moon traveller herald

Got to know Steve Freund in the Sunnyland Slim Blues Band days. Heck of a player and person!

Sunnyland Slim got his name from the train. Jim has featured him on his Al Compas site many times. The train ran on the Frisco Line. It would go ever so fast. Going by, it would set papers and soda bottles to flying. And it would kill people and mules and destroy their wagons if they were stuck on the tracks. They wrote about it. The Sunnyland Train. The song comes to me, when I see that Purple T.

HISTORY             SPACE               BLUES POETRY             TRADE PRESS DAYS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Always good to visit Al Compas. Jim Haas's music fiestra. Recently, his take on British Rock led me to create a small addendum. "Failure works for British Invasion Plan" ...  Failure to exactly recreate American Blues. This I learned. It was pandemic time and I wiled away the hours on YouTube. I learned that Paul Jones was childhood friends with Brian Jones - who invited him to move to London with him to start a band - said Paul, Nah – Later, ok he said I will go to London to jam the blues with some art schoolers – the Manfreds - happily end up reinvigorating Brill Bldg wall of sounders like sha la la and do wah diddy [with connection to American jive or cockney patois - where you fill in t...

  A favorite picture of Cecelia [in Chicago, late 1970s]

 Picture of Big Walter Horton Lookin like a bird rockin back and forth Flaps his arms as he blows his harp lookin out cross eyed over a hawk nose His harp sing Like a bird Walter at twelve was playin in Handy Park Recorded with the Memphis Jug Band in a hotel room in the '30s had a hit with Sun Records in the '50s and hit Chicago Birdlike rockin he played a whoopin harp and he was only one in the same league as  Little Walter Could blow your mind the nights he felt like it.

Misposted this on Moon Traveler...But I Embrace the Random! For the music of your life and more visit Sister Site:  https://alcompasdelmundo.blogspot.com/ Any program that starts and ends with Little Walter has got something going on right. And in this version of Mexican radio’s Al compas del mundo (radioactivaTX.org – in Tequisquiapan, Queretaro) I can do no wrong. Though I kind of, sort of, do a chronology of the harmonica in American blues, I had to start off this playlist with Little Walter Jacobs for reasons obvious to me and, I’m certain, many others. Followed by an all-time favorite – Rollin’ and Tumblin’, with Walter again, Muddy Waters, Baby Face Leroy Foster and an unnamed participant or two. It is a given that the blues developed in the United States brought by an enslaved population that introduced African characteristics from many different roots and regions. This lyric-less version of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ is played, moaned and wailed to create a mood that – to these e...

  Slim quote: Muddy had soul with one string on the guitar. What did he mean? First of all, he meant Muddy Waters was the greatest bluesman, I think. And that his music touched the soul. He also meant that Muddy needed no big accompaniment, or fanfare, and what he had shared was only what was essential. Sunnyland helped a lot of other musicians. He like to make things happen. He had a session with the Chess Brothers when they had the Aristocrat Label. He made a point to get Muddy on the session, and to tell them Muddy should be recorded as well. Muddy had recorded before, but the Chess Brothers had their own studio and would take all the time in the world to achieve what they thought were the best possible blues recordings. So Muddy's talent and their talent would become famous. "Can he sing?" Leonard asked Slim of Muddy. "Can he sing? He can sing like a bird." Slim replied. There is another level too. What Muddy Waters did was strip away artifice to find the fu...

We were celebrating Mardi Gras a few weeks ago, listening to New Orleans and New Orleans-style music. Pulled out an old EP 45 by Boston's Ron Levy Bluesman Band. Coconaut Milk. Then, found that Ron had posted it to his YouTube page [see below].  Back in the day Ron let me create the Sleeve for this record. I got to gather some of my buds {Dave Hofstetter took the pic} and "Find" some art [the images of city and feet were from "1001 Afternoons in Chicago" by Ben Hecht 1922 [Racine's own]].  Layout is cool. You look at the graphic objects enough they finally start talking to you! Anyway I worked hours and hours on this. I loved Record Covers and would try my own hand. And my hand is clutzy. Ron came over to check it out. He looks at it and says "that's funky." And I say "Funky, good or bad?" And Ron says "Funky good" and smiles.  I was so relieved, and happy. I started trying to create newsletters in the basement when I was 6....

 On the passing of Luther Guitar Junior Johnson Christmas Day 2023 at 83 - I post here some excerpts from liner notes I wrote for his 1984 Rooster Record: “Doing the Sugar Too.”  He was a hard-working and riveting performer with a great sense of Time, Dynamics, Emotion, and Blues.  And a thoughtful individual I recall, as a read a bit of the liner notes.  Cringing too, as it's pretty clear I must have asked him some pretty dumb questions. But he fielded them manfully, and they tell a story. He came up from Mississippi to West Side Chicago, and played extensively with Magic Sam, but most notably with Muddy Waters, playing a role as something of a bandmaster for most of the 1980s, counting off numbers in one of Muddy Waters’ greatest ensembles. Here are some portions of the notes: Luther pursues a sound that represents his feelings. “I take my guitar and go into a sound,” he says. “I pick up an acoustic and think about different arrangements of music.” He sometimes com...

