Son Seals - Midnight Son 1976

Wow! Have we really made it this far without a Son Seals post?? I LOVE this guy - live he was a similar experience to Luther Allison, he just wore your ass out! You did not walk away from a Son Seals' show un-satted!

"He was born in Osceola, Arkansas where his father, Jim "Son" Seals, owned a small juke joint. He began performing professionally by the age of 13, first as a drummer with Robert Nighthawk, and later as a guitarist. At age 16, he began to play at the T-99, a local upper echelon club, with Walter Jefferson, “Little Walter”, who was his brother in law. At the T-99, he played with many other musicians, such as Albert King, Rufus Thomas, Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, and Rosco Gordon. Their varying styles contributed to the development of Seals' own playing techniques. While playing at the T-99, he was also introduced to country-western music by Jimmy Grubbs, who would ask Seals to gig with his group every now and then on both drums and guitar. At 19 years old, he formed his own band to fill in at a local club in Osceola called the Rebel Club. Shortly thereafter, a man from Little Rock, Arkansas came to find “Little Walter” for a gig at his club, but when he turned it down the offer went to Seals. The band members were “Old man Horse” (Johnny Moore) on piano, Alvin Goodberry on either drums, guitar, bass, or piano, “Little Bob” (Robinson) on vocals, and Walter Lee “Skinny Dynamo” Harris on piano. The band’s name was “Son Seals and the Upsetters.”

In 1971, Seals moved to Chicago. His career took off after he was discovered by Bruce Iglauer of Alligator Records at the 'Flamingo Club' in Chicago's South Side. His debut album, The Son Seals Blues Band, was released in 1973. The album included "Your Love Is Like a Cancer" and "Hot Sauce". Seals followed up with 1976's Midnight Son and 1978's Live and Burning. He continued releasing albums throughout the next two decades, all but one on Alligator Records. These included Chicago Fire (1980), Bad Axe (1984), Living in the Danger Zone (1991), Nothing But the Truth and Live-Spontaneous Combustion (1996). He received the W.C. Handy Award in 1985, 1987, and 2001.

Author Andrew Vachss was a friend of Seals, and used his influence to promote Seals' music. Vachss gave Seals several cameo appearances in his novels and co-wrote songs with him for his 2000 album, Lettin' Go. Vachss dedicated the novel Mask Market to Seals' memory.

In 2002, Seals was featured on the Bo Diddley tribute album, Hey Bo Diddley - A Tribute!, performing the song "My Story" (aka "Story of Bo Diddley").

Seals had a number of problems in his life. He survived all but one of his fourteen siblings, and in 1997 he was shot in the jaw by his wife, sustaining injuries which required reconstructive surgery. Also, in 1999 part of his left leg was amputated, due to complications from diabetes. He lost belongings in a fire that destroyed his home while he was away performing live, and several of his prized guitars were stolen from his home. After his health problems Seals used a number of different accompanying bands, such as James Soleberg's, Jimmy Vivino's, and Big Jim Kohler's, while on the road.

The band Phish performed Seals' song "Funky Bitch", and brought him on stage on multiple occasions.

Seals died in 2004, at the age of 62, from complications of diabetes; he was survived by his sister and fourteen children."

Atlanta Blues 1933

The John Edwards Memorial Foundation released this lp of previously unreleased material from Bubby Moss, Blind Willie McTell, and Curley Weaver in 1979. Most of the recordings have at least two of the three principals on them. In general, the songs and recordings are quite good but I give fair warning that the last 2 tacks of side one have a good amount of distortion in the vocals.

Soul For Sinners

Another Sunday morning special courtesy of Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven, this one compiled by Kevin Kiley who also checks in around here and endorsed a multi-media post of his killer compilation. Here is a link to Kevin's full article and the story of this compilation - now push play and you can multi-task!

http://www.sirshambling.com/articles/...

