Booking The Blues--Part One

Since I've been busy practicing my novelist skills by stabbing words onto my second manuscript (or w.i.p.--work in progress being the term writer types use), and since I'm still busy looking for someone to look at my first attempt, I thought that I'd share some of what sits and cries the blues on my book shelves. So, for anyone looking to add to their blues music knowledge bank, these are loaded with the good stuff. Sorry for Amazon's "look inside clicker", because you can't look inside here, but I needed book cover photos to jazz this up a bit--so there.



Might as well get both Muddy Waters/The Mojo Man by Sandra B. Tooze and Can't Be Satisfied/The Life and Times of Muddy Waters by Robert Gordon. I did and I'd be hard pressed to recommend one over the other. Can't go wrong with a well written biography of THE greatest bluesman who ever walked the planet and both of these are well written.



Same for Moanin' At Midnight/The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf by Jemes Segrest and Mark Hoffman about THE greatest bluesman who ever walked planet earth. Yeah, yeah, it depends on whether I'm listening to Smokestack Lightin' or Standing Around Cryin' as to which way I'm leaning.



When Blues With A Feeling/The Little Walter Story by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks, and Ward Gaines hit the shelves, all I could think was--It's about damned time! someone wrote about THE greatest blues harp player who ever walked planet earth.



I'll stop there as far as my top blues bios, because I think to know the blues that one has to know Chicago blues and those four books do it for me.


Deep Blues/A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta by Robert Palmer defines just what difference there is between the music that pulled itself from the delta to Chicago and all the others flavors. Boils down to this: Muddy Waters played 'deep blues'--B.B. King doesn't and admits it in this book. Charlie Patton did--Mississippi John Hurt didn't. Bukka White did--Josh White didn't. Good read, good analysis.




Chicago Blues/The City and the Music by Mike Rowe traces the evolution and the migration of the music from the plantations to the city. This English fellow writes a valuable history of the growth of the blues once it hit Chicago and the men who made it vital, including the rise of Chess Records and the grooming of their stable of stars.




Urban Blues by Charles Keil is a good companion piece to Rowe's book and has been around a lot longer, but holds up well. When B.B. King, Bobby Bland, Freddie King, Otis Rush, and others began to catch on with the hippies of the late '60s and '70s, Keil provided them with a road map to these stars with this book and explained just why this music had significance to the American music scene.




Chasin' That Devil Music/Searching For The Blues by Gayle Dean Wardlow basically follows the trails and tribulations of blueshound, or bluesfinder, Wardlow's life ambition to track down the life stories and recordings of Mississippi Delta blues guys, great and small. I enjoyed reading his tales about knocking on doors looking for 78 rpm records throughout he rural delta area in chapters with titles such as, Tips, Leads, and Documents. Many of the chapters reflect reprints from articles that he published as far back as the '60s, while some of them based on new unpublished findings that he adds to the mix of mud from the delta. Now I doubt seriously that being born in Freer, Texas had anything to do to prompt him on this journey. Ever been to Freer? The first thing you'll notice when you do is a giant rattlesnake statue. No, he was living in Mississippi when some of those yankees from NEW YORK CITY came calling for his help in tracking down the elusive bluesmen in 1962. He never stopped looking. A nice bonus is the CD that he throws into the back of the book with recordings from his own collection by the likes of Charlie Patton, Willie Brown, Garfield Akers, Joe Callicott, Ismon Bracey, Son House, and others. He includes five oral interviews from his research on the disc also. Great book from someone who walked the walk.




Escaping The Delta/Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues by Elijah Wald takes off from some of the same sources that people like Wardlow uncovered and provides him with a thesis that deconstructs the Robert Johnson mystique and puts it in perspective. Even though, this is not a biography of Robert Johnson, Wald gives the reader a good foundation of what the bluesman's place in the history of the music was all about. He acknowledges the debt owed to all those "blues finders" who came before him as he compares what the music meant in its day, how it moved across cultural boundaries, and what it means today.




Every self-respecting harmonica players has to have a copy of Kim Fields' Harmonica, Harps, and Heavy Breathers. Great book for those that love the instrument or blues fans in general. It is chock full of informative bios of every harp player known to man, from Jaybird Coleman to Kim Wilson and all in between. Fields recounts the history of the harmonica from Mathias Hohner's first efforts in the 1800s and he breaks the practitioners down into the musical genre in which they huffed 'n puffed. Indispensable.




I've covered books such as, Alan Grovenar's Texas Blues and Down In Houston by Rogers Woods in previous posts and in more detail, so I won't repeat myself here. I've got a few others on the shelf that I'll visit back here soon. 'Til I do, 'Nuff for now.

