Mississippi Fred McDowell - John Henry

When Mississippi Fred McDowell proclaimed on one of his last albums, "I do not play no rock & roll," it was less a boast by an aging musician swept aside by the big beat than a mere statement of fact. As a stylist and purveyor of the original Delta blues, he was superb, equal parts Charley Patton and Son House coming to the fore through his roughed-up vocals and slashing bottleneck style of guitar playing. McDowell knew he was the real deal, and while others were diluting and updating their sound to keep pace with the changing times and audiences, Mississippi Fred stood out from the rest of the pack simply by not changing his style one iota. Though he scorned the amplified rock sound with a passion matched by few country bluesmen, he certainly had no qualms about passing any of his musical secrets along to his young, white acolytes, prompting several of them -- including a young Bonnie Raitt -- to develop slide guitar techniques of their own. Although generally lumped in with other blues "rediscoveries" from the '60s, the most amazing thing about him was that this rich repository of Delta blues had never recorded in the '20s or early '30s, didn't get "discovered" until 1959, and didn't become a full-time professional musician until the mid-'60s.

He was born in 1904 in Rossville, TN, and was playing the guitar by the age of 14 with a slide hollowed out of a steer bone. His parents died when Fred was a youngster and the wandering life of a traveling musician soon took hold. The 1920s saw him playing for tips on the street around Memphis, TN, the hoboing life eventually setting him down in Como, MS, where he lived the rest of his life. There McDowell split his time between farming and keeping up with his music by playing weekends for various fish fries, picnics, and house parties in the immediate area. This pattern stayed largely unchanged for the next 30 years until he was discovered in 1959 by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax was the first to record this semi-professional bluesman, the results of which were released as part of an American folk music series on the Atlantic label. McDowell, for his part, was happy to have some sounds on records, but continued on with his farming and playing for tips outside of Stuckey's candy store in Como for spare change. It wasn't until Chris Strachwitz -- folk-blues enthusiast and owner of the fledgling Arhoolie label -- came searching for McDowell to record him that the bluesman's fortunes began to change dramatically.

Two albums, Fred McDowell, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, were released on Arhoolie in the mid-'60s, and the shock waves were felt throughout the folk-blues community. Here was a bluesman with a repertoire of uncommon depth, putting it over with great emotional force, and to top it all off, he had seemingly slipped through the cracks of late-'20s/early-'30s field recordings. No scratchy, highly prized 78s on Paramount or Vocalion to use as a yardstick to measure his current worth, no romantic stories about him disappearing into the Delta for decades at a time to become a professional gambler or a preacher. No, Mississippi Fred McDowell had been in his adopted home state, farming and playing all along, and the world coming to his doorstep seemed to ruffle him no more than the little boy down the street delivering the local newspaper.

Sticky Fingers The success of the Arhoolie recordings suddenly found McDowell very much in demand on the folk and festival circuit, where his quiet, good-natured performances left many a fan utterly spellbound. Working everything from the Newport Folk Festival to coffeehouse dates to becoming a member of the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe, McDowell suddenly had more listings in his résumé in a couple of years than he had in the previous three decades combined. He was also well documented on film, with appearances in The Blues Maker (1968), his own documentary Fred McDowell (1969), and Roots of American Music: Country and Urban Music (1970) among them. By the end of the decade, he was signed to do a one-off album for Capitol Records (the aforementioned I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll) and his tunes were being mainstreamed into the blues-rock firmament by artists like Bonnie Raitt (who recorded several of his tunes, including notable versions of "Write Me a Few Lines" and "Kokomo") and the Rolling Stones, who included a very authentic version of his classic "You Got to Move" on their Sticky Fingers album. Unfortunately, this career largess didn't last much longer, as McDowell was diagnosed with cancer while performing dates into 1971. His playing days suddenly behind him, he lingered for a few months into July 1972, finally succumbing to the disease at age 68. And right to the end, the man remained true to his word; he didn't play any rock & roll, just the straight, natural blues.

Transatlantic - Kaleidoscope

Transatlantic is a progressive rock supergroup consisting of Roine Stolt of The Flower Kings, Pete Trewavas of Marillion, Mike Portnoy formerly of Dream Theater and Neal Morse formerly of Spock's Beard. They formed in 1999 as a side project to their full time bands until 2002. They have reunited in 2009.

