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Howling Diablos
"Live"
Top Dog Records CD 50002-2 TDR

By John Sinclair


They can't be called a blues band by any stretch of the imagination--they don't even play the blues--but the Howling Diablos are deeply rooted in the blues matrix.

Lead vocalist/guitarist/producer/composer Martin "Tino" Gross is one of the finest blues drummers of the modern era; he's backed up everybody from Big Walter Horton and Victoria Spivey to Willie D. Warren, Juanita McCray, and The Butler Twins, and he's hosted the exemplary blues program Big City Blues Cruise on WEMU-FM for more than 15 years.

Tino's long-time partner (they hooked up as members of the Urbations around 1981), saxophonist/co-producer "Showtime" Johnny Evans, has contributed to many local blues ensembles and is an accomplished jazz soloist as well.

And lead guitarist Jeff Grand--who's produced albums by Uncle Jessie White and the Butler Twins--is a stone bluesman with a deep, soulful sound, impeccable taste, and one of the most intense slide guitar attacks you'd ever want to hear.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, it should also be stated that all three have backed up this writer in performance as long-standing members of John Sinclair & the Blues Scholars and are close personal friends to boot.)

But they're here before us as members of the Motor City's hottest modern rock band, the Howling Diablos, performing live  in front of a studio full of fellow music fanatics and frenzied followers of the big beat, laying down a set of their most popular numbers as if their lives depended on just how far over the top they could make it go.

The Howling D's knock out crowd favorites like "Funky Daddy," "Reefer Man," "Nobody in Detroit," "Junkyard Jesus," "Business Man's Legs" and "Ban Lon Stew" with abandon and power, driven by the massive rhythms churned up by bassist Mike Hollis and drummer Jeff Fowlkes. Jeff Grand slashes and burns his industrial-strength rock guitar leads from deep in the heart of the beast, fed back by Johnny Evans' wailing saxophonics, and the band rocks it all with a steady grinding roll.

Martin Gross has been one of this writer's favorite songwriters since his wild improvised lyrics to songs like "Ether Mambo" used to set the Progressive Blues Band on fire at the turn of the 80s, and he continues to come up with some of the sickest, most twisted songs in modern popular music.

Demented sagas with a personal root like "Go Gene Go"--a musical salute to Tino's childhood idol Gene Krupa--and "Record Collection" (of which Tino possesses one of the world's finest in terms of 78s and 45s) deliver a particular kick, while "X-Mas in Jail" takes its place in the pantheon of jailbird anthems like "Angola Bound," "Please Mr. Judge" and Andre Williams' immortal "Pulling Time."

In response to the crowd's chanted demand, the set climaxes with "Babysitter," a throbbing slab of musical menace that raises a cry to "Call the babysitter--this beat is getting bigger and bigger!" And it's just the same with the Howling Diablos: their insane beat keeps on growing in size and thrust, and their following gets larger and more frenetic every day.

The Howlin  D's are filling a serious need for intelligence, wit, and uninhibited fun in pop music today, and they're bound for glory in a big way.


--New Orleans
March 1, 1997


(c) 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:56:55 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/810-bernard-allison-keepin-the-blues-alive.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/810-bernard-allison-keepin-the-blues-alive.html
Bernard Allison
Keepin' the Blues Alive
Cannonball Records CBD 29101

By John Sinclair


The cruelly untimely demise of the great Luther Allison only two years following his remarkable and long-awaited ascension to the top of the contemporary blues world has left Luther's legion of fans and friends pitifully bereft.

But the guitarist's living legacy extends beyond his recordings and our memories of his thrilling stage performances to include the music being made by his son Bernard, now a recording artist in his own right and author of a fine new album for Cannonball Records.

Keepin' the Blues Alive presents the 32-year-old guitarist and singer with stripped-down, hard-driving support from Greg Rzab (bass), Ray "Killer" Allison (drums), Will Crosby (rhythm guitar) and the always sympathetic keyboards of producer Ron Levy.

A veteran of Koko Taylor's Blues Machine and Willie Dixon's All Stars as well as his father's loving tutelage, Bernard steps forward here to lead this taut ensemble through a stirring program of original material and carefully chosen covers, showcasing his fluent guitar, convincing vocals, vigorous drive and consistent good taste to impressive effect.

Allison's guitar shines brightest on the obscure Freddy King instrumental, "In the Open," where emotional abandon is registered with admirable restraint over the relentessly pumping rhythm section to produce an impeccably rendered performance.

Bernard pays tribute to his father with an impassioned reading of Luther's hopeful composition "A Change Must Come," and offers an entirely distinctive treatment of the Jackie Brenston chestnut "Rocket 88." "Home Goin'" is an equally unique adaptation of an old-style gospel anthem, marred only somewhat by Levy's over-the-top Hammond organ interlude, while both Allison and composer Aron Burton are poorly served by the ill-conceived closing selection, "Garbage Man."

Of the Bernard Allison originals, "Baby Chile" and "Young Boy's Blues" seem to date to an earlier period in the artist's development and lose considerable potency in the hands of a man over 30; repeated listening deprives them of even more power, leaving a very thin vein of interest indeed. Everyone plays well, however, and the leader takes plenty of well-spent solo space.

Allison's incoherent lyrics to "Tell Me Why" are redeemed by a pair of blazing guitar solos which, characteristically, generate great heat and light but never flame out of control. "Walkin'" moves at a brisk pace with more inspired guitar from Allison, while "You Gave Me the Blues" and "When I'm Lonely" are well-made and -played pop blues numbers that remind of Little Milton, Tyrone Davis, Walter "Wolfman" Washington or Guitar Slim Jr.

Bernard Allison has weighed in as a welcome blues force to be reckoned with, now and in years to come. As he points out himself, Bernard's no Muddy Waters or B.B. King, but he can play the hell out of the guitar at the same level of passion and virtuosity attained by his late lamented father--and that's definitely good news for the blues.


