Sheboygan Blues Society

Big City Blues by Ventresco

2009-10-15T16:25:00.001-05:00

Springtime Rag by Ventresco

2009-10-15T16:20:00.001-05:00

Ventresco

2009-10-15T16:14:00.002-05:00

You're going to be seeing more posts from me about this amazing guitarist, Craig Ventresco. In this clip he is merely a supporting player, but where he does his old time vaudeville and ragtime tunes he will astound.

The Hotshots at the HarvestFest

2009-10-07T05:09:00.003-05:00

Good times were had by all with blues, ragtime and some hokum and jug music provided by Michael Ammons and the Water Street Hot Shots at the Sheboygan Harvest Fest last weekend. Lil' Rev was a special guest blowing that harmonica and picking that uke! If you missed it -- well, you missed it!

Austin Music Historian Discovers Blind Willie Johnson’s Grave

2009-08-10T11:38:00.002-05:00

From the Texas Psychedelic Rock website:

AUSTIN, TX - July 27, 2009 – Since his death in 1945, the grave of Blind Willie Johnson, one of the greatest bottleneck-slide guitarists of all time, has been unmarked. Now, thanks to 18 months of research and a dozen visits to the Blanchette Cemetery in Beaumont, Texas by Austinite Jack Ortman, the final resting place of this influential Texas musician will get the recognition it deserves.

Johnson’s music has always been revered by his fellow musicians. His songs have been covered by Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, White Stripes, Bruce Springsteen, Hot Tuna, the Grateful Dead and countless other artists. More than 30 years after his death, Johnson’s recording of “Dark was the Night (Cold was the Ground)” was included on a Sounds of Earth record launched into space onboard NASA’s Voyager One. Nearly 60 years after Johnson’s death, Texas guitar legend Johnny Winter called that song one of his 10 favorite songs in a Guitar World interview.

Johnson’s childhood, like his untimely death, was heartbreaking. His mother died when he was a baby; his step-mother blinded him with lye when he was seven years old. (His song “Motherless Children Have a Hard Time” was covered by Clapton on 461 Ocean Boulevard in 1974.) One of Columbia’s biggest selling race recording stars during the Great Depression, Johnson recorded 30 songs between 1927 and 1930. When the economy ended his recording career, he became a Baptist minister. He operated a “House of Prayer” in Beaumont with his wife and continued to perform on street corners. In 1945, a fire ravaged their home. With nowhere to go and little funds, they slept on newspapers on their water-damaged bed. Johnson caught pneumonia but was turned away at a local hospital because he was blind (or black, depending upon the source). He died within a week: his final resting place unknown; his grave unmarked.

Determined to uncover that page of Texas history, Ortman began making the 230 mile trek from Austin to Beaumont every two or three weeks. “I’m into the history of music and musicians of the Golden Triangle − Beaumont, Orange and Port Arthur, Texas” he explained. “During my research, I kept coming across information that Blind Willie had lived in Beaumont during the 30s and 40s. The sources also revealed that he died in Beaumont. My natural curiosity made me search further and I started finding information that no one was sure where he was buried. That was it, my moment of realization, and I thought, ‘What a perfect project for me’.”

Ortman began researching Johnson’s life, collecting books, articles, and CD liner notes. After reading an article in the Austin American Statesman by Michael Corcoran, and a chapter about Johnson in Corcoran’s book All Over the Map, he learned that Corcoran had found a copy of the Johnson’s death certificate that noted he was buried in Blanchette Cemetery.

Ortman headed for that cemetery and met Estraleta Sonnier, the new director of Community Cemeteries, an umbrella organization for several Beaumont cemeteries. He then hooked up with the Tyrrell Historical Library and the Jefferson County Historical Commission and was told Johnson was buried at Community Cemeteries, which had him searching two additional burial grounds. After a couple of dead ends at those cemeteries, he once again focused on Blanchette.

Johnson was buried in a pauper’s grave in the “colored section” of the Blanchette Cemetery, which has a chain link fence separating the white and black sections. When Ortman discovered his final resting place in July, Johnson had been dead for almost 65 years. Sam Charters, music historian, record producer, and author of The Country Blues, The Legacy of the Blues, and several other books on blues and jazz, searched for his grave in the mid 1950s. Corcoran abandoned his search in 2003. Ortman believed the time was right to try again and credits his success to a number of factors.

