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Exclusive premiere of the Residents’ new video, ‘Bury My Bone’
06.26.2020
10:28 am
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Like their masterpiece Eskimo, the story of the Residents’ new album starts with a cryptoethnomusicological discovery: in this case, the complete recorded works of an albino bluesman from western Louisiana named Alvin Snow.

Under the stage name “Dyin’ Dog,” the story goes, Snow cut ten agonized electric blues originals with his band, the Mongrels, before falling off the face of the earth in 1976. Whether the last straw was the death of his pet dog, the death of his elderly ladyfriend, or the death of Howlin’ Wolf, no one can say. Only these screams of rage and shame remain.

(There’s a mini-documentary on the Residents’ YouTube channel about Dyin’ Dog, and Homer Flynn of the Cryptic Corporation discussed the legend of Alvin Snow with us last December.)
 

The Residents’ new album, out July 10

Dyin’ Dog’s songs about sex, death, death, sex and death came out last year on a now quite scarce seven-inch box set released by Psychofon Records. On the new album Metal, Meat & Bone: The Songs of Dyin’ Dog, the Residents interpret the Alvin Snow songbook with help from the Pixies’ Black Francis, Magic Band and Pere Ubu alumnus Eric Drew Feldman, and other high-quality musical guests. The album also reproduces Dyin’ Dog and the Mongrels’ demos in full stereo abjection.

John Sanborn’s video for the Residents’ take on “Bury My Bone,” exclusively premiered below, is mildly NSFW. Then again, in time of plague, work itself is NSFW. And this is a blues song about a dog looking for a hole to bury his bone in, for fuck’s sake.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Residential: Homer Flynn on the Residents’ ambitious ‘God in Three Persons’ show at MoMA
Take a walk around a masterpiece with the Residents’ ‘Eskimo Deconstructed’
Exclusive video and music from the Residents’ new album, ‘Intruders’

Posted by Oliver Hall
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06.26.2020
10:28 am
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Hail the King: Muddy Waters rules the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, 1968
03.22.2016
10:36 am
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In his later years, when Muddy Waters started making the money he was long overdue, he’d call up his friend John Lee Hooker and the pair would jokingly brag about the cars they owned. If Waters said he had a new Mercedes then Hooker would call back a few weeks later and tell Waters he had just bought a Mercedes with a phone in the back. It was a small perk in a long career of endless nights gigging, playing or recording for little return.

For playing blues didn’t make money unless you were somebody, as Waters told the N.M.E.‘s Charles Shaar Murray in 1977:

The kind of blues I play, there’s no money in it. You makes a good livin’ when you gets established like I am, but you don’t reach that kind of overnight million dollar thing, man…no way.

If you play nuthin’ but blues, it’s hard to get big off of it. It takes years and years and still the kids come in and go, ‘Who he?’

That night in 1977, Waters was playing a gig with Johnny Winter at some small deathtrap venue in the village of Willimantic—which according to folklore means the “Place of the Swift Running Waters.” As journalist Murray discovered, Waters was right the audience knew more about Johnny Winter—ironically the whitest blues musician of all time, as the Texas guitarist, was of course an albino—than the legendary king Muddy Waters—even after forty years of hard work.

Forget Elvis—Muddy Waters is the true King of modern rock, r’n'b and all the rest. Without Muddy Waters things would have been a whole lot different and sure as hell not nearly as good.

McKinley Morganfield was born on April 4, 1913 or 1915—depending on who you believe—in Rolling Fork, Mississippi.  He was the second son of farmer Ollie Morganfield. When his mother died in 1918, McKinley was sent off to live with his grandmother in Clarksdale, who first christened the boy “Muddy”:

‘I was raised in the country, and out there they didn’t have no concrete, ya know… just muddy country roads and people used to clean their feet off on our front porch. I’d be playing around crawlin’ in the mud, probably eatin’ it…and my granmother started callin’ me her little muddy baby.

‘I started to play harp [harmonica] when I was seven. At nine I was really tryin’ to play. At thirteen I thought I was good. The kids I used to sing to would call out “Hey Muddy Waters play us a piece.”

‘I didn’t like that “Muddy Water” thing, ya know…I didn’t mind my grandmother calling me Muddy, but that whole Muddy Waters thing, I didn’t like it. It just growed on me.’

As a teenager, Waters picked up his first influence, bluesman Charley Patton. Then Son House—from whom he learnt the finer points of bottleneck guitar—and Robert Johnson—whose style Waters copied before finding his very own distinct voice. He traded in his harmonica and took up the guitar.  Waters had known for some time he was going to be a musician—he was going to be someone. Ever since he could remember music was what he wanted to do. If he couldn’t make it music, he figured, then he’d be a preacher, a ball player—“something outstanding.”

‘I didn’t want to grow up with no one knowin’ me but the neighbourhood people. I wanted the world to know a lot about me. I thank my God I got it through…’

By day, Waters worked on the cotton plantations. But he was soon earning more in a night playing blues than he made in a week working for someone else. His early recordings were for the Library of Congress in 1941—an organization which Charles Shaar Murray points out “treats folk musicians as wildlife specimens rather than artists.” Waters never made money on these recordings until about a quarter of a century later when they were released as Down on Stovall’s Plantation.

