A.C. Reed - Take These Blues And Shove 'Em!

Somehow this never got much recognition the first time around - a fun album ...and how about that lp rip!

Excellent Artist Biography by Bill Dahl

"To hear tenor saxist A.C. Reed bemoan his fate on-stage, one might glean the impression that he truly detests his job. But it's a tongue-in-cheek complaint -- Reed's raspy, gutbucket blowing and laid-back vocals belie any sense of boredom.

Sax-blowing blues bandleaders are scarce as hen's teeth in Chicago; other than Eddie Shaw, Reed's about all there is. Born in Missouri, young Aaron Corthen (whether he's related to blues legend Jimmy Reed remains hazy, but his laconic vocal drawl certainly mirrors his namesake) grew up in downstate Illinois. A big-band fan, he loved the sound of Paul Bascomb's horn on an obscure Erskine Hawkins 78 he heard tracking on a tavern jukebox so much that he was inspired to pick up a sax himself.

Arriving in Chicago during the war years, he picked up steady gigs with Earl Hooker and Willie Mabon before the '40s were over. In 1956, he joined forces with ex-Ike Turner cohort Dennis "Long Man" Binder, gigging across the southwest for an extended period. Reed became a valuable session player for producer Mel London's Age and Chief labels during the early '60s; in addition to playing on sides by Lillian Offitt, Ricky Allen, and Hooker, he cut a locally popular 1961 single of his own for Age, "This Little Voice."

More gems for Age -- "Come on Home," "Mean Cop," "I Stay Mad" -- followed. He cut 45s for USA in 1963 ("I'd Rather Fight Than Switch"), Cool ("My Baby Is Fine," a tune he's recut countless times since) and Nike ("Talkin' 'Bout My Friends") in 1966, and "Things I Want You to Do" in 1969 for T.D.S.

Reed joined Buddy Guy's band in 1967, visiting Africa with the mercurial guitarist in 1969 and, after harpist Junior Wells teamed with Guy, touring as opening act for the Rolling Stones in 1970. He left the employ of Guy and Wells for good in 1977, only to hook up with Alligator acts Son Seals, and then the Master of the Telecaster, Albert Collins. Reed appeared on Collins' first five icy Alligator LPs, including the seminal Ice Pickin'.

During his tenure with Collins, Reed's solo career began to reignite, with four cuts on the second batch of Alligator's Living Chicago Blues anthologies in 1980 and two subsequent LPs of his own, 1982's Take These Blues and Shove 'Em! (on Ice Cube Records, a logo co-owned by Reed and drummer Casey Jones) and I'm in the Wrong Business! five years later for Alligator (with cameos by Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan). Until his death from cancer in February of 2004, Reed remained an active force on the Chicago circuit with his band the Spark Plugs (get it? AC spark plugs? Sure you do!)." AMG

My vinyl rip of near mint copy found at Euclid Records.

'Roll 'Em Pete' Johnson

Pete Johnson (March 25, 1904 – March 23, 1967) was an American boogie-woogie and jazz pianist.

Journalist Tony Russell stated in his book The Blues - From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray, that "Johnson shared with the other members of the 'Boogie Woogie Trio' the technical virtuosity and melodic fertility that can make this the most exciting of all piano music styles, but he was more comfortable than Meade Lux Lewis in a band setting; and as an accompanist, unlike Lewis or Albert Ammons, he could sparkle but not outshine his singing partner"...

Johnson was born in Kansas City, Missouri, United States.

He began his musical career in 1922 as a drummer in Kansas City. From 1926 to 1938 he worked as a pianist, often accompanying Big Joe Turner. Record producer John Hammond discovered him in 1936 and got him to play at the Famous Door in New York. In 1938 Johnson and Turner appeared in the From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. This concert started a boogie-woogie craze, and Turner and two other performers at the concert, Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons, worked together afterwards at Café Society for a long time; they also toured and recorded together. In 1941 Lewis, Ammons and Johnson were featured in the movie short Boogie-Woogie Dream.

The song, "Roll 'Em Pete" (composed by Johnson and Turner), featuring Turner on vocals and Johnson on piano, was one of the first rock and roll records. Another self-referential title was their "Johnson and Turner Blues". In 1949, he also wrote and recorded "Rocket 88 Boogie", a two-sided instrumental, which influenced the 1951 Ike Turner hit, "Rocket 88".

In the late 1940s, Johnson recorded an early concept album, House Rent Party, in which he starts out playing alone, supposedly in a new empty house, and is joined there by J. C. Higgenbotham, J. C. Heard, and other Kansas City players. Each has a solo single backed by Johnson, and then the whole group plays a jam session together. On this album Johnson shows his considerable command of stride piano and his ability to work with a group.

