Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, on Tuesday, Johnny Otis, great L.A. area r&b band leader, died having just reached 90.  Here’s his NY Times obit.

Odd coincidence:  James’ [...]]]> Etta James has died at 73; her NY Times obit is already up.  Here’s Etta James (with Dr. John) performing “I’d Rather Go Blind.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, on Tuesday, Johnny Otis, great L.A. area r&b band leader, died having just reached 90.  Here’s his NY Times obit.

Odd coincidence:  James’ first recording session, where she recorded “Roll With Me Henry” at age 15, was arranged by Johnny Otis.   The song went to number 2 on the r&b charts, and, re-recorded by a white singer as “Dance With Me, Henry,” to number one on the pop charts, with James sharing songwriter royalties with Otis and Hank Ballard.

Here Otis is from his 50s tv show, performing “Willie and The Hand Jive.”  You get to see 3 Tons of Joy doing the hand jive, and it closes with a bit of Lionel Hampton on vibes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The centenary of Guthrie’s birth is next year, and Oklahoma has only just begun to celebrate his legacy.  The George Kaiser Foundation is buying Guthrie’s papers from his daughter Nora and creating a center in Tulsa devoted to his legacy.  Meanwhile, the town where he was born, Okemah, finally got around to celebrating him [...]]]>

The centenary of Guthrie’s birth is next year, and Oklahoma has only just begun to celebrate his legacy.  The George Kaiser Foundation is buying Guthrie’s papers from his daughter Nora and creating a center in Tulsa devoted to his legacy.  Meanwhile, the town where he was born, Okemah, finally got around to celebrating him with a festival in 2006.

The New York Times story about this notes that Guthrie’s sister, Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon (pictured above), is still alive, with “a persistent smile and a sharp wit” at 90, who describes him. Part of it, about his view of his hometown, fits the Woody of legend:  ”“He didn’t get attached to anything,” she said. “Everywhere was his home.”

Thacker Mountain Radio’s Christmas show this year was excellent, both for music (BIll Perry, Effie Burt, the return of Duff Durrough) and readings (Theresa Starkey, Richard Howorth, Jack Pendarvis).  A full two hour version will be broadcast in Oxford tomorrow and Saturday afternoon from 3 to 5, and then an hour version will [...]]]>

Thacker Mountain Radio’s Christmas show this year was excellent, both for music (BIll Perry, Effie Burt, the return of Duff Durrough) and readings (Theresa Starkey, Richard Howorth, Jack Pendarvis).  A full two hour version will be broadcast in Oxford tomorrow and Saturday afternoon from 3 to 5, and then an hour version will be broadcast statewide and livestreamed to the internet on Mississippi Public Broadcasting at 7:00 on Saturday.

Before Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Monroe was a brother act, with his brother Charlie. Music writer and music poster collector Pete Howard has acquired the above poster from an appearance by the Monroe Brothers.

Fans of 50s or 60s rock, r&B, and soul will really want to check out Pete’s [...]]]>

Before Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Monroe was a brother act, with his brother Charlie. Music writer and music poster collector Pete Howard has acquired the above poster from an appearance by the Monroe Brothers.

Fans of 50s or 60s rock, r&B, and soul will really want to check out Pete’s site of music posters. I would probably give a minor digit (a small toe?) to have seen a soul revue show with Otis Redding, James Carr, the Bar-Kays, Percy Sledge, and Arthur Conley.

Chico can find his man Bruce when he was appearing as a band member on some of these posters.

Bill Tapia– who continued performing up until very recently– died at 103.  In the performance above, he’s just past 100, filmed in the  Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.  He was ukelele professional by aged 12, and was an important figure in Hawaiian music in the 1920s.   He [...]]]> Click here to view the embedded video.

Bill Tapia– who continued performing up until very recently– died at 103.  In the performance above, he’s just past 100, filmed in the  Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki.  He was ukelele professional by aged 12, and was an important figure in Hawaiian music in the 1920s.   He performed with folks like Louis Armstrong, and, among Hawaiian musicians, King Bennie Nawahi, Sol Hoopii, and Andy Iona.  From an obituary from Hawaii:

He was for years the only performer who could introduce a pop standard with the words “Here’s a song I learned during World War I.”

