On A Monday - Catfish Keith

There are some days where nothing will do but a resonator guitar, you know? I think we've all had those days.

So everybody please say Hello to one of the masters of the dobro: Mr. Catfish Keith, shown here performing Leadbelly's 'On a Monday' at a Rural Roots Concert in Southwell Library.

I've always found there's something about the sound of resonators that's otherworldly, rusty and sexy all at once. Catfish himself has one of the goofiest growly voices for both singing and talking, but he pulls it off with be-hatted swagger. He's playing the Half Moon in Putney on November 18th which seems like the absolute best way to see him. Let's all go! Agreed.

Happy Birthday Clifton Chenier!

A very Happy Birthday to the King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier! The first Creole to be given a Grammy on national television, Clifton was known for his howling fusion of zydeco rhythms with big band, jazz and blues. 

He is the true Accordion Hero. 

The Weather Report: It's A Blessing - Maria Muldaur and Bonnie Raitt

The first in a new series: we will do our best to let you know the weather in London via a song that matches it. Scientifically. We're using weather balloons with guitars attached to them and all sorts.

Today we have the heavy delta heat of slide guitar master Bonnie Raitt duetting with the gravel voiced Maria Muldaur on It's A Blessing.

Tunes of Terror Vol. 3 - Naked In The Afternoon

Halloween simply isn't Halloween without a little Jandek:

The history of Jandek is convoluted and confusing. In an attempt to put simply: the performer known as Jandek has been self publishing his own brand of crypto-goth blues since the late 70s behind many layers of obfuscation and intentional misdirection. Since late 2004 he has finally begun performing (reasonably) consistently in public.

Yet even with the artist making public appearances nothing can take away from the sense of dread and rot ground into every note of 'Naked In The Afternoon,' the opening track from Jandek's 1978 debut Ready For The House.

Back Water Rising - Napoleon Strickland

Back Water Rising for those with Spotify

(Well it was there a week ago, guess it's gone now so...)

Back Water Rising for those without Spotify everybody

Fife and Drum Blues is one of the less well known variations of the Blues genre. The music does what it says on the tin: Fifes (usually one, sometimes more) blow melody over a massive drum line, with spare vocals shouted out over the top.

The origins of the genre are disputed. Some point to the military march music of the American Revolutionary War, built as it was upon carried snare drums and fife pipes, while others argue that the sound can be traced back to African folk music. Either way it's agreed upon that the use of the instrumentation to play blues music began in the southern United States, with examples to be found all the way from Georgia to Tennessee.

Today we're looking at one of the most well known practitioners of the genre, Napoleon Strickland and his song Back Water Rising.

Born near Como, Mississippi in 1919 Strickland was a multi-instrumentalist, showing skill at percussion, guitars, harmonica and more. He was taught to play the fife by musician Otha Turner during his younger years, and it was this instrument which he consistently stuck to through most of his career.

Lucinda - Tom Waits

'Well they call me William the Pleaser / I've sold opium, fireworks and lead / Now I'm telling my troubles to strangers / And when the shadows get long I'll be dead'

So Tom Waits opens Lucinda, a booming murder ballad from the album Orphans. The song is the perfect melding of Waits' experimental leanings with his Beat poet via Alan Lomax tinged lyrics.

Nearly the whole backing to the song is the sound of Waits booming, slurring and hollering in a beatbox collage of dust blowing and gallows snapping. Aside from a spare harmonica or the every so often bass note, that's all you get. The song is built from the ground up upon the power of his voice, and shows what a formidable instrument it is in its own right.

By limiting the arrangement to his vocals but chopping them up in a unique style, Waits has created a song which wouldn't seem out of place one hundred years ago or coming out tomorrow. It's a rare feat and powerfully kinetic piece of music.

Tipitina - Professor Longhair

If you recently discovered Tipitina off of Hugh Laurie's album, allow me to throw a little grit, sweat and soul in your eyes with the original. We're going to dirty things up to wash away Mr. Laurie's take on the inimitable Professor Longhair:

Professor Longhair – Tipitina

Professor Longhair is one of the fathers of blues piano, introducing a funk and swing to the music via the rhumba rhythms of his native Louisiana that would come to be defined as the New Orleans Piano sound. He spent the early part of his life hustling on the street till he turned to the piano in earnest in the late 1940s and early 50s. Recordings from this period were collected on the 1972 album New Orleans Piano, and it's on this record where we can find not just one but two versions of Tipitina.

The Professor has a marvelous way of making music with intensely infectious energy that manages to sound completely laid back, as if he sat down to jam one day and just happened to play a masterpiece. It's the feeling of your shirt sticking to your back from hours of dancing without you having to move a muscle. It's the melody of laughing with friends even if your friends are a world away. It's the sound of a world buzzing and humming while you catch a nap.

