New York, NY. (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) - The Blues Foundation has announced the inductees for the Blues Hall of Fame in 2009, including "Soul
Queen of New Orleans" Irma
Thomas and multiple GRAMMY Award winner Taj Mahal, as well as late
Chicago bluesman Son Seals and the Reverend Gary Davis.
Austin club owner Clifford Antone, discographer Mike Leadbitter and radio programmer/producer Bob Porter will be the non-performers inducted this year. The book I Hear You Knockin' by Jeff Hannusch was selected as a Classics of Blues Literature. The induction ceremony will be held at The Blues Foundation's Charter Member Dinner on Wednesday, May 6, at the Memphis Marriott Downtown in Memphis, Tennessee, the night before the 30th Blues Music Awards. Taj Mahal and Irma Thomas will both attend the induction ceremony.
The following singles or album tracks will be inducted during the ceremony: "Boom Boom" by John Lee Hooker; "Caldonia" by Louis Jordan; and "Sitting on Top of the World" by Mississippi Sheiks. These albums were also chosen for induction: Amtrak Blues by Alberta Hunter; T-Bone Blues by T-Bone Walker; and the 2 CD set Blues With a Feeling (Newport Folk Festival Classics) by Various Artists.
The Hall of Fame committee, consisting of scholars, record producers, radio programmers, and historians, is chaired by Jim O'Neal, founding editor of Living Blues.
The Blues Hall of Fame is a program of The Blues Foundation, a non-profit organization established to preserve Blues history, celebrate Blues excellence, support Blues education and ensure the future of this uniquely American art form. The Foundation consists of a worldwide network of 165 affiliated Blues societies and has individual memberships spanning the globe. In addition to the Blues Hall of Fame, the Foundation also produces the Blues Music Awards, the International Blues Challenge and the Keeping the Blues Alive Awards. For more information or to join The Blues Foundation, log onto www.blues.org.
The Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame: Inductee Biographies (2009)
Reverend Gary Davis
Rev. Gary Davis was one of the foremost guitarists in acoustic blues, gospel and folk music, a spirited performer who not only dazzled audiences with his virtuosity but who also served as a mentor and personal instructor to generations of guitar pickers. A self-taught musician, the blind Davis often played the streets for tips in the Carolinas and New York before he became a sought-after festival performer and private teacher during the 1950s and '60s. Born in Laurens, South Carolina, on April 30, 1896, Davis made his first recordings in 1935 under the name Blind Gary, performing both blues and gospel songs. As Rev. Gary Davis he later devoted his public performances to gospel singing, although there was still plenty of blues, jazz, and ragtime influence in his instrumental work, and students or producers might coax a few blues out of him at home or in the studio. Renowned as the master of fingerpicking styles, Davis was such a wizard that he only needed to use his thumb and forefinger while chording complex figures with his left hand. His students ranged from Blind Boy Fuller to Dave Van Ronk, David Bromberg, Ry Cooder, Jorma Kaukonen, Taj Mahal, Philadelphia Jerry Ricks, and Ernie Hawkins. Davis died in Hammonton, New Jersey, on May 5, 1972.
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal may have explored more farflung corners of African-rooted musical traditions than any other performer, but he has always returned to the sound at the core of his journeys, the blues. Born Henry St. Clair Fredericks on May 17, 1942, in New York, and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, Taj chose his exotic stage name well in advance of his world travels when he was at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After relocating to California, he rose to national prominence with the release of his Columbia album, Taj Mahal , which was highlighted by his modern-day reworkings of vintage tunes by the traditional blues masters, many of whom Taj had gotten to know during the folk-blues revival era. Taj's brand of blues was embraced rock audiences and over the years inspired a number of younger African-American performers as well. His recordings have featured him on guitar, harmonica, piano, bass, banjo, mandolin, fife, and other of the 20 instruments he plays. When he delved into reggae and other Afro-Caribbean sounds, he was no stranger to the culture, since his father was a West Indian from the island of St. Kitts and his stepfather was Jamaican. Taj also recorded zydeco, New Orleans creole music, childrens' songs, folk tunes, gospel, soundtracks, and rhythm & blues, and did sessions with musicians from Africa, India, and Hawaii. But it all revolved around and interacted with his blues, and audiences continue to be treated to inspiring performances by one of the genre's most eclectic and charismatic performers.
