Blues Resources.....
Books, Radio, Equipment Suppliers, CDs, Mp3s, Teaching Tools, Educational History, etc.....
From John Babich,
At this time, because of licensing questions, podcasting is still feeling it's way into Internet culture. Expect independent artists to dominate podcasting until this is settled.
Groovy podcasting!
Cd's and Reviews
Carlos Santana
All That I Am
by David White
The tried and true formula is applied once again in Santana's latest release, All That I Am. Once again, rock meets pop, reaching multiple audiences in multiple genres, to the benefit (for the most part) of all involved.
Michelle Branch is back, this time with the first single from the album, "I'm Feeling You." The songs on her own albums should sound this good.Something about performing with one of the all time greatest rock guitarists just brings out the best in some people. Mary J. Blige (with Outkast's Big Boi) shows more range on "My Man" than we knew she had. Aerosmith's Steven Tyler has never sounded any better than he does on "Just Feel Better."
A couple of the tracks seem glaringly out of place. Joss Stone and Sean Paul sound forced on "Cry Baby Cry," and it seems plausible that the only reason Santana's Arista label-mate, the not-quite-American Idol, Bo Bice appears ("Brown Skin Girl") is to promote his own album that comes out in December.
Those who long for the days of "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va," or who don't particularly care for today's brand of pop music, will not be particularly happy with this album. Those who appreciate how a masterful musician has successfully reinvented himself and continues to thrive after 35+ years will enjoy adding it to their collections.
1. Hermes
2. El Fuego
3. I'm Feeling You (Michelle Branch)
4. My Man (Big Boi & Mary J. Blige)
5. Just Feel Better (Steven Tyler)
6. I Am Somebody (will.i.am)
7. Con Santana
8. Twisted (Anthony Hamilton
9. Cry Baby Cry (Joss Stone & Sean Paul)
10. Brown Skin Girl (Bo Bice)
11. I Don't Want To Lose Your Love (Los Lonely Boys)
12. Trinity (Kirk Hammett & Robert Randolph)
13. Da Tu Amor
Smokin Joe Kubek & Bnois King
Show Me the Money
Show Me the Money is a worthy successor to Joe and Bnois' acclaimed Blind Pig debut, Roadhouse Research. Kubek's flame-throwing guitar work tempered by the finesse of King’s accompaniment and smooth vocals remain the bedrock of a powerful, irresistible combination. A rare blend of hot guitars and cool savvy, that does, indeed, smoke.
Robert Randolph & the Family Band "Unclassified" ( has mp3 )
Robert Randolph is a virtuoso on
the pedal steel guitar, and he has a first rate band to show off his talents.
Blending rock and roll with blues, funk, soul and gospel, this CD brings
something fresh to the music scene using influences from a few decades before.
With a wide array of influences and styles, this album is a throw-back to the
rock and roll of the 60's and 70's, when the focus was on the music.
Randolph is able to successfully blend rock and roll with hints of gospel,
blues, funk and even soul.
Deborah Coleman "What About Love"
Deborah Coleman, one of the most talented and prolific female blues artists of the last decade, makes her move to Telarc with the release of her new album, What About Love? Recorded in November 2003 at The Centre for Performing Arts in Unity, Maine, the album explores the ups and downs of matters of the heart—in a way that only a highly accomplished blues singer and songwriter like Coleman can do it.
Magazines
Blues Revue Magazine
A must read ....basically the international authority on artists, reports on festivals, tours, CD's absolutely anything blues related you can think of in North America......full color glossy...... comes out 6 times a year and every second issue includes a CD Sampler compilation of singles from recently released albums. They have a site www.bluesrevue.com or email at info@bluesrevue.com or phone 1-800-258-7388 or 304 782-1971.
tLiving Blues Magazine
The publication is historically oriented, but very much up to date on the blues scene and artists.
http://www.livingblues.com/index.htm
or phone for Subscription Inquiries : 1(800) 390-3527
Books
Nothing But the BLUES
Edited by Lawrence Cohn / Introduction by B.B. King
![[ Cover Image ]](http://www.abbeville.com/images-catalog/thumb/0789206072.jpg)
"Nothing
But the Blues is a gorgeous object, packed full of rare photographs and
written by a virtual who's who of blues experts. " --Boston
Globe
The story of America's most passionate and enduring music,
told through fascinating narrative and vintage photographs.
