Η Φωτογραφία της ημέρας.

[The Rebel]

Honeyboy Edwards.
June 28, 1915 – August 29, 2011



“In the English Department I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on the Blues literary tradition. In my Southern Studies courses, I often use Honeyboy Edwards’ Autobiography,
‘The World Don’t Owe Me Nothing.’

SpoilerShow

If somebody is looking to read what I consider the great Blues autobiography, that’s it. Honeyboy knew everybody who was anybody, and he came up right when Blues was emerging as a musical force in the Delta. B.B. King’s autobiography is good too, but Honeyboy’s has something different. He really makes you understand what the music did for him.
You asked how my students receive this material.”

“…Honeyboy used his creativity and figured out a way of circumventing that exploitation.
He realized that if you could be an independent contractor, busk for nickels and dimes the way Robert Johnson did, play what the public wanted, and be a human jukebox/songster, you could actually make a life for yourself.” - Adam Gussow.

[The Rebel]

Johnny Shines.



“Long before becoming a force in Chicago blues, Johnny Shines hoboed with Robert Johnson through Depression-era America. They hopped freights, played on street corners, shared rooms and whiskey, and made it as far north as Canada.

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Johnson, the Mississippi Delta’s most celebrated blues performer, perished in 1938, and for the next half-century, his spirit haunted the music of Johnny Shines. It echoed in his turnarounds, mournful bottleneck slides, impassioned lyrics, and falsetto moans. At clubs, house parties, and other gatherings, Johnny Shines was just as likely to launch into Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues,”
“Terraplane Blues,” and “Sweet Home Chicago” as he was his own “Evil-Hearted Woman Blues,”
“A Little Tenderness,” and “Evening Sun.” - Jas Obrecht.

“Shines was that rare being, a blues artist who overcame age and rustiness to make music that stood up beside the work of his youth. When Shines came back to the blues in 1965 he was 50, yet his voice had the leonine power of a dozen years before, when he made records his reputation was based on”. - Tony Russell.

[The Rebel]

B. B. King.



"I believe your sound comes from within you. You can manufacture a sound by having a wah-wah pedal or something, but the actual sound comes from you. You know, if you have a piano sitting out in the lounge, and Ray Charles is playing it, he’s going to sound like Ray Charles. If Elton John is playing it, he’s going to sound like Elton. My point is that it’s your touch and your soul that makes it sound the way it does.

"Now, you don’t want to play like B.B. King or somebody else. You want to be you. So what you do is listen to me and anybody else you like. I won’t use the word ‘steal,’ but try to ‘borrow’ a little bit from each guy. And, like that, you become you.” - B. B. King.

[The Rebel]

Son House.



About seeing Son House and his band of musicians for the first time, Alan Lomax wrote:
“Of all my times with the blues, this was the best one, better than Leadbelly, better than Josh White, Son Terry, and the rest of them. There was a harmonica player who howled and whined through his instrument like a hound dog on a hot trail. There was a mandolin player who did not pick his instrument delicately, but trailed cascades of blue-silver chords that lit up the harmonica’s chase like the hot moonlight of Southern midsummer nights. A second guitarist picked bass-string obbligato to the big country feet that whomped out the rhythm and turned the whole frame building into a huge African drum. At the center of all this was Son House, a man transformed, no longer the quiet, affable person I had met, but possessed by the song, as Gypsies in Spain are possessed, gone blind with music and poetry.” - Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began.

[The Rebel]

Blind Lemon Jefferson.
September 24, 1893 – December 19, 1929



Remembering Blind Lemon Jefferson, who passed away on this date back in 1929. Jefferson is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Texas Blues”, and, the “Father of Country Blues”.

“The first artist to take the blues back “down home” on a national scale was Blind Lemon Jefferson, the “King of Country Blues.” He was the first male blues recording star, and by far the most popular country bluesman of the 1920s in terms of record sales.

In 1974 blues authority Pete Welding wrote: “There is scarcely a blues performer alive, major or minor, who has not acknowledged his debt to Lemon, remarking either on the striking character of his instrumental work, or on the high quality of his songs, many of which have become staples of the blues repertoire.” - Jim O’Neal, The Blues Foundation.

[The Rebel]

Hubert Sumlin.




“Actually, when I was a kid I wanted to be a jazz player like Charlie Christian more than anything, but I also loved and heard the blues. [Those players] were all around me, and at a certain point, I realized how great all these dudes I listened to were: Charley Patton, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson… all those guys. Peetie Wheatstraw, the “devil’s son-in-law”—Jesus, man, he was something!

Then when I got with Wolf and Muddy I realized that they actually played with these guys,
and that blew my mind. I’ll never forget my old 78 of Charlie Patton. He was a wizard, man,
a genius. I tried to ask Wolf about him, and he said, “Aw, you young punk, you’re too young
to understand.” It always hurt me that I missed out on seeing and playing with those old guys,
because they wrote the book that Wolf and Muddy electrified and expanded. If Wolf and Muddy were the fathers of rock and roll, then those acoustic guys were the granddaddies.” - Hubert Sumlin.

[The Rebel]

Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten.
January 5, 1893 – June 29, 1987



Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten was a self-taught, American folk and blues musician.
She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, in the “Early Influence” category.

