Jazzin’Around Little Red Rooster

Roscoe Holcombe @Smithsonian Folkways: The legendary Roscoe Holcomb performs 21 powerful songs shaped by the hard times and conflict between old and new that marked his life in the Kentucky mountains. A hard-hitting singer and banjo-player, he also performs unaccompanied ballads, banjo and harmonica solos, and with a guitar.

Frank Hovington @sundayblues.org : Frank Hovington was from Pennsylvania but lived in Delaware. He was recorded by Dick Spottswood & Bruce Bastin in the summer of 1975 at Frank’s home, using a tape recorder on loan from the Library of Congress. It was released by the British Label Flyright Records in 1976 as Lonesome Road Blues.

Alexis Korner : “I THINK that what is going to kill the blues scene is the dreadful restriction of material.” That is the opinion of Alexis Korner who has probably been working longer in the blues field than anyone else on the current scene. He went on “They seem to reject so much of what goes up to make the blues – the jazz things, the worksongs and just about anything that doesn’t have a 12 or 8-bar chorus, in fact about 90 percent of what makes up the blues form. But you can’t just say all that never happened and ignore it.”

Grace Brim @PastBlues : Drummer and harmonica player, first female drummer in Chicago and wife of Blues drummer John Brim, Grace Brim died in Gary, IN at the age of 75.

R.L. Burnside @Fat Possum Records : R.L. Burnside was born in Layfayette County, near Oxford, Mississippiin 1926. As a young man R.L. moved North into the neighboring MarshallCounty and began sharecropping. Inspired by John Lee Hooker‘s ’50s hit”Boogie Chillun’,” R.L. began singing blues and playing guitar. I

The Yardbirds : The Yardbirds expanded the range of the electric guitar, experimenting with feedback, sustain, and fuzztone. They also coined and popularized the rave-up, a kind of free-for-all where you jam long and hard, not as soloists, but in a tandem, until you reach an epiphany about 10 or 20 or 30 minutes later, a shuddering climax of decibels and pure energy, and then—back into the song for one more boom-boom chorus.

Reverend Gary Davis : “More than three decades after his death, the influence of Reverend Gary Davis can still be felt. As each new generation is introduced to blues, folk, and other forms of traditional American music, Davis’ signature guitar stylings and heartfelt vocals continue to move, entertain, and educate.” – Paul Andersen

Big Bill Broonzy : Bill often regaled audiences with tales of his birth on 26 June 1893 and that of his twin sister Laney and of his father’s response to being told he had twins to care for. He claimed to have served in the US Army in France from 1918 – 1919 and to have been invited by a record company to travel to the Delta following a major flood in 1927: Turns out, that a good deal of this was fiction at worst and faction at best.

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