Transatlantic Official Site

Roine Stolt : Guitar and Vocals
Pete Trevawas : Bass and Vocals
Neal Morse : Keyboards Guitar Acoustic and Vocals
Mike Portnoy : Drums and Vocals
Ted Leonard : Keyboards Guitars Vocals And Percussion

Son House - Downhearted Blues

Born near Lyon, Mississippi, March 21, 1902, Son House (Eddie James House Jr) chopped cotton as a teenager while developing a passion for the Baptist church. He delivered his first sermon at the age of fifteen and within five years was the pastor of a small country church south of Lyon. His fall from the church was a result of an affair with a woman ten years his senior, whom he followed home to Louisiana. By 1926, House had returned to the Lyon area and began playing guitar under the tutelage of an obscure local musician named James McCoy. He developed quickly as a guitarist; within a year he had fallen in with Delta musician Rube Lacy and began emulating his slide guitar style. House shot and killed a man during a house party near Lyon in 1928. He was sentenced to work on Parchman Farm, but was released within two years after a judge in Clarksdale re-examined the case. Having been advised by the judge to leave the Clarksdale vicinity, House relocated to Lula and there met bluesman Charley Patton while playing at the Lula railroad depot for tips.

Patton befriended House, who began working as a musician around the Kirby Plantation. In 1930, Patton brought him, guitarist Willie Brown, and pianist Louise Johnson to Grafton, Wisconsin, for a recording session with Paramount Records. House's influence on the Delta School of musicians can be judged from a handful of recordings made in Grafton. His song "Preachin' The Blues Part I & II" was a six-minute biography of his life and served as inspiration for Robert Johnson's "Preaching Blues" and "Walking Blues." House's powerful vocals and slashing slide guitar style established him as a giant of the Delta School but did not lead to commercial success. House continued playing with Willie Brown during the 1930s and developed a relationship with a young Robert Johnson after moving to Robinsonville, Mississippi. After Johnson had learned to play guitar, he began to gig with House and Brown, learning the older musicians' licks.

House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams were recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax near Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, in 1941 for the Library of Congress. Lomax returned the next year to record House in Robinsonville, but the musician did not make another commercial record until the "blues revival" of the 1960s. His influence, however, would be felt through the recordings of Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk, and other successful blues artists.

Son House died October 19, 1988.

Raul Seixas e Marcelo Nova - Quando eu Morri - 21/08/2015

E mais uma vez prestamos nossa homenagem ao eterno Raulzito no aniversário de 26 anos de seu precoce falecimento.

Son House - Grinnin' in your Face

Born near Lyon, Mississippi, March 21, 1902, Son House (Eddie James House Jr) chopped cotton as a teenager while developing a passion for the Baptist church. He delivered his first sermon at the age of fifteen and within five years was the pastor of a small country church south of Lyon. His fall from the church was a result of an affair with a woman ten years his senior, whom he followed home to Louisiana. By 1926, House had returned to the Lyon area and began playing guitar under the tutelage of an obscure local musician named James McCoy. He developed quickly as a guitarist; within a year he had fallen in with Delta musician Rube Lacy and began emulating his slide guitar style. House shot and killed a man during a house party near Lyon in 1928. He was sentenced to work on Parchman Farm, but was released within two years after a judge in Clarksdale re-examined the case. Having been advised by the judge to leave the Clarksdale vicinity, House relocated to Lula and there met bluesman Charley Patton while playing at the Lula railroad depot for tips.

Patton befriended House, who began working as a musician around the Kirby Plantation. In 1930, Patton brought him, guitarist Willie Brown, and pianist Louise Johnson to Grafton, Wisconsin, for a recording session with Paramount Records. House's influence on the Delta School of musicians can be judged from a handful of recordings made in Grafton. His song "Preachin' The Blues Part I & II" was a six-minute biography of his life and served as inspiration for Robert Johnson's "Preaching Blues" and "Walking Blues." House's powerful vocals and slashing slide guitar style established him as a giant of the Delta School but did not lead to commercial success. House continued playing with Willie Brown during the 1930s and developed a relationship with a young Robert Johnson after moving to Robinsonville, Mississippi. After Johnson had learned to play guitar, he began to gig with House and Brown, learning the older musicians' licks.

House, Willie Brown, Fiddlin' Joe Martin, and Leroy Williams were recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax near Lake Cormorant, Mississippi, in 1941 for the Library of Congress. Lomax returned the next year to record House in Robinsonville, but the musician did not make another commercial record until the "blues revival" of the 1960s. His influence, however, would be felt through the recordings of Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk, and other successful blues artists.

Son House died October 19, 1988.

