. "Furry" Lewis (March 6, 1893 or 1899 – September 14, 1981) was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. He was one of the first of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be brought out of retirement and given new opportunities to record during the folk blues revival of the 1960s. Life and career Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. His birth year is uncertain. Many sources give 1893, the date he gave in his later years, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1899, based on his 1900 census entry, and other sources suggest 1895 or 1898. His family moved to Memphis when he was seven. He acquired the nickname "Furry" from childhood playmates. By 1908, he was playing solo at parties, in taverns, and on the street. He was also invited to play several dates with W. C. Handy's Orchestra. In his travels as a musician, he was exposed to a wide variety of performers, including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Son House
Edward James "Son" House Jr. (March 21, 1902His date of birth is a matter of some debate. House alleged that he was middle-aged during World War I and that he was 79 in 1965, which would make his date of birth around 1886. However, all legal records give his date of birth as March 21, 1902. – October 19, 1988) was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing. After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also working as a church pastor, he turned to blues performance at the age of 25. He quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. In a short career interrupted by a spell in Parchman Farm penitentiary, he developed his musicianship to the point that Charley Patton, the foremost blues artist of the Mississippi Delta region, invited him to share engagements and to accomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rubin Lacey
Rubin "Rube" Lacy (or Lacey) (January 2, 1901 – November 14, 1969) was an American country blues musician, who played guitar and was a singer and songwriter. Lacy was born in Pelahatchie, Mississippi, United States, and learned to play the guitar in his teens from an older performer, George Hendrix. Working out of the Jackson area in the Mississippi Delta, he became one of the state's most popular blues singers. His bottleneck style inspired that of the better-known performer Son House. In 1927, he recorded four songs for Columbia Records in Memphis, Tennessee, though none were released, and the masters do not survive. In 1928, Lacy recorded two songs, "Mississippi Jail House Groan" and "Ham Hound Crave", for Paramount Records, which constitute his recorded legacy. Four years later he became a minister. He was later found living in Lancaster, California Lancaster is a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, in the Antelope Valley of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willie Brown (musician)
Willie Lee Brown (August 6, 1900 – December 30, 1952) was an American blues guitar player and vocalist. He performed and recorded with other blues musicians, including Son House and Charlie Patton, and influenced Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Brown is considered one of the pioneering musicians of the Delta blues genre. Brown worked as a side player, performing mostly with House, Patton, and Johnson. He recorded six sides for Paramount Records in Grafton, Wisconsin in 1930, which were subsequently released on 78-rpm discs. He made three recordings for the Library of Congress in 1941, accompanied by House. In 1952, Brown briefly joined House in Rochester, New York, but soon returned to Tunica, Mississippi, where he died the same year. Although normally an accompanist, Brown recorded three highly rated solo performances: "M & O Blues", "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" and "Future Blues". He disappeared from the music scene during the 1940s, together with House, and died befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Patton
Charley Patton (April 1891 (probable) – April 28, 1934), also known as Charlie Patton, was an American Delta blues musician and songwriter. Considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues", he created an enduring body of American music and inspired most Delta blues musicians. The musicologist Robert Palmer considered him one of the most important American musicians of the twentieth century. Patton (who was well educated by the standards of his time) spelled his name ''Charlie'', but many sources, including record labels and his gravestone, use the spelling ''Charley''. Biography Patton was born in Hinds County, Mississippi, near the town of Edwards, and lived most of his life in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta. Most sources say he was born in April 1891, but the years 1881, 1885 and 1887 have also been suggested. Patton's parentage and race also are uncertain. His parents were Bill and Annie Patton, but locally he was regarded as having been fathered by f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louise Johnson (blues)
