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Double Shot! (Album)
''Double Shot!'' is the first blues album recorded by harmonica player Snooky Pryor and guitarist Mel Brown. It was produced by Andrew Galloway and Sandra B. Tooze and was recorded on October 18 and 19 1999 at Liquid Recording Studio in Toronto, Ontario. It was released by Electro-Fi Records in 2000 with a running time of 57:28, and received a Juno Award nomination for Blues Album of The Year. Track listing #"Dirty Rat" ( W. M. Thornton, M. Laylar) – 4:50 #"Ruby Mae" (Mel Brown) – 4:55 #"Early in the Morning" (Leo Hickman, Dallas Bartley, Louis Jordan) – 4:28 #"Big Leg Woman" ( Johnny Temple) – 7:31 #"Snooky and Mel Boogie" (James Pryor) – 1:38 #"Rock This House" (James A. Lane) – 4:03 #"Let Your Hair Down, Woman" (James Pryor) – 5:20 #"So Fine" (Johnny Otis Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes; December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was an American singer, musician, composer, bandleader, record producer, and talent scout. He was a seminal influenc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snooky Pryor
James Edward "Snooky" Pryor (September 15, 1919 or 1921 – October 18, 2006) was an American Chicago blues harmonica player. He claimed to have pioneered the now-common method of playing amplified harmonica by cupping a small microphone in his hands along with the harmonica, although on his earliest records, in the late 1940s, he did not use this method. Career Pryor was born in Lambert, Mississippi, United States. He developed a country blues style influenced by Sonny Boy Williamson I (John Lee Williamson) and Sonny Boy Williamson II (Aleck Ford "Rice" Miller). In the mid-1930s, in and around Vance, Mississippi, Pryor played in impromptu gatherings of three or four harmonica players, including Jimmy Rogers, who then lived nearby and had yet to take up playing the guitar. Pryor moved to Chicago around 1940. While serving in the U.S. Army he would blow bugle calls through a PA system, which led him to experiment with playing the harmonica that way. However, most historians cred ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Mama Thornton
Willie Mae Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984), better known as Big Mama Thornton, was an American singer and songwriter of the blues and R&B genres. She was the first to record Leiber and Stoller's " Hound Dog", in 1952, which became her biggest hit, staying seven weeks at number one on the ''Billboard'' R&B chart in 1953 and selling almost two million copies. Thornton's other recordings included the original version of "Ball and Chain", which she wrote. Her recording of "Hound Dog", written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952, and later recorded by Elvis Presley, reached Number 1 on the Rhythm & Blues Records chart. According to Maureen Mahon, a music professor at New York University, "the song is seen as an important beginning of rock-and-roll, especially in its use of the guitar as the key instrument". Early life Thornton's birth certificate states that she was born in Ariton, Alabama, but in an interview with Chris Strachwitz, she claimed Montgomery, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Fonfara
Michael Fonfara (11 August 1946 – 8 January 2021) was a Canadian keyboard player who was most notable for his work as a member of The Electric Flag and Rhinoceros in the 1960s, Rough Trade and Lou Reed's backing band in the 1970s and The Downchild Blues Band, from 1990 to the present. He studied classical piano at The Royal Conservatory of Music. He is a multiple Maple Blues Award winner as Piano/Keyboardist of the year and a Juno Award winner with the Downchild Blues Band. His distinguished musical career was so honoured by the Maple Blues Awards as early as 2000 and a Juno Award in 2014. Biography Fonfara's career as a professional musician commenced in 1963, when he started playing in the Toronto band, Lee Jackson & The Checkmates, which evolved into Jon and Lee & The Checkmates soon afterwards. Members of Jon and Lee & The Checkmates ultimately formed the nucleus of the later bands Rhinoceros and Blackstone, plus contributed significantly to the work of Lou Reed in the 1 ... [...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 Otis
Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes; December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was an American singer, musician, composer, bandleader, record producer, and talent scout. He was a seminal influence on American R&B and rock and roll. He discovered numerous artists early in their careers who went on to become highly successful in their own right, including Little Esther Phillips, Etta James, Alan O'Day, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, and The Robins, among many others. Otis has been called the "Godfather of Rhythm and Blues". Personal life Otis was born in Vallejo, California, to Greek immigrant parents, Alexander J. Veliotes, a Mare Island longshoreman and grocery store owner, and his wife, the former Irene Kiskakes, a painter. He had a younger sister, Dorothy, and a younger brother, Nicholas A. Veliotes, who became the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan (1978–1981) and Egypt (1984–1986). Johnny grew up in a predominantly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Temple (musician)