“Right from the beginning, I felt if I were to have any success, I needed the involvement of all the players,” he said. “My objective was getting to know the people at the cemetery and all the historical commissions on a personal basis. Discovering the location took combining the “Industrial Maps” of Beaumont from the 1920s to the 1960s; having a new director of the Blanchette Cemetery; utilizing overhead aerial photos from satellites in space; timing; and a lot of luck.”

“I think other researchers had been looking for a gravestone with Blind Willie’s name chiseled on it,” he added. “When I found out he was buried in a paupers grave, it changed the focus of my search. After I eliminated all the ‘marked’ and ‘paid for’ tombs and narrowed what was left as the paupers graves, I had found the last of the missing ‘Blues Founding Fathers’.”

Requirements for an Official Texas Historical Marker from the Texas Historical Commission (THC) are stringent and require applications to be submitted by a county historical commission. The Jefferson County Historical Commission is submitting Ortman’s application this fall. When approved, the THC writes the inscription, requires payment for the marker (approximately $1500, already pledged by an anonymous donor), and has a foundry cast the marker. Ortman plans to host an unveiling ceremony with the Jefferson County Historical Commission when the wait is finally over.

“Well deserved and 65 years overdue, Blind Willie Johnson will finally get the recognition he deserves as a seminal Texas musician,” Ortman added.

By Mary Lou Sullivan

Dyin' Crapshooter's Blues

2009-08-06T17:53:00.000-05:00

I must be on a roll!

Lookin' Good But Feelin' Bad

2009-08-06T17:35:00.002-05:00

Another awesome performance of an 80-year old tune by Fats Waller!

Dinah

2009-08-06T17:02:00.001-05:00

I just love these guys! I always knew I was born too late....

Stardust -- a reinterpretation

2009-06-21T19:47:00.001-05:00

Enjoy this video. What cool stylings of this great 1927 jazz-pop song by Hoagy Carmichael.

Congratulations to Michael Ammons and the Hotshots!

2009-05-15T09:29:00.001-05:00

Congratulations to Michael Ammons and the Water Street Hotshots for winning this year's Grafton Blues Challenge last weekend. They were the only acoustic group on the bill and took away top honors. Now it's on to Memphis for the International Blues Challenge.

Good luck!

Tonewoods

2009-05-13T08:31:00.006-05:00

I've never thought too much about the wood my guitars are constructed of, except from a visual aspect. I have a beautiful flamed maple parlor from Larrivee, for example. It's fun to play, and great to look at. So I hadn't thought about guitar materials outside of the woods we're all familiar with: rosewood, spruce, mahogany, maple. But if you start looking into the guitars of the 20s and 30s, you see guitars constructed from other woods, like oak and birch.

Recently I began the early steps into having a 1920-30s Stella-style guitar built for me by a Wisconsin luthier. One of the choices I had to make was the wood from which the back and sides of the guitar will be constructed. I could have gone with the old standard, mahogany. I have several "hog" guitars now, so I'm quite familiar with the sonic qualities of that tonewood.

But I discovered a few things during my research on the internet concerning tonewoods for guitar.
(1) Guitar players, and perhaps to a lesser extent, luthiers themselves, have a very narrow idea of what makes a good tonewood.
(2) Oak, despite the fact that it was commonly used decades ago, is held in low regard, primarily, I believe, out of ignorance.
(3) There do exist tonewood "heretics" out there who are all to happy to experiment with alternative woods.

One such heretic is luthier John Calkin. I discovered his article "The Heretic's Guide to Alternative Lutherie Woods" in which he claims that the whole concept of a tonewood is a hoax.

"First of all (and speaking from a steel string guitar perspective), let's discard the notion that some species of wood make good instruments and that others don't. The concept of a tonewood is a hoax. Of the few things that we can do to a guitar and still call it a guitar, changing the wood it is made of will have the least impact upon the quality of the sound that it produces."

It is a thought-provoking article for those interested in this sort of thing, and I recommend reading the entire article via the link provided.

Then I came across a site by Neil Harpe, Stella Guitars. Neil is helping to save and revive many old guitars, including the old Stellas which I am interested in. On his site, he shows us the reconstruction of an oak-spruce Stella. Well, that pretty much sealed the deal for me -- my Stella repro is going to be oak and spruce, with reproduction fingerboard inlays like the Stella in Neil's restoration. Here is a photo of the finished restoration -- visit Neil's site for some great info, Stella shirts, reproductions of classic guitar catalogs, much more.

Slow Season

2009-03-08T09:42:00.010-05:00

I haven't been very active on this blog lately -- just not much going on.