Johnson used to play at a nightclub in Niagara Falls where he had to climb a long ladder to the piano above the bar. In 1950 he moved to Buffalo, but despite problems with his health, he continued to tour and record, notably with Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, and on a 1958 Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Europe, despite losing part of a finger some years earlier while changing a tire.

A stroke in 1958 left him partly paralyzed. His last years were troubled by illness and poverty. Johnson made one final appearance at Hammond's January 1967 "Spirituals to Swing" concert, playing the right hand on a version of "Roll 'Em Pete", two months before his death.

He died in Meyer Hospital, Buffalo, New York in March 1967, at the age of 62.

Fontella Bass - The Very Best Of

 (NY Times Obituary)

wiki "Fontella Bass (July 3, 1940 – December 26, 2012) was an American R&B soul singer best known for her 1965 hit, "Rescue Me".

Fontella Bass was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of gospel singer Martha Bass (a member of the Clara Ward Singers). At an early age, Fontella showed great musical talent – at five years old she was providing the piano accompaniment for her grandmother's singing at funeral services, she was singing in her church's choir at six years old and by the time she was nine she was accompanying her mother on tours throughout the American South and Southwest.

Fontella continued touring with her mother until the age of sixteen. As a teenager, Bass was attracted by more secular music. She began singing R&B songs at local contests and fairs while attending Soldan High School where she graduated from in 1958. At seventeen, she started her professional career working at the Showboat Club near Chain of Rocks, Missouri. In 1961, she auditioned on a dare for the Leon Claxton carnival show and was hired to play piano and sing in the chorus for two weeks, making $175 per week for the two weeks it was in town. She wanted to go on tour with Claxton but her mother refused and according to Bass "... she literally dragged me off the train". It was during this brief stint with Claxton that she was heard by vocalist Little Milton and his bandleader Oliver Sain who hired her to back Little Milton on piano for concerts and recording.
 

Bass originally only played piano with the band, but one night Milton didn't show up on time so Sain asked her to sing and she was soon given her own featured vocal spot in the show. Milton and Sain eventually split up and Bass went with Sain; he also recruited male singer Bobby McClure and the group became known as "The Oliver Sain Soul Revue featuring Fontella and Bobby McClure".

With the support of Bob Lyons, the manager of St. Louis station KATZ, Bass recorded several songs released through Bobbin Records and produced by Ike Turner. She saw no notable success outside her home town. It was also during this period she met and subsequently married the noted jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie.

Two years later she quit the band and moved to Chicago after a dispute with Oliver Sain. She auditioned for Chess Records, who immediately signed her as a recording artist. Her first works with the label were several duets with Bobby McClure, who had also been signed to the label. Released early in 1965, their recording "Don't Mess Up a Good Thing" (credited to Oliver Sain) found immediate success, reaching the top five at R&B radio and peaking at #33 at pop. In 1979 the song was covered by Ry Cooder with Chaka Khan on Cooder's album Bop 'Til You Drop.

Bass and McClure followed their early success with "You'll Miss Me (When I'm Gone)" that summer, a song that had mild success, reaching the Top 30 on the R&B chart, although it made no significant impression on the pop chart. After a brief tour, Bass returned to the studio. The result was an original composition with an aggressive rhythm section; backing musicians on the track included drummer Maurice White (later the leader of Earth, Wind, & Fire), bassist Louis Satterfield and tenor saxophonist Gene Barge, with the young Minnie Riperton among the background singers. The song, "Rescue Me", shot up the charts in the fall and winter of 1965. After a month-long run at the top of the R&B charts, the song reached #4 on the US pop charts and #11 in the UK, and gave Chess its first million-selling single since Chuck Berry a decade earlier. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

Bass followed with "Recovery," which did moderately well, peaking at #13 (R&B) and #37 (pop) in early 1966. The same year brought two more R&B hits, "I Can't Rest" (backed with "I Surrender)" and "You'll Never Know." Her only album with Chess Records, The New Look, sold reasonably well, but Bass soon became disillusioned with Chess and decided to leave the label after only two years, in 1967. Bass claimed that, although the credited co-writers Carl Smith and Raynard Miner, and record producer Billy Davis, had assured her that her contribution to co-writing the lyrics of "Rescue Me" would be acknowledged, this was never done.

    "I had the first million seller for Chess since Chuck Berry about 10 years before. Things were riding high for them, but when it came time to collect my first royalty check, I looked at it, saw how little it was, tore it up and threw it back across the desk."