  Keeper of the Flame – JB Hutto This is something I wrote in 1981 for a publication called Sweet Potato. It was the first time I ever got paid for something I wrote. JB Hutto is a musical powerhouse. A small man in a red gabardine shirt and gray sports cap, he pops his eyes and grins to the back seats as he plays. It's late on a weeknight at Cambridge’s soon to be defunct Speakeasy, and the crowd is thinned in preparation for the next day's work. But JB is somehow spurred on, jumping from the stage with ferocious good fun. He is soon dancing on one foot, snaking through the audience and to his guitar cords’ limit. The man has his own style of playing and young guitar players typically line the stage watching his hands. He's the king of slide stylists today. Only Muddy Waters performs slide with such skill and he often plays the instrument with cold frugality. But JB’s playing is abundant and his leads map a tune’s wildest borders. Theatrical antics can mask it from ...

  This artifact from my bedroom bureau shows how lively the Chicago Blues Scene was in 1978. Every night in July, boffo!  What a line-up! Sunnyland Slim, Otis Rush, Magic Slim, Detroit Jr. Son Seals, Erwin Helfer and Mama Yancey - it just goes on and on. I got to a couple of these nights - hot but it was great to be there. This happened while I worked with Sunnyland on the Prose Poem "Sunnyland Blues." Most of that was Sunnyland conversation - and what testimonies they were. Here below instead I include some excerpts from the book that touch on my impressions of Chicago. These and some verbatims by other musicians weren't particularly received well by the critics. I get it, they were jarring, and might have worked well in a longer more rambling presentation.      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FROM CHICAGO AND ACROSS KING DRIVE - Distended lights of the northwestern trestle. Buses this burden their scores. Ice chests in the gas stations wait for Sat...

  I was idly Web surfing and I found this in the Records of the Wisconsin Historical Society. A beautiful poster promoting Sunnyland Slim appearance at Gordon Commons at the University of Wisconsin in Madison way back in the day (Donation: $1.50; beer 25 cents). Playing with Sunnyland were my friends Harry Duncan and Paul DeMark A story to this one has to do with the billing of "Little" Eddie Taylor - one of the Chicago greats - a story that I will pass on for now. Posters were a People's Art Form back in those days. You would post them on telephone poles, you would cop them after the event, you would put them on your wall, you would study them, and think about what they meant. Posting this today especially because it is Sunnyland Slim's birthday anniversary. As we often say: "He was a man amongst men." Strong character, strong heart, strong voice. Now a strong memory. https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM58549# Eddie Taylor story - Paul DeMark

In Japanese,  haiku  are traditionally printed as a single line, while  haiku  in English often appear as three lines. There are several other  forms  of Japanese poetry related to  haiku , such as tanka, as well as other art  forms  that incorporate  haiku , such as haibun and haiga. The  tanka  is a thirty-one-syllable  poem , traditionally written in a single unbroken line. A  form  of waka, Japanese song or  verse ,  tanka  translates as "short song," and is better known in its five-line, 5/7/5/7/7 syllable count  form .   Short song of Sunnyland: Denton We had a lotta cane / rattlesnakes, bears, panthers / come up to you alot / we chewed the sorghum that grew on stalks / Cleaned up the land at six bits a day. Spann was bad / Im gonna tell you Spann put out a sound / he didn’t have nothing to do after he got with Muddy / If there’s whiskey there. That’s what killed him...

  A person standing NeXT to a van. Description automatically generated with medium confidence In the category of something completely different. I found this picture of New Orleans piano great Jack Dupree yesterday, and I thought it was cool to pick up on. I never saw Jack, but I have a few of his records, which show he belongs in the pantheon of piano professors. The pic showed up in a Twitter feed that asked people to cite American blues players that went to Europe and more or less stayed there (Memphis Slim, Eddie Boyd, Luther Allison are just some of those listed along with Jack). I like the picture cause, well, he has a simple kind of car but he has pride enough to stand with it. Maybe he’d have liked a Cadillac, but this one would save on gas, and it looks like it could haul equipment too.  Does it make him look shorter or taller than he would in front of a Cadillac? (Your call.) And sign says it all: Champion Jack Dupree, Blues Pianist of New Orleans, LA.U.S.A." {Little...

The first time I posted this up, the vid came down, so here goes again. The whole video is quite historic and excellent from beginning to end if you are into roots, ethnic music or just into music. Ry Cooder's number around the 8 minute point is a fave of mine. I also liked his description of encountering it.  Which follows. [I have a little NLP trascriber known as Otter that is like magic for stuff like this...] Ry Cooder on Joe Williams’ Sloppy Drunk . I bought the record in 1960 I think it came out. I was a young boy. And I used to go down to this little record store in a house these two ladies had. And they had it in an old bungalow house downtown Los Angeles, that I had to take two buses to get to. Regular bus and and electric bus. And they let you play the records on a little Webcor schoolhouse record player. I put the needle over there, took it out of the sleeve and you know and put the LP down the record itself and then put the needle on and Sloppy Drunk JUMPED OFF! Never h...

  The whole video is quite historic and excellent from beginning to end if you are into roots, ethnic music or just into music. Ry Cooder's number around the 8 minute point is a fave of mine. I also liked his description of encountering it.  Which follows. [I have a little NLP trascriber known as Otter that is like magic for stuff like this...] Ry Cooder on Joe Williams’ Sloppy Drunk . I bought the record in 1960 I think it came out. I was a young boy. And I used to go down to this little record store in a house these two ladies had. And they had it in an old bungalow house downtown Los Angeles, that I had to take two buses to get to. Regular bus and and electric bus. And they let you play the records on a little Webcor schoolhouse record player. I put the needle over there, took it out of the sleeve and you know and put the LP down the record itself and then put the needle on and Sloppy Drunk JUMPED OFF! Never heard anything before so crazy and violent. I was only about 1...

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. ...