Word: harmonicas
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Several major collaborations of this sort were released last year. My favorite is Blue Memphis Suite (Warner Brothers), which features the incomparable singer-pianist Memphis Slim, backed by guitarist Peter Green (Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac), organist John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Duster Bennett on harmonica, Chris Spedding, Pete Winfield, and others. The performance of everyone, especially producer Philippe Rault, is absolutely flawless; the juxtaposition of early Forties blues structure with ultramodern instrumentation and arrangement completely transcends the concept of mere revival. It is a tour de force of textural and harmonic complexity within the blues idiom. On side...
...music which the New Lost City Ramblers play is based almost entirely on field recordings made by commercial record companies and the Library of Congress during the period between 1925 and 1935. The Ramblers play almost the entire range of American folk instruments (mouth bow, harmonica, autoharp, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar), in the styles used by such groups as Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers, Byrd Moore and his Hot Shots, and Dr. Humphrey Bate and the Possum Hunters, to name but a few of the groups from which the Ramblers derive their repertoire. They play old breakdowns, sing ballads...
Getting On. That is a decided improvement over the days when, at the age of 13, he was blowing harmonica and singing for the Saturday night fish fries in Clarksdale, Miss. "I was making about 50? a night, a fish sandwich and half a pint of moonshine, and I was getting on," he recalls. Muddy was born McKinley Morganfield, 56 years ago. His mother died young, so his father sent him to be raised by his grandmother. "She used to say I'd sneak out and play in the mud when I was little, so she started calling...
...crates were broken up for firewood. The fervor of resistance seemed to relax, revealing a band of people who were young, tired and cold. A few tried a couple of verses of Viet Nam Rag, then retreated into subdued silence; hardly anyone knew the words. Then someone put a harmonica to his mouth, and soon they were singing, like so many Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls...
...overboard," he says, "but ruining expensive stuff was the usual. Ike always provided replacements." In those days, too, Dr. Taylor led in singing sea chanteys and folk songs at cookouts on the beach. At 15, James, along with Danny Kootch, won a hootenanny contest, singing and accompanying themselves with harmonica and guitar. In their early teens, Livingston and James used to turn up at the Chilmark Community Center square dances. Friends recall that the Taylors as a family seemed touched by a special energy and grace?particularly the boys...