VA - Calypso Breakaway (1990, Rounder)

Have a happy new year!

This disc centers on some of the best Decca calypsos of the late ‘30s. Here are the songs and singers that sparked the calypso boom in the United States. They include Beginner, Lion, Radio, Invader, Caresser, Tiger, and Atilla. The notes are not very informative, but the transcriptions are good.

"Born out of the postslavery kalinda songs of stick-fighting competitions, Calypso has evolved into today's techno-tinted soca, with several major shifts along the way. These 20 songs are representative of an extremely musically sophisticated period in the evolution, with references from swing jazz and Cuba in abundance. They are transcribed from vintage recordings, and there is plenty of humor, wisdom, and wit inherent in the Calypsonians' lyrics to relate to the human condition in any age. Calypso has always documented politics, weather, and news stories (intermixed with racy double-entendres), and these tunes are no exception, save being from a slower, more naive period of history. Although the instrumentation has changed over the years, much of this classic music swings hard and will stand the test of time long after the overly synthesized treatments of today's "road songs" have been forgotten. Many of these artists performed in cabarets and nightclubs in New York and London at the time, and several went on to great international acclaim. Calypso Breakaway is both a great introduction and a priceless, carefully mastered record for the aficionado, despite uninformative liner notes." --Derek Rath

Tracklist:

1 Keskidee Trio – Don't Le' Me Mother Know 2:58
2 King Radio  –Ma Maria 3:03
3 Felix And His Krazy Kats – Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen 2:44
4 The Growler – An Excursion To Grenada 3:03
5 The Lion –  Tina 2:21
6 Lord Executor – Seven Skeletons Found In The Yard 2:47
7 Al Philip Iere Syncopators – Little Gal, Mother Is Calling You 2:42
8 The Tiger – Maraval Girls 3:01
9 Lord Beginner – Anacaona 2:52
10 Atilla The Hun – Dynamite 2:49
11 Lord Invader – Caro At Point Cumana 2:30
12 Lionel Belasco's Orchestra – Violets-Venezuelan Waltz 2:39
13 The Lion And Atilla The Hun – Guests Of Rudy Vallee 2:49
14 Lord Executor – How I Spent My Time At The Hospital 2:51
15 King Radio – Old Men Come Back Again 2:52
16 Wilmouth Houdini And His Caribbean Orchestra – Johnnie Take My Wife 3:12
17 The Caresser – The More They Try To Do Me Bad 2:49
18 The Lion – Love Thy Neighbor 2:51
19 Codallo's Top Hatters Orchestra – Tropical Heat-Paseo 2:55
20 The Tiger – The Whe Whe Banker Wedding 3:05

VA - Calypso Breakaway (1990, Rounder)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Mike Bloomfield - Initial Shock - Live Between 1977 And 1979

Michael Bloomfield was one of America's first great white blues guitarists, earning his reputation on the strength of his work in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. His expressive, fluid solo lines and prodigious technique graced many other projects - most notably Bob Dylan's earliest electric forays - and he also pursued a solo career, with variable results. Uncomfortable with the reverential treatment afforded a guitar hero, Bloomfield tended to shy away from the spotlight after spending just a few years in it; he maintained a lower-visibility career during the '70s due to his distaste for fame and his worsening drug problems, which claimed his life in 1981.     
      
Michael Bernard Bloomfield was born July 28, 1943, into a well-off Jewish family on Chicago's North Side. A shy, awkward loner as a child, he became interested in music through the Southern radio stations he was able to pick up at night, which gave him a regular source for rockabilly, R&B, and blues. He received his first guitar at his bar mitzvah and he and his friends began sneaking out to hear electric blues on the South Side's fertile club scene (with the help of their families' maids). The young Bloomfield sometimes jumped on-stage to jam with the musicians and the novelty of such a spectacle soon made him a prominent scenester. Dismayed with the turn his education was taking, his parents sent him to a private boarding school on the East Coast in 1958 and he eventually graduated from a Chicago school for troubled youth. By this time, he'd embraced the beatnik subculture, frequenting hangout spots near the University of Chicago. He got a job managing a folk club and frequently booked veteran acoustic bluesmen; in the meantime, he was also playing guitar as a session man and around the Chicago club scene with several different bands.