In 1943, Waters moved to Chicago to become a full-time musician. He earned his money playing bars and clubs. In 1944, he made a major change to his sound by purchasing his first electric guitar. With the release of his single “I Can’t Be Satisfied” in 1948, Waters changed the course of modern music—its beat and loud powerful electric sound announced the imminent arrival of rock ‘n’ roll.

As Murray writes in Shots from the Hip:

[Waters] consolidated his success with a series of harder, heavier, more passionate and more electric hits, and began to assemble, member by member, the toughest and most exciting band in town. Muddy Waters’ Blues Band was to become, not only the best and most influential band in Chicago, but what was for all practical purposes, the first electric rock band.

More Muddy Waters, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.22.2016
10:36 am
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‘A Few Tunes Between Homicides’: Never before released song by Lead Belly! Dangerous Minds exclusive
01.20.2015
09:12 am
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That great American blues/folk artist Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter was born on January 20, 1888 (or 1889), making today the 127th (or 126th) anniversary of his birth. He’s known today for popularizing songs like “Goodnight Irene,” “Midnight Special,” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” as American folk and, eventually, rock ‘n’ roll standards, but in his day, Lead Belly was widely renowned for having been in jail. A lot. Thrice, in fact—once on a weapons charge, once for killing a man, and a third time for trying to kill a man.

Remarkably, Lead Belly literally sang his way out of prison! His second stint was cut short by a pardon issued after Lead Belly wrote a song honoring the then-Governor of Texas Pat Morris Neff, and he repeated the stunt during his third hitch, in Louisiana (though as he may have been eligible for a good-behavior release anyway, it’s disputed whether it was really the song that did the job). It was while he was serving that third sentence that Lead Belly was recorded in performance by the famous father-son team of folklorists John and Alan Lomax, which of course is how we know him today. From an essay by Smithsonian Folkways archivist Jeff Place, which will appear in the forthcoming 5-disc retrospective Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, and which we’ve edited for length:

Angola was one of the worst prisons in the South; it was probably as close to slavery as any person could come in 1930. Lead Belly became known around the prison for his singing and guitar playing. This was the situation when John Lomax wrote the prison warden L.A. Jones about visiting on behalf of the Library of Congress to record prison songs.

John Lomax and his young son Alan were traveling and recording African American folk songs in prisons in the South. They were hoping to find older African American vernacular music not “contaminated” by the popular blues and jazz of the present day, and they felt long-term prisoners who had been isolated from society might just be the answer. Fresh from recording some of Lead Belly’s fellow prisoners at Sugarland on July 5, 1933, they arrived at Angola on July 16. Lead Belly was suggested to them as a good singer to record, and they realized they had really made a “find.”

The Lomaxes made 12 recordings. Lead Belly saw an opportunity in this situation for himself and “wondered if a pardon song” might work again. Unlike Neff, Louisiana governor O.K. Allen did not tour prisons, so Lead Belly didn’t have access to him. When the Lomaxes returned the following July to record 15 more songs, he had a special one prepared, “Governor O.K. Allen.” He asked if John Lomax would deliver a recording of the song to Allen’s office. Lead Belly had previously written asking for a pardon as well. It is not known whether Allen listened to the song, but Lead Belly was officially granted a pardon on July 25, 1934. Again, the state maintained it was purely on the basis of “good time.”

Lead Belly’s meeting with the Lomaxes was re-enacted for a short newsreel film that, luckily, survives. Here it is, featuring Lead Belly and John Lomax woodenly playing themselves, with a darkened garage standing in for a prison yard. It’s kind of ridiculous, and to a viewer today it’s full of embarrassing values dissonance (loads of “yassuh” racism, unsurprisingly) but on the other hand, it’s motion footage of Lead Belly performing “Goodnight Irene!”
 

 
After his third release, in 1934, Lead Belly made a go of a singing career, abetted by the Lomaxes, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and tantalizingly lurid newspaper descriptions like “Murderous Minstrel,” “Virtuoso of Knife and Guitar,” “Two-Time Dixie Murderer Sings Way to Freedom,” and by far my favorite for its sheer over-the-top sensationalism, “Sweet Singer of the Swamplands Here to do a Few Tunes Between Homicides.” Lead Belly fell out with Lomax in 1935, but his career continued, and in 1948, he would make his final recordings. Again from Jeff Place:

During the 1940s, Lead Belly met two individuals who would become important to his final years of life, Frederic Ramsey Jr. (1915–95) and Charles Edward Smith (1904– 70). Both men were record collectors and jazz scholars and had recently jointly published a book, Jazzmen (1939). They were interested in researching early African American music from the South to search for the roots of jazz. Lead Belly’s repertoire was a perfect resource in this quest. Ramsey felt that Lead Belly’s repertoire had been under-recorded and wanted to get as much of it as he could on tape.