Soul For Sinners by Kingcake on Mixcloud

Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues D & E

Disc four concludes with seven tracks from Robert Petway, including his influential version of "Catfish Blues." The final disc opens with six more Petway recordings, followed by a dozen Honeyboy Edwards field recordings made for Alan Lomax in 1942, and then concludes with the eight sides Willie "Poor Boy" Lofton recorded for Decca Records in 1934 and 1935 (including his "Dark Road Blues," a version of Tommy Johnson's "Big Road Blues"). What holds all of this together? Countless songs that are essentially variations of "Baby Please Don't Go" and "49 Highway Blues," showing the real and pervasive influence of Williams' rough and ragged approach to Mississippi blues.

Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues, Disc C

Disc three and the start of disc four feature the complete recorded output of Tommy McClennan, a gruff-voiced blues shouter best known for "Cross Cut Saw Blues" and "Whiskey Head Woman" and a penchant for interjections and spoken asides during his recordings.

Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues, Disc B

A five-disc box set from England's JSP Records, Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues collects 126 tracks by Big Joe Williams and loosely related artists like Willie Lofton, Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Petway, and Tommy McClennan.

The second disc collects 17 songs Williams recorded in Chicago in 1945 and 1947, followed by two sides (including "Jivin' Woman") tracked in St. Louis in 1949, and six songs from a 1951 session in Jackson, MS.

Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues, Disc A

A five-disc box set from England's JSP Records, Big Joe Williams and the Stars of Mississippi Blues collects 126 tracks by Big Joe Williams and loosely related artists like Willie Lofton, Honeyboy Edwards, Robert Petway, and Tommy McClennan. Disc one opens with a half dozen tracks from Williams (including "49 Highway Blues") with Henry Townsend on second guitar that were recorded in Chicago in February 1935, followed by four sides (including Williams' signature song, "Baby Please Don't Go") recorded the following Halloween. The disc closes out with four songs from a session in Aurora, IL, in 1937, and nine tracks recorded in March and December of 1941.

Big Joe Williams

I'll do the prewar Big Joe Stuff soon, but I really enjoy both of these as well so I'll use these to get the biographical info out.

"Joseph Lee Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982), billed throughout his career as Big Joe Williams, was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over four decades, he recorded such songs as "Baby Please Don't Go", "Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama" for a variety of record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. Williams was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992.

Blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story, Virginia Piedmont Blues) attempted to document the gritty intensity of the Williams persona in this description:

    "When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. When he played, everything rattled but Big Joe himself. The total effect of this incredible apparatus produced the most buzzing, sizzling, African-sounding music I have ever heard".

Born in Crawford, Mississippi, Williams as a youth began wandering across the United States busking and playing stores, bars, alleys and work camps. In the early 1920s he worked in the Rabbit Foot Minstrels revue and recorded with the Birmingham Jug Band in 1930 for the Okeh label.

In 1934, he was in St. Louis, where he met record producer Lester Melrose who signed him to Bluebird Records in 1935. He stayed with Bluebird for ten years, recording such blues hits as "Baby, Please Don't Go" (1935) and "Crawlin' King Snake" (1941), both songs later covered by many other performers. He also recorded with other blues singers, including Sonny Boy Williamson I, Robert Nighthawk and Peetie Wheatstraw.

Williams remained a noted blues artist in the 1950s and 1960s, with his guitar style and vocals becoming popular with folk-blues fans. He recorded for the Trumpet, Delmark, Prestige and Vocalion labels, among others. He became a regular on the concert and coffeehouse circuits, touring Europe and Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s and performing at major U.S. music festivals.

Williams' guitar playing was in the Delta blues style, and yet was unique. He played driving rhythm and virtuosic lead lines simultaneously and sang over it all. He played with picks both on his thumb and index finger, plus his guitar was heavily modified. Williams added a rudimentary electric pick-up, whose wires coiled all over the top of his guitar. He also added three extra strings, creating unison pairs for the first, second and fourth strings. His guitar was usually tuned to Open G, like such: (D2 G2 D3D3 G3 B3B3 D4D4), with a capo placed on the second fret to set the tuning to the key of A. During the 1920s and 1930s, Williams had gradually added these extra strings in order to keep other guitar players from being able to play his guitar. In his later years, he would also occasionally use a 12-string guitar with all strings tuned in unison to Open G. Williams sometimes tuned a six-string guitar to an interesting modification of Open G. In this modified tuning, the bass D string (D2) was replaced with a .08 gauge string and tuned to G4. The resulting tuning was (G4 G2 D3 G3 B3 D4), with the G4 string being used as a melody string. This tuning was used exclusively for slide playing.