--New Orleans
October 30, 1997


(c) 1997, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:24:01 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/720-willie-king-a-the-liberators-living-in-a-new-world.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/720-willie-king-a-the-liberators-living-in-a-new-world.html
Willie King & The Liberators
Living in a New World
Rooster Blues R 2647


The Secret History of the Blues

By John Sinclair


You talk about terror 
I been terrorized all my days & 

Willie King, Terrorized 


The blues has never been about what's on the surface. It cuts deep below the crust of everyday life and reaches straight into the heart of things, from where all feeling lives and never lies. It speaks of bad luck and trouble, desperate love and abandonment, good times and bad times and every emotional shade in between.

But at the very bottom of the blues is the terrible sadness people feel when they are unjustly and mercilessly beaten down every day of all the years of their lives by the people over them.

The brutal harshness of life as a landless, cruelly exploited or either jobless and discarded American of African descent is what the blues is all about, and the things people do to make a life for themselves within this crushing social framework so that they may enjoy some small measure of happiness as relief from the constant battering.

But, in the long American experience of the blues people, there is and always has been great danger in speaking forthrightly where the white people might hear you and take offense, because their response to what they do not want to hear has never been nothing nice.

So the blues has always talked about everything but the oppressor in the second person  it's addressed to the mean woman, or to the neighbor who's taken your mate, or to the gods of chance and fate.

Rarely, rarely has the blues been about the wicked master who steals your labor, takes your woman or wants to end your life  the upstanding citizens upon whom the fates have smiled by making them your social superiors in every goddamned way.

This point is drawn very finely in a remarkable conversation between folklorist Alan Lomax and three Mississippi bluesmen who came up in the 20s and 30s, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim and John Lee Williamson, recorded in the mid-1940s but never released under their own names until a dozen years ago or so, when all three men had passed on to their greater reward.

After the bluesmen describe the hopelessly severe social conditions under which they were raised in the Deep South, they are taken aback when Lomax suggests releasing the recording: Oh, no, we still got people down there. 

In the modern world, where life in America's vast urban ghettos is even more brutally oppressive than the years of slavery and then of sharecropping in the South, where even children may be heavily armed and human life is at no premium whatsoever, it is commonplace to hear the rap artists talk about anything they want to, including their intentions toward the people who keep them down.

But in the blues, which continue to be sung and played by people who cling for their lives to an earlier aesthetic, the subject of the blues remains masked under the rubric of interpersonal relationships or the vagaries of fate.

It is simple to conclude that this misdirection is what lends the blues its poetic force, and this writer would be the last to argue that point. The blues is powerful in its rootedness in the circumstances of daily life in America, and the general absence in its lyrics of the oppressor who is always present in real life adds another layer of poetic depth to the idiom. That's as true for the great bluesmen and women of today as it was for Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Memphis Minnie, Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters.

But when you hear a blues singer say it right out, like Willie King does on this album of northwestern Alabama blues direct from the 21st century, it raises the power of the blues to an even higher level, and you might even say to yourself, Oh, yeah, so that's what they were talking about. 

It sounds so natural, to hear Willie King talk about all the places he's worked and how little he has to show for it, or how working in the rural environment seems not really to have changed since the days of slavery, even though it's almost a century and a half later now. It sounds so natural, because that's what you were hearing all along, as a subtext to the lyrics of the blues.

Willie King brings it all down front, as they say, and in his songs reveals the secret history of the blues. Born in Prairie Point, Mississippi, in 1943, Willie was raised by his grandparents and has lived and struggled in the Deep South for most of his life. He's worked in the fields plowing mules, in the sawmills, as a travelling salesman of shoes, cologne and notions, but he's never been resigned to accepting his mandated lot in life.

Thus he's been a civil rights activist for more than 30 years now and a student of the techniques of community organizing in the rural setting as taught by the professional agitators at the Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee where Pete Seeger, Guy Carawan and other important folk artists have been active for well over half a century.

A musician since he was a youth  he was playing a one-string guitar at the age of nine  by the late 70s Willie had started playing the blues in rustic local nightclubs and juke joints as a way to bring the struggling songs  he was writing to the people of his community, hoping to inspire them to join the movement to gain more control over the terms of their lives.

He made music at night and by day he organized the Rural Members Association, sponsoring classes in music, woodworking, food preservation and African American cultural traditions and providing transportation, legal assistance and other much-needed services to the RMA's constituency.

Described as a field hand turned Field Marshal,  King has combined his musical mission with his community organizing activities to give voice to the deepest feelings of his listeners and make a significant impact on their lives.

Willie's songs are remarkable: Never harsh nor doctrinaire, they state the realities of real life in the ordinary language of the blues, matter-of-factly telling the truth about the way things really are and tempering the songs of social criticism that call for serious change with tender pleas for love and compassion  remembering, in the phrase of Che Guevara, that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

Willie's music is wholly rooted in the blues tradition, and he utilizes the forms, rhythms and grooves endemic to northern Mississippi and Alabama which are familiar to his listeners through the works of Howlin  Wolf, John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside and other bluesmen native to the area.

The band of musicians he has recruited to play his music is beautifully united around the vision of its leader and supports King's voice, songs and guitar with a warmth and empathy that is almost palpable. Willie's long-time partner and closest comrade is second vocalist Willie Lee Halbert, who echoes and underlines King's phrases in a manner which seems to be unique in the blues idiom to this particular ensemble.

Guitarist Aaron Hardhead  Hodge and drummer Willie James Williams are fellow veterans of countless Sunday night stomp-downs at Betty Jean's jukehouse and other favorite local venues, sticking with King and Halbert through every sort of thick and thin. Keyboard man Henry Smith and bassist Robert Corbett  at 19 he is 20 years younger than anyone else in the band  are fairly recent additions, and alto saxophonist Kevin Hayes, a truck driver from Louisville, Mississippi, joins them when he can.

