The birth and beauty of boogie guitar

"Fantastic, as usual. U always seem 2 write about bands I am interested in, with great links & writing style! :-)"

Bev Wills@CoreCritical, Miami, USA and Leeds, UK, 27 November 2013

BLUESMUSE43
There’s been a fair share of boogie woogie piano in this blog lately, including a rare clip featuring Jools Holland in his younger days banging the ivories with an equally young Dr. John. Just in case you didn’t know, Jools’ BBC TV show, “Later … With Jools Holland”, has become a contemporary music institution, enjoying millions of viewers worldwide, and is highly recommended. The world’s best bands and solo artists regularly appear live and I’ve recently noticed a number of guest artists have started to call it the best music show in the world. Jools, an exceptional pianist, makes a point of playing along with many of his guests, very often in the boogie woogie style. A recent example of the show’s stellar line-ups was Paul McCartney, the Arctic Monkeys and blues guitarist/singer Gary Clarke Jnr. amongst others, all on the same show.

Canned Heat with lead singer, Bob 'The Bear' Hite, centre

However, as much as I enjoy boogie piano, I love boogie guitar better – preferably nice and fuzzy in the style of ZZ Top. Boogie guitar, to me, seemed the heartbeat of the blues when growing up and spending my pocket money on obscure blues records. Indeed, the basic two-string boogie in E, playing A and D-strings on second and fourth frets, drives many rock & roll songs, not just blues.

On the cusp of 1967/1968, bluesy, brilliant electric guitar boogie struck mainstream Britain for the very first time, in the shape of Canned Heat’s ‘Fried Hockey Boogie’ from their ‘Boogie With Canned Heat’ LP. If you don’t know it, the track was over 11 minutes long and attributed to bass player Larry Taylor, although it borrowed heavily from John Lee Hooker’s

The great John Lee Hooker

1949 ‘Boogie Chillen’ riff. If you’ve never heard Fried Hockey Boogie’, here’s a link to a seven minute version on YouTube that’s well worth a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykKF2ZtyWXU

Blaring out of shops, juke boxes, radios and discotheques (what we called dance clubs before the disco craze soiled the disco’s reputation forever), Canned Heat’s boogie made me think all my Christmases had come at once. (Talking of Christmas, have a happy one for 2013, by the way. And, if in the UK, don’t forget the quest to put AC/DC’s Highway to Hell on top of Britain’s Christmas pop chart this year – see links on previous post.)

The 60s ended on a boogie high with America’s Norman Greenbaum’s fabulous fuzzy guitar boogie, Spirit In The Sky, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZQxH_8raCIreleased in late 1969. John Lennon loved it saying he always preferred simple rock and nothing else. So did many others. The song topped charts around the world in 1969 and 1970 selling over two million copies.

In Britain, in March 1970, Status Quo had the first of many boogie rock & roll guitar hits with ‘Down The Dustpipe’. Two years earlier, Quo had had a big hit in the UK and USA with their unusual

Kings of British guitar boogie: Status Quo

‘progressive’-style, or what’s now called ‘bubblegum psychedelia’, ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’. For posterity’s sake and the enlightenment of Quo fans who have never seen it, here’s the link:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UusT9edo-0E

Status Quo have since had 60 hits in Britain since Down The Dustpipe in 1970, most of them boogie guitar rock, more than any other rock band. Surprisingly, ‘Quo’ never again broke into the U.S. charts after that uncharacteristic 1968 Matchstick Men hit, not even with all those boogie records. Then again, taking UK boogie to the USA, the actual home of boogie, smacks of taking coal to Newcastle.

Now the boogie guitar craze was on in earnest. Another former English progressive rock combo, Tyrannosaurus Rex, shortened its name to T. Rex, combined boogie guitar with glam rock and released ‘Ride A White Swan’ in October 1970, which hit number two on the UK Top Ten. I remember the British DJ, John Peel, was supposed to have wept when he heard T. Rex had finally made the charts, such was his support for them. T. Rex went on to have a long run of chart hits, many of them boogie guitar-driven, and were one of the few British glam rock acts to make it big in the USA.