Johnny Temple (October 18, 1906 – November 22, 1968) was an American Chicago blues guitarist and singer, who was active in the 1930s and 1940s. He was variously billed as Johnny Temple, Johnnie Temple and Johnnie "Geechie" Temple. Life and career Temple was born in Canton, Mississippi, and grew up around Jackson. He learned to play guitar and mandolin as a child and began playing house parties as a teenager. While in Jackson he befriended Skip James. He moved to Chicago in the early 1930s and started playing with Joe McCoy in clubs. Temple began recording songs such as "The Evil Devil Blues" and "Lead Pencil Blues" in 1935. His most popular record, "Louise Louise Blues," released by Decca Records, was a hit in 1936.Santelli, Robert (2001). ''The Big Book of Blues''. Penguin Books. page 454. . The Harlem Hamfats, a Chicago jazz band formed in 1936, provided backup music for Temple and other singers. By 1940, Decca had released two dozen of his records. Temple continued record ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as " the King of the Jukebox", he earned his highest profile towards the end of the swing era. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1987. Specializing in the alto sax, Jordan played all forms of the saxophone, as well as piano and clarinet. He also was a talented singer with great comedic flair, and fronted his own band for more than twenty years. He duetted with some of the biggest solo singing stars of his time, including Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Jordan was also an actor and a film personality—he appeared in dozens of "soundies" (promotional film clips) He also made numerous cameos in mainstream features and short films, and starred in two musical feature films: Swing Parade of 1946, probably targeting white viewers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juno Award
The Juno Awards, more popularly known as the JUNOS, are awards presented annually to Canadian musical artists and bands to acknowledge their artistic and technical achievements in all aspects of music. New members of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame are also inducted as part of the awards ceremonies. The Juno Awards are often referred to as the Canadian equivalent of the Brit Awards in the United Kingdom or the Grammy Awards given in the United States. Members of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), or a panel of experts, depending on the award, choose the award winners. However, sales figures are the sole basis for determining the winners of nine of the forty-two categories like Album of the Year or Artist of the Year. CARAS members determine the nominees for Single of the Year, Artist and Group of the Year. A judge vote by experts in the relevant genre, determines the nominees for the remaining categories. The names of the judges remain confidential. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mel Brown (guitarist)
Mel Brown (October 7, 1939March 20, 2009) was an American-born blues guitarist and singer. He is best remembered for his decade long backing of Bobby Bland, although in his own right, Brown recorded over a dozen albums between 1967 and 2006. Career Brown was born in Jackson, Mississippi, United States, and was presented with his first guitar as a teenager while recovering from a bout of meningitis. By 1955, after performing backing duties for both Sonny Boy Williamson II and Jimmy Beasley, Brown had a two year long stint backing Johnny Otis. This led to work with Etta James, where he swapped his Gibson Les Paul for an ES-175 to give him a richer and fuller tone to his guitar work, that set him apart from his contemporaries. The stress of constant touring led him to Los Angeles, California, to resume work with Otis, spending an extended residency at the Club Sands. Further session duties saw Brown back Bobby Darin and Bill Cosby among others, as well as performing on T- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year."About Penguin – company history" , Penguin Books. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths Group (United Kingdom), Woolworths and other stores for Sixpence (British coin), sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for serious books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science. Penguin Books is now an imprint (trade name), imprint of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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