This is an up-tempo R&B record from 1951, produced in Memphis, TN by Sam Phillips, the man who would three years later produce and release, on his own Sun label, the first records of Elvis Presley. Ike Turner and his band traveled by car from Clarksdale, MS to Memphis for the record date with Phillips. […]
Les Paul, inducted into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the year 1988. Inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame in the year 2005. Died at the age of 94 in the year 2009. Rock on! Mike
Who was Paul Bigsby? Who was Les Paul? Who was Leo Fender? Paul Bigsby was an American inventor who was a pioneer of the solid body electric guitar. He built such a guitar for singer, songwriter and guitarist Merle Travis in 1948. This instrument made brand new guitar sounds, with more volume, and with no […]
There is really no need for very much commentary here. Master musician, sax player, singer, songwriter, bandleader, record seller and entertainer Louis Jordan has all the elements assembled and put to work in this historic record. Louis Jordan was born on July 8, 1908 in Brinkley, Arkansas. His father was a music teacher, bandleader and […]
We turn now to two very important records in the late ‘40s-early ‘50s gestation period leading to the birth of Rock & Roll Music in the mid-‘50s. Chicken Shack Boogie was written and recorded by Amos Milburn, R&B/Jump Blues singer, self-taught piano player, and songwriter. Milburn was born in Houston, Texas on April 1, 1927. […]
Hank Williams, born in Butler County, Alabama on September 17, 1923, singer, songwriter and musician. Hank was given a guitar at about 10 years of age. He was taught how to play the chords, progressions, and bass lines and turns in Blues and Folk Music on his guitar by Rufus Payne, an African American Blues […]
Question: Who was Arnold Shultz? I’ll tell you the answer directly. First, some information about the attached mp3 of a 78 rpm record released by Columbia in 1946, featuring Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys. It is an up-tempo Blues number with a steady boogie rhythm. You will notice that the bass fiddle player […]
Boogie-Woogie is a piano rhythm style in 4/4 or common time which features a flowing bass line of eighth notes. This style was developed around the turn of the 20th century by African American piano players in the dance halls of northeast and southeast Texas. In those early days it was called “Fast Western” rhythm. […]
This old 78 rpm record, released in 1929, contains a roomful of guitar licks and rhythm played by two jazz guitarists, one black (Lonnie Johnson), the other white (Eddie Lang), but appearing as a black delta bluesman, “Blind Willie Dunn”. The thing to notice is that although this record contains a bunch of speeded up […]
Dear Friends, I started to roll this project around in my feeble mind after watching the recent broadcast of the Ken Burns history of Country Music documentary. I thought that they got some things wrong, but many things I believe they got right. One of those things I thought they got right was that the […]