Willie calls them The Liberators, and watching the ensemble begin to assemble in the funky little Memphis recording studio where they ve driven from northwestern Alabama to make their new album, it's easy to see that this is not your standard-issue blues band. The core members have been together a long time and their easy camaraderie is readily apparent, while the newer guys are made to feel equally welcome.

They set up around their leader and get right to work, their familiarity with the material through regular performance giving them the kind of confidence needed to make things move along without a hitch, and by the end of their third day at Easley McCain Recording they re ready to pack up and head back home with the whole album safely in the can.

One of the reasons everything is able to proceed so smoothly is the production team, headed by Willie and Rooster Blues founder Jim O Neal and aided and abetted by Rooster staffers Jeff Loh and Brian Factor. Willie met O Neal at a blues festival in Eutaw, Alabama, in 1987 and kept in touch with Jim over the years.

He signed with the label at the turn of the century and cut his first Rooster Blues album, Freedom Creek, which garnered almost unanimous critical acclaim and was named Album of the Year  by Living Blues in 2001. Willie was also named Blues Artist of the Year  in the same poll, and the new album is eagerly awaited by everyone who had the good fortune to hear Freedom Creek

Well, no one will be disappointed here, because Living in a New World builds on the considerable strengths of the live  album  including great songs with a unique focus, soulful playing by a well-seasoned ensemble, and an overwhelming feeling of oneness with the audience  to deliver an impressive program of music that's deeply steeped in the blues tradition yet as fresh as today and tomorrow.

All the songs here are Willie King compositions (his friend Peter O Hare contributed the lyrics to Ain t Gonna Work ), and the lyrics are full of King's trademark topics: the rigors of life as a working man with nothing to call one's own, the stultifying lack of progress toward social and economic justice, the need for oppressed people to unite under the banner of compassion and common purpose. And the band sounds even better in the studio than live  on stage, which is not always so easy to achieve.

Willie King knows the secret history of the blues all too well, and he reveals it here so plainly and so naturally that there's no possible room for doubt. The blues have always been part of me,  he sums up in the monologue that ends the album. I live it every day. And it's about love  sharing, helping each other, caring for one another, that's what the blues life is all about. I m holding on to the blues life, because I found out that it's a good life to live. I just want to keep passing it down. 


New Orleans
March 31, 2002


(c) 2002, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:53:31 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/536-billy-c-farlow-too-much-fun.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/536-billy-c-farlow-too-much-fun.html
Billy C. Farlow
Too Much Fun
Appaloosa Records

By John Sinclair


In the pretentious, overblown world of popular music today, authentic rockabilly madmen lke Billy C. Farlow are few and far between. Maybe it's always been this way, except for that brief golden period in Memphis in the mid- 50s when Sam Phillips seemed to have the key to some mysterious storehouse where a succession of young white men with country backgrounds, gospel roots, and big ears for rhythm & blues sat around drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, writing songs and rehearsing their bands of fellow rockers while swarms of ladies waited for them to come outside and take them away: men like Carl Perkins, Billy Riley, Warren Storm, Jerry Lee Lewis and their rare counterparts from other regions of the country--Gene Vincent, Jack Scott, Eddie Cochrane, Dale Hawkins, Bobby Charles, Jimmy Clanton and Rusty York.

While this scene has faded out of sight for more than 30 years now, Billy C. and his frantic stage presentation bring us back a glimpse of the genuine article: balls-out, what-the-hell, no-holds-barred rock & roll in the Sun Records tradition--trembling with musical passion, frantic with unrepressed desire, afraid of nothing or no one in its relentless drive to burn down the house, blow out all the walls, totally destroy every member of the audience and swagger away grinning, a girl on each arm, ready to rock all night, sleep all day, and come back for more as soon as the sun goes down again.

Billy C. has paid his dues up several times over; his card is punched all the way around, yet he's still out there riding cross-country in vans packed with beat-up equipment, playing in bars and hellholes all over America, somehow summoning up the incredible energy that propels his performances night after night with no end in sight, a tireless troubador of musical kicks and pursuer of off-stage fun in whatever form it might present itself. Long an insufficiently recognized showman and key member of Commander Cody's various frenetic ensembles, Billy C. is finally featured as a leader on his own recording, showing off his own original (though deeply traditional) rockabilly compositions and a hand-picked, rip-roaring ensemble of fellow Southerners held together by the steady production hand of Fred James.

Born June 9, 1948, in Greensburg, Indiana, Billy C. Farlow has lived in Alabama, Texas, Michigan, and California, where he presently resides between tours with the Commander Cody band. Billy C. comes from a musical/religious Southern family and credits his mother for his early exposure to music: "She always had the radio on." As a youth, Billy C. drew inspiration from the musicians--both black and white--he saw performing at fairs, supermarket openings and church functions, gradually picking up the guitar and harmonica. He made his first public appearance in 1964 at a Church of God camp meeting, "where I sang the old standard 'Do Lord' with two other boys at a rousing, break-neck tempo while beating glorious hell out of an ancient F-hole guitar."

Billy C.'s family moved to the Detroit area around 1964, and the transplanted Southerner started sitting in at the west-side blues coffeehouse, the Chessmate, "performing blues on acoustic guitar and backing up other artists on the harp, including Sippie Wallace, Big Joe Williams and John Lee Hooker." He also hung out and jammed with the James Cotton Band during their frequent visits to the Motor City and became friends with drummer Sammy Lay, with whose band he would work during 1968-69 following the untimely and tragic death of Farlow's harmonica master, the great Little Walter, who had been featured with the group.