“I play my guitar upside down, I guess you can see that, can’t you? Well, I was learning to play my guitar, I would ask my brother to show me, and that’s the answer I would get: ‘You got it upside down, turn it around or change the strings.’ Well, I changed the strings, and it was worse when I changed, so I’d leave it like this. No one helped me. Everything I played tonight, I give myself credit, because no one helped me.” - Libba Cotten.

[The Rebel]

Chuck Berry and Buddy Guy.

[The Rebel]

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.



“It’s thinking positive and not getting stuck with someone else’s sound. I ain’t out there trying to sound like this guy and that guy – I don’t believe in that stuff. As an artist, you have to have your own identity. If anything, have people try to sound like you.”
“Stop thinking about the guys you idolize. Think for yourself. You have a mind, so use it.”
- Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.
From January 2005 issue of Guitar Player Magazine.

[The Rebel]

Mister Satan (Sterling Magee) and Adam Gussow.



“People say I must have been brave to be in Harlem at that time, but I didn’t feel brave.
Once I started playing with Sterling and saw the positive response from the audience, it just felt right.

SpoilerShow

It was a time when New York had a very high murder rate, but I never heard a gun or saw a gun. I didn’t think that was happening where we were, although later a Village Voice writer, Peter Noel, told me that he was hanging out with militant Black Nationalists just around the corner from where we were playing and they were not happy with the fact that I was out there. And he said, ‘Frankly, Adam, I’m surprised they didn’t take you out,’ so maybe it was more dangerous than I realized. But it was such a great gift to be able to play with this amazing musician. Then, pretty early on in our relationship, Mr. Satan got a second high-hat cymbal and he took off like a shot, doing much more complex rhythms.”

“He developed that incredible percussion sound while I was there. I think I provoked a little bit of it. My harp was adding to his sound, and we became very intense–we really pushed each other in an amazing way. To the people who came to listen to us I was just the ‘white boy who played with Satan,’ but then we made a demo and I had to put a name on it, so I called us ‘Satan and Adam’. We started playing in other locations, including near Columbia University and down in Times Square, and I remember at one location I sold 60 of the demo cassettes in one hour, while I was playing! I was trying to play and would have to stop to take their ten dollars and shove it in my pocket.” - Adam Gussow.

[The Rebel]

Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker.
May 28, 1910 – March 16, 1975



“To be the best, I’d have to stick with my style. I can’t get away from it. That’s the reason why I don’t do rock-n-roll, which they’ve been trying to get me to do it, but I’ll get away from my style.”

“The old-timey blues is beginning to come back and rhythm and blues is beginning to come back.” – T-Bone Walker.

[The Rebel]

Junior Wells.
born Amos Wells Blakemore Jr.
December 9, 1934 – January 15, 1998



“I went to this pawnshop downtown and the man had a harmonica priced at $2.00. I got a job on a soda truck…. played hookey from school… worked all week and on Saturday the man gave me a dollar and a half. A dollar and a half! For a whole week of work. I went to the pawnshop and the man said the price was two dollars. I told him I had to have that harp. He walked away from the counter – left the harp there. So I laid my dollar-and-a-half on the counter and picked up the harp. When my trial came up, the judge asked me why I did it. I told him I had to have that harp. The judge asked me to play it and when I did he gave the man the 50 cents and hollered ‘Case dismissed!'” - Junior Wells.

[The Rebel]

Good times!



From the National Blues Award show in 1984…
Hubert Sumlin, Rufus Thomas, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, Albert King.
Photo by Mike Kappus.

[The Rebel]

Robert Lockwood Jr.
March 27, 1915 – November 21, 2006



On how it all started…
“I was taught by Robert Johnson. I was already playing the piano a little bit, so sense of time was really no problem. Robert Johnson came into my mother's life and he could play so well, until I guess everybody would want to learn how to play it like he did. After he had been with my mother for about three or four months, he seen I was really interested in it and he asked me if I really wanted to learn it. I told him, "Yes, I did." He started letting me fool with the guitar. I learned so fast that it kind of excited my momma. He showed me something a couple of times and then I would have it. Finally, my auntie bought me a guitar. Me and Robert put one together, but not having the right kind of glue and stuff, it didn't stay together. And my auntie bought me the guitar and I've been playing it ever since.” - Robert Lockwood Jr.

[The Rebel]

Richard "Hacksaw" Harney.
July 16, 1902 – December 25, 1973



"Hacksaw was an octopus! Well, that's the only way to explain how he could play so many notes at once. Of course, Robert [Johnson] stole his licks from a lot of guys, but I know for a fact that he learned from Hacksaw. And you know Hacksaw was just as good on the piano, don't you?" - Robert Lockwood Jr.

“Hacksaw was regarded by many musicians as the best guitarist in the Delta.” - Robert Palmer, Deep Blues.

“I really think that Hacksaw was a big influence with Robert [Johnson]. He was the only somebody who could compete with him... He played the guitar very, very well.” - Robert Lockwood Jr., Living Blues.

“His talent, virtuosity and flair rank him with the likes of Robert Johnson, Blind Blake, Reverrend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson. And yet, if it were not for these Adelphi/Blues Vault tapes, he would be a blues equivalent of Buddy Bolden, the unrecorded giant whose mysterious legend enlivens early jazz lore.” - Larry Hoffman.