Skip to main content

Al compas del mundo - programa #109 - Blues from Bukka to Lloyd Glenn



This ain’t no mouse music! (exclamation courtesy of Chris Strachwitz, he of Arhoolie Records fame). I called the program “Los blues originales” for its presentation on Mexican radio, but “Original blues” didn’t seem to work in English. All these guys were originals in some way, but what said of Elmore James’ rendition of “One Way Out”? Sonny Boy Williamson wrote it and recorded it first…and James hits it out of the park. Howling Wolf’s “Callin’ for My Darlin’” suffers not in the hands of Albert King. As covers come and covers go, much of what was recorded had its origins in some other place (likely the deep South) and some other, earlier time. We don’t always know who was the original creative mind to conjure up tunes like “Funeral Hearse at My Door”, “Too Poor”, or “Squabblin’ Blues”, but each and every song included here brings original art, lived experience, rhythmic vitality, and a story worth listening to. JH

Run list for Blues from Bukka to Lloyd Glenn
First broadcast  1-4-24

01 Bukka White - Good Gin Blues

02 Ed Bell - Squabblin' Blues

03 Rocky Fuller - Funeral Hearse at My Door

04 Big Joe Williams - Stack o' Dollars

05 Garfield Akers - Dough Roller Blues

06 Mississippi Fred McDowell - Fred McDowell's Blues

07 Sunnyland Slim - Johnson Machine Gun

08 Little Walter - My Babe

09 Junior Wells - Hoodoo Man Blues

10 Memphis Slim - All This Piano Boogie

11 Jimmy Reed - Little Rain

12 Elmore James - One Way Out

13 Detroit Jr. - Too Poor

14 Willie Dixon - 29 Ways

15 Jimmy Rogers - Act Like You Love Me

16 Rosco Gordon - Just a Little Bit

17 John Lee Hooker - Crawlin' King Snake

18 Albert King - Callin' for My Darlin'

19 Champion Jack Dupree - Nasty Boogie

20 J.B. Lenoir - She Don't Know

21 Lloyd Glenn - The Shakedown






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Al compas del mundo, programa #92 - Japan

The Japanese historically have been a most creative people, excelling in aesthetic conventions like architecture, painting, culinary arts, theatre, music, and more. A craftsman’s care and an artist’s flair have come to define everyday household objects such as articles of clothing and kitchen ware, designed with a sensibility that imbues them with import and elevated status. After WWII in the United States however, an item inscribed “made in Japan” usually indicated a tchotchke of mediocre quality. A perfect example is the large number of Northwest Coast Native American-style bone totem poles made for the tourist shops in the Northwest. There is a distinctive difference in these “artifacts” from the real, home-made variety that illustrates someone from another culture tackling aesthetics they don’t fully comprehend. And that leads us to some of this week’s musical choices. Imitating Western pop, rock and jazz, Japanese artists have recorded many forgettable efforts – not unlike those o...

Al compás del mundo - programa #99 - Los Folkloristas

This week’s Al compás del mundo earns a pair of dedications. Primarily, to Las Folkloristas, a group of Mexican musicians who first came together in 1966 and who continue to the present day, delighting their public and educating them as to the breadth of folk music genres and instrumentation found in every corner of Latin America. The second dedication is to me and my sweetheart wife Claudia – we met at a concert of Los Folkloristas at the Sala Agora in Mexico City, in 1976. And yes, we too are still together. Get out your handkerchiefs and dry your eyes because there’s a story to be told as evidence that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone. You just have to make the effort to look, even if it takes you to a foreign land. And so it goes like this: I spent all of 1976 living in Mexico City, ostensibly to learn Spanish, but en realidad to loaf around, drink beer, practice my saxophone, and maybe, just maybe, look to meet a señorita. I lived in a pension (boardinghouse) owned by Jul...

Al compás del mundo – programa #119 –Blues Harmonica

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 ears – evokes the sound of the motherland, how distant that might be. Followed by early recordings of a novelty harmonica solo, jug bands, and country sounds. F...