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Lonnie Johnson - Like that of the blues itself, the birthdate of Alonzo "Lonnie" Johnson is subject to conjecture: it has been variously given as 1889, 1894, 1899, and 1900. We know he was born into a musical family in New Orleans and began playing in his father's string band when he was fourteen. Though he became a guitarist of such subtlety and drive that his rifts would be echoed by generations of blues as well as jazz guitarists: Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, T-Bone Walker and B.B. King.
The violin was his primary instrument in early years. (Johnson also played piano, passably well on record, and reportedly played a variety of stringed instruments in his youth.)
________ Big Joe Turner was assertively urban and, in his New York Cafe Society days, even urbane, but he loved earthy metaphors: "I'm like a Mississippi bullfrog, settin' on a hollow stump," he shouted in "Flip, Flop and Fly," a hit for him in 1955. "I like to keep 'em smiling," Turner said,and his down-home references were a strong part of his poetic humor.
________ T-Bone Walker was born in 1910 in Dallas, where he was destined to lead Lemon Jefferson and follow Huddie Ledbetter. Veteran L.A. bandleader Les Hite caught Walker's act and hired him in 1939. Hite's band had provided soundtracks for several films and boasted many stellar alumni prior to Walker, including Lionel Hampton, who was a drummer for Hite in the 1920s.
Some call it the land of sunshine, Some call it old Central Avenue, Some call it the land of sunshine, Some call it old Central Avenue, I call it a big ol' country town, Where the folks don't care what they do.
________ Otis Spann, a marvelous boogie-woogie and blues pianist and an essential player in Muddy Water's band, did not live past his fortieth year.
________ Big Maceo was one of the best of all boogie-woogie pianists. His career was cut short by a stroke.
________
Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett) was born in West Point, Mississippi, in 1910. When grown, he stood 6 feet 3 inches and tipped the scales at more than 270 pounds. There are sundry stories about the source of the name Howlin' Wolf, though the truth may be less important than the way Burnett came to embody the role implied by the name. Big, fearsome, solitary, and mysterious. Cancer claimed one of the Delta's greatest bluesmen in 1976. Howlin' Wolf was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a "forefather" in 1991.
Now I'm old and gray, Got no place to go, You got yourself a young stud, And you can't stand me no more.
________ Sonny Boy Williamson II was one of the certifiable "characters" of the blues. His eccentric, insinuating vocals and harp prowess were well-seasoned. So, too, was his wit and knack for spinning memorable tales, mostly about women. He knew one woman so cruel she put him out when it was "Nine below Zero," and another whose sexual feats brought "Eyesight to the Blind" and similar cures ("Every time she start to lovin', the deaf and dumb begin to talk").
________ Elmore James,an influential slide guitarist, made a huge hit with his electrified version of Robert Johnson's "Dust My Broom."
________ Bobby Bland (Robert Calvin Bland) grew up in Rosemark, Tennessee, but made it to Memphis about the same time as everyone else: 1947. Soon he was singing the blues at Palace Theater amateur shows and "hanging around Beale Street with a bunch of guys." The guys included Johnny Ace, Roscoe Gordon, and B.B. King, whose singing style Bland emulated.
Woh, it's my life, baby, Don't try to change my ways ... Well, if you want my loving, Don't make no graveyard plays.
________
Muddy Waters, one of the architects of Chicago's electric blues, turned a vast audience onto the blues in the postwar era.
Well, my mother told my father Just before, hmmm, I was born; "I got a boy child's comin', Gonna be, he's gonna be a rollin stone ..."
________ Tampa Red understood the advantages of a varied repertoire as well as that of a novelty gimmick like the "jazz horn" (kazoo) he blew on many of his records. He refused to be a relic and was among the first bluesmen to perform with electric guitar. His fluid bottleneck style fit well on the new instrument, and he used it on his influential recordings of "Black Angel Blues" (later "Sweet Little Angel"). "Love Her with a Feeling," "Crying Won't Help You," and 1940s "Anna Lou Blues," in which Tampa Red sang:
... I'm going to Louisiana, Just to get me a Hoodoo Hand; And I won't stop trying, Till I get you under my command.
________ Leroy Carr's many recordings were not only vastly influential but readily available, in contrast to performances of most of the period's country blues artists of the deep South. Sadly, Carr lived only to age thirty. Carr was born in Nashville in 1905, but spent most of his life in Indianapolis, where he established a reputation as the city's best blues pianist and singer.
________ Scrapper Blackwell, one of the most unusual guitar-playing blues practitioners of the 1920s, was a marvelous stylist and a magnificent artist in his own right as well as Leroy Carr's faithful partner.
Now people I'm gonna tell you, as near as I can, Now people I'm gonna tell you, as near as I can, About the death of Leroy Carr, he was my closest friend.
________ Charles Brown - The year of 1943 was the year that Charles Brown arrived in Los Angeles from Texas. He had a national hit within two years. Charles had what was known as "a gentler taste for the Blues."
________
Jimmy Reed - To this day, Jimmy Reed stands as the most successful down-home bluesman ever to "cross over" into the pop market. In 1960 and 1961, six consecutive Reed 45s, from "Baby What You Want Me to Do" through "Bright Lights Big City," hit both the Top 20 of the rhythm and blues charts and the Top 100 of the pop charts in Billboard magazine.
Jimmy Reed's songs entered the repertoire of rock (both American and British) and country and western; his blues also formed the core element of the "swamp blues" style of south Louisiana artists Lightnin' Slim, Slim Harpo, and others.
The Creators of Urban Blues ...
Bright lights, big city, gone to my baby's head -Jimmy Reed
W.C. Handy * Little Bill Gaither * Memphis Slim (Peter Chatman) * Big Bill Broonzy (William Lee Conley Broonzy) * Jelly Roll Morton * Blind Lemon Jefferson * Charley Patton * Lonnie Johnson * Dan Dixon (guitar) * Andrew Harris (bass) * De Lois Searcy * James Johnson * (banjo, Lonnies' Brother) Blind Willie Dunn * Bessie Smith * Clara Smith * Victoria Spivey * Eddie "Son" House * Willie Brown * Leroy Carr * Scrapper Blackwell * Tampa Red (Hudson Whittaker) * T-Bone Walker (Aaron Thibeaux Walker) * Bumble Bee Slim (Steel bodied National guitar) * Honey Hill * "Ma" Rainey * Thomas A. Dorsey * Robert Nighthawk (Robert Lee McCoy) * Johnnie Jones * Big Walter Horton * John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson * Doctor Clayton * Big Maceo Merriweather * Rosetta Howard * Washboard Sam (Robert Brown) * Jazz Gillum * Lil Green * Ethel Waters * Big Joe Turner (Joseph Vernon Turner) * Meade "Lux" Lewis * Albert Ammons * Pete Johnson * Clarence (Pinetop) Smith * Roy Brown * Wynonie Harris * Charles Brown * Muddy Waters * Little Walter Jacobs * Otis Spann * Howlin' Wolf (Charles Arthur Burnett) * Rice Miller * Elmore James * Robert "Junior" Lockwood * Joe Hill Louis (One Man Band) * Bobby "Blue" Bland * Junior Parker * Magic Sam (died in 1969 at thirty-two) * B.B. King * Freddy King * Big Mama Thorton * Roosevelt Sykes * Earl Hooker * James Cotton * Joe Louis Walker (born on Christmas Day, 1949, in San Francisco) * Little Ester Phillips * ...
_________________ By the time it entered the global village, the Blues had endured an arduous and amazing journey from the Tutwiler, Mississippi, train depot where, in 1903, W.C. Handy first tasted "the weirdest music I had ever heard."
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