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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2018 18:38:02 GMT
In my case my sister arrived home with the John Mayall 'Beano' album. Never heard of him and if my sister bought it then it probably wouldn't interest me anyway. I did notice a track listed called 'Hideaway' so assuming it was the version by Dave Dee,Dozy etc. I gave it a listen.The rest is history as they say.
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Post by ricks on Sept 6, 2018 19:00:37 GMT
Age 15, Reading Ricky Tick Club, 1963, Sonny Boy Williamson - still got his autograph on the back of my membership card!
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Post by Pickers Ditch on Sept 6, 2018 19:07:31 GMT
A squaddie turned up at the youth club in Dortmund one evening (1961ish) with a 78rpm copy of Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning as we had a 78rpm machine and he didn't. We had already heard similar stuff coming out of the US block in the barracks but now we found out what it was all about. BOOM - that was it! .....and I've looked backwards ever since.
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Post by rbe on Sept 6, 2018 20:33:12 GMT
The first Paul Butterfield Blues Band album. That did it for me!
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Post by jono1uk on Sept 6, 2018 20:34:30 GMT
Early 90's came home from the pub a bit pissed ...turned on the telly to "Crossroads" film.. next day went a bought 2 CD's because the had a black men on the front playing guitar.. John Lee Hooker "Mr Lucky" and Robert Cray "Strong Persuader" ...
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Post by Pickers Ditch on Sept 7, 2018 11:29:29 GMT
Apropos of nothing really but it seems to fit here, maybe....
After my post above I started reading my first Paul Oliver book - Blues Off The Record - last night.
I was amazed to read of his first brush with the blues:
As a teenager in 1942 he did ‘harvest camp’ in Suffolk, farm work taken on by teenagers to replace agricultural labourers called up for military service in World War II. Americans were building a base in Stoke-by-Clare, and Oliver’s friend Stan persuaded him to eavesdrop on a gang of black soldiers digging a trench. After a while most of the GIs were marched away, leaving two alone to finish the job. “We stayed behind the hedge,” Oliver wrote, “getting cold. I was getting impatient too, when suddenly the air seemed split by the most eerie sounds. The two men were singing, swooping, undulating, unintelligible words, and the back of my neck tingled. ‘They’re singing a blues,’ Stan hissed at me. It was the strangest, most compelling singing I’d ever heard . . .”
Now, the base that was being built must have been Ridgewell Airfield, home to a US bomber group.
Between Stoke-by-Clare and very close to the northern boundary of the old airbase is a village called Ashen - the village to which my parents retired, passed away and are now buried in Ashen churchyard. I suspect that PO and his mate Stan must have been on that northern perimeter either in or very close to Ashen, which is about 3 miles from Stoke-by-Clare, when they heard "blues". - Coincidence Number 1?
On the south side of Ridgewell airbase is a little village called Tilbury-Juxta-Clare. So what? I hear you say... The "what" is that when I started playing again in 1996 after a 26 year break and the passing of my parents, the blues band I joined was based at Tilbury-Juxta-Clare, about 25 miles from where I live. Our band leader singer guitarist lived in a converted airfield operations block on this south side of the airfield. Our rehearsal studio for the ten years I was with the band was a bl88dy freezing cold Nissen hut (ex US sleeping quarters) in his garden. -Coincidence Number 2?
Small world, innit?
....and, no, I didn't see the ghosts of US bluesmen, either.
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Post by slide496 on Sept 7, 2018 12:59:33 GMT
It was a good long while ago but I was exposed to the blues a bunch of times at the university I went to, saw early Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, John Hammond, Son House, Gary Davis and others. Earlier I heard Robert Johnson and Sonny Boy Williamson- (through Al Wilson, he lived next town over and I would go over his parent's house) - but I really focused when I came to NY. and I was looking for some new vintage artists - they used to have these street sellers with bins on the NYC streets - I stumbled onto a tape of Johnny Woods and Fred Mcdowell...
Harriet
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Post by Malc on Sept 7, 2018 17:29:56 GMT
Ready Steady Go on Sunday afternoons in the 60s.. John Lee Hooker, Sonny boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Paul Butterfield and loads of British bands "Groups"covering blues music.
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Post by creolian on Nov 12, 2018 19:36:17 GMT
My earliest musical memory is the gospel that the woman ( Willie Mae ) who cooked for my grandmother sang and hummed. We would shell peas in the backyard and she would sing and tell stories. In the kitchen she constantly hummed those melodies that I still hear today.