Irma Thomas
Irma Thomas has reigned as 'The Soul Queen of New Orleans' since the 1960s and remains not only a hometown favorite but also an international legend in the annals of rhythm & blues. Born Irma Lee in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, on February 18, 1941, she always loved to sing - at home, in church, in school, in talent shows, and finally in the nightclubs and recording studios of New Orleans. She even lost jobs by singing in clubs when she was being paid to waitress, but that led to one of her first professional breaks, when the bandleader at the Pimlico Club, Tommy Ridgley, hired her and took her on the road. She was a teenaged mother of four when her first record, Don't Mess With My Man, hit the charts in 1960. Her biggest hit was the soul-baring, self-penned Imperial single Wish Someone Would Care in 1964, but the best-known song she recorded was the flip side of another 1964 Imperial 45, Time Is On My Side, which became a rock 'n' roll classic for the Rolling Stones. A series of less successful records followed, along with a period of semi-retirement from music when she moved to California after Hurricane Camille devastated the Gulf Coast in 1969. Irma has been a fixture on the New Orleans scene since returning home in the 1970s, and began to win wider acclaim again after recording the first in a long series of albums for Rounder in 1985. She and her husband ran a club, the Lions Den on Gravier Street, until another hurricane - Katrina - flooded the premises and sent her away from the Crescent City again, but this time only as far as Gonzales, Louisiana. Thomas has been a perennial nominee and frequent winner in the Blues Music Awards, and is in the running again this year for Soul Blues Female Artist of the Year and Soul Blues Album of the Year.
Son Seals
Son Seals' fiery, hard-driven electric blues renewed the gritty Southern roots of Chicago blues during the 1970s and '80s, an era during which many of his contemporaries were molding their blues around the rhythms of funk and soul music or the excesses of rock 'n' roll. Frank 'Son' Seals, born August 13, 1942, in Osceola, Arkansas, grew up with the blues at his father's juke joint, the Dipsy Doodle. He learned from his father, Jim Seals, and from musicians who played at the club, especially Albert King, who drove a truck in Osceola, and Earl Hooker. As a guitarist he led his own band, the Upsetters, in Arkansas, and as a drummer he toured with both King and Hooker. King remained his foremost influence, and sometimes Seals would do entire sets of Albert's material, but he could deliver them with raw fury and a harsh tonality that gave him a sound all his own. Seals' approach exemplified the term high-energy blues in its purest form and proved to be a great match for the promotions and productions of the label he spent most of his career with, Alligator Records. Health problems slowed him down in later years, but even after he was shot in the jaw and had a foot amputated, he did his utmost to generate sparks whenever he took the stage. Seals died of complications from diabetes on December 20, 2004, in Richton Park, Illinois.
Non-performers
Clifford Antone
Clifford Antone transformed Austin, Texas, into a major blues center in the 1970s and '80s after he founded a nightclub called Antone's to book the legendary bluesmen he loved. Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Albert King, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, and many more discovered a friend and patron in Antone, who even housed musicians such as Hubert Sumlin and Pinetop Perkins for months at a time. Young Austin musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds were on hand not only to perform, but to soak up the music of the masters-the club was sometimes as much a training school as it was an internationally renowned performing venue. Antone also launched a record label to further promote artists such as Sumlin, Perkins, Cotton, Lazy Lester, Angela Strehli, Sue Foley and Jimmy Rogers, and opened a record store as well. Antone was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on October 27, 1949. He attended the University of Texas and later returned to teach blues courses there. He died in Austin on May 23, 2006.