Farlow formed his first band, Billy C. & The Sunshine, in the fall of 1966 with pianist Lawrence "Boot Hill" Hamilton and guitarist Larry Welker. "We may have been the first white blues band in Detroit, I don't know." Billy C. & The Sunshine gained a small but fanatical following in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, working gigs with the MC-5 and other local favorites at the Grande Ballroom, The See, First Unitarian Church, and other area venues, culminating in a New Year's Eve appearance at the Grande opening for Cream.

The Sunshine clouded over and finally disbanded when Welker and drummer Lance Dickerson joined the Charlie Musselwhite Blues Band and Boot Hill left to go with Sam Lay. Billy C. joined Lay's band for an East Coast tour in February 1968 and continued to work with him off and on through 1968 and into 1969. At the same time he was doing a lot of jamming with Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen in and around Ann Arbor. He became a full-time Airman in the spring of 1969 and moved with the band to Berkeley, California that July.

Billy C. recorded eight albums with Cody for Paramount Records between 1969 and 1976, when the band finally threw in the towel. "For the next six years I tried unsuccessfully to get it together with my own groups in California,  C. says. We toured the Northwest and around to Texas, but no products, no money, no glory. In 1982 I moved my family to the Tennessee-Alabama border area,  Billy says, and worked as a farmer, cook, day laborer, you name it," before organizing the band heard on this recording, called variously the Congo Cruisers, the Hell Hounds, and the Morgan County Mutants. Farlow rejoined Commander Cody in 1987 and continues to tour and record with the Commander.

Reviewing his illustrious career for this writer, Billy C. attests: "Over the years I have performed with such luminaries as John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace, Bobo Jenkins, Chuck Berry, Linda Ronstadt, and Big Joe Williams. I have also appeared on the bill with such as the Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Starship, Bob Seger, John Lennon, The Eagles, Beach Boys, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Fred McDowell, Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, The Byrds, Poco, Gene Vincent, Jack Scott, Kenny Rogers and once passed up the chance to fornicate with Buddy Holly's widow."

At last, dear listener, you have the chance to enter into intimate musical congress with this unbridled son of the South, Mr. Billy C. Farlow and his hard-kicking ensemble from down Tennessee-Alabama way, recorded in Nashville during 1988-89 and now available in disc form. Don't pass this one up--it might be another 30 years before something this splendid comes around again!


--Detroit
January 31, 1991


(C) 1991, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


Billy C. Farlow
"Too Much Fun"
Appaloosa Records

"Too Much Fun"
"Honey Girl"
"You Put Your Mark On Me" (Fred James)
"Oh Babe"
"Sit On Dadddy's Knee"
"Demon Lover"
"A Little Meat On The Side" (Fred James)
"Love Bandit"
"Jerry's Playhouse"

Produced By Fred James
Engineer: Joe Fundaburk
Recorded at Creative Workshop, Nashville, Tennessee, 1988-89

Personnel:
Billy C. Farlow, lead vocals, harmonica
Roger Younger, lead guitar (Lake County, TN)
Granny Grantham (Nashville, TN) or Jimmy Grey (Oklahoma), bass
J.T. Thompson, drums (Huntsville, AL)

Plus:
Fred James, lead guitar, background vocals (Topeka, Kansas)
Deanna Bogart, keyboards & saxophones (Baltimore, Maryland)
Billy West, drums (Nashville, TN)
Linton Wages, saxophones (Georgia)
Mary Ann Brandon, background vocals
unknown keyboards


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:19:07 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/518-james-cottons-35th-anniversary-jam.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/518-james-cottons-35th-anniversary-jam.html
James Cotton's 35th Anniversary Jam

By John Sinclair


James Cotton is one of the best loved bluesmen alive, and to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the formation of the legendary James Cotton Blues Band  organized when the rising young harmonica star finally left his post in the great Muddy Waters outfit of the mid- 60s  a whole gang of the veteran harpist's musician friends (and fans!) joined their hero to pay homage to his greatness.

For this hearty celebration James and producer Randy Labbe augmented the Cotton band's working line-up  guitarist Mike Williams, pianist Dave Maxwell, bassist Noel Neal and drummer Per Hansen  with a whole galaxy of top-flight blues singers, from Koko Taylor, Bobby Rush, Syl Johnson, Ronnie Hawkins and Lucky Peterson to Maria Muldaur, Kim Wilson, Shemekia Copeland and Kenny Neal. Guitarists Tab Benoit, G.E. Smith and Jimmie Vaughan also join in the festivities, with Vaughan paying his respects more than once.

While Cotton's once-lusty voice has suffered in recent years from the ravages of time, tobacco, and other destructive forces, he's got so many singers on board for these sessions that he doesn t even have to worry about exercising his battered vocal cords. But it's important to note  and immediately apparent  that James  harmonica chops are stronger and more expressive than ever, and his many fans will be delighted to hear him blast and moan his way through the program of Cotton classics and blues standards presented on this disc.

What a harmonica Cotton continues to wield! What enormous surges of power, what swelling billows of emotive sound issue forth from his humble little instrument of choice! Ever since Cotton came of musical age as a hotshot player on the West Helena and Memphis blues scenes in the early 1950s, his personal sound, inventive solos and sensitive obbligati have gained the harpist his well-deserved reputation as one of the most important American musicians ever to put his mouth to the Mississippi saxophone.

A native of Tunica, in the upper Delta, Cotton  like his contemporaries Little Walter and Junior Wells  drew the inspiration for his brilliant harmonica style from the pioneering modern harp work of Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Snooky Pryor and Big Walter Horton. One of Sam Phillips  early Sun Records artists ( Cotton Crop Blues ), Cotton burst into national prominence in 1955 when Muddy Waters called him up to the bigs to fill the harmonica seat in his band previously held by Little Walter, Junior Wells, Big Walter and Henry Pot  Strong.

