From ‘Beer drinkin’ woman’ to ‘Youll Never Miss The Water Till the Wells Gone Dry’ , we have mixed 15 ‘Blues Only‘ tunes around the theme of ‘Beverages‘. It has Jimmy Gordon , Tommy Johnson , Lightnin’ Hopkins , Brownie McGhee and many more.
Richard Thompson: Drinking Wine (Written by Sticks McGhee-J. Mayo Williams). “Stick” McGhee got his nickname from pushing his older brother, disabled Blues legend Brownie McGhee, in a wagon with a stick. “Down in New Orlean, where ev’rything is fine. All them cats is drinkin that wine. When they gets drunk, start singing all night”. (my advice, dont book an hotel near them!)
The Music’s Over : Earl Hooker was a cousin to John Lee Hooker. He taught himself to play guitar around the age of 10 and shortly thereafter his family migrated to Chicago. A self-described “bad boy” who consorted with gangs and had “sticky fingers,” Hooker ran away from home back to Mississippi when he was 13, only to return again to Chi-Town where he played street gigs with Bo Diddley.
Today’s Chicago Blues : A Dixon was one of the true heroes of early R&B and jump blues. By the time he released the classic “Hey Bartender” 1954, Dixon was an established star in the West Coast R&B scene. He toured constantly and at various times shared the stage with the likes of Ray Charles. It was an early tour with Charles that Dixon encouraged Ray to switch from his suave Nat King Cole approach to a more gospel-inspired delivery. Charles took his advice, and ….
viagracat@Amazon.com : J B Hutto and His Hawks play a good, straight-up, old-fashioned Chicago slide-guitar tunes about women and alcohol (Rory Gallagher’s great track “Too Much Alcohol”, found on his Irish Tour CD, is taken from a J D Hutto track).
SongMeanings : In the original Hooker’s “”One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”, the hero “Well my baby she gone, she been gone two night….I wanna get drunk till I’m off of my mind” drinks because his wife is “missing”. In a later version, George Thorogood put together two Hooker songs (‘house rent blues’ and ‘one bourbon, one scotch, one beer) and made it a story about economic crisis. ( Time, they are changing).
Kathleen Loves Music : A lot of people might remember Johnny solely for an Ann arbor Blues Festical “appearance-fiasco” in which he kind of screwed up. Johnny doesn’t have the best reputation for holding his liquor. After that he sort of drifted in oblivion (yeah).
Larry Garner : ” I recall hanging out at Tabby’s one night with Kenny Neal, who’d just finished touring. When Neal pleaded with me to stick around for another drink, I tried to explain. Kenny said, ‘You got to quit that job.’ ‘I know, I said, but I still got to go to work in the morning.’ I left, but what Kenny said stuck in my head.
Lyric007 : In “Bald Headed Woman”, Lightnin Hopkins sings “Give me back that wig I bought you woman, woman you don’t need no hair at all. Special delivery man said he seed you on the corner last night … tagging all around with a Whiskey bottle in your hand” (This is more “Blues in my wife’s bottle”. By the way, can I borrow this wig? ).
Smokin Joe Kubek : On early tours, the band did weeks in the Northeast in the dead of winter in an old Ford van, without heat. Then to top it off, every hotel we stopped at only had heat in the rooms when you rented ‘em. So they never got warm. I had to sleep with my hair dryer the whole time. (Is it when you did Stop drinking?).
Smokin Joe Kubek : On early tours, the band did weeks in the Northeast in the dead of winter in an old Ford van, without heat. Then to top it off, every hotel we stopped at only had heat in the rooms when you rented ‘em. So they never got warm. I had to sleep with my hair dryer the whole time. (Is it when you did Stop drinking?).
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