The Yardbirds - I'm A Man

In addition to their six Top 40 songs, the Yardbirds will be remembered as having produced the top three English blues-based guitarists of the ‘60s: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

The Yardbirds formed in June 1963, with Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Chris Dreja on guitar, Jim McCarty on drums, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass and Anthony “Top” Topham on guitar. That October, Topham was replaced by Eric Clapton. The group was originally called the Most Blueswailing Yardbirds, and their repertoire consisted entirely of blues cover songs. Their following increased when they replaced the Rolling Stones as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey, England.

The group’s first solo album, For Your Love, was released in the U.S. in August 1965. The title track reached Number Six on the U.S. charts. Later that year, the group released Having a Rave Up. By the time of that album’s release, Clapton had quit the band, and he only appeared on four tracks. He eventually joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Clapton initially recommended that the group hire Jimmy Page as guitarist, but Page was hesitant about giving up his lucrative studio work, and he recommended his friend Jeff Beck. Beck played his first gig with the Yardbirds in May 1965. His innovative playing, with fuzz tone, feedback and distortion, altered the Yardbirds’ sound, and the group began to experiment with various European and Asian styles ("Still I'm Sad,”  “Turn into Earth,” "Hot House of Omagarashid,” "Farewell,” "Ever Since the World Began") .

Beck played lead guitar on several Yardbirds’ hits, including “Heart Full of Soul” (Number Nine, 1965), “I’m a Man” (Number 17, 1965), “Shapes of Things” (Number 11, 1966) and “Over Under Sideways Down” (Number 13, 1966). The group played its first U.S. tour in August 1965. Three more U.S. tours took place during Beck’s tenure with the band.

In the summer of 1966, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith quit the band to focus on record production. He went on to produce such artists as Carly Simon, Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull. His replacement was Jimmy Page. After Page’s arrival, rhythm guitarist Dreja switched to bass, and Page and Beck both played lead guitar. This lineup can be seen in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up. The Yardbirds performed “Stroll On,” a re-working of “Train Kept a-Rollin’.”

The Beck-Page lineup recorded little else in the studio and no live recordings of the dual-lead guitar lineup have surfaced (save a scratchy cover of the Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man"). The Beck-Page Yardbirds also recorded a commercial for a milkshake product, "Great Shakes," using the opening riff of "Over Under Sideways Down.”

That was about all this version of the Yardbirds recorded. But Beck and Page did record one song with John Paul Jones on bass, Keith Moon on drums and Nicky Hopkins on piano. The song was called "Beck's Bolero,” and it was inspired by Ravel's "Bolero.” The song was the B-side of Beck's first solo single, "Hi Ho Silver Lining." It also appeared on Beck’s first album, Truth, in 1968.

As a Yardbird, Beck had been missing many shows due to health problems, and he wound up leaving the band in November 1966. The Yardbirds carried on as a quartet, and in 1967 they released another LP, Little Games. Additional singles were released, but they didn’t do well. Finally, on July 7, 1968, the group played its final show at the Luton College of Technology in Bedfordshire, England. After that, the Yardbirds disbanded. Relf and McCarty formed a folk duo called Together, which was followed by Renaissance and, later, Armageddon.

Page formed the New Yardbirds; that group eventually mutated into Led Zeppelin. Chris Dreja became a photographer, and shot the band photos for Zeppelin’s eponymous debut. Relf died of an electric shock at his home on May 14, 1976.

Despite their relatively brief career, the Yardbirds had a major impact on rock and roll. According to Rolling Stone, the group “virtually wrote the book on guitar-oriented, blues-based rock and roll. They were a crucial link between mid-Sixties British R&B and late-Sixties psychedelia, setting the groundwork for heavy metal.”

The Yardbirds - For Your Love

In addition to their six Top 40 songs, the Yardbirds will be remembered as having produced the top three English blues-based guitarists of the ‘60s: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

The Yardbirds formed in June 1963, with Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica, Chris Dreja on guitar, Jim McCarty on drums, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass and Anthony “Top” Topham on guitar. That October, Topham was replaced by Eric Clapton. The group was originally called the Most Blueswailing Yardbirds, and their repertoire consisted entirely of blues cover songs. Their following increased when they replaced the Rolling Stones as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey, England.