In 1964, Bloomfield was discovered through his session work by the legendary John Hammond, who signed him to CBS; however, several recordings from 1964 went unreleased as the label wasn't sure how to market a white American blues guitarist. In early 1965, Bloomfield joined several associates in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a racially integrated outfit with a storming, rock-tinged take on Chicago's urban electric blues sound. The group's self-titled debut for Elektra, released later that year, made them a sensation in the blues community and helped introduce white audiences to a less watered-down version of the blues. Individually, Bloomfield's lead guitar work was acclaimed as a perfectly logical bridge between Chicago blues and contemporary rock. Later, in 1965, Bloomfield was recruited for Bob Dylan's new electrified backing band; he was a prominent presence on the groundbreaking classic "Highway 61 Revisited" and he was also part of Dylan's epochal plugged-in performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. In the meantime, Bloomfield was developing an interest in Eastern music, particularly the Indian raga form, and his preoccupation exerted a major influence on the next Butterfield album, 1966's "East-West". Driven by Bloomfield's jaw-dropping extended solos on his instrumental title cut, "East-West" merged blues, jazz, world music, and psychedelic rock in an unprecedented fashion. The Butterfield band became a favorite live act on the emerging San Francisco music scene and in 1967, Bloomfield quit the group to permanently relocate there and pursue new projects

Bloomfield quickly formed a new band called the "Electric Flag" with longtime Chicago cohort Nick Gravenites on vocals. "The Electric Flag" was supposed to build on the innovations of "East-West" and accordingly featured an expanded lineup complete with a horn section, which allowed the group to add soul music to their laundry list of influences. The Electric Flag debuted at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival and issued a proper debut album, "A Long Time Comin'", in 1968. Critics complimented the group's distinctive, intriguing sound, but found the record itself somewhat uneven. Unfortunately, the band was already disintegrating; rivalries between members and shortsighted management - not to mention heroin abuse - all took their toll. Bloomfield himself left the band he'd formed before their album was even released. He next hooked up with organist Al Kooper, whom he'd played with in the Dylan band, and cut "Super Session", a jam-oriented record that spotlighted his own guitar skills on one half and those of Stephen Stills on the other. Issued in 1968, it received excellent reviews and moreover became the best-selling album of Bloomfield's career. "Super Session"'s success led to a sequel, "The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper", which was recorded over three shows at the Fillmore West in 1968 and released the following year; it featured Bloomfield's on-record singing debut.
              
Bloomfield, however, was wary of his commercial success and growing disenchanted with fame. He was also tired of touring and after recording the second album with Kooper, he effectively retired for a while, at least from high-profile activities. He did, however, continue to work as a session guitarist and producer, and also began writing and playing on movie soundtracks (including some pornographic films by the Mitchell Brothers). He played locally and occasionally toured with Bloomfield and Friends, which included Nick Gravenites and ex-Butterfield mate Mark Naftalin. Additionally, he returned to the studio in 1973 for a session with John Hammond and New Orleans pianist Dr. John; the result, "Triumvirate", was released on Columbia, but didn't make much of a splash. Neither did Bloomfield's 1974 reunion with Electric Flag and neither did KGB, a short-lived supergroup with Barry Goldberg, Rik Grech (Traffic), and Carmine Appice that recorded for MCA in 1976. During the late '70s, Bloomfield recorded for several smaller labels (including Takoma), usually in predominantly acoustic settings; through Guitar Player magazine, he also put out an instructional album with a vast array of blues guitar styles, titled "If You Love These Blues, Play 'Em as You Please".

