Don't ask what possessed me, but I made YouTube videos out of two of my original blues numbers . . .

YouTube ^ | 30 May 2013 | Yours Truly

[BluesDuke]

. . . after being even crazier enough to cut them as demos myself.

1) On Time.

This one is a little blues I came up with hoping to use it as a kind-of theme for my new blues group. Considering the rhythmic suggestion of clocks and the title I finally decided to use, I couldn't resist setting it to a montage of classic ad clocks . . .

Guitar: Gibson Les Paul. Vibraphone, bass, harmonica, drums, bongo, conga, temple block simulations: Casio LK-220 electronic keyboard. Amplifier: Fender Deluxe Reverb.

2) Fremont Ramble.

This is a little jam number I came up with. The opening theme and the closing turnaround are the only set-in-stone portions; in the middle, it's pretty much up to us for improvisation within the structure of guitar solo first, then keyboard solo, and then back to the guitar for the finale. We could, if we wanted, stretch this one out to ten minutes.

The photographs making up the video montage are photos I took myself while spending an evening on Fremont Street in Las Vegas a few weeks ago.

Guitar: Gibson Les Paul. Organ, bass, drums simulations: Casio LK-220. Amplifier: Fender Deluxe Reverb.

OK, hit me with your best shots!

(If anyone can figure how to embed the links so you see the YouTube itself, I'd be grateful . . .)

[BluesDuke]

Your drummer is rushing. :•)

Yeah, I have to talk to him about lusting with those temple blocks! ;)

[Slump Tester]

Very nice! (Especially that Fremont Ramble.)

But sometimes blues are cool with some horns.

[Slump Tester]

Again, very nice stuff! Thanks for posting these.

[BluesDuke]

Very nice! (Especially that Fremont Ramble.)

But sometimes blues are cool with some horns.

I agree----but we don't have horn players in the band. The nearest we have is, our keyboard player has a rig that produces frighteningly accurate sax and flute sounds! She could be a one-woman, two-handed saxophone section if she wants to be, and I may develop a song that uses that facet of her playing. (In fact, our book includes the Blues Project's "Flute Thing" because of that.) We're trying to keep the group a quartet or quintet if we can.

[mylife]

I haven’t seen you in a long time.

Good job on the tunes.

[Baynative]

When I was a kid I lived about 60 miles from SF and I had a little transistor radio that I would put under the covers and listen to late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. Rock and roll was king, but one of the stations I picked up after dark was KDIA from Oakland, a black owned rhythm and blues AM station. When my friends were listening to Brenda Lee, Trini Lopez and the Four Seasons, I was tuning in to Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley and Lightnin' Hopkins. Presentations were a little rougher then but it went to my blood. Evolution has brought us around to sweet stuff like this one with Buddy and BB that I've seen dozens of times and it still makes me shiver, tear up and smile all at once.

[Baynative]

"...smooth and danceable. Makes me wish I was 20 years younger or 30 or......oh well."

You're never too old to dance and sway to the blues. If you can stand, you can groove.

[BluesDuke]

By the time I began listening to radio growing up in and around New York, there was little enough blues to be heard but a lot of great soul music by way of WWRL (before they became a ranting talk station). One of the first blues albums in that haul I described earlier was Howlin' Wolf's entry in the then Chess Vintage Blues Series, Evil. (Not to mention Muddy Waters's Sail On and Sonny Boy Williamson's Bummer Road. Later I latched onto Buddy Guy's entry in that series, I Was Walking Through the Woods . . .)

[gotribe]

Great playlist. Thanks for posting.

[ruesrose]

Standin’ and groovin’. The guy has talent.

[Baynative]

In the late 50s and early 60s there were some cross over artists sneaking into the top 40 charts; Bo Diddley, Huey Smith, Bobby Blue Bland, etc. These were the ones that took me away and felt good. I didn’t know why, they just did.

[BluesDuke]

For me the shock was not just what B.B. King did for and to me on that summer camp trip, but getting home from that trip to discover the freshly-released “The Thrill is Gone” had crossed over into being a huge hit.

[Baynative]

I think that was a break through for a lot of people. That is one of the more iconic riffs in music history.

sidebar:
I used to live in Lake Tahoe and BB was playing in the cabaret lounge at Harrahs. (I don't know why he wasn't playing the big room, but so be it.)

I was knocking about with a friend and though as locals we didn't spend much time in casinos, we planned to see his show. I forgot what time of year it was, but there was a weather disruption and for some reason there were only about 8 or 10 people in the lounge and we sat at a table only a couple of feet away from him while he played. It almost turned conversational as people made comments and asked questions or requested different tunes.