Cotton fit into Muddy's band like fingers into a glove on a brisk winter day, and he remained with Muddy for most of the next 10 years. Carefully tailored to the needs of the modern electric blues band and ever attentive to the nuances of delivery by whoever might be singing the lead, Cotton's harmonica lifted Muddy's vocals above the band and blew hot and blazing or deep and nasty in his allotted solo spots.

Starting with their crowd-leveling set at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival, released as a popular Chess LP, the Muddy Waters band began to reach out from their base in the blues ghetto to penetrate the consciousness of music lovers of the Caucasian persuasion all over America and England. Cotton's own reputation as Muddy's front-line foil and spectacular harmonica soloist mounted until he was signed by the pop label Buddha Records in 1966 and encouraged to form his own ensemble, a fiery outfit known simply as the James Cotton Blues Band.

Cotton came out of the box with a bang to begin his solo career, enjoying widespread FM airplay and a full touring schedule which frequently found him sharing bills in major venues with hit rock bands. He was a favorite at the Fillmores and at rock ballrooms all across the country, and he was able to lay down a solid foundation during this period for a successful lifetime in music.

Ensuing Cotton Blues Band.albums for Buddha, Verve and a succession of labels helped keep the harpist at the forefront of the contemporary blues scene as it waxed and waned and began to wax brightly again in the 1990s. Now he's more popular than ever, riding a new crest of listener interest and basking in the adulation of the generations of contemporary harmonica players he has helped spawn.

There are a lot of James  many musical admirers on hand right here to help him make this album, but let's say it right out: This is a James Cotton record first of all, and he's right on top of everything that's happening, attacking his instrument with the energy of a man just starting out and the wisdom and taste of a wily survivor, a fully accomplished master player who can say anything he wants to on the harmonica  and does.

Happy anniversary, James, and may you enjoy as many years at the top of your game as you may wish to savor on this Earth.



Amsterdam
November 21, 2001


(c) 2001, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Sat, 31 Dec 2005 08:51:29 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/514-alligator-records-30th-anniversary-collection.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/514-alligator-records-30th-anniversary-collection.html
The Alligator Records 30th Anniversary Collection

By John Sinclair


It's hard to believe, but it's already been 30 years since Alligator Records issued its first LP, a rough and raucous set of primal electric blues by a raw, gloriously rowdy three-piece outfit from Chicago by way of Mississippi known as Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers.
Although the album was enthusiastically received by the small coterie of urban blues fanatics who were desperately seeking signs that the blues would continue to evolve and grow into the 1970s and beyond, the eponymous Hound Dog Taylor & the HouseRockers LP didn t make much of an impact on the marketplace, and it seemed inevitable that Alligator Records would remain a labor of love well into the foreseeable future.

It was clearly Bruce Iglauer's love for the blues and his determination to get Hound Dog's music onto record and out into the world beyond Chicago that drove the 23-year-old Cincinnati native, just out of college at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and newly settled in the Windy City, to apply the proceeds of a tiny inheritance to the launching of his little blues label and seeing the first Alligator LP into print. Now, three full decades later, Alligator Records is the largest independent contemporary blues label in the world, boasting a catalog of over 190 titles  the bulk of them produced by Iglauer himself  and Bruce Iglauer is one of the most successful and widely respected individuals in the blues business today.

Bruce met the blues in 1966 at the University of Chicago Folk Festival, where he was totally blown away by a Mississippi Fred McDowell performance which literally changed the course of his life. Soon he was busy booking Howlin  Wolf and Luther Allison for appearances at his college and making trips to Chicago in fiendish pursuit of obscure blues records and live performances by the living giants of the blues. After graduation Bruce moved to Chicago and landed a job as a $30-a-week shipping clerk at Bob Koester's Jazz Record Mart, doubling as an assistant to Koester at his Delmark Records operation. Delmark had been making fine traditional and modern blues albums by Roosevelt Sykes, Sleepy John Estes, Big Joe Williams, Magic Sam, Luther Allison, Junior Wells, Jimmy Dawkins and other blues heavyweights since 1959, keeping the blues flame burning throughout the 60s and into the 70s.

Iglauer also joined a select group of obsessive Chicago-based blues lovers  including Jim O Neal and Amy Van Singel, Tim Zorn, Paul and Diane Allmen, Wesley Race and others  who founded Living Blues, America's first magazine dedicated to keeping the authentic blues alive. O Neal and Van Singel later established the Rooster Blues label and the Stackhouse record shop in Clarksdale, Misissippi, and Wes Race is credited for turning Iglauer on to Son Seals as well as co-producing the Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers album.

Hound Dog had a tremendous impact on Bruce Iglauer, and he spent the next four years of his life (until Taylor's untimely demise in 1975) totally caught up in the music and affairs of the Houserockers. First Iglauer tried to convince Delmark to record this incredible band, but it wasn t quite Koester's cup of tea, so when a couple thousand dollars that had been willed to him by his grandfather came into his hands, Bruce decided to do the thing himself, and Alligator Records was born.

From a business standpoint, the young entrepreneur couldn t have picked a worse time to launch his new blues label. By 1971, the pioneering post-war independent blues imprints  Chess/Checker, Modern/RPM, King/Federal and the other small concerns that recorded and sold blues records to a black audience  had either gone under or been sold to large entertainment conglomerates, leaving the surviving blues giants whose recordings had provided the independents with plenty of product bereft of a reliable outlet for their music.

The blues stars of the 50s and 60s and their audience were growing old, and many of their once-loyal listeners were switching their affections to the R&B and soul music produced and marketed by new companies like Stax/Volt and Motown. What was left of the established blues industry had begun to abandon the musical and emotional force of the Delta-based electric blues which had given such eloquent expression to the painful complexities of African American life in the cities of the North and chose instead to market a shallower and slicker sound designed to please a musically sophisticated modern audience that had long left the South behind.