Gary Primich Lives

Gary Primich
w/Honey B&T-Bones
Wentus Blues Band
Gary, Indiana
Blue North Records

Even though I plan to eventually get around to chatting about Gary, Indiana, the predominantly live recordings that Gary Primich recorded with a couple of Finnish bands, his set with Honey B & T-Bones being recorded back in 1991 sparks a remembrance of one of the most original harmonica men to ever stick the instrument in his mouth.

Back in 1991, I was aspiring to master the blues harp and had not been at it for too long a period of time. My collection of blues harp blues at that time was but a grain of sand that eventually become the mountain of music stacked around my house. Gary Primich launched his solo career that year with a release on Amazing Records and it quickly became a favorite of mine. During that same year, Gary travelled over to Bryan, Texas for a gig at The Stafford Opera House and his performance solidified my desire to keep working at torturing harmonica reeds.

It's been awhile since that gig, but I remember getting to the venue early, and Gary was poking his head out the door, and I was going in. I think he was wondering if anyone would show up. Recognizing him, I stopped and introduced myself as a blues harp fan, and novice practitioner. He took me inside, up to the stage, and showed me the tools of his trade. Marine Band harps, ceramic element bullet mic, and vintage Fender Bandmaster amplifier. At that time, I was relatively clueless as to the amplified aspects of the music, so that was a sort of epiphanied moment. He seemed as excited about do this as I was about him doing it. Or something like that.

I'm not going to lie and say that I remember exactly what they played. He did work through most of the songs from that debut album and his next. What impressed me right off was the variety of grooves that he hit upon--rockabilly, traditional Chi-Town blues, jazzy interludes, '50s rock, and even Tin Pan Alley standards from his big chromatic. He even proved to be accomplished at slinging guitar licks around. His guitarist at the time was Shorty Lenoir and he really impressed me with his Magic Sam licks and what he could do with a Howling Wolf tune. We spent some time during the first set break discussing his influences while Gary and the rest of the band walked across the street to catch a bit of Doyle Bramhall's show (yeah, who'd know that two substantial talents would end up in downtown Bryan on the same night). Well, it seems that Doyle's stepson played drums that night in Gary's band. Think his name was Chris Hunter.

What knocked me out that night (and ever since then) was Gary Primich's absolute command of the harmonica. His style was his own, although he could absolutely conjure up the spirit of both Sonny Boys, both Walters, Slim Harpo, Jerry McCain, etc... at will. We stayed in touch with each other by e-mail for quite a few years. American Harmonica Newsmagzine ran a couple of interviews that I wrote based on that correspondence. I lost touch with Gary somewhere along the way, but I'll always fondly remember that gig in downtown Bryan. I may have told this tale somewhere on the blog sometime in the past, if so forgive me for repeating the story...but, you see I've just become a granddad, and since that's what granddad's are noted for doing, then this will just have to pass as acceptable.

A couple of other "live" Primich nights stand out in my mind. One took place at one of Sonny Boy Terry's harmonica rumbles in Houston. Lots of good players were playing some kind of impressive blues harp. Then, Gary Primich stepped up and his first note was sooo fat, juicy, and toneful that he sort of separated himself from everyone else. Reminds me now of his turn on one of Mark Hummel's recorded blowouts. His tone just put him on a different plane--not necessarily worlds better, but just on another plane. The last time I saw him play, he recorded two nights at The Big Easy in Houston, and he absolutely played a fire and brimstoned performance. THAT is the "live" show that I'd like to see someone out there somewhere produce and share with the rest of the world--because it represents what Gary Primich was all about and would be a fitting capstone for his legacy.

In the meantime, we have Gary, Indiana with Honey B & T-Bones, the Wentus Blues Band, and Esa Kolonemi from different trips to Helsinki, Finland. The CD opens with a very strange studio recording with Esa Kuloniemi and Jimmie Lawson on a tune called the Hitman, which sounds like Shaft era Isaac Hayes. I really thought that the wrong CD somehow found its way into the case, until Gary's innovative amplified licks kick in and fits the vibe of the music--which ain't exactly blues, but ain't exactly ain't either. The last cut is also from the same session, with Gary holding court with an acoustic style. He pulls out mostly acoustic harp on the 2002 gig and does that style better than anyone that I've ever heard, but I love his dripping, fatbacked amplified tones even more so. The 1991 stuff gets that going a bit more.

After that shocking opener (not really shocking, but it threw me a bit), the recording shares what Gary was putting down in 2002 at a place called Cantina West with the Westus Blues Band, starting off with Hillbilly Blues. The band gets a good rock-a-billy rhythm going and guitarist Niko Riipa rips it pretty substantially. Primich works the heck out of triplets, split octaves, up and down the length of his acoustic harp on this Eddie Clearwater tune. From there he does get some of the fattest acoustic harp tones I've ever heard on a cover of Hounddog Taylor's Sadie. He goes deep and uses great expressive hand wahs and generally just tears up his first solo over the Help Me groove that the band lays down. One of the highlights of the disc for me.

