The Greatest Talent Sam Philips Discovered!
Still the greatest Slide Guitar player of all time!!
He used his electronic knowledge to tailor his guitar sound in his electrical radio repair shop on Hickory Street in Canton Mississippi way back in the 1950s.
He created a unique sound and style that many have tried to emulate!
But Elmore James remains the King of the Slide Guitar!!
In Search of Captain Beefheart Paperback
The sixties raged. I was young, crazy, full of hormones and wanting to snatch life by the balls. There was a life out there for the grabbing and it had to be wrestled into submission. There was a society full of boring amoral crap and a life to be had in the face of the boring, comforting vision of slow death on offer. Rock music vented all that passion. This book is a memoir of a life spent immersed in Rock Music. I was born in 1949 and so lived through the whole gamut of Rock. Rock music formed the background to momentous world events – the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, Iraq war, Watergate, the miners’ strike and Thatcher years, CND, the Green Movement, Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Women’s Liberation and the Cold War. I see this as the Rock Era. I was immersed in Rock music. It was fused into my personality. It informed me, transformed me and inspired me. My heroes were musicians. I am who I am because of them. Without Rock Music I would not have the same sensibilities, optimism or ideals. They woke me up! This tells that story.
In Search of Captain Beefheart: Amazon.co.uk: Goodwin, Opher: 9781502820457: Books
Some of the monuments and Markers from The Blues Trail in Mississippi (Plus a few) – Pt 2
Today’s Music to keep me IIiiNnnNSSSsAaAANNnnnEEe – Robert Johnson – King of the Delta Blues Singers.
I remember buying this album way back in 1965 when I was a lad of sixteen. From that first burst of guitar it blew me away.
Recorded back in the 1930s in a hotel room. The intensity is incredible. The guitar rings and is so crisp. The poetry is so full of imagery. The voice is haunting. Blew all the chart pop music to dust. This was real! Never looked back.
Twenty-five years old when he recorded these 29 songs (with 12 alternative takes). He was dead by the age of twenty-seven.
What he might have done!
Natchez Burning – The terrible fire in Natchez Mississippi that killed 209 people.
Travel and Photography. Howlin’ Wolf and Blues.
I had only heard about the terrible fire from the Howlin’ Wolf record which I first heard as a teenager. I never thought I would actually get to visit the site and see where the tragedy had happened. It was a song; then suddenly, it was real. I was actually standing at the site that had elicited that song. All that was left was a slab of concrete.
Here’s Howlin’ Wolf’s poignant song. Takes me back to my fourteen-year-old self.
Memphis Minnie – a hard-living blues woman with a big guitar.
Born Lizzie Douglas in 1897. She started out as a street busker on Beale Street supplementing her income as a sex worker. She was a hard-drinking, hard-living woman who could hold her own in a fight.
A fabulous performer. Her best-known tracks include Bumble Bee and Me and my Chauffeur – both full of sexual innuendo.
Finding her grave and marker wasn’t too difficult.
Discovering Charlie Patton’s Marker and Grave
The Mississippi Blues Trail – Rolling Fork – Birthplace of Muddy Waters.
I’d heard there was a monument to Muddy Waters in his birthplace. We stopped and I had a walk around. I was looking for a statue. There were some murals on a wall but that wasn’t it.
It was Sunday morning and the only people around were three guys in a gazebo sharing a bottle of whiskey in a brown bag. I wandered over. They looked like locals. I asked them if they knew where the monument to Muddy Waters was. One of them said ‘You’re standing in it, brother’.
Seems the gazebo was the monument. It had a plaque in front. I took a photo.
One of the other guys said: ‘What’s Muddy Waters ever done for us?’
I thought that was a little harsh as the guys were sitting in his gazebo enjoying a drink.