Ramsey got to know Lead Belly socially after the war. “Lead Belly used to come up and visit, and people would come and visit, and we would really throw parties, and you couldn’t stop that guy from performing. I mean, he did it, you could have paid him nothing, he’d come there and have a good time and he would play”. One night Huddie and Martha were invited to the Ramseys for dinner, and Ramsey showed Lead Belly the new machine. Ramsey had hung drapes in his apartment to simulate the sound dampening in a recording studio. Lead Belly wanted to try it out, although he had not brought his guitar, not planning on playing. Ramsey had only a cheap microphone. With Martha’s occasional help he recorded 34 songs that night. Better yet, the tape deck allowed the recording of the introductions and the stories behind the songs. There would be three evening sessions (with the guitar at the other two, along with much better RCA mics borrowed from Moe Asch), and more planned. Lead Belly left for a European tour before additional sessions could be arranged. “Anyway, I think we had maybe three or four gatherings, and I could be wrong about this, it certainly wasn’t all done in one evening, but he used to come and once he… he was a guy who got really comfortable, once he got started, he wouldn’t stop.”

That many of these last recordings were recorded unaccompanied was sadly prophetic. Lead Belly would soon be exhibiting the symptoms of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), which robbed him of his ability to play before took his life near the end of 1949.
 

 
The aforementioned Folkways set, Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, is the most comprehensive career-spanning retrospective of his work yet, and is scheduled for release on February 24th, 2015. Packaged in a 140 page 12x12” book, it features over 100 songs on five discs, 16 of which have never been released. One of those unreleased songs comes from that guitar-less session at Frederic Ramsey’s apartment. It’s called “Everytime I Go Out,” an original composition that doesn’t appear to have ever been recorded in any other form. We at Dangerous Minds are thrilled to be able to debut it for you today.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
The only film footage of blues/folk legend Leadbelly
Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan’s short-lived Leadbelly tribute band
The amazing old Paramount Records ads that inspired R. Crumb

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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01.20.2015
09:12 am
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The amazing old Paramount Records ads that inspired R. Crumb
10.23.2014
03:50 pm
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The story of Paramount Records is a fascinating one—the beginning is set about 100 years ago, in a Wisconsin furniture company that began pressing records in hopes that’d help them sell record players, which in their early years were indeed whoppin’ big ol’ pieces of furniture. The middle sees that furniture company curating and releasing a jaw-dropping and still legendary catalogue of classic early jazz and Delta blues 78s by the likes of Charley Patton, Ma Rainey, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. The end of the story sees the closing of the company and disgruntled employees flinging those now priceless shellac records into the Milwaukee River and melting down the metal masters for scrap. The whole story can be found in greater detail online, or in the books Paramount’s Rise and Fall and Do Not Sell At Any Price.

What concerns us here are the label’s print ads, which ran in The Chicago Defender. I’ve tried mightily to find the names of the artists who drew these. People in a better position to know than I assure me their identities are lost to the years, though they may have been staff illustrators at a Madison ad agency. The loss of that knowledge is a damned shame, because without knowing it, those artists altered the history of underground comix, by serving as an acknowledged influence on that form’s grand pooh-bah, Robert Crumb. Even a superficial glance at some of these ads reveals a precursor to Crumb’s famous signature style (it’s strikingly evident in the slouching posture of some of these characters), and Crumb paid direct homage to these artists in a series of trading card sets that have been compiled into the book R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country—the comix artist’s abiding passion for the music of the early recording era has never been a secret.

Here are a few of those ads. Where the ad copy is adequately readable, I encourage you to give it a look, because some of this stuff is priceless—I’m wondering how many old blues songs weren’t about wangs and adultery. Bear in mind, please, that the ads I chose to post here weren’t necessarily selected for resemblance to Crumb’s work. Some I simply felt like sharing because they were just too much!
 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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10.23.2014
03:50 pm
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Happy Birthday Beth Gibbons of Portishead
01.04.2012
01:34 pm
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Beth Gibbons, vocalist of both Portishead and Rustin Man, turns 46 today. Here’s to one of the best, most soulful, female voices English music has ever produced. After the jump a selection of her best clips, but let’s start with this haunting cover of the Velvet Underground:

Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man “Candy Says”
 

 
Thanks to Grizz Gom Jabbar Robinson.
 
After the Jump, videos for “L’Annulaire”, “The Rip” and “Glory Box” (live)...

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Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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01.04.2012
01:34 pm
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Nina Simone: in the name of freedom

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Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born 77 years ago today in the tiny town of Tryon, North Carolina. As Nina Simone, she’d go on to become the most powerful singer/songwriter of the Civil Rights era, blending the rawest aspects of jazz, blues, soul, and gospel into a unique style that buoyed her message of liberation.

As a generation of despots falls in the Middle East and people confront the forces of greed in Wisconsin, it seems apropos to recall what Simone bestowed on the world…
 

 
After the jump: Simone repossesses the Beatles’ “Revolution” and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” in the name of avant-garde freedom blues…

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Posted by Ron Nachmann
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02.21.2011
11:39 pm
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