MickeyV | All About Blues Music

TRIXIE SMITH

In the early 1920’s Blues recording was dominated by women who took the Blues from the travelling shows and the cabaret stages to the recording studio and, although unrelated, many of them shared the surname Smith. Of course, Bessie Smith, ‘The Empress of the Blues’, is obviously the best known of these women, and Mamie…

CHARLEY BOOKER

Charley Booker was born and raised in Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta, with the sound of original Blues music all around him. The plantation where Charley grew up is just east of Indianola, where Charley reported seeing Charley Patton play. Charley’s uncle played with Patton and the kid was playing guitar in local juke-joints…

BRUCE BASTIN

In 1958, Muddy Waters played a gig at St. Pancras Town Hall in London as guest of Chris Barber, the bandleader whose love of the Blues was to spark the British Blues Boom in the following decade. In the audience that night was a teenaged Bruce Bastin, the future musicologist, writer and label owner whose…

DUFFY POWER

Duffy Power was a man out of time. His short career as a British teen idol eventually led him to be part of the British Blues Boom, but unlike Rod Stewart, Chris Farlowe, Long John Baldry and bands like The Stones, The Yardbirds and The Animals, he couldn’t find a hit record to propel him…

FLOYD COUNCIL

Floyd Council was a superb Piedmont guitarist, mandolin player and singer, whose records appeared under the names ‘Dipper Boy’ Council and ‘The Devil’s Daddy-in-Law’. These tags were the work of his manager J D Long, who loved to give his acts memorable names: he called Fulton Allen ‘Blind Boy Fuller‘, harp player Saunders Terrell became…

CONGO SQUARE

Congo Square, on Rampart Street in New Orleans, is a place of special significance for lovers of modern American music. A statue of ‘Satchmo’ stands in what is now called Louis Armstrong Park, near the Municipal Auditorium, and this location is the birthplace of The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Back in the 50s,…

LOUIS PRIMA

Louis Prima will be forever remembered as the voice of ‘King Louis’ in the Disney film of ‘Jungle Book’, and readers of a certain age will remember him as one of the biggest acts in Vegas during the 50s and 60s. However, in the late 30s, the swinging dance music played by his 5-man ‘gang’…

ROY GAINES

Roy Gaines was born on 1934 in Waskom, Texas and brought up in Houston. There was music in the family, as his older brother Grady played sax as a session musician for Don Robey‘s Peacock Records, and later joined Little Richard‘s band The Upsetters. Roy started out playing piano, but switched to guitar because he…

LADY BIANCA

A woman who can sing the Blues with an authentic growl a smooth, seductive contralto and a big, sweet toned range will always be in demand, and West-coast star Lady Bianca fills that bill perfectly. She is not well known around the world, or even across the nation, but her big, rounded voice has been…

‘PAPA’ HARVEY HULL

When J Mayo ‘Ink’ Williams set up Black Patti Records in Chicago in 1927, he was hoping to exploit the market for ‘race records‘, which was expanding rapidly. He released Blues, Jazz and Spiritual music, hell-fire sermons by ‘straining preachers’ and comedy routines and popular ditties from vaudeville stars. The enterprise was not immediately profitable,…