Category: Uncategorized

Janiva Magness – Blues Center Interview #8

Janiva Magness traces her career and New Orleans inspirations in the Blues Center interview with Ric Stewart. She gets started as an engineer, then a background singer for soulman Herman Jones. Later she cuts three attention grabbing releases for Alligator. She talks country and blues sources Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Tex Ritter and Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell. With powerful stage performances of “Long As I Can See The Light” “Moth to a Flame” and more.

Billy Vera – Blues Center Interview #7

Singer-Actor-Songwriter-Bandleader-Music Historian Billy Vera is the guest for Blues Center Interview #7. With a star on the Hollywood walk of fame right outside the Capitol Records building lauding him mid-career, he has blazed a continual path across the related fields of the entertainment business. His 2017 documentary From Harlem to Hollywood describes his early songwriting success for Ricky Nelson with “Mean Old World” which appeared on the Ozzie and Harriet Show to his #1 hits for Dolly Parton, and then for himself with “At This Moment” in 1987.

His soul duo with Judy Clay, signed to Atlantic and worked with super producer Jerry Wexler to cut wrote “Storybook Children” in 1967. The pairing created a racially integrated act at a time of great tension and rose to fame at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Some of his other exploits, over 300 liner notes and reissue production credits. He won the Grammy for his liner notes to Singular Genius: The Complete ABC Singles of Ray Charles in 2013.

In this interview he discusses Specialty Records and its remarkable run of hits with Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Larry Williams and more. He also discusses the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant. A fascinating journey across the decades.

 

Walter “Wolfman” Washington: Blues from New Orleans

Ahead of his India debut, the American bluesman looks back on his eventful career.

Walter “Wolfman” Washington is a musician of unparalleled versatility. The American blues vocalist-guitarist’s roots might be in the blues—he’s been performing it for over half a century—but in the past three decades, he has also whipped up some wholesome funk and R&B. It can be heard best on his 1997 record, Blue Moon Risin’.

It is but only natural for Washington to glide between different styles of music effortlessly—he grew up in New Orleans within a family that breathed music. “It was all around me. My whole family was involved in music, including two of my uncles, [the veteran guitarists] Guitar Slim [Eddie Jones] and Lightnin’ Slim [Otis Verries Hicks].”

Next month, Washington will perform for the first time in India, at the Mahindra Blues Festival. “We want to share some of our special brand of New Orleans music with the people,” says the 74-year-old, who started his career as a teenager, playing with pop and R&B singer Lee Dorsey’s group.

Read the full story at: http://rollingstoneindia.com/walter-wolfman-washington-blues-from-new-orleans/

 

New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Fest 2018

The latest Blues Center video offers a cigar box guitar primer. It covers the 2018 New Orleans Cigar Box Festival with an interview of founder Collins Kirby and live clips from Samantha Fish, Little Freddie King, Steve Arvey, April Mae & The June Bugs and Ivor Simpson Kennedy. Find out more about Bo Diddley, the premiere cigar box player of all time. Little Freddie and Bo Diddley are both from McComb, MS.

Blues Center Trailer – Peter Case talks Bruce Springsteen

Introducing the Blues Center! Ric Stewart previews the channel and BCI #9 with Peter Case. Bruce Springsteen praised Peter Case’s work in Rolling Stone Magazine and took the time to meet him as he toured New Jersey. Ric interviewed Peter in 1996 and includes some of that footage to illustrate an hilarious story about meeting the Boss.

This video made possible in part by a Community Partnership grant from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation.

The Eddie Hinton Story – Will a troubled Southern R&B genius finally get his due?

He should have been a superstar along the lines of Eric Clapton. Or John Mayer. Someone like that. As gifted as he was as a soul singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer, Hinton should have been rich and famous instead of a tragic cult hero who died broke and broken, known mostly only to hardcore Southern R&B obsessives, a man whose best recordings aren’t even in print right now.

But that’s how the hand of fate works sometimes.

After moving to Muscle Shoals, Hinton played guitar on Staple Singers, Boz Scaggs, Waylon Jennings, Mavis Staples, Toots Hibbert and Jimmy Cliff records. His playing is featured prominently on the Aretha Franklin LP “This Girl’s in Love with You.” And “3614 Jackson Highway,” the underrated covers album Cher made at Muscle Shoals Sound, bearing that Sheffield studio’s now famous address.

 

Read the full story at: http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/01/eddie_hinton.html