Unfortunately, Bloomfield was also plagued by alcoholism and heroin addiction for much of the '70s, which made him an unreliable concert presence and slowly cost him some of his longtime musical associations (as well as his marriage). By 1980, he had seemingly recovered enough to tour in Europe; that November, he also appeared on-stage in San Francisco with Bob Dylan for a rendition of "Like a Rolling Stone." However, on February 15, 1981, Bloomfield was found dead in his car of a drug overdose; he was only 37.

Tracklist:
1) Eyesight to the Blind
2) Women Lovin' Each Other
3) Linda Lou
4) Kansas City
5) Blues in B-Flat
6) Medley: Darktown Strutter's Ball / Mop Mop / Call Me a Dog
7) I'm Glad I'm Jewish
8) Jockey Blues
9) Between the Hard Place and the Ground
10) Don't Lie to Me
11) Cherry Red
12) Uncle Bob's Barrelhouse Blues
13) Wee Wee Hours
14) Vamp in C
15) One of These Days

Mike Bloomfield - Initial Shock - Live Between 1977 And 1979
(256 kbps, cover art included)

Heiner Müller liest Heiner Müller

Heiner Müller died 28 years ago. He´s missing.

"Wenn die Diskotheken verlassen und die Akademien verödet sind, wird das Schweigen des Theaters wieder gehört werden, das der Grund seiner Sprache ist."

- Heiner Müller


The german dramatist and playwright Heiner Müller was born in 1929 and died in 1995. Living in East Germany (GDR), he worked as managing, literary and artistic director at the Maxim-Gorki-Theatre (from 1958 on) and the Berliner Ensemble (from 1970 on), often staging his own productions.

Müller showed strong socialist leanings and worked in the tradition of Brechtian theatre. His initial agreement with the East German regime began to dwindle in 1960s when severals plays of his were censored and banned. He then began to work with West German theatres and ensembles and succeeded with pieces such as "Hamletmaschine" (1979), earning him worldwide fame. Müller was also renowned for his prose and poetry ("Das Ende der Handschrift. Gedichte") and publications on the theory of drama.

Before the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, Heiner Müller was widely regarded, internationally and in both German states, as “the most important German dramatist since Brecht”. Subsequently, like other “heroes” of the GDR semi-dissident scene, he was the target of a concerted campaign accusing him, among other things, of collaboration with the Stasi (Staats-Sicherheitsdienst, the GDR political police) and crypto-Stalinist tendencies. His reputation, despite a short-term eclipse, will survive these inanities; the extended public wake held upon his death on 30 December 1995 gave expression to a deep sense of loss in the vibrant East Berlin cultural scene of which he was the most brilliant protagonist.

Born in Eppendorf, Saxony, on 9 January 1929, his conscious life-span mirrors that of the GDR – from the bloody end of World War II through the difficult years of socialist reconstruction to the profound disillusionment of the “years of stagnation” and the ultimate implosion of the GDR, which he survived by only five depressive years of black clownery.

After the fall of the Wall, Müller became president of the East German Academy of the Arts for a short time in 1990 before its inclusion in the West German Akademie. In 1992, he was invited to join the directorate of the Berliner Ensemble, Brecht's former company at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, as one of its five members along with Peter Zadek, Peter Palitzsch, Fritz Marquardt and Matthias Langhoff. In 1995, shortly before his death, Müller was appointed as the theatre’s sole artistic director.
During the last five years of his life, Müller continued to live in Berlin and work all over Germany and Europe, mostly directing productions of his own works. He wrote few new dramatic texts in this time, though, like Brecht, he did produce much poetry in his final years.

Müller died in Berlin of cancer in 1995, acknowledged as one of the greatest living German authors and the most important German language dramatists since Bertolt Brecht.

Here´s his reading of some poems and prose at his 60s birthday, January 9, 1989, at the "Academy Of The Arts" in Berlin.

