I really can’t wait til tomorrow, when i’ll be driving up to Nashville til Monday (this means no updates til next tuesday) this week has gone on long enough already.

quick update today.

luke jordan is a pretty unknown virginia blues singer, he only recorded 12 sides, but they all feature very solid east coast blues style guitar playing and real nice laid back voice. the song i’m posting is from his last recording session - and is very remorseful track - featuring some of his best guitar work.

more information - and another song here

sorry guys.

As with every Tuesday I’ll be doing my radio show - The Gate City Blues - this evening from 11-1am EST, Click the WUAG link on the sidebar to hear a stream of it or if you are the Greensboro Area - tune into 103.1 to here me in full stereophonic sound.

Thanks for everyone who left comments or sent me emails about female blues, they’ve been really intersting and helpful. Today I’m posting a track by the “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey. Rainey was the prototype that all blues singers afterwards would follow and she did it better than almost anyone would ever do. One of the earliest singers - Rainey only recorded for a few years (23-28, i think) but she recorded a wealth of material and help many future blues stars get their foot in the door and help them with singing. Like many female blues singers she did not have much of a career after 28, because female blues singers were not in demand anymore.

The track I am posting is “Sleep Talking Blues” recorded in 1928 during her last session, Rainey is still at the top of her game and features a great band. It is one of the great mistakes in music history that the female blues because so out of fashion and ignored after less than ten years of recorded history - many of the great female blues singers were just hitting their prime as the bottom of the industry fell out, it would have been a great thing to here later day Ma Rainey working with some of the great male blues players, but alas.

i realize i’ve now used “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone twice in my post tiles, so i’m including that as a bonus mp3 for the week. This weekend for me just flew by - and i’m back in summer classes and because of them i’ll be updating the blog a little later for the rest of the summer, but I’ll try to make sure everything is up by the end of the work day, for all the 9 to 5ers that check this site out.

I’m posting a song by one of the most mysterious figures in blues history - Washington Phillips. Born in Texas, Phillips was reported to play a dolceola, a novelty minature piano like instrument, but the actual instrument use has come to be of some dispute in recent years (check out the links posted below). Phillips played gospel music only, no secular songs, in the Texas tradition of Blind Willie Johnson. Unlike Johnson however, Phillips is very low key in his delivery and playing - but still retains a very passionate voice that speaks to the listener in a way a preacher would speak to his congregation.

A side note about the recordings. I am using the Yazoo collection “The Complete Recorded Works of Washington Phillips” and like all of Yazoo’s discs, it doesn’t contain any information on the actual recordings, such as dates and studios as well as little to no information about Phillips himself (though it goes into great detail about his use of the dolceola), but to Yazoo’s credit the disc sounds great. I really wish Yazoo would start giving more detailed track descripitions (a la Document Records)on their releases, i noticed that on their most recent collections they have started to put the year the track was recorded, but that’s hardly enough, considering the amount of information that most labels put on their blues releases.

An intersting link about Phillips:

The dolceola debate also contains a link to the a great text by Michael Corcoran

bonus track!

alright. so look.

i totally messed up some stuff. but no matter. i’m posting a few ghostface killah tracks, because bascially his new album is really awesome - and more people need to be hearing it as it is getting zero airplay. so one track off that “Save Me Dear” which features ghostface rapping over a freddie scott song and then “Motherless Child” one of my favorite tracks off his first solo album - ironman

High noon just doesn’t mean what it used to. I am doing a rare early morning update because i’m up and i doubt i’ll be about to do it around noonish. So now ya’ll can get yr blues with yr coffee.

Today’s track is from a great piano blues legend - Aaron “Pinetop” Sparks, one half of the Sparks Brothers(Aaron and Lindberg)as well as several amazing solo sides. This track “Tell Her About Me” is a light hearted boogie woogie piece feature some outstanding piano playing and a nice guitar by Henry Townsend.

As a side note i’ve noticed that ya’ll don’t post comments on the female/piano blues pieces as much as the guitar guys (or when i don’t update) does that mean that most people don’t like piano based blues recordings or.. i’d be intersted hear some feedback about that sort of thing. leave a comment in the box or emailme at pkpatnaik at gmail.

cheers!

I hope everyone caught my radio show last night. I had to cut it off early because the guy who has the unlucky 1-4am shift came in like a half hour early and was sorta pacing around.

I played this track last night, pretty early on in the set, but i wanted to play it like three or four more times. I couldn’t find much information about Gene Gilmore outside that he was a part of the Five Breezes and did not record a whole lot of solo material (though the Five Breezes only had one session) but Gilmore played with some great players such as Sammy Price and Ike Perkins. This track “Charity Blues” was made popular by Charlie McCoy, Gilmore plays it faster and looser and makes it really jump.

i’ll get back on track tomorrow.

also 90% of me doing my radio show tonight

www.uncg.edu/wua - 11-1 a.m. EST

i’ll be playing some new stuff i just picked up, so check it out!

i need to finish up this project, but i’ll post some stuff later tonight maybe. i’ll be back on track tommorrow though.

Oh Yea. Today in honor of me getting better i’m going to upload some awesome summer tracks that will make you clear your living room or den or bedroom and just dance dance dance. Also in honor of me needing to make like thirty pages of biographies for my last summer class, the update will be short on text, long on dance.

Joe Tex is up first singing “That’s Life” and really just ripping the hell out this track live and the unknown gal named “Palmer” doing “Hot Dog! That Made Him Made” and i even like it more than the Wanda Jackson verison!