He died December 17, 1982 in Macon, Mississippi. Williams was buried in a private cemetery outside Crawford near the Lowndes County line. His headstone was primarily paid for by friends and partially funded by a collection taken up among musicians at Clifford Antone's nightclub in Austin, Texas, organized by California music writer Dan Forte, and erected through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund on October 9, 1994. Harmonica virtuoso and one time touring companion of Williams, Charlie Musselwhite, delivered the eulogy at the unveiling. Williams' headstone epitaph, composed by Forte, proclaims him "King of the 9 String Guitar."

Dues Paid The Bluestime Story

"Bluestime is not a storied label, not in the way Sun and Chess are. An offshoot of ABC, Bluestime launched in 1969 and the intent of the imprint was to take old bluesmen and freshen them up for the new decade, usually by placing them in a setting where long, jazzy improvisations were encouraged. Apart from a live version of "Hound Dog" from Big Mama Thornton, every one of the 15 tracks showcased on this 2013 collection were released between 1969 and 1970, most of them in 1970. To get an idea of how thoroughly of its time this music is, T-Bone Walker performs a tribute to B.B. King and also covers the man's "Every Day I Have the Blues," while Big Joe Turner sings a song about plastic man. The decades have washed away the commercialism of these moves and have left behind funky, almost jazzy vamps on cuts that rarely stretch longer than four minutes (although the 14 minutes of the Super Black Blues Band and the ten minutes of Turner surely do leave an impression) but often feel like they do, because the concentration is not on the song but the groove. It's hard to argue that any of these acts are at a peak, and yet hearing Walker, Turner, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson," Otis Spann, and Harmonica Slim in a different setting, happy to tackle their times, is pretty engaging and makes this worthwhile hearing. Maybe it doesn't completely rehabilitate this awkward era, but it does suggest the elongated jams had more to savor than initially met the ear."AMG

James "Wee Willie" Wayne - Fom Texas To New Orleans

There was a request for re-up on this link so I will bring it forward for another run.

Now some of you may have thought that Unky Clif was some sort of myth but this post is actually written by him.

"Charlie Gillett ruined my life.

In 1970 when the first edition of his book "Sound Of The City" was released I was a novice collector. Too smart to continue buying albums because I liked the cover but smart enough to know how little I knew about the music(s) I loved. Gillet's book, possibly the finest written about the origins of rock & roll, was a revelation and the suggested listening set me on an epic quest to gather all the 300 or so songs mentioned. Some performers were familiar to a Chicago boy, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Jimmy Reed. Others were a bit more of a chore.

James Wayne ruined my life.

Buried in the early portion of Gillett's treasure map was James Waynes' "Tend To Your Business" (Sittin' In With 588) from 1951. So began my search for the Holy Grail. For 35 years I dug into anything which might lead to this golden track. Hard to recall in those pre-internet days the effort involved in finding an out of print 78 by a one-hit R&B singer who never found his own pot of gold. A process made even harder by a man who recorded under nearly as many names as he released records. James Wayne, James Waynes, Wee Willie, Larry Evans, Billy Hoke, where to begin…

My journey ended about 5 years ago and like any quest the experience is more important than goal so I won't pretend that Wayne is the great lost R&B hero. Just a journeyman who cranked out  about 40 songs for Sittin' In With (1950-1951), Imperial (1951-1952, 1955 & 1961), Aladdin, Million, Old Town & Fabor (1954 - 1955),  Pickwick (1956) and D.W. (1965). Also the perfect example of a Chitlin' Circuit performer.