Boogie rock hit its peak in the mid-70s. Then the world of music seemed to go mad when the description ‘boogie’ seemed to be hi-jacked by the disco and dance crazes. Everyone was saying, yes, sir, they could boogie. There were boogie nights. The Jacksons blamed it on the boogie. There were boogie men. Even ABBA mentioned the boogie. Yet none of this dance music resembled anything like genuine boogie.

Who else could this be but ZZ Top?

Sanity was restored in 1984 when ZZ Top stormed the world’s charts with their rollicking boogie guitar-style ‘Legs’ even though, apparently, most of the track was done on a synthesiser. And even Legs had a dance-mix version that made the dance charts.

But never mind, boogie had been reclaimed by two spinning furry guitars and ZZ Top have been masters of the boogie guitar ever since.

All this is a (very) roundabout way of allowing me to mention the very first boogie guitar players who included blues legends Lead Belly and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Born in the Louisiana village of Mooringsport in1888, Lead Belly became one of the first American performers known to incorporate boogie into his guitar playing. Lead Belly once said he adapted a boogie rhythm to the guitar after first hearing boogie-woogie piano’s rolling bass in north-east Texas,

The earliest known boogie guitar player. The legend that was Lead Belly.

around 1899. “Boogie-woogie was known as barrelhouse in those days,” Lead Belly is recorded as saying. Other reports have Lead Belly saying he got the idea to incorporate walking bass piano-style boogie into his guitar playing after seeing an anonymous barrelhouse player called Pinetop (not Pinetop Smith or Pinetop Perkins) in Fannin Street in downtown Shreveport, Louisiana, also around 1899. It’s also said that Lead Belly, 32, taught the younger Lemon Jefferson, aged 17, boogie guitar when they played together in Dallas, Texas around 1910. Lead Belly called his boogie guitar playing, ‘booga-rooga’. All this and much more can be found in the Ebook, How Blues Evolved.Going for a song on the links below.

How Blues Evolved in the UK is on the following link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital- text&field-keywords=how+blues+evolved+volume+one
In the USA, please follow this link:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=how+blues+evolved

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Celebrate 40 years of AC/DC. Help make ‘Highway To Hell’ the UK's Christmas No. 1

" Love that blog! :-) AC/DC are one of the best bands to work for too. 
They definitely get my vote over X-factor!"
Bev Wills (@CoreCritical), Miami, USA and Leeds, UK, November 21, 2013.
 
If you’re reading this in the States, let me explain. The song topping the charts on Christmas Day is a big deal in the UK but, due to all this recent TV talent show nonsense, Britain’s suffered some pretty dud number ones lately. As an antidote to this, a campaign has been launched to make AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’ number one for Xmas 2013, rather than the usual contender. This, of course, is whoever wins the UK’s X-Factor this year, their single traditionally due for release just before Christmas. For UK readers wanting to help AC/DC prevail over X-Factor, here’s the link:

 https://www.facebook.com/acdcxmas

Coincidentally, AC/DC were formed in November 1973 in Sydney, Australia, exactly 40 years ago

AC/DC: Cliff left, Angus right.

this month. As coincidence will have it, November 1973 is when I, too, first arrived in Australia. The following August I was in Melbourne and Lou Reed was in town. Since I’d recently been involved in London, if only in a small way, in all the hoopla spinning off David Bowie’s involvement with Mott the Hoople, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, I thought it only fitting I should go and see Lou. Mott the Hoople and Mr. Pop had both been produced by Mr. Bowie on the record label I worked for; and Lou’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, also produced by David Bowie, had recently stormed the world’s charts.