My introduction to reel blues was thanks to EC jamming with the Howlin wolf. The first concert I ever went to was Howlin Wolf, Taj Mahal et al at the municipal auditorium. Chester B had suffered a stroke and was not all there until the count in... Once the music started it was as if someone lit a fire. After a bit over an hour the promotors basically had to ask him to stop as he began to repeat his set. The crowd went nuts, I was hooked.
Great Topic... Thanks!
Back to humming.
Jeff
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Post by leeophonic on Nov 12, 2018 21:47:45 GMT
sideways from Hank Williams (Don Helms) to discover who else slid on strings, from slide guitar that opened the door to resonators and everything else in the daisychain.
Lee
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Post by snakehips on Nov 12, 2018 23:26:35 GMT
Hi there !
Elvis ! He’s a blues singer, in my view.
Listening to Chuck Berry and Fats Domino was an obvious next move as they were also rock’n’roll, and I was inspired by Chuck’s piano player (Johnnie Johnson), more than Chuck’s guitar playing.
Round about the same time (mid 1980’s, while in my mid teens, I decided to search the blues section of our local quite new, first large Virgin record store. Reading books about Elvis, there were plenty references to blues music, Arthur Big Boy Crudup, plus Beale Street in Memphis, and BB King, so I had an idea what to look for. My Dad bought the Blues Brothers LP (so I heard the music way before I saw the film). My eldest brother started going to live gigs, seeing Tam White, plus Blues’n’Trouble, and buying their LP’s at their gigs. Then I noticed BB King was booked to play our local theatre, and had seen Chuck Berry the previous year there. So, I got BB King tickets. In advance of the BB King concert, I bought my first proper blues album - BB King’s Live in Cook County Jail. Suitably enthralled, I went back to Virgin record store the following Saturday, with more pocket money for more BB King. However, Elmore James was blasting through the speakers of the hifi in the Jazz/Blues/Folk enclosed upstairs section - and it was hook, line & sinker from that point on !!! Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker & Lightnin’ Hopkins swiftly followed. Some of the tunes seemed vaguely familiar to me, the until I realised I’d heard some of them on one of the tapes my Dad used to play in his car, when I was much younger - tapes by the Rolling Stones, and albums my other brother was beginning to buy, by Fleetwood Mac & Jimmy Hendrix !
Never been the same since !!!
Started sneaking into pubs at the age of 16, with my older brothers to see Tam White, and bands like Blues’n’Trouble, who by that point had just recorded an album for the Blue Horizon label, with Ian Stuart on piano on the album. When I was about 17yrs old, I managed to get a B’n’T official band photo signed by the singer/harp player Tim Elliot, and the lead guitarist, John Bruce at one of their gigs. Very proud to say that for the last 5yrs, now at the age of 47yrs old, I have been playing (piano and organ, not guitar !!) in a band with one of my early heroes, John Bruce, the very guy I asked for his autograph 30yrs earlier !!!
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Post by jono1uk on Nov 13, 2018 2:10:40 GMT
came home pissed from the pub and started watching Crossroads on TV ..Next day bought Mr Lucky -John Lee Hooker And Robert Cray -Strong Persuader because they had a guitarist on the cover.
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Post by groff on Nov 13, 2018 6:19:42 GMT
Anyone remember John Pearse's BBC TV series "Hold down a chord"? The day after I bought my first guitar (18 Jan 69) I watched the second episode of the second series (on fingerpicking) which featured "My Creole Belle" from Mississippi John Hurt. An instant recognition that that was how I wanted to play. It's still true and I'm still trying.
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Post by dunvettin on Nov 13, 2018 9:29:30 GMT
That takes me back. But was it this series where John demonstrated the guitar calypso strum technique. Down-thumb-up-down -thumb - up down ?
I find this works a treat on my brand new banjolele when chording and lifting at the same time - great syncopation effect !
Happy days
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Post by pete1951 on Nov 15, 2018 9:57:20 GMT
It was exam time at school , my friend Clive was taking home a couple of records (these were black discs that had sound on, young people might know them as ‘vinyl ‘). “Pete” says Clive “can you take these home,? I’ll never get any revision done if I have them”. So I took home Muddy Waters and John Mayall, and Clive did much better in the exams because I spend my time listening to the Blues. P T
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