I can't  provide much by way of biography but this link (http://borensteinslaw.blogspot.com/search/label/Jimmy%20Wayne) tells a sad part of the Wayne story. Like many things in James' saga even this is flawed. James Douglas Wayne was actually born 17 April 1924 in Livingston Co TX the son of Alvin and Allie Wayne from DeSoto Parish LA. The family had moved to the outskirts of Houston in early 1920 and Alvin died there in 1938 leaving three children and his wife. James completed 3 years of High School and, in late 1942, enlisted in the Army.


This disc is a mess just like the James Wayne story. Clearly tossed together without notes, a lousy cover and issued on a homemade CD with no semblance of chronology. James' 1951 recording of "Junkco Partner" AKA "Worthless Man" (SIW 607) is considered by some to be the earliest version of this New Orleans chestnut and his "Travelin' Mood" (Imperial 5355) from 1955 has become the template for many subsequent recordings. Clearly a tarnished Grail but one well worthy of a few good gulps.

For my part the most fascinating thing about this guy is that he may well be responsible for the song Junco Partner in the form we know it today. I have found verification that this version (track 3) is the one that Professor Longhair, Dr. John and James Booker all learned the song from. There is no doubt it shares elements from earlier songs like Champion Jack's Junker's Blues, but it appears Wayne may be due credit for writing the song as it is currently played. The song itself has such a history and so many verses and versions that it should likely be public domain but somehow sleazy Bob Shad of all people managed to steal it and put his name on it and it remains that way today. 

Addendum: I had the honor today of discussing the subject of Junco Partner, Junker's Blues and James Wee Willie Wayne with both Deacon John and Smokey Johnson. They both were firm in saying that the two songs are essentially un-related other than thematically. Both quickly pointed out that The Fat Man and Lawdy Miss Clawdy are Junker's Blues with different lyrics. They also mentioned the fact that the song came out of a group of pianists including William Hill, Champion Jack, Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair who were all playing with recently arrived Caribbean musicians.

As to Junco Partner, neither felt it was a related song at all and both swear they had never heard it until James Wayne. They were both pretty impressed that I knew who he was and both were fairly certain that Wayne wrote the song. 

Livin' in New Orleans....Ain't it grand! 

The Soul Of Gospel 2

Part 2 of this stunning playlist extracted from an absolutely fabulous article and collection, written and compiled by Karl Tsigdinos & John Glassburner at the remarkable Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven. I started this last Sunday, and at least a few seemed to like it. Volume 2 is just as earth shaking as last weeks' service. The tracks themselves are included in last week's download.

The Soul Of Gospel 2 by Kingcake on Mixcloud

Blues and Gospel from the Bandera, Laredo and Jerico Road labels of Chicago

 These sets seem to be nearly endless, but I've got to say that this one is entirely worthwhile. The first 17 tracks are some entertaining blues, the last 10 tracks are some even more entertaining gospel. The aren't any "names" here, but there ain't no duds either.

Dusty Brown is one of those guys who you would cheerfully catch at a local blues club and come away satisfied.

Jimmy Lee Robinson is the kind of blues guy who was likely a local sensation, a regional star. There is a lot of variety to his sounds and he was clearly very creative in his ear for sound palates.

The Grover Pruitt single is worth the listen as is the Bobby Davis material - both of these are rock n roll crossover attempts that are easily as listenable as tracks from those better-known.

The 'memorable' quotient increases with the gospel material included. The A side of the Norfleet Brothers single is destined for a compilation. Both sides of the Space Spiritual Singer are good enough to have me keeping an eye for them from now on. The six tracks from The Faithful Wanderers and Elder Samuel Patterson are all easily good enough to be welcome additions to any collection of obscure gospel -- the kind of thing I love having in my pocket.

Skip James - The Complete Early Recordings

Nehemiah Curtis "Skip" James (June 9, 1902 – October 3, 1969) was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter. Born in Bentonia, Mississippi, United States, he died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He first learned to play guitar from another bluesman from the area, Henry Stuckey. His guitar playing is noted for its dark, minor sound, played in an open D-minor tuning with an intricate fingerpicking technique. James first recorded for Paramount Records in 1931, but these recordings sold poorly due to the Great Depression, and he drifted into obscurity. After a long absence from the public eye, James was "rediscovered" in 1964 by three blues enthusiasts, helping further the blues and folk music revival of the 1950s and early 1960s. During this period, James appeared at several folk and blues festivals and gave live concerts around the country, also recording several albums for various record labels.