Mike Leadbitter
Mike Leadbitter was hailed as the world's foremost authority on postwar blues during his years as editor of the pioneering magazine Blues Unlimited in England. Leadbitter, was born in India on March 12, 1942, but grew up in England. In 1962 he and fellow blues enthusiast Simon Napier formed the Blues Appreciation Society, and in 1963 they founded the first English-language blues periodical, Blues Unlimited. Leadbitter, Napier, and longtime Blues Unlimited contributor John Broven had all attended Bexhill Grammar School, and Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, became known to blues fans worldwide as the address of the magazine. Leadbitter led the way in documenting the careers and recordings of artists from across the spectrum of the electric blues era, but especially those from Memphis, Mississippi, Houston, Louisiana, and Chicago. He and Neil Slaven co-authored the groundbreaking discography Blues Records 1943-1970, and Leadbitter also edited a collection of Blues Unlimited articles published in book form as Nothing But the Blues in 1971. In addition, Leadbitter compiled albums for various record labels and coordinated research efforts among a wide network of international blues aficionados. He was at work on a book on postwar Delta blues when he died of meningitis at a London hospital on November 16, 1974. His manuscript is being updated for publication by a team of colleagues.
Bob Porter
The authoritative voice of Bob Porter is familiar to radio listeners across the country from his syndicated broadcasts of Portraits in Blue, the in-depth series he launched at WBGO in Newark, New Jersey, in 1981. Porter, one of America's leading experts on the blues, and especially on the junctures of blues with jazz, has also produced, preserved, and documented the music in the recording studio, in print, and in presentations at festivals and seminars. Born in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on June 20, 1940, Porter has produced jazz and blues sessions for Prestige, Muse, and other labels since the 1960s in addition to compiling and annotating extensive reissue sets for companies such as Atlantic, Savoy and Rhino. Porter has also donated his energy and knowledge to organizations such as the Blues Foundation and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He has worked with Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson, Big Joe Turner, Helen Humes, Roomful of Blues, Hank Crawford, Gene Ammons, Charles Earland, and others in the studio, and is authoring Soul Jazz: A History of Jazz in the Black Community 1945-1975 for Oxford University Press.
Classics of Blues Literature
I Hear You Knockin' - Jeff Hannusch
No writer has done more to chronicle the vibrant sounds of New Orleans rhythm & blues than Jeff Hannusch, a transplanted Canadian who made the Crescent City his home. In his first book, I Hear You Knockin': The Sound of New Orleans Rhythm and Blues, published in 1985, Hannusch weaves together the stories of the city's key singers, musicians, producers, record companies, and venues, as told by those who were there as the music developed during the 1950s and '60s. Chapters on Professor Longhair, Dave Bartholomew, Allen Toussaint, Roy Brown, Guitar Slim, Irma Thomas, Earl King, Ernie K-Doe, and other artists are complemented by the tales of music business veterans such as Johnny Vincent of Ace Records, producer Marshall Sehorn, and pioneering African-American DJ Vernon 'Dr. Daddy-O' Winslow. The book was published by Swallow Publications, Inc., an arm of Floyd Soileau's legendary cajun music operation in Ville Platte, Louisiana.
Classics of Blues Recording: Singles and Album Tracks
'Boom Boom'
John Lee Hooker (Vee-Jay, 1961)
Vee-Jay Records of Chicago came up with an unlikely formula to put John Lee Hooker on both the rhythm & blues and pop music charts with the catchy original version of his bad-man theme, Boom Boom. Prior to this 1961 session, Hooker had scored his first hits in when he recorded by himself in Detroit, playing guitar and stomping his feet. But this time the stomping rhythm was provided by none other than the cream of the Motown label's session men, later known as the Funk Brothers - including bassist James Jamerson, drummer Benny Benjamin, and pianist Joe Hunter. Boom Boom made it to No. 16 on the R&B charts in 1962 and hit No. 60 in the pop field. It was the last John Lee Hooker single to make the charts, although he would enjoy renewed success with his albums in the 1980s and '90s when a host of rock stars helped him boogie to the end.