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Heiner Müller - Heiner Müller liest Heiner Müller

(192 kbps, front cover included)

Alfredo Zitarossa - Canta Zitarossa (1966)

Alfredo Zitarrosa (March 10, 1936 – January 17, 1989) was a Uruguayan singer-songwriter, poet and journalist. He specialized in Uruguayan and Argentinean folk genres such as zamba and milonga, and he became a chief figure in the nueva canción movement in his country. A staunch supporter of Communist ideals, he lived in exile between 1976 and 1984. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential singer-songwriters of Latin America.

From the beginning, he was established as one of the great voices of Latin American popular song, with clear leftist and folkloric roots. He cultivated a contemptuous and manly style, and his thick voice and a typical accompaniment of guitars gave his hallmark.

"Canta Zitarossa" was his first album, released in 1966.


Tracklist:

Milonga De Ojos Dorados
La Coyunda
Coplas Al Compadre Juan Miguel
De No Olvidar
Milonga Para Una Niña
Por Prudencio Correa
Del Que Se Ausenta
La Vuelta De Obligado
Recordándote
Si Te Vas
No Me Esperes
Zamba Por Vos
Cueca Del Regresso
Gato De Las Cuchillas

Alfredo Zitarossa - Canta Zitarossa (1966)

(192 kbps, cover art included)

Maria Farantouri - Lieder der Welt (1979)

A well-known Greek vocalist and political activist, Maria Farantouri is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Greek music, especially the work of composer Mikis Theodorakis. A contralto singer with a deep, resonant voice, Farantouri is sometimes referred to as the Joan Baez of Greece, and over the years has moved from traditional and folk styles to more jazz, classical, and avant-garde works.

Born in Athens in 1947, Farantouri first began singing in her youth as a member of the progressive choir of the Society of Greek Music, which worked to support new music based on Greek traditions. By her teens she caught the ear of Theodorakis, who invited her to join his ensemble. This led to a time of great creative and social awakening for Farantouri, who along with Theodorakis' culturally and politically left-leaning work, helped popularize the writing of many important Greek poets.

From 1967 to 1974, Farantouri was forced into exile after a right-wing military junta staged a coup in Greece. During this time, she and Theodorakis made several protest recordings in Europe and expanded their work to included the writing of Bertolt Brecht and Spanish composer Carlos Puebla, as well as many Greek composers including Eleni Karaindrou and Mikalis Bourboulis. 

Also during this period she released the anti-fascist recording "Mauthausen Cycle," a work by Theodorakis featuring the writing of poet Iakovos Kambanellis. Often referred to as a hymn to human rights, the cycle would become one of Farantouri's signature recordings. After returning to Greece in 1974, Farantouri resumed her successful recording career and began to expand her sound in a variety of directions, including jazz.


Tracklist:

A1 Bella Ciao 2:41
A2 Andra Mou Pai 3:23
A3 La Peregrinacion 2:18
A4 Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child 4:34
A5 El Paso Del Ebro 3:10
B1 Gracias A La Vida 3:22
B2 La Plegaria A Un Labrador 3:16
B3 Commandante Che Guevara 3:59
B4 Joe Hill 2:29
B5 Te Recuerdo, Amanda 2:25
B6 Bella Ciao (Instrumental) 2:14

Maria Farantouri - Lieder der Welt (1979)

(320 kbps, cover art included)

Howlin' Wolf‎ – Cadillac Daddy - Memphis Recordings, 1952

You can't possibly fault the material aboard this 12-song collection of Howlin' Wolf's Memphis recordings cut for Sam Phillips. The title track features some truly frightening guitar work from Willie Johnson,and all the material here is loaded with feral energy and a sense that it could fall apart at any second. It's totally intuitive music, with Wolf seemingly making it all up as he went along, which Sam Phillips had the patience to capture as it all went down. These are some of the great moments in blues history...

