moon traveller herald

I remember hearing ''Dust My Blues'' -- on the grey Kent 45 thanks to Norman Wilde, who would select my free 45 to accompany an LP I'd buy at Soulville Records next to the Veneitan theatre on Main Street in Racine in 1967.  Norman was supposed to put promos in the LP bag, and there were some good ones, but he would find actual 'oldies' of Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James. I've put a lot of miles on, and seen many ramifications and enhancements and extrapolations. But I've come back to that chord of Elmore James as  if it is the only harmonic. Jack and Norman (shown here) were hipster gurus of life and blues and jazz. They made Soulville, a narrow dark store full of record covers, a truly extraordinary place. Norman set me on a path with those genius 45s, that he passed on to me as Jack was good naturally looking out the window. Recall I saw George Wallace with three Secret Service men go into barbershop next door one day. To get haircut downtown on...

The pioneering blues singer and guitarist B. B. King, who won over a dozen Grammy Awards and is perhaps best known for the song “The Thrill Is Gone,” died on Thursday in Las Vegas. He was 89. Mr. King was born in 1925, the son of sharecroppers in Mississippi. He had a career that began in the 1940s, kicked into high gear in the last years of the 1960s, and continued full-throttle until last fall, when he canceled a tour citing poor health. The British singer-songwriter and guitarist Eric Clapton, who drew inspiration from Mr. King as a young musician and collaborated with him on the 2000 album “Riding With the King,” shared a tribute to Mr. King on his Facebook page. On BB King's passing .. Norman Wilde at Soulville really hipped me to BB King. Remembering: at Soulville you could get a free 45 if you bought an LP. I'd get the Blues Project, or the Dirty Blues Band...he would slip in "Dont Answer the Door," "(I'm Going to Move to) The Ou...

First heard the Paul Butterfield blues band early in the summer of love 1967. We lent the record among our crew. For us they were something of a sleeper among the tremendous abundance of creative bands at the time. Certainly different in that they were closer to the roots of street expression - more so than some of the crimson and chiffon butterfly "psychedelicists" that were about. That year I caught on to Taj Mahal, Canned Heat, the Dirty Blues Band and the Butterfield Blues Band, whose lead guitar player, Mike Bloomfield, was a very big notch above anyone else on an instrument that was coming to define the era. He was the first rock guitar hero, ahead of Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and held the mantle, Mickey, at least for a while. When I re-imagined Black Orpheus ( itself a reimagining of Orpheus in the underground) I imagined Mike Bloomfield as the Pan-like protagonist, probably having learned by then that his guitar was the transcendental and evocative...

i. The news came by Internet, and then passed on by voice. Cecelia told me a great is gone. So, teardrops will fall. I am here today to mourn a most soulful and heartfelt musical talent. That is because Peter Green is dead at 73. I count him as a giant of the Blues. Certainly, among people from across the Atlantic, he was one of the bravest and brightest to contribute to the Blues. Green was the founder of what was and is now called “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac” – convenient naming as the eventual, successful, and very Californian Fleetwood Mac bore slight resemblance to Green’s blues bashing open-for-anything original. That would be the late 1960s. Green and cohorts John McVie, Mick Fleetwood and Jeremy Spenser came out of the London blues scene of 1967 somewhat in the wake of Cream. Previously, Green had replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, and had proved replacing “God” was possible, as Mayall’s band missed not a beat with Peter Green on guitar. ...

The fiddle breaks into the intro. We walk into the eternal honky tonk. James Hand is singing In the Corner at the Table by the Jukebox. In the Corner at the Table by the Jukebox My favorite mourners and I talk about these old hard knocks our lives are measured there by the bars clocks In the Corner at the Table by the Jukebox So step in side where live has died and you'll sure find me with sadness and a haunted face that's bound to be Hidden behind the door that sorrow locked In the Corner at the Table by the Jukebox. Do you know a place like that? Where people start out young honkytonkin and then retreat backwards into the old shadows? James Hand nails this like Poe in his Rounder record debut. He's past football playing age, James is. Comes out of Texas and says Willie: "James Hand is the real deal." It is that simple. Waterfall tradeoffs on pedal steel and guitar. James Hand sings from deep down within. And he is trying as h...

