Fw: [Bluesville] Today In Blues - Dec 17


--- On Tue, 12/16/08, hiway_61revisited <hiway_61revisited@...>
wrote:

From: hiway_61revisited <hiway_61revisited@...>
Subject: [Bluesville] Today In Blues - Dec 17
To: Bluesville@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, December 16, 2008, 9:54 PM

Today In Blues - Dec 17

On this 17th day of December in 1939 New Orleans Blues pianist James
Booker was born The Crescent City.
Booker was a flamboyant and eccentric pianist with an amazing left
hand technique that influenced many other New Orleans pianists.
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Influential Blues harmonica player Paul Butterfield was born in
Chicago on this day in 1942.
Butterfield was a trained classical flautist when he took up guitar
and began listening to Blues. He met guitarist Elvin Bishop and they
began playing parties as an acoustic duo and hanging out at the Black
Blues clubs on the South Side of Chicago, where they were befriended
by the likes of Muddy Waters , Howlin Wolf, Junior Wells, Little
Walter and Otis Rush. Bishop says "Butter" learned to play harp in 6
months , "a natural genius". They recruited bassist Jerome Arnold and
drummer Sam Lay from Howlin` Wolf`s band and formed The Paul
Butterfield Blues Band, becoming the first integrated Blues
band..Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboardist Mark Naftalin joined
the band for their first album, which became the the first million
selling Blues album. The band became a major influence on countless
young musicians, including yours truly.
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Eddie Kendricks, lead vocalist for The Temptations, was born in Union
Springs, AL on this day in 1937.
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Art Neville, keyboardist and vocalist with The Neville Brothers, was
born in New Orleans on this day in 1937.
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New Orleans Blues vocalist Little Sonny Jones (Specialty, Imperial
records) died on this day in New Orleans in 1989 at age 58.
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Chicago slide guitarist Hound Dog Taylor died on this day in 1975 in
Chicago at age 60.
Taylor was born in Misissippi and became a Chicago Club mainstay in
the 50s, but was only recorded sporatically until Bruce Iglauer
formed Alligator Records exclusively to record Hound Dog.
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Legendary Blues guitarist Big Joe Williams died on this day in 1982 in
Macon, GA at age 79.
Williams` career spanned 6 decades and he recorded for Vocalion,
Paramount, Okeh, Bluebird and Prestige Records, among others. Big Joe
played a nine string guitar in an open tuning (Usually G).
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Veteran record producer Joel Dorn, who worked with such artists as
Roberta Flack, Max Roach, and the Neville Brothers, died of a heart
attack on Monday, December 17, in New York. He was 65.
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On this day in 1938, John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson (the first)
records "Christmas Morning Blues"

On this day in 1955, Carl Perkins wrote Blue Suede Shoes. Less than 48
hours later, he recorded it at the Sun Studios in Memphis. The tune
became one of the first records to be popular on rock, country and
rhythm & blues charts at the same time.
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