His songs have influenced several generations of musicians, being adapted or covered by Kansas Joe McCoy, Robert Johnson, Alan Wilson, Cream, Deep Purple, Chris Thomas King, Alvin Youngblood Hart, The Derek Trucks Band, Beck, Big Sugar, Eric Clapton, Lucinda Williams and Rory Block. He is hailed as "one of the seminal figures of the blues."

Eddie Kirkland - It's The Blues Man! (w/ bonus)

Eddie Kirkland (August 16, 1923 – February 27, 2011) was an American electric blues guitarist, harmonicist, singer, and songwriter.

Kirkland, known as the "Gypsy of the Blues" for his rigorous touring schedules, played and toured with John Lee Hooker from 1949 to 1962. After his period of working in tandem with Hooker he pursued a successful solo career, recording for RPM Records, Fortune Records, Volt Records, and King Records, sometimes under the stage name Eddie Kirk. Kirkland continued to tour, write and record albums until his death in February 2011.

Kirkland was born in Jamaica to a mother, aged 11 (Kirkland was raised believing his mother was his sister), and first heard the blues from "field hollers", and raised in Dothan, Alabama until 1935, when he stowed away in the Sugar Girls Medicine Show tent truck and left town. Blind Blake was the one who influenced him the most in those early days. He was placed on the chorus line with "Diamond Tooth Mary" McLean. When the show closed a year later, he was in Dunkirk, Indiana where he briefly returned to school.

He joined the United States Army during World War II. It was racism in the military, he said, that led him to seek out the devil. After his discharge Kirkland traveled to Detroit where his mother had relocated. After a days work at the Ford Rouge Plant, Kirkland played his guitar at house parties, and there he met John Lee Hooker. Kirkland, a frequent second guitarist in recordings from 1949-1962. "It was difficult playin' behind Hooker but I had a good ear and was able to move in behind him on anything he did."

Kirkland fashioned his own style of playing open chords, and transformed the rough, porch style delta blues into the electric age by using his thumb, rather than a guitar pick. He secured his own series of recordings with Sid Nathan of King Records in 1953, at Fortune Records in 1958 and, by 1961, on his own album It's the Blues Man, with the King Curtis Band.

Kirkland became Hooker's road manager and the two traveled from Detroit to the Deep South on many tours, the last being in 1962 when Hooker abandoned Kirkland to go overseas. Kirkland found his way to Macon, Georgia and began performing with Otis Redding as his guitarist and band leader. As Eddie Kirk, he released "The Hawg" as a single on Volt Records in 1963. The record was overshadowed by Rufus Thomas's recordings, and Kirkland, discouraged by the music industry and his own lack of education to change the situation, turned to his other skill and sought work as an auto mechanic to earn a living for his growing family.

In 1970, one of the revivals of the blues was taking place. Peter B. Lowry found Kirkland in Macon and convinced him to record again. His first sessions were done in a motel room, resulting in the acoustic, solo LP Front and Center; his second was a studio-recorded band album, the funky The Devil... and other blues demons. Both were released on Lowry's Trix Records label. It was during the mid-1970s that Kirkland befriended the British blues-rock band, Foghat. Kirkland remained with Lowry, Trix, and was based in the Hudson Valley for twelve years. It was during this period that Kirkland appeared on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert with Muddy Waters, Honeyboy Edwards, and Foghat. These were also the years that Kirkland again energized his sound. "Eddie's thumb pick and fingers style give him freedom to play powerful chord riffs rich in rhythms and harmonic tension. He plays like a funky pianist, simultaneously covering bass lines, chord kick, and counterpoint."