Grinnin' in Your Face - Son House

Jack White turned 36 yesterday, and in honor of the occasion we are looking at his favorite song of all time: Grinnin' In Your Face by Son House.

It was this song that sent Jack White down the road of music. It's easy to see how the stripped back nature of the piece has influenced White's own musical experimentation with The White Stripes, especially their hard followed rule of only three instruments per song .

Son House was a Delta blues singer active from the early 1920's to his death in 1988. He trained to be a Baptist preacher till his late teens before being seduced by the blues and killing a man during one of his own performances (allegedly in self defense). He used his religious background by incorporating elements of gospel within the style and framework of the Delta blues.

House had a heavily percussive style of playing and singing, happily accompanying himself on heavily strummed dobro slide guitar or simply clapping along in rhythm. It's the latter style that Grinning in Your Face employs. Raw and electrifying, over eighty years down the line Son House still has the ability to claw his way into your mind with the sheer power of hand claps and his own voice.

You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman - Terry Callier

Terry Callier has had a tough time.

Despite several critically acclaimed albums recorded throughout the late 60s and early 70s he failed to catch on commercially and finally decided to stop touring. He went back to his desk job at a local university and settled into a comfortable nine to five, his musical past for all intents and purposes a secret identity he'd left behind.

Then he was rediscovered.

Slowly he was coaxed out of hiding and back onto the road. Some moderate success followed. People were buying his albums. They were attending his shows.

Then he got fired.

When the University he'd been working at discovered his 'secret identity' they threw him out the door. The exact circumstances remain somewhat shrouded, only cryptically referred to by Callier himself in interview.

If I had to guess a reason from the sound of his music, it was for fear he'd sex the pants off of every college aged girl in a 50 mile radius. You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman is a track off of Callier's breakthrough album The Color of Love, and mother-god-damn is it a good song.

Essentially Callier's take on Midnight Rider, the track is both a musical magpie and time machine of genre and style over it's seven and a half minutes. Folk picked guitars gently caress you through the doors, shimmying bongos slap you on the back, and then one of the slinkiest and sexiest funk basslines ever put to wax spikes your drink while pushing you out to the dance floor.

Callier's voice is equal parts silk sheeted soul singer and blues wolf on the prowl. By the time the string section is duking it out with Motown horns in one of the biggest bar brawls you've ever seen, he drags you into his private back room for a quiet moment alone, before letting the whole thing roar back up again into a long hot finish.

The song can be found in two flavors: the original album mix (which is great) or a version slightly remastered by The Cinematic Orchestra for their Late Night Tales mix album. The answer to choosing between the two? Easy. Get The Cinematic Orchestra's version first, and when you realize you HAVE to hear more of this man, get The Color of Love in it's entirety. Let's give the candyman we never knew we were missing the love he deserved way back when, just a little late coming.

EDIT: If the video above has trouble loading, here's the song as trimmed by The Cinematic Orchestra.

Terry Callier – You're Goin' Miss Your Candyman

Crazy Hazy Kisses - Flat Duo Jets

So before we do anything watch this and of course, make it loud:

Hooooooooly shit, right? That little slice of blues doesn't just rattle your ribcage, it stomps on your bones till there's nothing left but dust, and then sets the remains on fire just to make sure.

The two dark haired banshees in that video are Dexter Romweber (guitar and vocals) and Chris 'Crow' Smith (drums), better known as Flat Duo Jets. The blues duo, sadly long since disbanded, rocked the doors off of their hometown of Carrboro, North Carolina and the rest of the States through most of the 80s into the late 90s before going their separate ways.

In what should be counted as a crime against humanity, Crazy Hazy Kisses never appeared on any of the Flat Duo Jets records, it's sole appearance being in obscure music documentary Athens, G.A. (and later in Davis Guggenheim's It Might Get Loud). But what an appearance it is.

Dexter Romweber attacks his weathered Dan Electro with the fury of a hurricane; primal screams tearing out of him with such spine chilling power you can feel flecks of lung and bone battering your ear drums. Crow's drums, woefully under-mixed in that bootleg clip, still pack a wallop of boiling rills, rolls and spills. It's the kind of number that makes you want to dance, fuck and kill; preferably all at once.

Getting ahold of the track can be a bit tricky, but a bit of You Tube audio grabbing wizardry will get this gem into your hot little hands.

However you can. Get it. Now. And if anyone ever tells you that 50s style rock has no balls, play them this track, so it can kick them squarely in their own.