The group’s first solo album, For Your Love, was released in the U.S. in August 1965. The title track reached Number Six on the U.S. charts. Later that year, the group released Having a Rave Up. By the time of that album’s release, Clapton had quit the band, and he only appeared on four tracks. He eventually joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Clapton initially recommended that the group hire Jimmy Page as guitarist, but Page was hesitant about giving up his lucrative studio work, and he recommended his friend Jeff Beck. Beck played his first gig with the Yardbirds in May 1965. His innovative playing, with fuzz tone, feedback and distortion, altered the Yardbirds’ sound, and the group began to experiment with various European and Asian styles ("Still I'm Sad,”  “Turn into Earth,” "Hot House of Omagarashid,” "Farewell,” "Ever Since the World Began") .

Beck played lead guitar on several Yardbirds’ hits, including “Heart Full of Soul” (Number Nine, 1965), “I’m a Man” (Number 17, 1965), “Shapes of Things” (Number 11, 1966) and “Over Under Sideways Down” (Number 13, 1966). The group played its first U.S. tour in August 1965. Three more U.S. tours took place during Beck’s tenure with the band.

In the summer of 1966, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith quit the band to focus on record production. He went on to produce such artists as Carly Simon, Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull. His replacement was Jimmy Page. After Page’s arrival, rhythm guitarist Dreja switched to bass, and Page and Beck both played lead guitar. This lineup can be seen in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow Up. The Yardbirds performed “Stroll On,” a re-working of “Train Kept a-Rollin’.”

The Beck-Page lineup recorded little else in the studio and no live recordings of the dual-lead guitar lineup have surfaced (save a scratchy cover of the Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man"). The Beck-Page Yardbirds also recorded a commercial for a milkshake product, "Great Shakes," using the opening riff of "Over Under Sideways Down.”

That was about all this version of the Yardbirds recorded. But Beck and Page did record one song with John Paul Jones on bass, Keith Moon on drums and Nicky Hopkins on piano. The song was called "Beck's Bolero,” and it was inspired by Ravel's "Bolero.” The song was the B-side of Beck's first solo single, "Hi Ho Silver Lining." It also appeared on Beck’s first album, Truth, in 1968.

As a Yardbird, Beck had been missing many shows due to health problems, and he wound up leaving the band in November 1966. The Yardbirds carried on as a quartet, and in 1967 they released another LP, Little Games. Additional singles were released, but they didn’t do well. Finally, on July 7, 1968, the group played its final show at the Luton College of Technology in Bedfordshire, England. After that, the Yardbirds disbanded. Relf and McCarty formed a folk duo called Together, which was followed by Renaissance and, later, Armageddon.

Page formed the New Yardbirds; that group eventually mutated into Led Zeppelin. Chris Dreja became a photographer, and shot the band photos for Zeppelin’s eponymous debut. Relf died of an electric shock at his home on May 14, 1976.

Despite their relatively brief career, the Yardbirds had a major impact on rock and roll. According to Rolling Stone, the group “virtually wrote the book on guitar-oriented, blues-based rock and roll. They were a crucial link between mid-Sixties British R&B and late-Sixties psychedelia, setting the groundwork for heavy metal.”

Mississippi Fred McDowell: Baby Please Don't Go

When Mississippi Fred McDowell proclaimed on one of his last albums, "I do not play no rock & roll," it was less a boast by an aging musician swept aside by the big beat than a mere statement of fact. As a stylist and purveyor of the original Delta blues, he was superb, equal parts Charley Patton and Son House coming to the fore through his roughed-up vocals and slashing bottleneck style of guitar playing. McDowell knew he was the real deal, and while others were diluting and updating their sound to keep pace with the changing times and audiences, Mississippi Fred stood out from the rest of the pack simply by not changing his style one iota. Though he scorned the amplified rock sound with a passion matched by few country bluesmen, he certainly had no qualms about passing any of his musical secrets along to his young, white acolytes, prompting several of them -- including a young Bonnie Raitt -- to develop slide guitar techniques of their own. Although generally lumped in with other blues "rediscoveries" from the '60s, the most amazing thing about him was that this rich repository of Delta blues had never recorded in the '20s or early '30s, didn't get "discovered" until 1959, and didn't become a full-time professional musician until the mid-'60s.