There have been some notable blues deaths: John Cephas (shown at left) just passed away, and a few weeks ago Snooks Eaglin died at age 73.

I haven't made it to any local concerts -- I just can't take the smoke any more (damn smokers!) -- though I do have tickets for the Blue Note 70th Anniversary concert at Lakeland College later this month:

To mark the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records, the premier label in jazz, an all-star band featuring some of the finest musicians today is traveling the world celebrating this rich catalog of music. Led by Blue Note Records artist and pianist Bill Charlap, the group will explore classic tunes by Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter and many others. Joining Charlap in this talented ensemble will be Ravi Coltrane on tenor and soprano saxophone, Pat Martino on guitar, Lewis Nash on drums, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Peter Washington on bass and Steve Wilson on alto saxophone.

I've been playing my guitar, working out Reverend Gary Davis' version of "I'll Fly Away," a challenging version in the key of G. That's about it.

A Sign of the Times

2009-01-21T08:14:00.002-06:00

As another sign of the times the Hal Leonard Corporation has withdrawn its support for the Jazz Series at the Pabst Theater. Unless another sponsor is found, which is very unlikely, there will be no Jazz Series this year. This is unfortunate, as I've enjoyed the great talent the series has brought to Milwaukee the past years (see some of my old posts on concert reviews).

Archie Edwards

2009-01-07T09:28:00.004-06:00

I just ran across this bluesman, Archie Edwards (1918-1998). He's a bit rough around the edges -- guitar playing-wise -- but I'm enjoying his CD, The Toronto Sessions, Vol 1, recorded in 1986.

In June of 1986, Archie Edwards was in Toronto to perform a concert and was persuaded by producer Serge Sloimovits to go into the studio. The result was enough songs on tape to produce two albums, but the songs were never released. When Fred Litwin founded NorthernBlues Music in 2000, he heard about this nearly forgotten musical treasure and approached Sloimovits, from whom he bought the master tapes. The result is this historic CD.

Check him out if you enjoy really downhome Piedmont blues.

Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell

2008-12-11T06:28:00.010-06:00

Last December I purchased this book about Blind Willie McTell. At that time I wrote:

I have mixed feelings about this book thus far.

The first six chapters had my eyes crossed a few times trying to keep all the genealogy straight. Michael Gray, the author, goes into excruciatingly painful detail on the search through all the records to trace the relatives of Willie McTell, and cites tedious census entries. Perhaps entertaining for true genealogists, but terribly boring for a reader like myself. I would rather Gray had gone straight to the results, but then the book wouldn't have been as long, I guess. A genealogy chart might have helped keep things straight and made his narrative easier to follow.

So thus far, a hundred and some odd pages into the book, I'm disappointed. But don't get me wrong, if you're a lover of this music and Willie McTell's music in particular, it's still worth slogging through all the census lists and political sniping. And looking on the bright side, it can only get better from here -- I hope.

Well, I'm still struggling with this book, and my opinion now is that this is a waste of time. I've read a lot of praise for this book on other blues-related websites and forums, and I just don't understand it. You've heard the expression, "the book was so good I couldn't put it down." This is one book, once started, is hard to pick up again. A more boring, plodding, narrative I can't imagine. It is a morass of census data, geographical minutiae, and personal political sniping at the Republican administration:

He was buried at Zoar United Methodist Church. Its postal address is Stapleton (which is in Jefferson County), but it's on Zoar Church Road, which is, appropriately for Reddick, just inside Glascock and only half a mile from Warren and a further mile from McDuffie.

What? I would have been satisfied with the first sentence, I didn't need a detailed map. This is what the book is like -- endless meandering and pointless description. Then there's the author's personal political sniping, entirely pointless, but apparently since it's his book he feels a need to vent his own Bush-derangement, even though it adds nothing to the story he's trying to tell and simply detracts from the narrative:

Library staff see all the corner-cutting and encroaching bureaucracy, but what I see is that, discounting small obduracies in small branches, the library system in America stands for all the civilized values that George W. Bush and the boyz-in-the-hood equally would destroy at a stroke if they could.

As far as I'm concerned, the author has taken what should have been an entertaining story and turned it into an unreadable mess. I can't state this too strongly: I'm sorry I wasted the money and time on this literary abomination. And I haven't said that about too many books in my life. It's no surprise to me that no American publisher has picked up the rights to this book yet. And to think I had to pay a premium to get this book shipped from England! What a waste!