Waiting for bread on bakery road of dust. Zappa the boy grows up out in the Los Angeles dessert. His buddy is Don Van Vliet . They dream while they are driving the in Don’s father’s bread truck - the one welcomed by the housewives on the dusty bakery road. This is a truck which Don will drive for a while. Zappa is a lonely boy. They are buds and they dream on. Incessantly play R&B. Dwell on things. Imagine a homemade movie, Capt. Beefhart and the Clay People. Zappa is a lonely boy whose father works in the electronics world. The aeronautics world. The Lockheed-Martin-American part of it that world that is at cold war. Move 95, 100, 145 miles at a clip three or four times while zappa is growing. From San Diego to Lancaster, back, and beyond. Like American Graffiti, but more dusty.Zappa is growing so Zappa gets the growing lonely boy in the L.A. dessert blues. And he doesn’t go out for sports. Instead he is about Savoy 78s. The cutting guitar of Johnny Guitar Watson. B...

  THIS IS SYNDICATED CONTENT. FOR THE REAL THING GO TO https://alcompasdelmundo.blogspot.com/ Jack Vaughan steps in "invitado" tonight. He says: The party would revolve as vinyl, where the English bands or the Motown orchestras could set the quantum strings to spinning. If it were my records at my pad, maybe with a MeisterBrau big jug, I would put forward the case for the dance of ecstasy. There would be LPs and 45s strewn. It might include some slow blues. It might end with Sister Ray, which could wake up the danced-out couch  sleepers, and remind them they should go home. This is the kind of event which I look to memorialize here. In these times, it’s the 45s that seem so especially to hold the magic light – and it’s still easy, on a Friday or Saturday night, to let records play us into a shuffling cloud of socks on the shiny floor. The Watusi, the Swim, the Hully Gully. Among the 45s in this collection are the jazz 45s of Eddie Harris and the Crusaders, of the kind to fi...

This is adapted from a Selection from Our Vault. Writ on the passing of Wilson Pickett in 2006.  Wilson Picket was the first soul singer I heard, and the most direct, and the guy who got me into the thing. Wilson Pickett. I died in front of 40 people 0nce trying to replicate Mustang Sally. It isnt possible.  His is irreproducible art. Midnight Hour was an oldie. But it was totally different than any other. Tried and failed to replicate that as well.  The thing is that the time and the place become one with the feel. I'd listen to those records waiting for the Marlin ride to the Gritty. Wilson Pickett Poem My room in the house on North Bay Drive Waiting for Bob La France to pick me up in the Long Red AMC Marlin All anticipation in the night of Nitty Gritty Playing Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits in the anticipation Eyeballing a zit in the truth-telling mirror Getting psyched When Everybody Needs Somebody shook the radio Entering the long dark dusty archive - Soulville - to ...

  The day Microsoft added AutoSummarizer to Word, I stopped off at Egghead after work. There was no one else in line ahead of me. Not like John Wesley Harding. There were two other cats ahead at Soulville in Racine Wi when that was released. pic.twitter.com/A6LYhualS8 — Jack Vaughan (@JackIVaughan) February 15, 2024

  October marks the 20th Year of Jack Vaughan's Moon Traveller Herald Blog. Featuring here some drawings from the site. I could imagine this might be incidental art for a podcast. Attemmpt at a daily comic. Middle panel shows me as I picture myself in my office. Mitt Romney drawn via Etchesketch. Helping foreigners in the Dallas Airport, I reimagined the Boarding Pass. Ed Bride garnered me the works of MoonDog. I made a cover for the cassette. Gifs provide Animation for Everyone. In these days I would have to do the coding. In the wake of 911 things changed. I tried to work with charcoal pens. This actually predates the World Wide Web. It imagines JP Morgan visiting Egypt. I was remembering Soulville Record Store in Racine. Jack and Norman had the Keys to the Kingdom. Also in Racine, the Journal Times truck would drop off the papers and Timmy Egan would fold them to throw. He'd let me ride my bike along with him on his route. Distribution of News circa 1957. Imagined Bob Dylan ...

