Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
Blues guitarist and singer Johnny Winter has passed away in Switzerland at the age of 70. During his lifetime, he made some great music, including this wonderful full show from Copenhagen in 1970. Check it out.
For more on Winter, check out this story on NPR. RIP.
What is your favorite Johnny Winter performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
With Tank Full of Blues (2012), Dion completes a trilogy of outstanding blues albums along with Bronx in Blue (2006) and Son of Skip James (2007). While Bronx in Blues focused on covering traditional blues standards from Robert Johnson and others, and Son of Skip James followed that formula with a few more originals, in Tank Full of Blues Dion wrote or co-wrote all but two of the songs, taking his blues to another level. The new album adds more percussion and electric guitar into the mix without overdoing it on these new classics.
Dion worked to build his blues cred with the previous two albums, paying homage to the kings with a little bit of Bronx street swagger thrown in. I have previously written about the two earlier CDs and how when Bronx in Blues came out it was a great discovery for me. On Tank Full of Blues, though, Dion uses his blues credibility to show a little more of his own wings, as Dion’s originals on this album transition smoothly next to ones by Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. Just as the album makes you wonder what else Dion can do, he closes with a spoken word rap on “Bronx Poem.” While he is not a hip-hop artist, one might root for him to try a rap album next as he shows here that his rhyming skills and bravado dating back to “Runaround Sue” are still there.
Dion Dimucci is one of the great rock n’ rollers, and these albums have shown he is also a great blues man. These albums are not an artist’s self-absorbed dabbling in another genre, but music that has the great Dion’s heart. As AllMusic wrote about Tank Full of Blues, “it is the album he’s been waiting an entire career to make.” For the artist behind such hits as “I Wonder Why,” “The Wanderer,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Donna the Prima Donna,” and “Abraham, Martin, and John,” that is high praise. Check out this great album by a music legend.
What do you think of Dion’s blues? Should he write a new song called “Runaround Blues”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
One advantage to being a sitting president is that you do not have to go through the party debates. Instead of standing on stage with people attacking you, you get to do cool things like sing with B.B. King. This clip is from an tribute to the blues yesterday at the White House, which included Buddy Guy, Mick Jagger, and Booker T. Jones. At the end, Pres. Barack Obama gave in to the requests to sing a few lines of “Sweet Home Chicago,” his follow-up single to his cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney commented on Pres. Obama’s impromptu songs by noting that the president has “a hidden talent that we’re just getting to hear.”
Which former president would you like to hear sing? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)
Earlier this week, one of the creators of the Chicago blues sound, guitarist Hubert Sumlin passed away at the age of 80. Sumlin played as rhythm and then lead guitarist for Howlin’ Wolf from 1963 until Wolf died in 1976. So even if you have never heard Sumlin’s name, you have heard his guitar work on such blues classics as “Spoonful,” “Smokestack Lightning,” “Wang Dang Doodle,” and “Back Door Man.” Beyond that, you have heard his influence in many of the rock classics you know. Among many others, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix all credited Sumlin with influencing their guitar work. Sumlin also played guitar for Muddy Waters for a short period.
Here is an undated video that appears to be fairly recent of Sumlin showing he still has the chops, playing “Killing Floor” with Eric Clapton, Jimmie Vaughan, and Robert Cray.
By most accounts, Hubert Sumlin was a quiet and unassuming man. Because he was not one to hog the spotlight, if you were not a devoted blues fan you might have missed his name. But one may see a part of the history of rock and roll in the admiring and joyful facial expressions of Clapton, Vaughan, and Cray as they play with the legend. RIP.
(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)
As we did for the Super Bowl teams from Pittsburgh and Wisconsin, Chimesfreedom continues with songs related to the locales of the two Major League Baseball World Series teams. While the previous post focused on the Texas Rangers, this post considers the home of the St. Louis Cardinals with “St. Louis Blues,” performed by the great Bessie Smith.
In “St. Louis Blues,” by the legendary W.C. Handy, the singer tells about her man leaving her for a woman in St. Louis: “St. Louis woman with her diamond rings / Pulls that man ’round by her apron strings.” As she contemplates her sadness and considers going to the city to try to bring him home, she tells us, “I love that man like a schoolboy loves his pie / Like a Kentucky Colonel loves his mint and rye.”
Bessie Smith (1894-1937) was one of the greatest blues and jazz singers of the 1920s and 1930s, recording several duets with Louis Armstrong. We are fortunate to have her on film because she appeared in the movie, St. Louis Blues
As her career was recovering in the 1930s, through recording with John Hammond and through a return to performances in shows and clubs, she died from injuries in a car accident in 1937. Thousands of mourners came to pay tribute to her coffin in Philadelphia, and thousands more attended her funeral. But there was no money to mark her grave. In 1970, Janis Joplin and Juanita Green, a child of one of Smith’s domestic employees, paid for a tombstone to mark the grave of the great Bessie Smith. Joplin once said, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it. She’s the reason I started singing, really.”
The Cardinals hope to find a similar inspiration so they do not end up singing the blues.
(Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)
