Kentuckiana Blues Society
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Kentuckiana Blues Society
The Kentuckiana Blues Society (KBS) is a U.S. non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and perpetuation of blues music, founded in 1988 and based in Louisville, Kentucky. The KBS is an affiliate member of the Blues Foundation, an international network of blues organizations headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. Preservation The KBS conducts research to document the blues tradition in Louisville, Kentucky, preserving a collection of rare photos and interviews, and identifying the locations of early blues related sites. The society maintains an archive to house these materials, which are available to members. They have arranged for headstones to be placed as memorials at the graves of blues personalities buried in the area, including Sylvester Weaver and Bill Gaither, whose graves were located by the society, and KBS founding member Foree Wells and his wife Lorene, who are buried in Calvary Cemetery. The KBS also provided financial support for the posthumous ...
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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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Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. Named after King Louis XVI of France, Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark, making it one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachians. With nearby Falls of the Ohio as the only major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which grew into a system across 13 states. Today, the city is known as the home of boxer Muhammad Ali, the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the University of Louisville and its Cardinals, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and three of Kentucky's six ''Fortune'' 500 companies: Humana, Kindred Healthcare, and Yum! Brands. Muhamm ...
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Blues Foundation
The Blues Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, that is affiliated with more than 175 blues organizations from various parts of the world. Founded in 1980, a 25-person board of directors governs the foundation whose stated mission is to preserve blues heritage, celebrate blues recording and performance, and expand worldwide awareness of the blues. On its formation, the foundation organized the annual W. C. Handy Awards to "give recognition of the finest in blues performances and recordings." The awards have since been renamed the Blues Music Awards. The BMAs are generally recognized as the highest honor given to blues musicians, and are awarded by vote of Blues Foundation members. The Blues Foundation is also responsible for the Blues Hall of Fame Museum, International Blues Challenge (IBC), Keeping the Blues Alive Award (KBA) and Blues in the Schools program. Every year, the Blues Foundation presents the KBA Awards to individuals ...
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Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-most populous city in Tennessee, after Nashville. Memphis is the fifth-most populous city in the Southeast, the nation's 28th-largest overall, as well as the largest city bordering the Mississippi River. The Memphis metropolitan area includes West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas, Mississippi and the Missouri Bootheel. One of the more historic and culturally significant cities of the Southern United States, Memphis has a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods. The first European explorer to visit the area of present-day Memphis was Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto in 1541. The high Chickasaw Bluffs protecting the location from the waters of the Mississipp ...
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Sylvester Weaver (musician)
Sylvester Weaver (July 25, 1897 – April 4, 1960) was an American blues guitar player and a pioneer of country blues. He was the son of Walter and Mattie (nee Embers or Embry) Weaver. Walter Weaver's 1952 Kentucky death certificate indicates that he was born in Port Gibson, Mississippi. That area's economy was heavily agricultural, relying on African American labor to produce a profitable cotton crop. After Walter Weaver migrated to Louisville, Kentucky, Port Gibson would play a role in the preservation and dissemination of a blues tradition indigenous to the Mississippi Delta. This tradition, in the form in which Walter Weaver experienced it, likely was a foundation upon which Sylvester Weaver built his unique performance style. Biography Weaver recorded "Longing for Daddy Blues" and "I've Got to Go and Leave My Daddy Behind" with the blues singer Sara Martin, probably on October 24, 1923, in New York City. Two weeks later, as a soloist, he recorded "Guitar Blues" and "Gu ...
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Bill Gaither (blues Musician)
William Arthur Gaither (April 21, 1910 – October 30, 1970), sometimes known as "Little Bill" Gaither or Leroy's Buddy, was an American blues guitarist and singer. Biography Born in Belmont, Bullitt County, Kentucky, Gaither recorded over one hundred songs in the 1930s for labels such as Decca and Okeh. He often wrote and recorded with the pianist George "Honey" Hill. After his friend Leroy Carr's death in 1935, Gaither was often credited as "Leroy's Buddy". One of Gaither's most famous blues songs was "Champ Joe Louis", recorded on June 23, 1938, the day after Louis won his rematch against Max Schmeling. The blues scholar Paul Oliver has cited Gaither among a group of important, but understudied, 20th century musicians. His blues lyrics have been appreciated as poetry.''Perfect in Their Art: Poems on Boxing from Homer to Ali'' Michael Waters, Robert Hedin, editors. . Southern Illinois Univ. Press. 2003. p. 47 Gaither ran a radio repair shop in Louisville, Kentucky, ...