'Caldonia'
Louis Jordan (Decca, 1945)
Louis Jordan was the biggest African-American star of his era thanks to his infectious, good-time, boogie-based blues performances, in the studio, in person, and on the screen. Jordan has been called the father of rock 'n' roll, rhythm & blues, jump blues, and rap. In 1945 his humor and energy propelled Caldonia to the top of the Race Records chart, as it was known prior to the introduction of term Rhythm & Blues in 1949. Caldonia, recorded by Jordan with his Tympany Five for Decca Records in New York on January 19, 1945, has been covered by B.B. King, James Brown, and many other Jordan followers. Authorship of the song has always been attributed to Jordan's wife, Fleecie Moore, although Jordan claimed that he wrote the number and used her name for contractual reasons.
'Sitting on Top of the World'
Mississippi Sheiks (Okeh, 1930)
One of most enduring songs of pre-World War II blues, Sitting on Top of the World was recorded by the duo of singer-guitarist Walter Vinson and fiddler Lonnie Chatmon, who performed as the Mississippi Sheiks. The song's classic declaration of survival through hard times and lost love has inspired many others, from Howlin' Wolf and Ray Charles through Cream and Bob Dylan, to sing the lines, 'But now she's gone, I don't worry, I'm sitting on top of the world.' The Mississippi Sheiks' version was recorded on February 17, 1930, in Shreveport, Louisiana, for OKeh Records.
Classics of Blues Recording: Albums
Amtrak Blues ( Columbia, 1978)
Alberta Hunter
Alberta Hunter was in the midst of one of the great comebacks in musical history when she recorded Amtrak Blues in 1978. Hunter, then 83, had become the darling of the New York jazz /blues club scene, after decades away from the music she had recorded as a young diva in the 1920s. Amtrak Blues, released in 1980, featured her in the company of such veterans as Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Gerald Cook, Frank Wess, and Billy Butler. Bessie Smith biographer Chris Albertson contributed the liner notes and John Hammond served as producer. Hunter penned the title track herself as well as I'm Having a Good Time-a song that certainly summed up the irrepressible spirit of her final years.
T-Bone Blues (Atlantic, 1959)
T-Bone Walker
T-Bone Walker is best remembered as the father of electric blues guitar, the icon who paved the way for B.B. King, Albert King, Otis Rush, and the rest. His work on his 1959 Atlantic LP T-Bone Blues left no doubt that he was a guitar master, but in his liner notes on the original release, famed critic Ralph J. Gleason wrote: 'But it is as a blues singer that T-Bone will be remembered.' As a vocalist and as a guitarist, Walker was at a peak on this beautifully recorded album, which was compiled from an April 21, 1955, Chicago session (where the band included Junior Wells and Jimmy Rogers) and Los Angeles dates from December 14, 1956, and December 27, 1957. Joining him in L.A. were sidemen such as Lloyd Glenn, jazz guitar legend Barney Kessel, and Walker's nephew R.S. Rankin Jr., aka T-Bone Walker Jr. Walkers reprised some of his classics like Call It Stormy Monday and Mean Old World and let the sparks fly when jamming with Kessel and Rankin. A 1990 CD release added four previously unissued tracks to the 11 original LP cuts, including Why Not from the Chicago session, a predecessor to the blues classic that Jimmy Rogers recorded the following year as Walking By Myself.
Blues With a Feeling Newport Folk Festival Classics (Vanguard 2-CD set, 1993)
Various Artists
The Newport Folk Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, played a crucial role in introducing the music of Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Robert Pete Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, and others to the folk-blues audience of the 1960s. Performances by all those artists and more are featured on the two-CD Vanguard compilation Blues With a Feeling, culled by producer Mary Katherine Aldin from the1963, 1964, 1965, and 1968 festivals. Vanguard was one of the most significant record labels during the 1960s blues revival and folk music boom, and over the years the company has released a number of different Newport blues albums, but this set - released as a double CD in 1993 and as two individual CDs in 1997-was judged by the Blues Hall of Fame committee to be the definitive collection. The first CD begins with an introduction by Dick Waterman, the promoter who brought Son House out of retirement, and proceeds to the stirring music of House and the others, as the thrill of discovery fills the air for performers and audiences alike.