Louise Johnson (about 1908–after 1930) was an American Delta blues singer and pianist, who was active in the 1920s and 1930s. From her brief recording career, Johnson completed four songs during a famed recording session in 1930 which included Charley Patton, Son House, and Willie Brown. Little else is known about her, although Johnson's self-accompaniment during the session is stylistically unique among female musicians of the era. Biography Johnson was born in around 1908, in Tennessee. She lived in Clarksdale, Mississippi and is believed to have been from Robinsonville. According to pianist John "Red" Williams, who remembered her in Tunica in the late 1920s, "she was a small woman, about 20 years old, playing piano in a joint attached to the cotton mill quarters". By 1930, she was living and performing on a plantation in Claxton. On May 28, 1930, after traveling to Grafton, Wisconsin, she partook in a recording session arranged by record producer Art Laibly for Paramoun ... [...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] |
Johnny Shines
John Ned Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Biography Shines was born in the community of Frayser, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent most of his childhood in Memphis, playing slide guitar at an early age in juke joints and on the street. He moved to Hughes, Arkansas, in 1932 and worked on farms for three years, putting aside his music career.Johnny Shines interviewed by John Hammond Jr. in '' The Search for Robert Johnson'' (UK, 1991). A chance meeting with Robert Johnson, his greatest influence, gave him the inspiration to return to music. In 1935, Shines began traveling with Johnson, touring in the United States and Canada. They parted in 1937, one year before Johnson's death. Shines played throughout the southern United States until 1941, when he settled in Chicago. There he found work in the construction industry but continued to play in local bars. He made his first recor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Pete Williams
Robert Pete Williams (March 14, 1914 – December 31, 1980) was an American Louisiana blues musician. His music characteristically employed unconventional structures and guitar tunings, and his songs are often about the time he served in prison. His song "I've Grown So Ugly" has been covered by Captain Beefheart, on his album '' Safe as Milk'' (1967), and by The Black Keys, on ''Rubber Factory'' (2004). Biography Williams was born in Zachary, Louisiana, to a family of sharecroppers. He had no formal schooling, and spent his childhood picking cotton and cutting sugar cane. In 1928, he moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and worked in a lumberyard. At the age of 20, Williams fashioned a crude guitar by attaching five copper strings to a cigar box, and soon after bought a cheap, mass-produced one. Williams was taught by Frank and Robert Metty, and was at first chiefly influenced by Peetie Wheatstraw and Blind Lemon Jefferson. He began to play for small events such as Church gather ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helena, Arkansas
Helena is the eastern portion of Helena–West Helena, Arkansas, a city in Phillips County, Arkansas. It was founded in 1833 by Nicholas Rightor and is named after the daughter of Sylvanus Phillips, an early settler of Phillips County and the namesake of Phillips County. As of the 2000 census, this portion of the city population was 6,323. Helena was the county seat of Phillips County"Phillips County, AR." , January, 2016. Retrieved January 20, 2016. until January 1, 2006, when it merged its government and city limits with neighboring [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara Dane
Barbara Dane (born Barbara Jean Spillman; May 12, 1927) is an American folk, blues, and jazz singer, guitarist, record producer, and political activist. She co-founded Paredon Records with Irwin Silber. "Bessie Smith in stereo," wrote jazz critic Leonard Feather in the late 1950s. ''Time'' wrote of Dane: "The voice is pure, rich ... rare as a 20-carat diamond" and quoted Louis Armstrong's exclamation upon hearing her at the Pasadena jazz festival: "Did you get that chick? She's a gasser!" On the occasion of her 85th birthday, ''The Boston Globe'' music critic James Reed called her "one of the true unsung heroes of American music." Early life Dane's parents arrived in Detroit from Arkansas in the 1920s. Out of high school, Dane began to sing regularly at demonstrations for racial equality and economic justice. While still in her teens, she sat in with bands locally and won the interest of local music promoters. She received an offer to tour with Alvino Rey's band, but she turne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinetop Perkins
Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins (July 7, 1913 – March 21, 2011) was an American blues pianist. He played with some of the most influential blues and rock-and-roll performers of his time and received numerous honors, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and induction into the Blues Hall of Fame. Life and career Early career Perkins was born in Belzoni, Mississippi and raised on a plantation in Honey Island, Mississippi. He began his career as a guitarist but then injured the tendons in his left arm in a knife fight with a chorus girl in Helena, Arkansas in the 1940s. Unable to play the guitar, he switched to the piano. He also moved from Robert Nighthawk's radio program on KFFA to Sonny Boy Williamson's ''King Biscuit Time''. He continued working with Nighthawk, however, accompanying him on "Jackson Town Gal" in 1950. In the 1950s, Perkins joined Earl Hooker and began touring. He recorded "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie" at Sam Phillips's Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