Bass demanded a better royalty rate and artistic control; she approached her then manager Billy Davis about securing her writing credit on the song but was told not to worry about it. When the record came out and her name was still not on it she was told it would be on the legal documents, but this never happened. She continued to agitate about the matter for a couple of years but later recalled: "It actually side-stepped me in the business because I got a reputation of being a trouble maker." It was many years and much litigation before Bass would be credited with her share of the songwriting and the royalties.

Tiring of the mainstream music scene, she and husband Lester Bowie left America and moved to Paris in 1969, where she recorded two albums with the Art Ensemble of Chicago – Art Ensemble of Chicago with Fontella Bass and Les Stances a Sophie (both 1970). The latter was the soundtrack from the French movie of the same title. Bass's vocals, backed by the powerful, pulsating push of the band has allowed the "Theme De YoYo" to remain an underground cult classic ever since.[citation needed] She also appeared on Bowie's The Great Pretender (1981) and All the Magic (1982).

The next few years found Bass at a number of different labels, but saw no notable successes. After her second album, Free, flopped in 1972, Bass retired from music and concentrated on raising a family (she has four children with Bowie). She returned occasionally, being featured as a background vocalist on several recordings, including those by Bowie. In 1990 she recorded a gospel album with her mother and brother David Peaston, called Promises: A Family Portrait of Faith and undertook a fall tour of the US West Coast, called "Juke Joints and Jubilee", which featured both traditional gospel and blues performers. During the 1990s she hosted a short-lived Chicago radio talk show, released several gospel records on independent labels; through old friend Hamiet Bluiett, she was invited to perform three tracks on the World Saxophone Quartet album Breath of Life.

The original version of "Rescue Me" was utilized in a TV advertising campaign by American Express: Fontella Bass has stated that she was at a low point in her life when on New Year's Day 1990 she was astonished to hear her own voice singing "Rescue Me" on the American Express television ad. The experience gave Bass the inspiration to set her life in order: it also motivated her to make queries over the commercial use of her recording of "Rescue Me" with the ultimate result a 1993 settlement with American Express and its advertising agency awarding Bass $50,000 plus punitive damages

Like many artists of her time, Bass experienced a revival of interest. She was featured on the PBS Special and accompanying DVD, Soul Celebration. Soul Spectacular recorded live at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, PA, November 2001. Her voice can be heard on two tracks on The Cinematic Orchestra's 2002 album Every Day, and another two tracks on their 2007 album Ma Fleur.

Bass received a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame in the Loop in May 2000....Her health started fading after a series of strokes beginning in 2005. On December 26, 2012, she died at a St. Louis hospice from complications of a heart attack suffered earlier in the month of December 2012; she was 72."

Barbara Carr - Late Bloomer

 Sometimes good things come late in life, Barbara Carr didn't really hit her stride until she was in her fifties, an age when most of her peers were winding down or completely retired.

"After decades of toiling in obscurity (including a low-profile stint on Chess), Barbara Carr finally began to make a name for herself in the late '90s as a brassy, often X-rated belter in the Southern soul-blues vein. A native of St. Louis, Carr was born Barbara Crosby on January 9, 1941, and began singing in church as a choir girl, eventually forming a family gospel group called the Crosby Sisters. She joined a singing/dancing troupe in grade school and went on to sing in the high school choir, around which time she also helped start a singing group called the Comets Combo that played popular material at local clubs. In 1963, she joined a locally popular group called the Petites, which opened for Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. She met St. Louis-based saxophonist/bandleader Oliver Sain through her brother-in-law (she adopted her husband's last name, Carr) and successfully auditioned to join Sain's band.

Helped by her connection with Sain, Carr signed a solo contract with Chess in 1966 and recorded soulful singles like "Don't Knock Love," "I Can't Stop Now," and "Think About It Baby" over the next few years. Initially excited just to have a record deal, Carr grew frustrated with Chess' seeming lack of interest in promoting her; she stopped recording for a period in the late '60s to raise her children, and then returned to Chess circa 1970, albeit still without much recognition. She left Sain's band in 1972, and sang with a number of other, mostly short-lived groups around the St. Louis area. Carr recorded another single for Gateway in the late '70s, "Physical Love Affair," but again found little promotional support. She and her husband eventually formed their own label, Bar-Car, in 1982, and Carr issued a number of singles over the next few years, many recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama. This material helped form the basis for Carr's first full-length album, 1989's Good Woman Go Bad, which was later reissued on the Shreveport-based Paula label in 1994. A second collection, Street Woman, was released on Bar-Car on cassette in 1992, then upgraded to CD in 1994.