These are the recordings that prompted Sun Records chief Sam Phillips's oft-repeated assertion: "This is where the soul of a man dies." Phillips oversaw sessions by the likes of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and B.B. King, but the guttural electric blues of Howlin' Wolf captured his fancy like nothing else - and it's not hard to see why. The Wolf of these '52 sessions was just a few years off the farm, having begun to play West Memphis, Arkansas, juke joints, and cat houses following World War II. Working with a small but feral band highlighted by lead guitarist Willie Johnson (called by some the Jimi Hendrix of his day), the already middle-aged singer and harmonica player created a sound in the early '50s that bridged the Mississippi blues that were his roots with the amped Chicago blues that were his destiny. Phillips captured the man born Chester Burnett on the title track, "Drivin' C.V. Wine," and also on the other 10 selections included here, three of which were previously released while all but one of the remaining numbers have never appeared before in North America. Wolf's Chess sides are, of course, landmarks, but this is Wolf untamed and running wild. --Steven Stolder


Tracklist:
                           

A1	Cadillac Daddy (Mr. Highway Man)
A2	Bluebird Blues
A3	My Last Affair (Take 1)
A4	Oh Red! (Take 2)
A5	Come Back Home
A6	Dorothy Mae
B1	Decoration Day Blues
B2	Color And Kind
B3	Drinkin' C.V. Wine
B4	I Got A Woman (Sweet Woman)
B5	Everybody's In The Mood
B6	My Baby Walked Off

Howlin' Wolf‎ – Cadillac Daddy - Memphis Recordings, 1952
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth - Frankfurt Peking (1984)

The duo Goebbels/Harth (1975–1988), combining German composer, music-theatre director and keyboardist Heiner Goebbels and German composer, multi-media artist and saxophonist Alfred 23 Harth became famous for its adaptation of and departure from European composers, especially Hanns Eisler, implemented in a provocatively fresh manner into structured free improvisations and deploying content from areas beyond music. 

The duo was nicknamed the “Eisler brothers” by music critic W. Liefland. They later also experimented with different genres and sound collages, including electronic devices. The duo played in many international festivals and concerts in cities as diverse as Tel Aviv, Zagreb, West and East Berlin and South America.

In 1981, Berendt together with the duo produced the LP, "Zeit wird knapp" by including love poems and ballads from Bertolt Brecht, for which they recruited vocalists Dagmar Krause and Ernst Stötzner. The duo then artistically shaped the German new wave music/Neue Deutsche Welle in their style with their LPs "Indianer Für Morgn" and "Frankfurt/Peking" by also using synthesizer, electronic devices, and extended instruments. 

Around 1983–84, the creative spirit of the pair diminished. In 1987, Harth had been playing reeds and brass instruments in Goebbels’ performance "Der Mann im Fahrstuhl" at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada (together with Arto Lindsay and Heiner Müller). At the same festival, a final significant Goebbels/Harth event took place through a live recording, which became a kind of synopsis of the duo's entire repertoire over its long history. After a few more duo events and the unreleased last recordings “Duos für Fritz,” Harth disbanded the duo in 1988.

This album was recorded and mixed at Trion Sound Studio Frankfurt in September 1984-


Tracklist:
A1 Die Reise Nach Aschenfeld 5:50
A2 Stell Dir Vor Du Bist Ein Delphin 4:52
A3 Blitze Über Moskau 4:39
A4 Paradies Und Hölle Können Eine Stadt Sein 4:53
B Peking-Oper 15:55


Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth - Frankfurt Peking (1984)
(320 kbps, cover art included)

Floh De Cologne - Lucky Streik (1973)

"Lucky Streik" is a classic political "krautadelic" album released by Floh De Cologne in 1973 on the "Ohr" label.

Floh De Cologne were well-known for their humorous and satyrical approach (which gained them comparisons with other freak troupes like The Fugs or The Mothers Of Invention ). They deliver a freaky connection of agit-prop satira and madness with relentless no-barriers free jamming: Political agitation meets free-rock...