The jump R&B style of Real Gone Lover puts the harp mic in his hands for some classic Primich amplified fat. He knows how to work the vibe of this Dave Bartholomew tune. The band swings the holy smokes out of the song and proves their versatility.

Good Bye Little Girl is not a Sonny Boy Williamson II song, but that's what get nailed down with the acoustic harp licks that Primich pulls out of his harp hat. The Wentus guys drive this fast shuffle as he floats across the tune with an extended solo that eventually has the band dropping the volume while he does Rice Miller's memory justice.

This set wraps up with one of my favorite Primich songs--Company Man. It is the only song on this disc that is not a cover tune. The song has a unique coda and groove and the band acquits themselves quite well with getting it right. Of course, Primich smokes his part.

The 1991 tunes kick off with a rendition of John "Juke" Logan's Hustler, on which the Honey B band sounds very Fabulous T-Birdish and on which Esa Kulomieni demonstrates that he has his book of guitar blues down pat. Sounds to me as if these guys were just flat playing outside of themselves and Primich gets out all of his amplified stops and get down with it. This is PRIMICH getting it the way I love to hear Primich get it.

The deepest tones he saves for the rumba-ish, jazzy feel of The Girl That Radiates That Charm. No, this is the one. This is PRIMICH getting it the way I love to hear Primich get it--until he amplifies Franks Frost's My Back Scratcher pulling some kind of sweet long blue notes that puts the mud in the swamp tones of the tune. Kulomieni gets the reverbed guitar vibe happening much in the same way that Jimmy Vaughan did on the Slim Harpo's version. No, never mind, this is PRIMICH getting it the way I love to hear Primich get it--done.

These tunes sort of exemplify what the thirteen songs here represent, which is the variety of musical ideas that Primich mastered. All in all, this is a good document of what Gary Primich was all about on stages that he frequented a couple of hundreds nights of the year. At 49, he left of way too early, so anything new that can be shared from his legacy has to be considered a treasure. The man was remarkable with a harmonica in his mouth. For a bonus, an interview on his blues harp philosophy ends the program. Many thanks to the Finnish Blues Society for putting this on disc for us. NOW--if someone out there will release his music recorded live at The Big Easy club, we will have much more of his spirit captured for posterity, which we can release at will. 'nuff for now.

Amanda's Rollercoaster

Get over to this site and reserve a package to this historic event, before they sell out. Amanda tells me that the $200package deadline is this Friday.

Down Home Texas Harmonica Festival--Reminder

Just A Little Friendly Reminder--Especially since this great poster is out there!



Tickets now aviable online at http://houstonharmonicalessons.eventbrite.com/

Down Home Texas Blues Harmonica Festival/clinic.

Saturday, July 31st, Houston, Texas

Doors open 3PM

Live Band - H-Town Jukes - 3PM - 3:45PM (flow)

Adam Gussow Modern Blues Harmonica Clinic 4PM - 6PM

Dinner Break - 6PM - 8PM - Grill Menu Available on site.
(The heights has some of the best Mexican food in the world just a few blocks away)

DOORS RE-OPEN FOR HARMONICA SHOWCASE/MOVIE
MOVIE TIME! Pocket Full of Soul: The Harmonica Documentary 7:15PM - 8PM

Dave Nevling and the Blues Kats 8PM - 8:45PM

Rob Roy Parnell's Texas Roadhouse Blues 9PM - 9:45PM

Adam Gussow One Man Band 10PM - 10:45PM

Sonny Boy Terry Band - 11PM - 11:45 Finale – 11:45 - Midnight

After Midnight Open mic Texas Blues Jam
Hosted by Steve "Fess" Schnieder - Midnight – Close. All blues performers welcome

Adam Gussow's Modern Blues Harmonica Clinic.
Admission: 25.00 - All ages accompanied by Adult.
Texas Blues Harmonica Showcase - 8PM - 1:30AM Admission: 12.00
($10 for Houston Blues Society members. Must verify current membership)

Total Package Price: 35.00
Saturday, July 31st.
Dan Electro's Guitar Bar
1031 East 24th Street
Houston, Texas, 77009
713.862.8707

For more information, please email me at sbt@sonnyboyterry.com or feel free to call at 713.869.7746 or by cell at 713.822.0437

Chicago Blues Festival

After visiting Chicago back in March and loving every minute of the visit, my goal is to definitely make it back for the Chicago Blues Festival. That has to be one heck of a great time. In the mean time I'll share this. Ain't nobody ever come close to what the Wolf was to the blues.