Someone asked him why his guitar was named Lucille. He said a fight caused a fire in a bar he was playing in and after running out, he remembered the guitar and foolishly went back to get it. He could have died. The papers said the fire started by two men fighting over a woman named Lucille and he named the guitar that to remind himself to never do anything as stupid as run into a burning building or fight over a women.

[woofie]

Good stuff

[BluesDuke]

I used to live in Lake Tahoe and BB was playing in the cabaret lounge at Harrahs. (I don't know why he wasn't playing the big room, but so be it.)

I was knocking about with a friend and though as locals we didn't spend much time in casinos, we planned to see his show. I forgot what time of year it was, but there was a weather disruption and for some reason there were only about 8 or 10 people in the lounge and we sat at a table only a couple of feet away from him while he played. It almost turned conversational as people made comments and asked questions or requested different tunes.

Someone asked him why his guitar was named Lucille. He said a fight caused a fire in a bar he was playing in and after running out, he remembered the guitar and foolishly went back to get it. He could have died. The papers said the fire started by two men fighting over a woman named Lucille and he named the guitar that to remind himself to never do anything as stupid as run into a burning building or fight over a women.

Here's the title track of his 1968 album Lucille:

B.B. King, "Lucille"

The "Lucille" King rescued in that fire was a Gibson L-30, a small-body, non-cutaway instrument, a model discontinued in 1943 but one which King picked up in 1949. From there, Lucille has been all Gibson, all the time, including:

An ES-5. (Big single-cutaway archtop with three P90 pickups, the same model used by T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson, and for a short while---until he switched to the humbucker version---Chuck Berry.)

An ES-125. (No cutaway, single P90 pickup---King used this guitar to cut the record that launched him in earnest, his version of Fulson's "Three O'Clock Blues.")

A Byrdland, in the late '50s/very early '60s.

ES-175. (Single florentine cutaway, two humbucking pickups; he's seen with this guitar on the jacket art of some of his Kent/Crown albums of the early 1960s.)

ES-335. (Either a tobacco sunburst model or a cherry red model; he used this guitar for Live at the Regal and many of his early ABC-Paramount recordings starting in 1963.)

ES-345. (He played this for a time in the mid-1960s; he's shown with it on the back jacket of Live & Well.)

ES-355. (He picked this one up for the first time in late 1968 and it's been his model ever since; the special-edition Lucilles Gibson has made for him since 1980---the no-F hole feature was his idea, after having stuffed the ES-355 F holes for years with rags to cut down the feedback---is based on the ES-355.)

[bt_dooftlook]

Thank you for sharing!

I got turned on to Paul Butterfield 20 years ago; Bloomfield in high school 15 years before that (Electric Flag).

Have you ever listened to Johnny Adams? His second to last album,’One Foot in the Blues’, is amazing

http://jazztimes.com/articles/8842-one-foot-in-the-blues-johnny-adams

[BluesDuke]

Thank you for sharing!

I got turned on to Paul Butterfield 20 years ago; Bloomfield in high school 15 years before that (Electric Flag).

Have you ever listened to Johnny Adams? His second to last album,’One Foot in the Blues’, is amazing Thank you, too!

When I got home from that 1969 camp trip and went prowling for blues albums with the saved-up allowance, one of the albums I bought was Super Session . . . because I was a Buffalo Springfield fan, too, and I noticed Stephen Stills on the front cover, so I got curious. I'd never yet heard Mike Bloomfield. But when you bought the LP at that time you got Mike Bloomfield with Al Kooper on side one. Once he got through with me, especially on the two slow blues jams and that magnificent modal jazz waltz jam ("His Holy Modal Majesty"), who the hell needed Steve Stills? I noticed the album's back jacket note mentioned their former bands, including the Electric Flag, so I landed A Long Time Comin' soon after that, and in the interim someone told me about the Butterfield Blues Band and you can guess the rest, especially East-West . . .

I like Johnny Adams. That album is a treat, especially the way he makes Percy Mayfield's vintages his own, and I'm a huge Percy Mayfield fan. Mayfield was a sort-of tragedy, if you think about the road accident that put a stop to his performing career, though he continued writing remarkable songs (including but not limited to "People Get Ready" for the Impressions---to whose leader Curtis Mayfield Percy Mayfield wasn't related, for those who didn't realise---and "Hit the Road, Jack" for Ray Charles . . .)