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Otis Spann's Chicago Blues
''Otis Spann's Chicago Blues'' (also released as ''Nobody Knows My Troubles'') is an album by blues pianist and vocalist Otis Spann recorded in Chicago at two sessions in 1965 and released by the Testament label. accessed November 11, 2019 Reception AllMusic reviewer Richie Unterberger stated "divided between solo piano performances and pieces with a full band ... The variation in approach means that this isn't the most consistent Spann album, and the material and performances don't rank among his best either, although they're reasonably solid".Track listing All compositions by Otis Spann except where noted # "Get Your Hands Out of My Po ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otis Spann
Otis Spann (March 21, 1924 or 1930April 24, 1970) was an American blues musician, whom many consider to be the leading postwar Chicago blues pianist. Early life Sources differ over Spann's early years. Some state that he was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1930, but researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc concluded on the basis of census records and other official information that he was born in 1924 in Belzoni, Mississippi. Spann's father was, according to some sources, a pianist called Friday Ford. His mother, Josephine Erby, was a guitarist who had worked with Memphis Minnie and Bessie Smith, and his stepfather, Frank Houston Spann, was a preacher and musician. One of five children, Spann began playing the piano at the age of seven, with some instruction from Friday Ford, Frank Spann, and Little Brother Montgomery.Harris, S. (1981). ''Blues Who's Who''. New York: Da Capo Press. pp. 477–479. . Career By the age of 14, he was playing in bands in the Jackson area. He moved to C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big Maceo Merriweather
Major Merriweather (March 31, 1905 – February 23, 1953), better known as Big Maceo Merriweather, was an American pianist and blues singer. He was mainly active in Chicago through the 1940s. Career Born in Newnan, Georgia, he was a self-taught pianist. In the 1920s, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, to begin his music career. He moved to Chicago in 1941, where he made the acquaintance of Tampa Red. Red introduced him to Lester Melrose of RCA Victor and its subsidiary label Bluebird Records, who signed Merriweather to a recording contract. His first record was "" (1941), which became a blues |
1966 Albums
Events January * January 1 – In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa takes over as military ruler of the Central African Republic, ousting President David Dacko. * January 3 – 1966 Upper Voltan coup d'état: President Maurice Yaméogo is deposed by a military coup in the Republic of Upper Volta (modern-day Burkina Faso). * January 10 ** Pakistani–Indian peace negotiations end successfully with the signing of the Tashkent Declaration, a day before the sudden death of Indian prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. ** The House of Representatives of the US state of Georgia refuses to allow African-American representative Julian Bond to take his seat, because of his anti-war stance. ** A Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference convenes in Lagos, Nigeria, primarily to discuss Rhodesia. * January 12 – United States President Lyndon Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended. * January 15 – 1966 Nigeria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny "Man" Young
Johnny "Man" Young (January 1, 1917 – April 18, 1974) was an American blues singer, mandolin player and guitarist, significant as one of the first of the new generation of electric blues artists to record in Chicago after the Second World War. He was one of the few mandolin players active in blues music in the postwar era. His nickname, Man, came from his playing the mandolin. Life and career Young was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and played in string bands in Mississippi in the 1930s. He also claimed to have worked with Sleepy John Estes in Tennessee before moving to Chicago in 1940. By 1943, he was working with John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson and Muddy Waters. In the late 1940s he became a regular player on Maxwell Street, often with his cousin, the guitarist Johnny Williams, and in clubs with Williams and Little Walter. His first recording was made in 1947 for the Ora Nelle label, featuring Young singing "Money Taking Woman" on the A-side, accompanied by Williams, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Cotton
James Henry Cotton (July 1, 1935 – March 16, 2017) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, who performed and recorded with many fellow blues artists and with his own band. He also played drums early in his career. Cotton began his professional career playing the blues harp in Howlin' Wolf's band in the early 1950s. He made his first recordings in Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis for Sun Records, under the direction of Sam Phillips. In 1955, he was recruited by Muddy Waters to come to Chicago and join his band. Cotton became Muddy's bandleader and stayed with the group until 1965. In 1965, he formed the Jimmy Cotton Blues Quartet, with Otis Spann on piano, to record between gigs with the Muddy Waters band. He eventually left to form his own full-time touring group. His first full album, on Verve Records, was produced by the guitarist Mike Bloomfield and the singer and songwriter Nick Gravenites, who later were members of the band The Electric Flag, Electr ... [...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] |
Ma Rainey
Gertrude "Ma" Rainey ( Pridgett; April 26, 1886 – December 22, 1939) was an American blues singer and influential early blues recording artist. Dubbed the "Mother of the Blues", she bridged earlier vaudeville and the authentic expression of southern blues, influencing a generation of blues singers. Gertrude Pridgett began performing as a teenager and became known as "Ma" Rainey after her marriage to Will "Pa" Rainey in 1904. They toured with the Rabbit Foot Minstrels and later formed their own group, ''Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues''. Her first recording was made in 1923. In the following five years, she made over 100 recordings, including " Bo-Weevil Blues" (1923), "Moonshine Blues" (1923), "See See Rider Blues" (1925), "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (1927), and "Soon This Morning" (1927). Rainey was known for her powerful vocal abilities, energetic disposition, majestic phrasing, and a "moaning" style of singing. Her qualities are present and most evident in he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
See See Rider
"See See Rider", also known as "C.C. Rider", "See See Rider Blues" or "Easy Rider", is a popular American 12-bar blues song that became a standard in several genres. Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was the first to record it on October 16, 1924, at Paramount Records in New York. The song uses mostly traditional blues lyrics to tell the story of an unfaithful lover, commonly called an "easy rider": "See see rider, see what you have done", making a play on the word "see" and the sound of "easy". Background "See See Rider" is a traditional song that may have originated on the black vaudeville circuit. It is similar to "Poor Boy Blues" as performed by Ramblin' Thomas. Jelly Roll Morton recollected hearing the song as a young boy some time after 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, when he performed with a spiritual quartet that played at funerals. Older band members played "See See Rider" during get-togethers with their "sweet mamas" or as Morton called them "fifth-class whores". Big Bill Broonz ... [...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] |
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] |
The Penguin Guide To Blues Recordings
''The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings'' is an encyclopedia of blues music albums released on CD. Content The book was released on 31 October 2006 and was written by Tony Russell and Chris Smith with contributions by Neil Slaven, Ricky Russell and Joe Faulkner. Russell in particular is known as a musical historian, working closely with programs presented on BBC Radio, as well as documentaries on the blues. In the book, artists are set up alphabetically and include short (usually one paragraph) biographies before showing a complete listing of their discography. Each album includes title, a rating out of four stars, label, musicians on the album, month and year of recording, and finally a review of varying length. See also * ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine edi ... [...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] |