At the same time, rock music was well on its way to establishing an utter hegemony over the radio airwaves and record bins of the nation, effectively blocking the blues and other root forms from entering the ever-tightening circle of popular success. From time to time a blues legend like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush or Freddie King would be adopted  by a best-selling rock star and produced for release on a major label, but these instances were few and far between at best and failed in their mission to catapult the bluesmen into mainstream acceptance.

This was the table set by fate for Bruce Iglauer, a young man with a vision and a whole lot of nerve who was ready and willing to put his life on the line if that's what it would take to make authentic Chicago blues records and give them a first-class introduction to the world at large. He d witnessed the enthusiastic response authentic blues artists were beginning to enjoy at college concerts and festivals and from progressive rock radio programmers who would actually play blues records in regular rotation, and he basically set out to identify and develop a whole new audience of blues record buyers among the ranks of students, hippies and rockers who had yet to meet the blues in its purest and most exciting form.

Iglauer's idea was to put out one album, work it as thoroughly as possible, see what might happen, and maybe put out another one next year. And, from the very beginning, Bruce was aware that he needed to provide professional management and booking services to his artists in order to maximize their exposure in the marketplace, create new performance opportunities and spur record sales wherever the artists were booked to perform.

Slowly but surely, Alligator moved to establish a distribution network, put Hound Dog Taylor albums in the hands of sympathetic publications and radio stations, and build contacts with the nightclubs, festivals and campus concert presenters who were open to booking blues artists. The college concert market had been opened up by pioneering blues agents like Dick Waterman, and college radio stations were gradually airing more and more blues recordings. And, while the mainstream press had little interest in blues of any stripe, the college papers, rock music magazines and alternative weeklies could be persuaded to pay some attention to modern blues artists who operated largely beneath the radar of the mass media.

Following on the modest success of its first release, Alligator made a fine album with harmonica master Big Walter Horton, signed the compelling guitarist Son Seals and cut an LP with Fenton Robinson, making sure to inform the listening public that the veteran bluesman had penned its title track, Somebody Loan Me a Dime,  which had just been a big chart hit for Boz Scaggs on Columbia Records.

Alligator took a significant step forward in 1975 when former Chess Records star Koko Taylor joined the label's embryonic artist roster and released I Got What It Takes, winning the company its first Grammy nomination (its first Grammy award, for Clifton Chenier's I m Here!, would come in 1982). Then legendary Texas guitarist Albert Collins signed with Alligator in 1978, bringing a big reputation and high visibility as an established blues artist who had enjoyed major label affiliations and been profiled in Rolling Stone. Because of Collins,  Iglauer has said, the media perceived Alligator had become a major blues label.  Marketed by the label under its slogan Genuine House-Rockin  Music,  both Taylor and Collins became important contract artists who built their careers as popular blues performers on the series of album releases issued by Alligator on a regular basis.

Alligator staked another convincing claim to major blues label status in 1978 with the first three albums in its historic Living Chicago Blues series, a six-LP set that featured unrecorded or under-recognized Chicago blues artists like Magic Slim, Carey Bell, Jimmy Johnson, Pinetop Perkins, Johnny Big Moose  Walker, Detroit Junior, Luther Guitar Jr.  Johnson, Queen Sylvia Embry and Lonnie Brooks, who was signed to his own album deal and soon became one of the label's brightest stars. This ambitious project was modeled on Samuel Charters  historic 1965 three-album set for Vanguard Records, Chicago! The Blues! Today!, which had brought neglected blues masters like Otis Spann, James Cotton, Big Walter Horton, Otis Rush, J.B. Hutto and others into the forefront of the contemporary blues world.

Alligator began to branch out in two more significant directions when Iglauer started licensing records from European labels and smaller blues independents, bringing LPs by well-known artists like Buddy Guy and Clarence Gatemouth  Brown to his imprint. And Iglauer began making records with roots-rock guitar heroes with mainstream radio recognition, helping revive the flagging careers of Roy Buchanan, Lonnie Mack and Johnny Winter, whose Guitar Slinger album put the label into Billboard's Top 200  chart for the first time.

In late 1979 Iglauer collaborated with Dr. John to produce Professor Longhair's Crawfish Fiesta, one of the finest of all Alligator albums but, sadly, the influential New Orleans pianist's last recording. Iglauer has worked with other co-producers on various projects, but on most Alligator dates you ll see Bruce Iglauer listed as the producer of record, making albums that are always well thought out, impeccably recorded and mixed for maximum impact. By now his productions must number in three figures  a remarkable achievement for a blues record man.

By the mid- 80s Alligator had grown from one or two releases a year to 10 to 14 albums and would soon become the first blues company to produce CDs. The label's roster of artists continued to grow under Iglauer's careful direction: Lil  Ed & the Blues Imperials, The Kinsey Report, Katie Webster, James Cotton, Charlie Musselwhite, Elvin Bishop, Bob Margolin, Little Charlie & the Nightcats, Kenny Neal, Maurice John Vaughn and Tinsley Ellis all cut for Alligator, gaining the benefit of the company's close attention to maximizing record sales and furthering the development of their careers.

Another Alligator highlight was its brilliant series of Trumpet Records reissues showcasing sides by Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller), Big Joe Williams, Willie Love, Jerry McCain, the Southern Sons and other Delta blues and gospel artists recorded by Lillian McMurry in Jackson, Mississippi between 1951 and 1955. Alligator's license to reissue these historic recordings  most of them unavailable since their original release as 78-rpm singles  lasted long enough to produce several essential CDs (now out of print) that provided a real treasure trove for modern blues listeners.