The 1990s brought Randy Labbe as manager, booking agent and on his own record label, Deluge, recorded Kirkland. Three albums were produced during this Maine period, one live, one with a guest appearance from Hooker and one containing a duet with Christine Ohlman. By 2000, Kirkland was on his own again, always doing his own driving to concerts in his Ford County Squires, crossing the country several times a year. Labeled now as the Road Warrior, "A thickset, powerful man in the waistcoat and pants of a pin strip suit; red shirt, medallion, shades and a black leather cap over a bandanna, his heavy leather overcoat slung over his arm,.... he's already a Road Warrior par excellence."

Well into his eighties Kirkland continued to drive himself to gigs along the coast and in Europe, frequently playing with the Wentus Blues Band from Finland.

A documentary short entitled PICK UP THE PIECES was made about a year in Eddie's life (2010) and it could be viewed on youtube.com up until Eddie's death when the family asked that it be removed. It followed Eddie's struggles as an uneducated African American trying to make it as a Blues musician and it chronicled his hard life that included taking three lives in self-defense, his stint in the armed forces resulting in an unfair discharge, his struggles with poverty, his many children ( he claimed 73), and his love of music.

Kirkland died in a car accident on the morning of February 27, 2011 in Crystal River, Florida. At approximately 8:30 a.m. a bus hit Kirkland's car, a 1998 Ford Taurus wagon. Reportedly Kirkland attempted to make a U-turn on U.S. 98 and Oak Park Boulevard, putting him directly in the path of a Greyhound bus. The bus struck the vehicle on the right side and pushed it approximately 200 feet from the point of impact. Kirkland suffered serious injuries and was transported by helicopter to Tampa General Hospital, where he died a short time later. The bus driver and 13 passengers on the bus were not hurt.

Cedell Davis

A favorite of Cliff's, I'm not a big fan myself.

"CeDell Davis (born Ellis Davis, 9 June 1927) is an American blues guitarist and singer.

Davis is most notable for his distinctive style of guitar playing. Davis plays guitar using a table knife in his fretting hand in a manner similar to slide guitar, resulting in a welter of metal-stress harmonic transients and a singular tonal plasticity. He uses this style out of necessity. When he was 10, he suffered from severe polio which left him little control over his left hand and restricted use of his right. He had been playing guitar prior to his polio and decided to continue in spite of his handicap, and developed his knife method as the only way he could come up with of still playing guitar.

Davis was born in Helena, Arkansas, United States, where his family worked on a local plantation. He enjoyed music from a young age, playing harmonica and guitar with his childhood friends.

Once he sufficiently mastered his variation on slide guitar playing, Davis began playing in various nightclubs across the Mississippi Delta area. He played with Robert Nighthawk for a ten-year period from 1953 to 1963. While playing in a club in 1957, a police raid caused the crowd to stampede over Davis. Both of his legs were broken in this incident and he was forced to use a wheelchair since that time. The hardships resulting from his physical handicaps were a major influence in his lyrics and style of blues playing.

Davis moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas in the early sixties and continued his artistic work. In recent times, Davis' music has been released by the Fat Possum Records label to much critical acclaim. His 1994 album, produced by Robert Palmer, Feel Like Doin' Something Wrong, received a 9.0 from Pitchfork Media who called it "timeless."

The Best Of CeDell Davis (1995) was also released, with help from Col. Bruce Hampton and The Aquarium Rescue Unit. The Horror of It All followed in 1998. His album When Lightnin' Struck the Pine, released in 2002, included work by musicians Peter Buck, Barrett Martin, Scott McCaughey, and Alex Veley."