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Albert Collins
Albert Gene Drewery, known as Albert Collins and the Ice Man (October 1, 1932 – November 24, 1993),Skeely, Richard. "Albert Collins: Biography" Allmusic.com. was an American electric blues guitarist and singer with a distinctive guitar style. He was noted for his powerful playing and his use of altered tunings and a capo. His long association with the Fender Telecaster led to the title "The Master of the Telecaster". Early life Collins was born in Leona, Texas, on October 1, 1932. He was introduced to the guitar at an early age by his cousin Lightnin' Hopkins, also a Leona resident, who played at family gatherings. The Collins family relocated to Marquez, Texas, in 1938 and to Houston in 1941,Obrecht, Jas, ed. (1993). ''Blues Guitar: The Men Who Made the Music''. 2nd ed. Miller Freeman Books. pp. 246–259. . where he attended Jack Yates High School.''Albert Collins''. Vital Blues Guitar Series. Transcriptions by Richard DeVinck. Creative Concepts Publishing (California), 1 ...
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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 ...
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Henry Townsend (musician)
Henry "Mule" Townsend (born Henry Jesse James Townsend; October 27, 1909 – September 24, 2006) was an American blues singer, guitarist and pianist. Career Townsend was born Henry Jesse James Townsend in Shelby, Mississippi to Allen and Omelia Townsend. His father was a blues musician who played guitar and accordion. When Henry was young, his family moved near Cairo, Illinois. Henry left home at the age of nine because of his abusive father and hoboed his way to St. Louis, Missouri. He learned guitar while in his early teens from a locally renowned blues guitarist known as Dudlow Joe. With aspirations to earn a living with his guitar, Townsend also worked as an auto mechanic, a shoe shiner, a hotel manager, and a salesman. By the late 1920s he had begun touring and recording with the pianist Walter Davis and had acquired the nickname Mule, because he was sturdy in both physique and character. In St. Louis, he worked with some of the early blues pioneers, including J. D. ...
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Old Louisville
Old Louisville is a historic district and neighborhood in central Louisville, Kentucky, United States. It is the third largest such district in the United States, and the largest preservation district featuring almost entirely Victorian architecture. It is also unique in that a majority of its structures are made of brick, and the neighborhood contains the highest concentration of residential homes with stained glass windows in the U.S. Many of the buildings are in the Victorian-era styles of Romanesque, Queen Anne, Italianate, among others; and many blocks have had few or no buildings razed. There are also several 20th-century buildings from 15 to 20 stories. Old Louisville consists of about 48 city blocks and is located north of the University of Louisville's main campus and south of Broadway and Downtown Louisville, in the central portion of the modern city. The neighborhood hosts the renowned St. James Court Art Show on the first weekend in October. Despite its name, Old L ...
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The Louisville Palace
The Palace Theatre (previously known as the Loew's Theatre, Loew's United Artist Theatre and the United Artists Theatre, it is locally known as the Louisville Palace) is a music venue in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, located in the city's theater district, on the east side of Fourth Street, between Broadway and Chestnut Street. It has a seating capacity of 2,800 people and is owned by Live Nation. The historic landmark opened on September 1, 1928, and was designed by architect John Eberson. It was originally known as the Loew's and United Artists State theatre. ''The Palace'' exhibits a Spanish Baroque motif with arcades, balconies and turrets. Cobalt blue, bursts of red and gold indirectly light all of the niches, coves and entrances. Above is a curved, vaulted ceiling with 139 sculptures of the faces of historical figures. The theater room inside ''The Palace'' is heavily ornamented and displays an imitation nighttime sky on the ceiling. The theater is two stories with a fl ...
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Blues Organizations
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 structure ...
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