Alligator turned 20 years old in 1991 and celebrated with the release of The Alligator Records 20th Anniversary Collection, a triumphant double-CD compilation which became one of the label's best-selling albums. Then Iglauer took the show on the road with a sensational cross-country tour that featured Koko Taylor, Lonnie Brooks, Lil  Ed & the Blues Imperials, Katie Webster and Elvin Bishop. The tour was recorded for the Grammy-nominated album, Alligator Records 20th Anniversary Tour, and documented by director Robert Mugge (Deep Blues) for the film Pride & Joy: The Story of Alligator Records.

The company continued to roll through the 1990s, building on its successes and expanding its musical focus beyond the genuine house-rockin  music  which had served the label so well since its inception. The acoustic blues revival was represented by John Jackson, Cephas & Wiggins and Corey Harris, who brought in New Orleans piano master Henry Butler for an album of rollicking blues duets. C.J. Chenier advanced the zydeco banner first brought to the label by his late lamented father, Texas blues legend Long John Hunter was finally introduced to the world, Chicago harmonica masters Junior Wells, Carey Bell and Billy Boy Arnold were effectively showcased, Saffire The Uppity Blues Women proved a surprise success, harpist William Clarke brought the West Coast sound to the label, and emerging young blues stars like Dave Hole, Coco Montoya and Michael Hill gave Alligator a firm foothold on the future.

One of Alligator's greatest triumphs came in the mid- 90s when the label helped pave the way for Luther Allison's return from his long self-imposed exile in Europe to take America by storm and establish himself at the very top of the contemporary blues world. Luther's blazing guitar swept away everything in his path as he leveled audience after audience with his joyful, exuberant, deliriously unstoppable performances, beautifully documented by the label for a blistering live album that was released after Luther was suddenly struck down by cancer and died at the age of 58.

Alligator entered the 21st Century with a bang, introducing new blues stars Shemekia Copeland and Michael Burks, signing established or emerging artists like Marcia Ball, Rusty Zinn and the Holmes Brothers, and producing new albums for the label's contract artists (Koko Taylor's most recent release, Royal Blue, is one of the finest of her long career). Bruce Iglauer continues to stay busy in the studio and always keeps an ever-vigilant eye open for new opportunities to take the label and its artists into previously unconquered territories.

Now, before you spin these two discs  one featuring live recordings and the other choice studio cuts from the Alligator catalog  take a good look at the lineup here and give yourself a moment to marvel at the breadth and depth of blues artistry represented on this 30th Anniversary Collection. Three decades following its most humble beginnings, Alligator Records has grown into a mighty powerhouse of contemporary roots music, and the company promises to keep growing without a let-up in sight. Let's offer our thanks and appreciation, because that's definitely an achievement to be proud of.



Detroit/Ann Arbor/Detroit
May 28-June 7, 2001/
New Orleans, June 19-20, 2001


 John Sinclair is editor of Blues Access magazine and host of the Blues & Roots show on WWOZ in New Orleans. He met Bruce Iglauer when Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers performed at the 1972 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, an event which Sinclair served as co-producer and Creative Director.


(c) 2001, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Sat, 31 Dec 2005 08:13:22 +0000 http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/511-hastings-street-grease-volume-2.html http://localhost/backup/liner-notes/83-blues/511-hastings-street-grease-volume-2.html
MOTOR CITY BLUES THROUGH THE AGES

By John Sinclair


Except for a couple of raggedy blocks straggling south from East Grand Boulevard, Detroit's Hastings Street is gone now. The Motor City's major African-American entertainment thoroughfare was gouged out in the late 1950s to make way for the Walter P. Chrysler Freeway, a federally-subsidized fast track laid down to facilitate the flight of the city's white population to the northeastern suburbs of Hazel Park, Warren, Ferndale, Royal Oak, Madison Heights and points north.

But for 20 years before that Hastings Street swung all the way from Paradise Valley downtown for 50 or 60 blocks north. The legend of Hastings Street was perhaps best told in a 1948 recording by The Detroit Count, a rough barrelhouse pianist who immortalized that pulsating scene by enumerating the many theatres, lounges, bars and rude nightspots which thrived along the length of the stroll in his two-part 78 rpm single on JVB Records titled "Hastings Street Opera."

Then there was the man they called the Mayor of Hastings Street, a dapper, diminuitive gentleman named Sunnie Wilson who painted a vivid portrait of Detroit in the 30s, 40s and 50s in his 1997 autobiography, TOAST OF THE TOWN, written with John Cohassey and published by Detroit's Wayne State University Press. Wilson was an intimate of the great Joe Louis and the popular proprietor of nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels serving African-American citizens in the racially segregated near east side neighborhood between Woodard Avenue and Hastings Street. He saw and heard it all, and his account is a valuable addition to the small body of literature which examines the city's history.

In its prime years Hastings Street throbbed with music, from the elemental blues of John Lee Hooker, Eddie Kirkland, Eddie Burns, Boogie Woogie Red, and Washboard Willie & His Super Suds of Rhythm to the swinging jazz of the Teddy Wilson Trio (with drummer J.C. Heard), Maurice King & His Wolverines (with vocalist LaVerne "Bea" Baker), Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams, T.J. Fowler, Todd Rhodes & His Toddlers, and the Matthew Rucker Orchestra.

Jazz stars like Charlie Parker, Billie Holliday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, and Cootie Williams played the Forest Club or the Flame Showbar as well as the Paradise Theatre on Woodward Avenue, sharing the stage with rhythm & blues recording stars like Dinah Washington, Wynonie Harris, Amos Milburn, B.B. King, and T-Bone Walker. Sonny Boy Williamson even spent a few months in Detroit in the earky 50s, playing with Calvin Frazier and Baby Boy Warren and providing inspiration to a young Aaron Willis, who gained national recognition some 15 years later as Little Sonny, "New King of the Blues Harmonica."