So to Melbourne’s Festival Hall, on a cold, wet winter night in the southern hemisphere. On came Lou’s support act, featuring a crazed schoolboy in shorts, school cap with little satchel on back, playing unbelievable electric rock & roll guitar. This, of course, was a youthful Angus Young and the band were AC/DC; and back then, Angus really did look like a demented little schoolboy on speed, rather than the demented old geezer clad in school uniform who's still the outfit’s focal point. AC/DC in 1973, were a lot looser than they were to become, but rocked like crazy and had the joint jumping. Unknown to the audience, AC/DC’s then lead singer, Dave Evans, was about to get the sack, to be replaced by Bon Scott, so this was one of Evans’ last ever performances for AC/DC. 
And, believe it or not, not so long after Bonn Scott joined AC/DC, I was standing next to four skinny little guys having beers at the bar in The Royal Standard pub in North Melbourne, one of whom was covered in tatts. This was Bon Scott, of course, whose memory is now honoured with a statue in Freemantle, West Australia, where he grew up. People are also currently raising money for a statue of the late lead singer to stand in the town square in Kirriemuir in Scotland, where Bon was born.
Little did I know then, that AC/DC's bassist, too, would be sacked in 1977 and replaced by Cliff Williams, someone I had known well in London when I did everything possible to get press coverage for his band, a country-oriented rock band called Home. In those days, Cliff was well known for playing his bass with a cello bow, a far cry from his bass lines with Acca Dacca, as the band’s known in Australia. I must have taken rock journalists to see Home over a hundred times.

In truth, I think AC/DC blew Lou Reed totally off stage that night. Lou was in the middle of his “fuck you” phase, uncommunicative with the audience, unenthusiastic and, to put it bluntly, fucking boring. Even Walk On The Wild Side and Sweet Jane lacked the expected panache.

So here we are nearly 40 years later. Lou Reed has just passed on aged 71 and so has Bon Scott. AC/DC are now one of the greatest hard rock or blues rock bands the world has ever known, selling well over 200 million albums.

But they need to sell a few more to stop the manufactured X-Factor winner hogging the UK’s Christmas Number One yet again. If you fancy helping, here’s that link again:

https://www.facebook.com/acdcxmas

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Mixed musical duos and first blues vocals ever published.

"Love your work! Hope you can check out our music video: http://youtu.be/p7p6HjPK3BI 
Eva Plays Dead (@EvaPlaysDead), Derby, England, November 11, 2013.

"The historical references in the 1st Blues book are great. Had no idea about most of it."
 nora j mckiddie (@mckiddie_j), Michigan, USA, November 6, 2013.

BluesMuse42. More by accident than design, the last two posts featured a fair share of duets. Last time we had a young Jules Holland and (quite) youthful Dr. John playing a barrelhouse duet in the fashion of those great 40s boogie woogie duets,

Albert Ammons (1907-1949) & Pete Johnson (1904-1967)

by Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, amongst others. 

In the post before that, Ella FitzGerald sang about cocaine with the Chic Webb Orchestra; and Lonnie Johnson and Victoria Spivey featured on Dope Head Blues. Links to all three clips are in the preceding posts should you be interested.

It was the 1927 song by Lonnie and Victoria, in particular, that got me thinking: why do so few men and women duet these days? For some strange reason, one of the rarest acts in popular music now seems to be the male and female double act. Apart from Sweden’s Roxette, I can’t think of any other man/woman duo to hit the international big time since The Eurythmics.

Has it always been like this? There was Ike and Tina Turner and Sonny & Cher in the 1960s, the

A classic Ike & Tina Turner shot

Carpenters in the 1970s and, perhaps, Ashford & Simpson through the 60s, 70s and 80s, although A&S were more songwriters for other artists than full time performers. Of course we’ve had one off duets like Dolly and Kenny, Diana and Lionel, etc. but since they were never permanent acts, they can’t count.

Compared to other musical combinations, the mixed twosome doesn’t come along that often.

Yet the first blues ever published with vocals was the mainstay of one of the great black mixed double acts of the early twentieth century: Baby Seals and Baby Fisher. 

The first blues vocals ever published

The male of the duo was the irrepressible H. Franklin ‘Baby’ Seals from Mobile, Alabama, and Baby Fisher was Miss Floyd Fisher, a female entertainer also known as ‘The Doll of Memphis.

And even back then, an African-American newspaper report referred to a pianist as the “cat on the piano”.

In 1909, in Texas, Seals and Fisher teamed up in Texas in 1909, performing together as that ‘Klassey, Kooney, Komedy pair’. By 1911, they had cracked the notoriously difficult black theatres of New

First blues vocal published: in 1912

York and Chicago and a year later, Baby Seals had his great blues publishing hit, Baby Seal’s Blues’. Released in August 1912, this was a significant milestone in blues history being the second blues ever published, the first published blues featuring vocals and the first published blues by a black composer. The first blues ever published, incidentally, was the instrumental Dallas Blues, released in Oklahoma City in March 1912 by the prodigy of German immigrants, Hart Wand. You might have heard of blues published before then but they were songs with blues in the titles published as ragtimes. (You can find much more about this in the second volume of How Blues Evolved, available on Amazon.) Dallas Blues is generally considered the first tune written and published as an actual blues.

