Kelly Joe Phelps
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Kelly Joe Phelps
Kelly Joe Phelps (October 5, 1959 – May 31, 2022) was an American musician and songwriter. His music has been characterized as a mixture of delta blues and jazz.Ann Powers, ''The New York Times'', February 9, 2000. Career Kelly Joe Phelps grew up in Sumner, Washington, a blue-collar farming town. He learned country and folk songs, as well as drums and piano, from his father. He began playing guitar at age twelve. Phelps concentrated on free jazz and took his cues from musicians like Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. He spent 10 years playing jazz, mostly as a bass player. He refers to his "conversion" to a blues musician when he began listening to acoustic blues masters like Mississippi Fred McDowell and Robert Pete Williams. He initially gained notice for his solo lapstyle slide guitar, which he played by laying the instrument flat and fretting it with a heavy steel bar. Inspired by the birth of his daughter Rachel in 1990, Phelps began writing songs. He began s ...
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Sumner, Washington
Sumner is a city in northern Pierce County, Washington, United States. The population was 10,621 at the 2020 census. Nearby cities include Puyallup to the west, Auburn to the north, and Bonney Lake to the east. History Sumner was founded in 1853 as Stuck Junction and platted in 1883 by George H. Ryan, in anticipation of a stop on the Northern Pacific Railway. The town was named "Franklin" until 1891, when the Post Office Department requested that the name be changed to avoid confusion with similarly named towns. The name of abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner was chosen for the town after a lottery. Geography Sumner is located at (47.205823, -122.235803). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. After Orting, Sumner and Puyallup are geographically next in line to be hit by lahars whenever Mount Rainier erupts in the future. This is depicted in the ''Modern Marvels'' episode titled "Most Dangero ...
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Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and ''fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the grea ...
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Instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instrumentals. The music is primarily or exclusively produced using musical instruments. An instrumental can exist in music notation, after it is written by a composer; in the mind of the composer (especially in cases where the composer themselves will perform the piece, as in the case of a blues solo guitarist or a folk music fiddle player); as a piece that is performed live by a single instrumentalist or a musical ensemble, which could range in components from a duo or trio to a large big band, concert band or orchestra. In a song that is otherwise sung, a section that is not sung but which is played by instruments can be called an instrumental interlude, or, if it occurs at the beginning of the song, before the singer starts to sing ...
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Tunesmith Retrofit
''Tunesmith Retrofit'' is an album by American blues/folk singer and guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps, released in 2006. It was his first recording on the Rounder label after five releases with Rykodisc. It reached #5 on the Billboard Top Blues Albums charts. Reception Music critic Thom Jurek praised the release in his AllMusic review, calling it "... another side of Phelps to be sure, as a songwriter who understands the actual music of poetry and creates a loose, coarse weave that allows the listener room to inhabit and live inside his songs. His rhythm is true, his words are impure, his songs are nearly glorious. Once more, Phelps shatters expectations and conjures something truly original and brave in the process." Russell Hall of '' No Depression'' wrote "Few songwriters wear the mantle of troubadour as unassumingly as Kelly Joe Phelps. Eschewing the cloying introspection that tends to prevail among the coffeehouse crowd, Phelps writes snapshot vignettes borne from short-story trad ...
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Tap The Red Cane Whirlwind
''Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind'' is an album by American blues singer and guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps. It reached number 11 on the ''Billboard'' Top Blues Albums. History ''Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind'' is a collection of solo live performances from engagements at McCabe's, Santa Monica, California and Freight and Salvage, Berkeley, California in 2004. In an interview regarding his first live release, Phelps said, "My passion lies in performing live, in the sense of 'no net' string grabbing and 'lord knows what' singing and flying by my seat and watching the songs come alive (hopefully) in a way that I could have never predicted beforehand. I've wanted to have a recorded representation of that for some time..."Six String Soul interview. January 2005.
Retrieved June 24, 2010.


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Music cr ...
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Live Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual Phonograph record#78 rpm disc developments, 78 rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl LP record, long-playing (LP) records played at  revolutions per minute, rpm. The album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983 and was gradually supplanted by the cassette tape during the 1970s and early 1980s; the populari ...
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Lead Me On (Kelly Joe Phelps Album)
''Lead Me On'' is the debut album of American blues singer and guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps. It is his first release on the Burnside label before moving to Rykodisc Records. Reception Writing for Allmusic, music critic Roch Parisien wrote of the album "This is the real deal — Phelps performs with the full authority and authenticity of the Delta blues tradition without ever once sounding like a Folkways museum piece." Track listing All songs written by Kelly Joe Phelps except as noted. #"I've Been Converted" (Traditional) – 6:16 #"Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" (Skip James) – 5:24 #"Where Do I Go Now" – 5:33 #"Love Me Baby Blues" (Joe Calicott) – 4:41 #"Lead Me On" – 4:46 #"Jesus Make up My Dying Bed" (Traditional) – 5:17 #"Leavin' Blues" (Herman Johnson) – 5:54 #"Marking Stone Blues" – 4:58 #"The Black Crow Keeps Flying" – 4:17 #"I'd Be a Rich Man" – 4:44 #"Someone to Save Me" – 6:35 #"Motherless Children" (Traditional)– 7:24 #"Fare Thee Well Fare Thee Wel ...
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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 ...
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Mississippi Fred McDowell
Fred McDowell (January 12, 1904 – July 3, 1972), known by his stage name Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American hill country blues singer and guitar player. Career McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee, United States. His parents were farmers, who both died while Fred was in his youth. He took up the guitar at the age of 14 and was soon playing for tips at dances around Rossville. Seeking a change from plowing fields, he moved to Memphis in 1926, where he worked in the Buck-Eye feed mill, which processed cotton into oil and other products.''Delta Blues'' back sleeve Arhoolie F1021 In 1928, he moved to Mississippi to pick cotton. He finally settled in Como, Mississippi, in 1940 or 1941 (or maybe the late 1930s), where he worked as a full-time farmer for many years while continuing to play music on weekends at dances and picnics. After decades of playing for small local gatherings, McDowell was recorded in 1959 by roving folklore musicologist Alan Lomax and Shirley Collin ...
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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 ...
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John Coltrane
John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pro ..., bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the Jazz#Post-war jazz, history of jazz and 20th-century music. Born and raised in North Carolina, Coltrane moved to Philadelphia after graduating high school, where he studied music. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of Modal jazz, modes and was one of the players at the forefront of free jazz. He led at least fifty recording sessions and appeared on many albums by other musicians, including trumpeter Miles Davis and pianist Thelonious Monk. Over the course of his career, Coltrane's music t ...
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Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contract wi ...
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