As Hastings Street began to disappear, a whole new generation of singers and musicians who grew up in or around the immediate vicinity emerged to extend its influence across the world, from Jackie Wilson, Andre Williams, Little Willie John, and Hank Ballard & The Midnighters in the 50s to the Motown Records stars who put Detroit on the map in the 60s: The Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles.

Aretha Franklin's father, the Reverend C.L. Franklin, pastored the New Bethel Baptist Church on Hastings, where his sermons were recorded by Joe Von Battles and leased to Chess Records in Chicago. Aretha's first recordings were made there when she was 14 years old, and Joe's Hastings Street record store and JVB imprint were also home to bluesmen from One-String Sam, Detroit Count, and Will Hairston to fledgling guitarist Johnnie Bassett, one of the leaders of Detroit's blues renaissance of the 1990s.

After Hastings Street disappeared, the Motor City blues scene dwindled to a handful of bars in rough neighborhoods where stalwarts like Little Sonny, Washboard Willie, Boogie Woogie Red, and Little Mac Collins & the Partymakers continued to entertain their friends and patrons well outside the mainstream of modern entertainment. In the early 70s Little Sonny had a shot at blues stardom via several fine albums for Stax Records  Enterprise imprint; a wild collection of Motor City blues artists was spotlighted at the 1973 Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival; and bluesman Bobo Jenkins and deejay/entrepeneur Famous Coachman established a series of free Detroit Blues Festivals, a Detroit Blues Society, and a weekly blues radio program on WDET-FM, but these were at best shots in the darkness of American life in the 70s.

More than a decade would elapse before a new crop of Detroit bluesmen would emerge from the gloom of the city's post-industrial landscape. The advent of the 1990s brought to light well-seasoned veterans like Eddie Burns, Louis Mr. Bo  Collins, and Sir Mack Rice, whose music was documented by a fledgling little record label in Toledo called Blue Suit Records. Another intrepid local label, Blues Factory Records, issued intriguing albums featuring previously unrecorded Motor City bluesmen like the Butler Twins, Willie D. Warren, Harmonica Shah, Uncle Jessie White, and Johnny Yard Dog  Jones (who went on to make an excellent CD, Ain t Gonna Worry,  for Chicago's Earwig label and won the city's first Handy Award in the process).

Now guitarist Johnnie Bassett, who got his start on Hastings Street, is issuing albums on a variety of labels and touring the world to wide acclaim. Vocalists Alberta Adams and Joe Weaver, fellow Hastings Street survivors, are following closely in Johnnie's footsteps, and blues from Detroit is beginning to be heard wherever music lovers congregate.

One of the most hopeful documents of the turn-of-the-century Motor City blues scene was issued earlier this year by John Rockwood and Bob Seeman of Blue Suit Records, which continues to lead the way in providing an outlet for what's happening today. Hastings Street Grease: Detroit Blues Is Alive, Volume One  presented music by eight vital modern bluesmen with deep roots in the Hastings Street era, including Eddie Kirkland, Piano Fats, Eddie Burns, Willie D. Warren, Harmonica Shah, Emmanuel Young and Leon Horner. On Hastings Street Revisited  (Part 1) Detroit Piano Fats shares his memories of the old stomping grounds with Harmonica Shah, and Kirkland looks back in sorrow on I Walk Down Hastings Street. 

Yet the raw energy and drive of the Detroit blues remains intact throughout, as fresh and exciting as ever, almost as if the musicians had come straight to the recording studio from their gigs at some of the little joints on Hastings. There's nothing of nostalgia here, nor the hokey kind of tribute album  ambience that's so popular with the big-label blues producers of today. This is the low-down Detroit blues at its most elemental, and it's as precise and effective as a JVB 78.

Now Blue Suit brings forth Detroit Blues Is Alive, Volume 2, a second generous helping of modern-day Motor City sounds gathered from the same relaxed, sympathetic sessions that produced the first Hastings Street Grease collection. Piano Fats takes Harmonica Shah way back in the day on Hastings Street Revisited  (Part 2) and goes Strolling Through Paradise Valley,  the downtown entertainment mecca from which the music spread north along Hastings.

Emmannuel Young and Leon Horner pay tribute to Detroit blues giant John Lee Hooker with I m in the Mood  and Boogie Chillen,  respectively, while Harmonica Shah salutes Jimmy Reed on Have Mercy, Mr. Reed  and contributes the chilling Motor City anthem Bring Me My Shotgun.  Willie D. Warren adds a new dimension to the Memphis Slim favorite simply by pointing out that Everyday We Have The Blues  and then reveals What Goes On in the Dark  with a special dedication to Shah.

Eddie Kirkland, the Hastings Street bluesman who began his career 50 years ago backing up John Lee Hooker, continues his contemporary resurgence with a pair of strong tracks in Going Back to the Backwoods  and the ominous There's Got To Be Some Changes Made.  Eddie Burns is in typically fine form on a live treatment of When I Get Drunk,  the dynamic Griswold brothers, Art & Roman, of Toledo, Ohio, romp and stomp on a great live cut titled Daddy, Daddy,  and the venerable Uncle Jessie White's distinctive approach is nicely showcased on the classic Bad Luck Is Falling. 

Hastings Street may have been laid to rest lo these 40 years ago, but its sound and spirit live on in the performances recorded here and in the music of the Detroit bluesmen who have managed to survive the cruel vicissitudes of time and social deterioration to keep on moving forward, all the way into the 21st century. That's definitely something Detroit can be proud of, anbd it's all right here on this compact disc. Put on your bibs and tuckers, ladies and g s, and dig into these musical ham hocks and chitlins cooked to funky perfection with plenty of that old-time Hastings Street Grease.



New Orleans
July 2, 1999


(c) 1999, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.


]]> johnsinclair001@hotmail.com (John) Blues Sat, 31 Dec 2005 06:02:10 +0000