But back to the second blues ever published. Between1912 and 1914, Baby Seal’s Blues’ was the biggest thing on the South’s black vaudeville circuit. Tellingly, the sheet music instructed the musicians to play the tune very slowly, just as Hart Wand’s sheet music had six months’ earlier.

   Black vaudeville artists who performed Baby Seal’s Blues on stage around 1913 included mixed double act Daddy Jenkins and Little Creole Pet with Pet’s fellow Creole, Jelly Roll Morton, backing them on piano. For your interest, the lyrics of Baby Seal’s Blues are printed here. It’s interesting to see the first line of the first blues published goes, “Woke up this morning, ‘bout half part four, someone knocking on my door,” I think we’ve all heard similar lyrics to that countless times over the years.

Baby Seals Blues (1912)
Words and music by Baby F. Seals
Arranged by Artie Matthews

Woke up this morning 'bout half past four, somebody knocking at my door
I went out to see what it was about, they told me my honey gal was gone
I said, Bub that's bad news, so sing for me them blues
(She) Honey baby, mama do, she do, she double-do love you

(Spoken: YEAH HOO)
I love you baby don't care what you do

(Spoken: SUEY)
(He) Oh sing’em sing’em sing them blues, 'cos they cert'ly sound good to me

I got the blues, can't be satisfied today, I got’em bad, want to lay down and die
I've been in love these last three weeks, and it cert'ly is a misery
There ain't but one thing I wish was right, I wish my honey babe was here tonight
(She) Honey babe, mama's coming back to you
(He) Come on babe, oh sing 'em, sing 'em, sing them blues

'Cause they cert'ly sound good to me
Honey babe, pops ain't mad with you today,

 I love you brown skin, don't care what you do
Oh my baby told me just yesterday, she'd take her trunk and move away
I said, hon, I know what it is about. I know babe you just want to put me out
Now babe I'll go insane, oh listen while I sing
(She) Honey baby, mama do she do she double do love you

(Spoken: YEAH HOO)

I Love you ba-a-be, don't care what you do

(Spoken: SUEY)
(He) Oh sing 'em, sing 'em, sing them blues, 'cause they certainly sound good to me
I've been in love these last three weeks, and it cert'ly is a misery
There ain't but one thing I wish was right, I wish my honey babe was here tonight
(She) Honey babe, mama's coming back to you
(He) Come on babe, oh sing 'em, sing 'em, sing them blues
'Cause they certainly sound good to me.”

Baby Seals’ first publishing success, incidentally, was a ragtime number about a dice game called Shake, Rattle and Roll, released in 1910. Title sound familiar?

Also touring America were another mixed double act, Gertrude Pridgett and Will Rainey better

Rainey & Rainey: Assassinators of the Blues

known as Ma and Pa Rainey. The daughter of two African-American minstrel troupers, 14-year-old Gertrude from Columbus, Georgia, made her debut as a singer and dancer with the Bunch of Blackberries review around 1900. At 18, she met and married the dancer, singer and comedian, Will Rainey, and they went on the road as Ma and Pa Rainey. Gertrude said she first heard what is now called blues in Missouri around 1902, when a girl started singing in a strange way about a man who had left her. The song was so haunting that Ma used it in her act with Pa in their Rabbit Foot Minstrels review with great success. A young star of the future was also in Ma’s troupe learning the ropes as a dancer: Bessie Smith. From 1914, Gertrude and Will toured as Rainey and Rainey, Assassinators of the Blues. What a great name!

Male and Females continued to tour together during the 1920s, namely Butterbeans and Susie and the first blues guitarist ever recorded, Sylvester Weaver, with vocalist Sarah Martin. See 14 May archive, “From Russia (and Ukraine) With Love”. Now, there was a mixed double act I'd really like to have seen.

How Blues Evolved in the UK is on the following link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital- text&field-keywords=how+blues+evolved+volume+one
In the USA, please follow this link:http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=how+blues+evolved

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