He was born in 1904 in Rossville, TN, and was playing the guitar by the age of 14 with a slide hollowed out of a steer bone. His parents died when Fred was a youngster and the wandering life of a traveling musician soon took hold. The 1920s saw him playing for tips on the street around Memphis, TN, the hoboing life eventually setting him down in Como, MS, where he lived the rest of his life. There McDowell split his time between farming and keeping up with his music by playing weekends for various fish fries, picnics, and house parties in the immediate area. This pattern stayed largely unchanged for the next 30 years until he was discovered in 1959 by folklorist Alan Lomax. Lomax was the first to record this semi-professional bluesman, the results of which were released as part of an American folk music series on the Atlantic label. McDowell, for his part, was happy to have some sounds on records, but continued on with his farming and playing for tips outside of Stuckey's candy store in Como for spare change. It wasn't until Chris Strachwitz -- folk-blues enthusiast and owner of the fledgling Arhoolie label -- came searching for McDowell to record him that the bluesman's fortunes began to change dramatically.

Two albums, Fred McDowell, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, were released on Arhoolie in the mid-'60s, and the shock waves were felt throughout the folk-blues community. Here was a bluesman with a repertoire of uncommon depth, putting it over with great emotional force, and to top it all off, he had seemingly slipped through the cracks of late-'20s/early-'30s field recordings. No scratchy, highly prized 78s on Paramount or Vocalion to use as a yardstick to measure his current worth, no romantic stories about him disappearing into the Delta for decades at a time to become a professional gambler or a preacher. No, Mississippi Fred McDowell had been in his adopted home state, farming and playing all along, and the world coming to his doorstep seemed to ruffle him no more than the little boy down the street delivering the local newspaper.

Sticky Fingers The success of the Arhoolie recordings suddenly found McDowell very much in demand on the folk and festival circuit, where his quiet, good-natured performances left many a fan utterly spellbound. Working everything from the Newport Folk Festival to coffeehouse dates to becoming a member of the American Folk Blues Festival in Europe, McDowell suddenly had more listings in his résumé in a couple of years than he had in the previous three decades combined. He was also well documented on film, with appearances in The Blues Maker (1968), his own documentary Fred McDowell (1969), and Roots of American Music: Country and Urban Music (1970) among them. By the end of the decade, he was signed to do a one-off album for Capitol Records (the aforementioned I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll) and his tunes were being mainstreamed into the blues-rock firmament by artists like Bonnie Raitt (who recorded several of his tunes, including notable versions of "Write Me a Few Lines" and "Kokomo") and the Rolling Stones, who included a very authentic version of his classic "You Got to Move" on their Sticky Fingers album. Unfortunately, this career largess didn't last much longer, as McDowell was diagnosed with cancer while performing dates into 1971. His playing days suddenly behind him, he lingered for a few months into July 1972, finally succumbing to the disease at age 68. And right to the end, the man remained true to his word; he didn't play any rock & roll, just the straight, natural blues.

Blind Faith - Well...All Right,Sea Of Joy and Sleeping On the Ground

Artist Biography by Bruce Eder

Blind Faith was either one of the great successes of the late '60s, a culmination of the decade's efforts by three legendary musicians -- or it was a disaster of monumental proportions, and a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the business of rock at the close of the decade. In actual fact, Blind Faith was probably both. By any ordinary reckoning, the quartet compiled an enviable record. They generated some great songs, two of them ("Sea of Joy," "Presence of the Lord") still regarded as classics 30-plus years later; they sold hundreds of thousands of concert tickets and perhaps a million more albums at the time; and they were so powerful a force in the music industry that they were indirectly responsible for helping facilitate the merger of two major record companies that evolved into Time Warner, before they'd released a note of music on record. And they did it all in under seven months together.

Blind Faith's beginnings dated from 1968 and the breakup of Cream. That band had sold millions of records and eventually achieved a status akin to that of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. Cream's internal structure was as stressful as it was musically potent, however, as a result of the genuine personal dislike between bassist/singer Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, which occasionally overwhelmed the respect they had for each other as musicians, leaving guitarist/singer Eric Clapton to serve as mediator. After two years of service as a referee, spent all the while in an unremitting spotlight, the public seemingly hanging on every note he played, Clapton was only too happy to leave that situation behind.

The initial spark for Blind Faith came from Clapton and Steve Winwood, whose band Traffic had split up in January of 1969, amid acrimonious disputes over songwriting and direction. Winwood at age 20 was some three years younger than Clapton, and had emerged as a rock star at 17 as a member of the Spencer Davis Group, spending three years as the lead singer on a string of enviable R&B-based hits. His concerns were musical -- he wanted to work with the best musicians, and wanted to experiment with jazz, which led him to leave the Spencer Davis Group and form Traffic, which proved riven by egos nearly as strong as the members' musical impulses. The January 1969 breakup would be the first of several temporary splits in the band's lineup.

To see full bio, please click here.