It is our most passionate music, rooted in
ancient Africa but brought to blossom in America at the doorstep of the
twentieth century. It is a living heritage of song born in poverty, persecution,
and hard labor, born of love and love betrayed, of holiness and sin, the
pleasures and the pains of the flesh, the experience of tragedy, comedy,
drunkenness, despair, desolation, and pure joy. It is the blues.
At
root, the blues is rich in its simplicity, but it has flowered across the years
in a variety of rare complexity. Perhaps no form of popular art is more
immediately appealing than the blues, yet so rewards a thorough knowledge of its
finer points. In eleven authoritative essays commissioned especially for the
book, Nothing But the Blues traces the African-American origins of the
music, its early development as popular entertainment, its early recorded
manifestations, its regional differentiation
(Mid-South,
Tidewater-Piedmont,
Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles), its many stylistic dimensions, and its
contemporary manifestations. Country blues, urban blues, the evolution of rhythm
and blues, rock 'n' roll, and the blues revival are all fully covered.
But the written history
is only part of the story. Blues fans have always treasured rare photographs of
their heroes, and Nothing But the Blues is gloriously illustrated with
posed and candid shots of the musicians as well as photographs of such
one-of-a-kind artifacts and documents as Leadbelly's NYPD rap sheet and classic
recording contracts. Nothing But the Blues features an introduction by
one of the genre's living legends, B. B. King, and a comprehensive "best of the
best" discography, including current and rereleased recordings as well as the
collectors' treasures to go after.
Blues is more popular than ever before. Not
only are reissues of historical blues classics selling in unprecedented numbers,
but a whole new crop of vital young blues artists is active in clubs and on
record today. Nothing But the Blues is a lavishly illustrated
comprehensive history of the music and the musicians, as well as the promoters,
producers, and others who have shaped--and continue to shape--this powerful and
enduringly popular American musical art form.
Blues historian Lawrence Cohn
is the producer of a massive blues reissue project undertaken by Sony
Music/Legacy Recordings. The premiere two-CD set in the series, featuring the
music of blues giant Robert Johnson, not only earned Cohn a Grammy award, but
has sold some half-million copies in the U.S. alone--an unprecedented number for
a historical reissue.
John Lee Hooker - Boogie Man
By Charles Shaar Murray
Acclaimed writer
Charles Shaar Murray's Boogie Man is the authorized and authoritative biography
of an extraordinary musician. Murray was given unparalleled access to Hooker,
and he lets the man from Clarksdale, Mississippi, tell his own story.
"Everything you read on album covers is not true, and every album reads
different," he told Murray. Murray helps Hooker set the record straight,
disentangling the myths and legends from truths so rock-ribbed that we
understand, as if for the first time, why they have provided the source for a
lifetime of unforgettable sound.
Murray weaves together Hooker's life and music to reveal their indissoluble
bonds. Yet Boogie Man is far more than merely an accomplished and brilliant
biography of one man; it gives an account of an entire art form. Grounded in a
time and place in American culture, the blues are universal, and in the hands of
the greatest practitioners its power resides in the miracle of using despair to
transcend it. "The preacher's mantle," Murray tells us, "passes to the
bluesman." This bluesman traveled a hard road out of the American South, from
obscurity to adulation and back-and back again. John Lee Hooker has seen it all
and sung it all, and his music is both a living legacy and an American treasure.
Here is the book that does him and his music full justice.
Blues Odyssey
By Bill Wyman
In
this evocative and intensely personal history of the blues, Bill Wyman pays
tribute to the musicians who
inspired him and whose music he took around the world as a member of the Rolling
Stones. The starting point of Bill's Odyssey is the journey of African slaves to
the plantations of America's Deep South. We follow their descendants as they
walk, travel the highways, and ride the railroads out of the Delta and the
troubled South via Memphis to the northern cities of Chicago and St Louis. But
this is no superficial history: Bill Wyman's in-depth odyssey reveals a society
where poverty and injustice as well as love and faith, found their expression in
a musical style that gave birth to rock 'n' roll. Location shots of smoky juke
joints, railroad stations, and endless highways combine with richly detailed
maps to bring the Blues alive. Feature spreads with previously unpublished
photographs from Bill Wyman's personal archive showcase 40 Blues legends from
Robert Johnson to John Lee Hooker, telling the story of their fascinating and
often troubled lives. Bill Wyman is a legend in his own right. He has known and
played with many of the Blues legends, and his personal knowledge and
unprecedented access give this book an authenticity that is almost impossible to
match.
