The Blues List

I agree. I like Tina Turner's but Humble Pie did so much better.

Rosetta Tharpe was great. Without her, rock & roll may have never come to be.

 

I have that version on a CD, and also a CD of the Cheap Thrills album. My favorite version is the Cheap Thrills version with Big Brother and the Holding Company, because I think the intro is one of the best intro's of Acid Rock era. I used to have that intro as my ring tone on my cell phone! The first couple of notes and then that pregnant pause! But I do like her rap at the end of the song in the other version.





I haven't done a post on either Janis Joplin or Rosetta Tharpe on the_bues_list yet, but I have certainly thought about doing it on Ball & Chain. I did talk about Ball & Chain in a piece I wrote about how the Hippies represented Nietzsche's Ubermensch or Superman. I posted that here on HF.

I also happened to mention this song in a post on Hubert Sumlin, which is the post after the next one I will post-----coincidentally referring to that pregnant pause!

 

CANNED HEAT

Fried Hockey Boogie


After John Lee Hooker, it's a good time for another Canned Heat post. Fried Hockey Boogie is one of their boogie songs with that beat I referred to. This came out in 1968, and in the song the Bear introduces each of the members, and they each jam for you to that boogie beat.

In the last post I mentioned that John Lee Hooker wrote Boom, Boom as a response to Canned Heats boogie music. But Canned Heat also adopted this beat from John Lee Hooker's Boogie Chillin. Hooker played with Canned Heat, and they even recorded an album together. But as I write this, I just realized that Canned Heat was formed in 1965, AFTER JOHN LEE HOOKER WROTE BOOM, BOOM, so that piece of trivia I shared in the last post was wrong! I believe it came from a book, but I read it on the internet a while back (and it's still there cause I looked it up to check it this morning!). Its likely that he played it with Canned Heat in response to a boogie song, but it was written before that.

Fried Hockey Boogie is the last song on the CD/album in the picture above. I have an old LP sonewhere that had it as the last song, and this CD is basically a version of that record from 1968, except that the LP had a great parody of the Los Angeles Police Department on it----complete with pig snorts.

Now here's something special for you---see that hat in the second picture? It has history! For a $10 entrance fee you can see the actual hat at my house. Now you might think that was the hat that the Bear wore. You're so close! Because it is the hat I wore to a Canned Heat concert in the mountains above Denver in the late 70's. And the Bear probably even saw it with his eyes as I was in the audience. I mean, if you put your hand over the display case you might even feel the vibrations of their music imprinted on the hat all those decades ago.

And that's not all, I have a blue tie-dye bandana that a chick, who looked just like Bridgette Bardot, bought me at a music festival in about '78 or so. Some big rock bands played there, and her and I even fooled around in the forest above the concert. I don't remember all the bands, but I do remember that forest very well...

You might be thinking, 'That's worth far more than $10!' But wait---there's still more! I have a booth where you can actually buy land at a posh real estate development in South Florida known as, The Everglades. It's exclusive, and the very wealthy are buying it up like crazy! They love the abundance of water, and the rich wildlife there! Send the $10 in advance because I still need to buy the display case. Or $5.95 for a picture of the hat, or the bandana, or a print out of Bridgette Bardot..........And don't forget to boogie...





Here is the picture of the hat that was in the second picture (The first picture was the picture of the same album on the YouTube video with the title of Canned Heat and Fried Chicken Boogie placed on it.)

 

HUBERT SUMLIN

Iodine In My Coffee


'You used to put iodine in my coffee,

And rat poison in my bread,

When I feel a little sleepy
Sprinkle lye all in my bed...'

And that is,why I don't anger my wife. (She's a Filipina, and as a meme I recently found says, 'You don't scare me--my wife's a Filipina.') This song was written by Muddy Waters in 1984, and Hubert Sumlin does a great version of it.

Sumlin is one of the fathers of Chicago Blues. Rolling Stones ranked him number 43 in the greatest guitarists of all time. Most of his career was spent as the guitarist of Howlin' Wolf.

Wikipedia, quoting an article in Guitar World says, "...best known for his 'wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions' as a member of Howlin'Wolf's band."

I think that is part of the emotional experience of the blues that attracts me to it---shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff hanger silences, daring rhythmic suspensions. This was also a feature of acid rock, and I think a great example of this is the intro to, Ball and Chain, as recorded on the Cheap Thrills album of Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin.

 

VICTORIA SPIVEY

Blood Thirsty Blues


When people talk about the original female blues singers, they almost always mention Billie Holiday. I don't know---for some reason Holiday's music never did it for me as much as Victoria Spivey. For one thing, Holliday's music has always been more jazzy than blues-like. But the first time I heard Spivey's voice, I was hooked.

"Blood, blood, look at all that blood...

Yes, I killed my man.
I told him blood was in my eyes,
And still he wouldn't listen to me..."

As I understand, a lot of female singers studied Victoria Spivey, including Janis Joplin and Madonna.

In 1961, she launched her own record label, Spivey Records, with her 4th husband. (What about the other 3 husband's? "Blood, blood, look at all that blood... (I'm joking!)) She recorded a lot of big artists, including Otis Spann (I posted a few posts back), Big Joe Turner, Otis Rush, and Luther Johnson, who I will post in the near future.

Blood Thirsty Blues is a good example of her music. There are a lot of songs of hers that I like.

 

JESSE ROPER

Hurricane's Eye

Jesse Roper is a blues musician from Victoria, Canada. I happened to find this video of Hurricane's Eye a few years ago wandering around YouTube, and I'm really impressed with Roper who is barely into his 30's.

The official video for Hurricane's Eye is as interesting as the song is good. I have provided screen shots from it to give you a taste. (Here on HipForums, I'll just provide the video.) There's a story, but we don't know what it truly is---we know there is a woman, a murder, a black powder gun fight, some kind of mystical guy or spirit, possibly a hallucinogen... is it a tale of possession, revenge, witchcraft, a hallucination?! Maybe a brush with insanity back in the pioneer days...?

This song is some great blues that could easily pass as rock, southern rock, roots (which, by the way, is a new genre of rock that tries to rediscover the roots of rock), cowboy blues, one could say there is even a hint of bluegrass in it. However you classify it, it's a hell of a song!

Roper's got some other great songs too, and based on the comments on YouTube, he performs one hell of a concert. Apparently he has even used his music for a commercial for a brewery here in Colorado.

 

Thanks for all the info and the posting of some obscure (mostly) blues singers!! Great stuff!!

 

Thank you!

Jimmy Reed is another one I haven't gotten to, but is planned for the future.