Word of Carr's recordings began to spread, and she wound up signing with the Ecko label in 1996, releasing her label debut, Footprints on the Ceiling, in 1997. The follow-up firmly established Carr's new tough, bawdy blues-mama persona; issued in 1998, both the title and the lyrics of Bone Me Like You Own Me left little to the imagination. Carr was becoming popular on blues and retro-soul radio stations around the South, positioning herself as something of a female counterpart to Marvin Sease; her success finally enabled her to quit the day job she'd held for over 20 years at an electronics company. Having hit upon a winning formula, Carr stuck to it for a succession of follow-ups, which included 1999's What a Woman Wants, 2000's Stroke It, 2001's The Best Woman, 2002's On My Own, 2003's Talk to Me, and 2006's Down Low Brother." AMG

Ann Peebles - 99 pounds of Soul

 A diminutive singer with a powerful voice and an even stronger attitude, Ann Peebles was one of the artists who defined Willie Mitchell's legendary Memphis soul label Hi Records, along with Al Green and, later, O.V. Wright. Easily the best female singer in the Hi stable, Peebles ranked among the finest deep Southern soul singers of the decade, notching an instant classic with her 1973 hit "I Can't Stand the Rain." She co-wrote a generous share of her own material with husband Don Bryant, and while she cut plenty of love and heartbreak tunes, her persona was built on the grit and resilient strength she displayed on songs like "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down." Peebles wasn't always as appreciated on the charts as her work often merited, especially among pop listeners, but her best recordings hold up among the best of their era.

Peebles was born April 27, 1947, in East St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a minister and her mother a singer, and naturally Peebles began singing at a young age in her father's church choir. She also sang with the family group, the Peebles Choir, which had been touring the gospel circuit since Peebles' grandfather founded it a generation earlier. As a teenager, she sang secular music on the St. Louis club circuit, supported and accompanied by her father. There she met blues bandleader Oliver Sain, a local legend, and eventually joined his revue. Peebles caught her big break in 1968 on a trip to Memphis, where she asked to sit in on a club set by trumpeter Gene "Bowlegs" Miller. Miller was already signed to Hi Records at the time, and duly impressed with Peebles' voice, he brought her to Hi house producer Willie Mitchell for a tryout. Mitchell, who was still in the process of shifting the label from country to R&B (and had not yet discovered Al Green), immediately offered Peebles a contract; she was still shy of her 21st birthday.

Mitchell teamed Peebles with singer and house songwriter Don Bryant, seeking a bit more seasoning in her R&B phrasing. Peebles and Bryant soon began writing together (and would also end up dating). In the meantime, Peebles recorded her debut single, "Walk Away," a song written by Sain that just missed the Top 20 on the R&B chart in 1969. The follow-up, "Give Me Some Credit," was also a minor hit. Both songs were featured on the singer's debut album, This Is Ann Peebles. Her fourth single, 1970's "Part Time Love," was her first R&B Top Ten. 1972's Straight from the Heart was her first artistically realized LP, however; it featured several minor R&B hits in "I Pity the Fool," "Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love," "I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody's Home" (later covered by Bette Midler), and "Somebody's on Your Case," plus the signature album track "99 Lbs." Her hot streak continued with 1973's I Can't Stand the Rain, which many critics still regard as her finest work. "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" was a decent-sized hit, and the brilliant title cut -- written by Peebles, Bryant, and disc jockey Bernard Miller -- became her biggest hit, peaking at number six R&B and famously becoming a favorite of John Lennon. She also charted with "(You Keep Me) Hangin' On" and "Do I Need You," but more importantly, married Bryant in 1974.

In the wake of "I Can't Stand the Rain," Peebles was a star on the soul circuit, even if she never duplicated its commercial success. "Beware," "Come to Mama," and "Dr. Love Power" were all charting singles from 1975's Tellin' It, but the rise of disco and the sale of Hi Records in 1977 would conspire against Peebles' career momentum. 1977's If This Is Heaven produced only one single in the title cut, which was more polished than Peebles' usual fare; none of the singles from 1979's The Handwriting Is on the Wall cracked the R&B Top 50. With Mitchell and most of the Hi house band gone, Peebles took a hiatus from the music business to concentrate on her family.

Peebles reunited with Mitchell in 1989 for Call Me, an album released on Mitchell's short-lived new label, Waylo; however, longtime fans generally found it a disappointing comeback overpowered by sterile electronic instrumentation. Peebles returned to a more organic approach by signing with roots label Rounder's Bullseye Blues subsidiary for 1992's Full Time Love. Another effort, Fill This World with Love, followed in 1996, which featured guest spots from Mavis Staples and Shirley Brown. During the '90s, Peebles guested on several albums by Maria Muldaur. Meanwhile, "I Can't Stand the Rain" was covered by numerous artists, including Tina Turner, and revived by Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott via sampling on her 1997 smash "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)."