Leo Welch - Sabougla Voices

Although the blues and gospel are classified as different kinds of music genres, they aren't mutually exclusive, and like every other kind of vernacular American music, there has always been a lot of cross-pollination going on, and since musicians are musicians, playing secular music in a jook on Saturday night isn't substantially different than taking the same set of riffs into church on Sunday morning, with different lyrics, of course. And even that isn't all that difficult, since singing about loss and singing about redemption are really two sides of the same coin, a part of the same conversation. Leo Welch understands this, and he's had to. Born and raised in Sabougla in the hill country of Mississippi, Welch worked over 30 years in the region's logging camps, spending his nights and days off playing picnics, house parties, and jook joints, developing a raw and urgent electric guitar style that put him in a long line of Mississippi trance guitarists that included R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. When the blues gigs began to get rarer in the mid-'70s, Welch simply packed up his approach and blues prowess and took them to the churches, developing a style that combined the grit and dirt of Mississippi blues guitar with the passionate urgency of Southern call-and-response gospel, which puts him squarely in the lineage of another great gospel guitarist, Mississippi Fred McDowell. This debut set, released when Welch was 82, is pretty much his church set done up straight with no frills in a recording studio, and it's a stunning and fiery thing to hear. From the relentless opener, "Praise His Name," this is an album of redemptive gospel blues that crackles with urgency, passion, and relentless energy. Welch is no traditionalist, and he has stated that he doesn't have a divisive mind when it comes to either the blues or gospel, enjoying both, and whether one sings about mortal love or God, it's all about longing. This is a marvelous album, a revelation, even, with striking electric stomps like "Somebody Touched Me," which sounds a bit like a raw garage band doing a slowed-down gospel version of Chuck Berry, and delicately balanced acoustic numbers like "Mother Loves Her Children" and "The Lord Will Make a Way" showing that Welch has found a way to make the blues and gospel speak together in one voice.

Darrow Fletcher - The Pain Gets A Little Deeper

"A child prodigy, Darrow Fletcher started singing when he was six years old. Everybody predicted stardom for the young crooner, who didn't have a shy bone in his body. He recorded his first record while still a student at Hirsch High School; he later attended South Shore. Ironically, the song turned out to be his most popular recording. "The Pain Gets a Little Deeper" was a rough song for a 14-year-old to get into, or so one would think, but Fletcher belted it out as if he had just gone through a knockdown, drag-out divorce. Travels took him to the celebrated chitlin' circuit, where he shared billings with other hot acts. He appeared on many television shows, not big ones like Dick Clark, but smaller soul shows like Ken Hawkins' World of Soul in Cleveland, OH, and Soul Train when it was Chicago-based.

At least three more singles on Groovy Records didn't come close to equaling the minimal success of his debut; he switched labels again and again, but sales never amounted to much. He recorded some singles, though; "Sitting There That Night" was a monster in Chicago, but never got much further than the city limits, due to Jacklyn Records' small budget. He cut "What Good Am I Without You" (1968) for the same label with the same results. Chicago's big city lifestyle, combined with his local success, got him flossy gigs at the Regal Theater with stars such as Stevie Wonder, Jimmy Ruffin, B.B. King, the Radiants, and others. His "The Way of a Man" made CKLW's (Detroit/Windsor) heavy rotation, notching well into the station's Top 20 survey. Pushed and managed by his father, Fletcher tried but never signed to a label with deep pockets. He had two releases on Revue Records that went totally unnoticed everywhere but at the Fletcher abode. In 1970, "Dolly Baby" b/w "What Is This" dropped on Uni Records, but made no noise. "Now Is the Time for Love" came out on Genna Records, another midget.

After a while, Fletcher gave up the dream." AMG

The Soul of Gospel, The Gospel of Soul

The Soul Of Gospel by Kingcake on Mixcloud

First of all let me say that even if you normally take a pass on our Sunday morning services, today you should make an exception because this collection is too, too good!!!!

This first Sunday Morning post is extracted from an absolutely fabulous article and collection writen and compiled by Karl Tsigdinos & John Glassburner at the remarkable Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven. The site is pretty much required reading for anyone who is interested enough in this stuff to be hanging out here. The truly excellent article, pictures, links etc are all included in the download or at the link above to  the site, as I found it - what I have done for you is to extract all of the mp3's imbedded in the article into a two volume file for you to listen to whilst you read the fine work of Messrs Karl Tsigdinos & John Glassburner.

I have listened to part one of this compilation this morning and it is quite simply the greatest, most moving, gospel I have ever heard!!! I was moved to tears repeatedly!!!