Have A "Blue" Christmas

2008-11-30T08:04:00.005-06:00

One of my favorite CDs for this time of year is "Blue Yule: Christmas Blues & R&B Classics," a compilation of blues and R&B tunes fitting for the season.

The disc includes songs by John Lee Hooker, Louis Jordan, Detroit Junior, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Charles Brown, among others.

This is a good antidote to the same old canned Christmas music which seems to be everywhere. Give me these blues tunes AND a little Handel and Bach -- and I'm good for the season!

That'll Never Happen No More

2008-11-27T09:03:00.003-06:00

Here's a really nice version of the Blind Blake classic by John Jackson, circa 1970.

And where can I get a pair of socks like that? Wow.

A Nice Little Ditty

2008-11-05T09:39:00.001-06:00

A nice little version of a Buddy Moss tune. Love the overalls.

"I Found A New Baby"

2008-10-23T06:59:00.003-05:00

Here's another video by our own Water Street Hot Shots.

Classic jazz tune, this version inspired by McKinney's Cotton Pickers. Performed by Ammons and The Water Street Hot Shots from Sheboygan, WI. Features the world's hottest sinkaphone solo. Recorded Sept. 27, 2008 at the Jacksonport Town Hall Bakery, Door County, Wisconsin.

Check out McKinney's Cotton Pickers for some amazing hot jazz from the 20s and 30s -- the great tenor sax player Coleman Hawkins played with this band, and their recordings are amazing.

Diddie Wah Diddie

2008-10-08T15:19:00.001-05:00

Oh, Glory How Happy I Am

2008-10-01T08:13:00.004-05:00

Oh, when I was out in the world of sin
I had no one to be my friend
Jesus came and he taken me in
Glory, hallelu
And he taken my feet out the miry clay
He placed them up on a rock to stay
I thank God that I can say
Glory, hallelu

Oh, Glory how happy I am
Oh, Glory how happy I am
My soul is washed in the blood of the lamb
Glory, hallelu

I was out in darkness and I could not see
Jesus came and he rescued me
He claimed me and gave me a victory
Glory, hallelu
And one day while Jesus was passing by
He set my sinful soul on fire
He made me laugh and he made me cry
Glory, hallelu

Uplifting Blues When You're Blue

2008-09-30T11:57:00.003-05:00

Probably my favorite hymn/gospel tune is "I'll Fly Away," and no one, to my mind, does a better job of it than the Reverend Gary Davis. So, since the time seems appropriate right now, with the recent deaths in my family, for some joyful noise, here it is.

A non-music related subject

2008-09-28T16:29:00.007-05:00

I'm going to go against my own self-imposed prohibition against non-music related issues on this post. I promise I won't make it a habit.

In the last four months I've lost a younger sister and, most recently this weekend, my father, to cancer. Aside from the utter wickedness and relentlessness of that disease, is there anything to be learned from these last four months of high emotion, regrets, hospitals, pain, suffering, and death?

What comes to my mind foremost is this: Time goes on and we don't know what next week let alone the next day will bring. I guess that's pretty self-evident. Yet, in the fast-paced, sometimes self-absorbed, world we find ourselves in, it's so easy to forget this immutable fact of life.

Don't postpone that trip with your friends that you've been meaning to take for the last few years. Don't work those overtime hours at the expense of time with your family or friends, or at the expense of your favorite hobby. Play that guitar. Do what is important, and do it today. You may not have tomorrow.

I wanted to take my dad to see the Lambeau Field renovations in Green Bay. We often talked about when “down the road” we would do that. But something always got in the way. We'll never take that trip now.

I wanted my sister, someone who, in her short existence, had never been on a plane, to experience that and to see a little of the desert in Arizona where I used to live. We'll never take that trip now.

There are other similar regrets.

For my dad, from a bumper sticker on his desk: On the Eighth Day God Created Marines.

Semper Fi, dad.

Darktown Strutters Ball

2008-09-17T10:52:00.002-05:00

Here's a great job with one of my favorite songs from the 1920s. And even a verse in Swedish! And here's a link to the band, The Piedmont Project, from Sweden.

Jazz Guitar at the Z-Spot

2008-09-17T07:05:00.001-05:00

Tonight, September 17, the Z Spot Coffeehouse on Indiana Avenue (Sheboygan) will host Rick Gustafson and Dave Sullivan on guitars from 6:30 to 8:30.

Thanks to Jon M. for the tip on this one!