While the pictures from our New Years Poesy Party is developing down there at the drug store, I am going to partially recollect things from the blog from the year in non-chronological ordeal. In January I summoned a drawing memory brief of Soulville, the place on Main St., between the Rialto (where I saw King Kong vs. Godzilla) and the barber shop (where I saw George Wallace get a haircut). On the left was Jack, on the right was Norman. Norman on the right hipped me to blues . L to R: Jack, Norman. In February I ventured West. Good idea as the snow was piling ever higher in the East. T'wern't long after the passing of Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks. There in the sybaritic city by the bay, Jeff DeMark sang his ode to Ernie Banks , "Does that sound like work to you?" On same trip me and the boys had a night on the town. We didnt dance, you know, but the bluegrass dancers of the evening did make an impression, of which I am still mindful. "Did you see that ...

I got to see Little Richard one time. He headlines a Dick Clark Oldies Show at Milwaukee Summerfest in 1971. Following the lead of the declining Beatles (“Get Back”) and reborn Rolling Stones (“Brown Sugar”) and the periodical hood ornament light of Creem magazine, we were migrating to rocknroll and glad to be in the presence of the pioneer spirit Richard, who had begun to go on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show to be outrageous. Now he has left this world. May 9, 2020. So, Richard was top of the bill, but that was a tough one, cause it was quite a bill. I am sure he would be hard to follow, but on the other hand it wasn’t easy for him to follow the Drifters, Coasters, Bo Diddley (who I got to talk to through the chain link fence at the foot of the stage) and Chuck Berry. Chuck really hit a home run. As a result, Little Richard was kind of anti-climatic. He went straight to ‘acting up’ and he kept repeating that he was the greatest, the prettiest, the thingiest and so on. He how...

Have a poem yall...two from the Vault combined. Taking vacation - see you there after! - JV i. Waiting for Bob La France to pick me up in the Long Red AMC Marlin All anticipation in the night of Nitty Gritty Playing Wilson Pickett's Greatest Hits in the anticipation Eyeballing a zit in the truth-telling mirror Getting psyched When Everybody Needs Somebody shook the radio Entering the long dark dusty archive - Soulville - to get the 45. And I Found a Love. 634-5789 - A Racine Exchange! ii. But the Juke Box at the Lucky Cue is the altar where we share these offerings.  he Lucky Cue was punk for us!  Recall The Cue: You walk in there and the juke box is playing.  Two long rows of greenfelt tables, pinball machines up front, more tables and a mezzanine level in the back.  And the juke box is playing  96 Tears,  Sometimes Good Guys Dont Wear White,  You Gonna Miss Me, and  Pushing Too Hard, by  Question Mark and the Mysterians,  the Standells...

Lately (Jun 2005) I've heard Elmore James anew. He could fix on a single note, but make it ring. Shame he died at 45, his heart exploded, with little mention. But he was in approach to music acutely aware somehow of a universal harmonics, a chord Elysium. And no one had it better. One extended chord that came up from Afrik to Greece by way of Hawaii and Mississippi. Circled the globe, Jack. No one dug more into the musical values of electric signals though they still be trying. Always felt: ''It was Elmore James invented musical electricity.'' But the one-note-ness of Elmore I'd kind of come to take for granted as a limitation. The note bloomed, expanded, of late. Who know why? There is a ringing wood chime at my neighbors where I park my car, and all of music can be spawned from it essential sound. Dust my Blues too is inevitable. Fleetwood Mac you know I've been listening too, I mean what they now call the Original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green. I w...