Dan
Aykroyd, a.k.a Elwood Blues, talks with the greats of blues and rock
Elwood's Blues
Interviews with the Blues Legends & Stars
By Dan Aykroyd, Ben
Manilla
Ray Charles * Ruth Brown * James Cotton * Buddy Guy * John Lee Hooker * B.B. King Taj Mahal * Charlie Musselwhite * Koko Taylor * Junior Wells * Aerosmith * Eddie Van Halen * Robert Plant * Carlos Santana * Bob Weir * Marcia Ball * Johnny Winter * John Mayall * Keb' Mo' * Susan Tedeschi * Shemekia Copeland * Blues Traveler * and more!
Born in the Delta 100 years ago, the music known as the blues has meandered through Mississippi juke joints and Chicago nightclubs, Texas roadhouses and Memphis studios, and on to concert halls worldwide and back again, each twist in the road producing a new permutation of this timeless music. Elwood's Blues is the story of the music makers along those roads, the artists who have created, re-envisioned, and remembered the blues.
The blues found its way onto The House of Blues Radio Hour in 1993, ushered in by host Dan Aykroyd and producer Ben Manilla. Every week, the award-winning radio program has brought in-depth artist profiles and the complete spectrum of blues music to millions of listeners across North America. Now--for the first time--these insightful, entertaining, and historical interviews have been compiled for you to study and enjoy--come along for a ride with the blues!
Elwood's Blues features:
A portion of the proceeds from Elwood's Blues goes to the nonprofit Blues Foundation, www.blues.org.
"What a great compilation--a
perfect complement to the radio show and a historical database of
unparalleled value."
--Bob Vorel, Publisher Emeritus, Blues
Revue magazine
"No second-hand stories. No
editorialized interpretations. Here are their own words--as pure and honest
as the music they create."
--Gaye Adegbalola, solo artist and frontwoman for Saffire, the Uppity Blues
Women
"More than a transcription of the radio show; it is guidebook for a journey through the blues." --Dave Benson, Program Director, KFOG-FM San Francisco
Learning to play?
Fender http://www.fender.com/home.html
Fender Players Club
This site is pretty cool
for tips on blues http://www.fenderplayersclub.com/home/blues.htm
Check out Woodshed and select Blues
Radio
INTERNET BLUES RADIO...No strings attached Free, just push the Listen Now box on the top left hand side of the page ( you don't have to sign in or pay attention to the other stuff in fact you can close the big box on the right, down and just keep the player box open ...minimize if you want)
Note: also it takes a minute or two to load the page up then non stop great
blues music from Kansas City
Blues Radio
Here's another Internet blues radio
station,
http://bluesfestradio.com/
BLUES ON THE RADIO in Manitoba (regular broadcasting stations NOT INTERNET)
CKUW 95.9 FM U. of Wpg
Tuesdays 8 to 11 pm Bluesday with Rockin’ Ronnie & E.B.
UMFM 101.5 FM U. of MB Wednesdays 4 to 5:30 pm
Behind the Blues Door; noon to 1 pm Sundays with Marc Giguere blues/blues rock
CKXL 91.1 FM French Mondays 8 to 10 pm with Johnny Blues
CBC Radio 990 am Saturday 11 pm to 1 am Saturday Night Blues hosted by Holger Peterson
Musical Instruments, Supplies, Sound Equipment Sales and Rentals
Ted Good Music: 747 10th St. Brandon, Mb.
Phone 728-1110
Surridge's Music Centre: 535 34th St. Brandon,
Mb.
Phone 727-3322
Boomtown Music: 960 Queens Av. Brandon, Mb. Phone 725-2731