"Lucky Streik" was live recorded on 25.11.72 in the Stadthalle Gummersbach and remixed at Studio Dierks in Stommeln, Köln.

Tracklist:

1. Countdown
2. Schön ist ein Jugendtraum
3. Sozialpartner Blues
4. Kalte Wut
5. Wenn ich einmal Reich bin
6. Die Wirtschaft ist jetzt in Gefahr
7. Der Imker
8. Deine Freiheit
9. Vergleiche
10. Der Löwenthaler
11. Was ein Kommunist trinken darf
12. Wenn es brennt
13. Freie Marktwirtschaft
14. Für die Zukunft sehen wir rot
15. Saurier
16. Wir sind millionenmal so stark

Gerd Wollschon - vocals, text
Dieter Klemm - vocals, percussion
Theo Konig - vocals, sax (tenor) clariner, flute
Markus Schmidt - vocals, guitar, keyboards
Dick Stadtler - bass, guitar, piano
Hansi Frank - vocals, drums

Floh De Cologne - Lucky Streik (1973)
(192 kbps, cover art included)

Chicago - The Blues - Today! Vol. 3

Notes from the original release of "Chicago/The Blues/Today Vol. 3":

Johnny Shines and Walter Horton sit around a table in Johnny’s apartment drinking a little from a fifth of Teacher’s, and after the television set in the next room is shut off the talk goes back to their early years in the blues. “Robert Johnson?” Shines laughs and shakes his head. “I ran with Robert for two years when I was first starting to sing. He was only a year or so older than I was and I was seventeen at that time. When? It must have been in 1933—in Helena, Arkansas.” Walter interrupts, “You couldn’t run with Robert for long; he wouldn’t stay in one place.” Johnny shrugs, “He did run off after we got here to Chicago. We were staying someplace—I don’t remember where it was—and he got up in the middle of the night and left. Just like that! I didn’t see him for five months.” Walter has another drink. “He was that kind of fellow. If anybody said to him ‘let’s go’ it didn’t matter to him where it was they were going, he’d just take off and go. It didn’t matter, either, what time of day or night it was.” Johnny Young leans against the bar where his band works on 47th Street, his broad, worried face perspiring from the last set. “I grew up in Vicksburg so I heard all them guys. Even Charley Patton. Of course he didn’t come to see me, I was too young. He come to see other people, but I was there anyway. The mandolin? I was playing that back in Vicksburg, but I did hear Charlie McCoy play, too. He was a mandolin player living over in Jackson that made some records about that time.”

The poor, hard city life in the Chicago slums has changed the Mississippi, the Alabama and Tennessee blues styles, but the ties between the old country music and the new city blues are still close. For the men in their twenties and thirties, Junior Wells, Otis Rush, Jimmy Cotton, Buddy Guy, it’s less personal—it’s something that they’ve heard other people talking about—but for the men in their late forties and early fifties, Johnny Shines, Walter Horton, Johnny Young, it’s a direct, still living involvement. You sit at a crowded table trying to listen to Johnny Young over the noise of the people around you and the words of the blues could be from Tennessee in the 1930’s. “I asked sweet mama, let me be your kid...” He could have heard it on a Sleepy John Estes record, but it’s as much like the other things he sings as it is like Estes. Johnny stands on the low bandstand, his tie knotted in place and his coat still buttoned, despite the hot, stale air of the club. “I’m stealin’ back to my same old used to be...”

