From NPR, an interview about an ethnography who recorded a number of blues musicians. I've listened to a number of old songs on the Smithsonian website, bu these have never been available until now.
From NPR, an interview about an ethnography who recorded a number of blues musicians. I've listened to a number of old songs on the Smithsonian website, bu these have never been available until now.
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Cool. I didn't know about this.
This is the Mack McCormick archive. Regardless of what you may think of him, there is some great music here and I'm glad he recorded it and I'm glad they are making it available.
This is what the director said about this recording:
"Lightnin's apparent omniscience was a constant source of surprise for me. He was like an ancient oracle in his uncanny ability to improvise rhyming blues songs about a person or situation that revealed a truth that was perfect in its simplicity, yet infinitely complex in its layers of meaning. “You make your bed hard, baby, and calls it ease. The blues is just a funny feelin', yet some folks calls it a mighty bad disease.” This line was composed late one night while I was filming what started out to be an ordinary interview.
I had asked him to tell me what the blues meant to him. He picked up his guitar and started to sing about a woman named Mary who had left him. Earlier that evening his wife had left him after a nasty argument that caused her cousin to attempt to shoot Lightnin'. While the song was being sung, the cousin was lurking outside the apartment door with a loaded pistol. Lightnin' also had a large loaded gun stuck down the front of his pants. Hardly a situation in which to delve into an academic and linear exploration of the nature of truth and the blues, but I came away feeling I knew a lot more about it than before, but I couldn’t exactly put it in words. Thus the style of the film."
There may be a lot of Robert Shaw in the McCormick archive. I knew him in the late 70s. He taught me a lot about the bar business and everything I know about the music business. He could have taught a graduate level program in how to play in juke joints and cat houses.
every last bit of this, beginning to end.
there is not a better creator of beat and sound out there...and then he starts singing.
same goes for the '78 lomax recordings, jumper on the line, etc.
how fortunate are we to watch this on a whim forty five years later
Monday is the Birthday of Jazz Gillum, born in 1902. Probably best known for Key to the Highway, he played from the 20s to the 60s. One of the Founding Fathers of the Blues.
Monday is the Birthday of Jazz Gillum, born in 1902. Probably best known for Key to the Highway, he played from the 20s to the 60s. One of the Founding Fathers of the Blues.
shame on me for missing this first time round
Quote:
Originally Posted by FallawayJumper
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I guess technically this is blues - but to me it's rock
Buddy Guy on guitar - fabulous
whatever you wanna call it - it's truly great
"She won't do this - she won't do that - she won't do nothing - 'till she knows where it's at"