Album of the Week 6-21-25
Afternoon folks!
There's a buncha blues for you this week. Starting out is an album from a fellow who should be better known having performed and made records with Otis Redding and Duane Allman (among others) - that would be Johnny Jenkins. After that is another not well-known blues guy, Zuzu Bollin from Texas. Following that is a later career album from Kansas City's Big Joe Turner. After that we've got some more or less acoustic blues from Ron Thompson and some uptown, sophisticated blues from Leon Redbone. Finishing up in the diversity department is some fine fiddlin' from Vassar Clements and friends.
Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!
Here 'tis:
Johnny Jenkins ~ Blessed Blues
Big Joe Turner ~ Things That I Used To Do
Ron Thompson ~ Just Like A Devil
Leon Redbone ~ Up A Lazy River
Vassar Clements, Doug Jernigan, Jesse McReynolds, Buddy Spicher – Nashville Jam
Comments
Everyone should see the Zappa documentary
now that they made it available on YouTube
One of the most important events in the history of music was when the Mothers of Invention, Zappa's band, was signed to a contract. Back in the day, the plutocrats who control everything did not make a big fuss about the regimes of music, art, and so on, that they let loose into the world. And so they deputized this guy to sign bands, and he scoped out a Mothers rehearsal, and they were playing something rhythm-and-bluesy, and so he signed them not knowing what he was getting into.
At the end of all that prosperity, when Zappa was dying of cancer, we got stuff like this. This one you'll have time to view in one sitting; it's less then five and a half minutes:
So yeah. "We were loud, we were coarse, and we were strange, and if anyone in the audience ever gave us any trouble, we'd tell them to fk off."
"The proletariat needs to become like a family" -- Zoya