Born and raised in Liliha, Tapia bought his first ukulele in 1915 from famed ukulele maker Manuel Nunes for 75-cents (“He wanted $1.50 but it was all the money I had”). Three years later he was playing for American soldiers; in 1918 he came up with a unique arrangement of “Stars and Stripes Forever” that was copied and adapted by generations of Hawaiian musicians.

Tapia found more work playing banjo and guitar, and played those instruments for most of his professional career in Hawaii and then in California.

h/t MK Aldin.

Went to Domino Records on Bayou in the Treme in New Orleans today. Totally a shrine to vinyl: I got three 45s for Scott Barretta’s juke box (“Scratch My Back” by Slim Harpo, “Working on a Coal Mine” by Lee Dorsey, and “The Things I Used To Do” by Guitar Slim. My daughter [...]]]>

Went to Domino Records on Bayou in the Treme in New Orleans today. Totally a shrine to vinyl: I got three 45s for Scott Barretta’s juke box (“Scratch My Back” by Slim Harpo, “Working on a Coal Mine” by Lee Dorsey, and “The Things I Used To Do” by Guitar Slim. My daughter snatched away “I Pity The Fool” by Bobby Bland with a nice Duke label), all for like $2-3 each.  Joyce found and got an old Folkways compilation of piano music that Sam Charters put together.

The place is a shrine to old formats– vinyl, tapes, maybe even 8 tracks, new and used, but no digital anything to be found. A big speciality in Jamaican stuff but with a huge wealth of New Orleans, jazz, blues, punk, and so on. My brother Robert would have browsed all day.

It’s been profiled online as a Community Cornerstone (a project of a Tulane grad school class my daughter took this year and got to profile Dooky Chase):

“Domino Sound” is how some reggae lovers know Matt Knowles and Domino Sound Record Shack is the tangible mark of his evolution as a reggae DJ and vinyl collector and enthusiast. He has been sharing the rich listening experience of vinyl records with New Orleanians for 12 years, working at the Iron Rail, the lending library at the ARC, and performing and sharing music at the community living and performance space, Nowe Miasto. He has been looking for his own place to vend records and cassettes since before Hurricane Katrina and has long had his eye on the Afro-centric, cultural corridor along Bayou Road. “I don’t know any other street like it at all in New Orleans…the bricks, the angle, the Carribean feel,” Matt states, carefully expressing the “sweet” feel where his store is located.

The store itself has a simple charm with a parapet façade and side walls that taper dramatically from front to rear; the result is an intimate space for browsing through the built-in record bins. Domino Records opened in February of 2007 when Bayou Road still emanated the quieting effects of Katrina, but Matt’s commitment to sharing his music — literally by setting speakers out on Bayou Road and more figuratively by keeping his front door open and creating a welcoming ambience complete with a record listening station — helped reanimate this part of town. Matt was concerned his commitment to selling records might be “too frivolous” for New Orleanians in the wake of Katrina, but it turns out the city houses lots of old school and eclectic music lovers, many of them with serious record and tape collections to rebuild.

7:30 Rocket 88 8:30 The Minor Adjustments [...]]]> Duff Durrough, leader of the house band Yalabushwackers at Thacker Mountain Radio and former member of the Tangents, has been seriously ill in the hospital in Jackson (He’s home now). There will be a benefit for him Friday at Proud Larry’s in Oxford. On the schedule are:

7:30 Rocket 88
8:30 The Minor Adjustments
9:30 George McConnell and The Nonchalants
10:30 Kudzu Kings
11:30 Blue Mountain

This was tonight.  After playing a few, T Model mostly looked on with delight while Robert Bilbo Walker did the show.  A good time had by all.

There’s a very fine obit for Wade Mainer in the [...]]]>

“What we was playin’ in the ’30s was true country music — no electric instruments, no copyrights,” he once said. “Something’d happen and someone’d write a song about it — nobody owned it, nobody’d know who wrote it. The music just told a story.”

There’s a very fine obit for Wade Mainer in the Washington Post that ends with the quote above.  It describes Mainer playing for F.D. Roosevelt at the White House for “An Evening of American Folklore,” a concert set up by John  and Alan Lomax, and has a good description of what was innovative about Wade Mainer’s banjo style:

Mr. Mainer picked the banjo with his thumb and index finger — creating a softer and less-syncopated approach than the three-fingered style later popularized by Scruggs and Don Reno. At the same time, Mr. Mainer heralded a distinct change from the even-older flailing style known as clawhammer.