In the early 1950’s Johnny Shines came into a recording studio and did a piece called “Ramblin’” that came closer to the emotionalism and the musical style of Robert Johnson than anything else he has done before or since. He took a moment to remember, then nodded, “‘Ramblin’’ was really picked out of the sky. We got there to the studio and we didn’t have enough time and we didn’t have arrangements for anything; so I just started singing the first thing that came into my mind...” Without arrangements or much time Johnny went back to the first blues style that he’d known, and today he still sometimes puts the guitar in an old Mississippi open tuning and begins to sing with some of Robert’s inflection and phrasing, the style as natural to Johnny as it was to Robert. The open tuning and the bottleneck go back even earlier for him. “I had an older brother, Willie Reed, who played, and I tried to learn from him, but I couldn’t make all the chords that he could...” Johnny grew up in Frazier, Tennessee, just north of Memphis. There’s a shopping center there now, but the rest of the town has become a suburb of Memphis. “...Then one day I ran into Howlin’ Wolf, who was young himself a that time, and I saw how he was playing with the open tuning and the slide. I said to myself, ‘If it’s that easy I can do it too.’ Wolf went away and left his guitar there and when he came back I was playing the same thing that he had just played...” A young man at 51, Johnny’s voice is one of the strongest and most exciting sounds in the Chicago blues today, and his music is a complex intermingling of the country and the city—the Delta melodic lines and the Chicago bass guitar and backbeat drumming—the South Side harmonic structure and the Delta verses, “Mister Boweevil, you done ate up all my cotton and corn...”
“Walter? I’ve known him most of my life.” “...The reason Johnny and I know what each other is going to play is that we started together when we were kids in Memphis.” The casual, drifting life of the early bluesmen kept the men close to each other and they drifted in twos or threes from job to job. Shines and Walter Horton started playing together in Memphis and they stayed together through the ragged years of the Depression, working at occasional jobs and running into each other when they were in the same town. Living not far from each other in Chicago and working with each other’s bands—“...When Johnny did ‘Ramblin’’ and ‘Brutal Hearted Woman’ he was working in my band in a club on West Madison...”—kept the country roots of their music strong and vigorous. A tall, nervous man, his face worn and scarred, Walter Horton, “Big Walter,” “Shakey Walter,” now limits his playing to a few sets with the bands working near his apartment on Indiana Avenue. When he’s feeling well he’s one of the most challenging harp men on the South Side. His health is poor and he works irregularly, but when he’s on the playing is magnificent, his thin body moving unsteadily across the bandstand, his face withdrawn and intent in the dim lights.

The blues backgrounds of Mississippi and Tennessee are woven into the fabric of the music that Johnny Shines and Walter Horton play. It’s in the shifting, restless sound of Johnny Young’s mandolin and in the insistent push of Johnny’s guitar accompaniments, in the verses of his blues and his singing style. The blues has changed in Chicago, but it’s still close to the country background, and it’s a music that has gone beyond the limits of its South Side neighborhoods. Memphis Charlie Musselwhite, who plays two harp duets with Walter Horton, is in his early twenties, and he’s white. He’s from the South and he’s grown up with the blues, so he’s been able to cross over into the South Side blues world. He was already playing when he came to Chicago, but Walter’s helped him, and when Charlie’s working with Johnny Young’s band Walter tries to get down on a Saturday night to do a set with him.

This is the blues in Chicago today—the new virtuosity of men like Junior Wells and Otis Rush, the country sound of J. B. Hutto and Homesick James, the exuberance of Jimmy Cotton and Otis Spann, the deep blues involvement of Johnny Shines. Johnny Young, and Walter Horton, the young men learning the style like Memphis Charlie. A new music has emerged out of the poverty and the anger of the South Side, a living music that has kept its own audience, its own expression, and its own truth. To hear it today all you have to do is take the El down to 40th or 47th Street...walk a few blocks through the empty streets...it’s fifty cents for a bottle of beer and as you sit at a table as close as you can get to the band the music fills the club around you like a sweet, intense voice that won’t stop singing...

I’d like to thank Bob Koester and Pete Welding, who have long been involved with the Chicago blues, for their help and their advice during the trips to Chicago that led to these recordings. Bob, on his Delmark label, and Pete, on his Testament label, have recorded a number of South Side bluesmen, and have done important work in bringing the Chicago music of today to a wider audience.

Chicago - The Blues - Today! Vol. 3
(192 kbps, ca. 56 MB)