Archive for the 'News' Category

BUDDY GUY TO RECEIVE
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
FROM THE BLUES FOUNDATION AT
2010 BLUES MUSIC AWARDS

[For Immediate Release: March 8, 2010] On May 6th, 2010 at the 31st annual Blues Music Awards, The Blues Foundation will publicly honor blues legend Buddy Guy with a Lifetime Achievement Award. The Foundation has commissioned for this special occasion a one-of-a-kind award from Patterson & Barnes, who also created the original artwork that serves as the basis for the 2010 poster. There will also be an oral and video presentation, as well as a special musical tribute, all in the legend’s honor. Buddy Guy will be at the ceremony to receive this honor.

In speaking about this great honor, The Blues Foundation’s Executive Director Jay Sieleman said “Buddy Guy has been a mentor and inspiration to five generations of musicians in multiple genres while he has continued to innovate. He has greatly expanded the blues definition while maintaining the anchor characteristics that first defined the genre, and with this distinction, we are proud to present him with this honor and tribute.”

Buddy Guy’s strikingly unique guitar style enervated his elder Muddy Waters’ Folk Singer album in the early ’60s, expanded on the vision of his contemporary Junior Wells on Hoodoo Man Blues in the mid-’60s, and was a beacon to the British Invasion rockers Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck in the late ’60s.

Soldiering on through the ’70s and ’80s, his visibility and stature refocused through the ’90s and into the 21st century with a series of recordings that underlined to the commercial pop world that he not only was the inspiration for countless musical icons from Jimi Hendrix psychedelics to John Mayer pop, but was still transforming while many of his disciples were reprising decades-old hits.

He obliterated the perceived chasm between blues and rock, leaving the term “crossover” to awkwardly define the efforts of lesser artists in both camps trying to bridge the racial, generational and stylistic borders of each. And he did it with a sense of dynamics and bravado that are rare in artists of any age, but which have been consistent for him throughout his career. You knew you were experiencing a Buddy Guy lick in the first few lines of any number he did in 1960, and the same can be said today. Buddy has been nominated for 41 Blues Music Awards and has received 28 such Awards.

Past recipients of this prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award include Bobby “Blue” Bland, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Ahmet Ertegun, John Lee Hooker, Etta James, B.B. King, Sam Phillips, Koko Taylor and Jerry Wexler.

The Blues Music Awards are universally recognized as the highest honor given to Blues artists. The presenting sponsor is The Gibson Foundation and the sustaining sponsor is BMI. Additional 2010 BMA sponsors include ArtsMemphis, band Village, Casey Family Programs, Eagle Rock Entertainment, FedEx, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company,
I55 Productions, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. For tickets, please visit www.blues.org or call (901) 527-2583.”

Eat A Dick, Joel: The Blog: Introducing: Ass Harmonica!.

To make it work that way, you’d have to be sucking rather than blowing.

A new club in the Smoke. Some blues, some DJ, some soul.  Looks pretty good.

http://www.theblueskitchen.com

Upcoming there is a great looking Festival with some big names for free….

http://www.bluesinlondon.com/features/201001_blues_kitchen.html

The Guardian – American Legends

Here is a series in the Guardian about the giants, pioneers and survivors from a century of American music as recalled by the stars they influenced.

I do believe that jazz and blues and the huge number of genres that they spawned are one of the great cultural contributions from the USA.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/series/american-legends

What a cool way to enjoy your old record collection without all that spinning and scratchy nonsense, this bloke has used an RFID label on each record and linked that to his MP3 collection.

Read on at REAL TOMATO: New project! http://bit.ly/bfQNZS

This from his agent.

It is with great sadness that I am sending this email to you all today. Lil’ Dave Thompson was killed in a car accident early this morning, Sunday, February 14, 2010. He was travelling home after playing the Blues Bash at Fiery Ron’s in Charleston, SC on his final day of a very succesful tour. The band was driving toward Greenville, MS when the van struck a hole in the road, veered into gravel and lost control. Lil’ Dave will be greatly missed by me personally. It has been an honor and blessing to represent such a genuine talent and wonderful person.

Lil’ Dave is survived by Susan White, his wife of 15 years; his children: David Jr. (20), Danielle (19), Shequeena (18), Shirleiah (16) and Destiny (13); sisters Patricia, Barbara Denise, Jennifer and Pasty Thompson, Zenovia Henderson and Rose Marie Richmond; and brothers John, Sam, Elijah Allen and Tyrone Thompson.

This is the bio from his MySpace page.  His own website is down.

David Lonzo Thompson was born in Hinds County, Mississippi May 21, 1969. Lil Dave’s exposure to music came early and has always been a way of life. His father, the late Sam Thompson played with Willie Foster, Asie Payton, Paul Wine Jones, Eddie Cusic, James Son Thomas and others. Lil Dave’s list of influences reads like an anthology of the blues. His family was burned out in legendary Moorhead, MS (Where the Yellow Dog Crosses the Southern) and moved to B.B. Kings hometown of Indianola, MS. But it was in Leland, MS, (Hellhole of the Delta) and home of James “Son” Thomas and other blues legends that Dave, at the age of 14, formed his first band. He, along with drummer, Dell Cusic and bass player, Allen Hite called themselves The Delta Blues Band. As a teenager, Dave played with various blues, Rand B, Reggae, and gospel bands in the delta area until he met and toured with the late Booba Barnes in 1990. So at the age of majority, 21, Lil Dave’s life, music and experiences away from the delta began A third or fourth generation Mississippi delta blues guitarist and vocalist, Thompson has come full circle with the blues. He has lived it, learned it and now seems to appreciate the rich legacy and his responsibility to the blues, this region and his fellow blues artists, past, present and future.

Well, the instruments will live on but the players will have to retire now that SONiVOX have released a virtual harmonica instrument.

http://tinyurl.com/ycmu7dn

That blues is so convincing, I wonder whether anyone will ever pick up a real harmonica again.