Tale #28.Howlin' Wolf remembers Natchez

The Rhythm Night Club in Natchez was decorated with Spanish moss hanging from the ceiling. Tiny Bradshaw and his orchestra was scheduled to appear on 23^rd April 1940 but was double-booked in Harlem so was replaced at the last minute with Walter Barnes and his Sophisticated Swing Orchestra.

Sometime during the evening the moss was ignited by a stray match or cigarette. The building was made from corrugated metal with a single exit and boarded up windows. Barnes directed his band to carry on playing to calm the crowd as they scrambled to leave. Over 200 people died including Barnes and 9 members of his band. Over 15000 people attended his funeral.

One of the first songs about the tragedy was done by Leonard Baby Doo Caston a few months later, however the best known is the song written by Howlin Wolf : THE NATCHEZ BURNING. The session on 19^th July 1956 had Willie Johnson on guitar , Chess however only released the song in November 1959 presumably to be out in time for any twentieth anniversary remembrance.

Though other artists like John Lee Hooker and Captain Beefheart wrote songs about the fire, it is the Wolf song that defines those terrible events at the club in Natchez.

Tale #27.Drive Em Down from the Crescent City to Halifax

Blues artist Willie Hall was better known as "Drive 'Em Down" and though he never recorded, he left a legacy in the melody called "Junkers Blues". It was a story of drugs and a harsh existence in the notorious Angola Prison. The distinctive riff became part of the New Orleans musical tradition picked up by Champion Jack Dupree in 1940 for a session released by the Okeh label. It was certainly recognised as the first recorded version of this famous piece and it inspired Fats Domino's debut "The Fat Man" in 1949.

Since then you can hear the same motif in "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" by Lloyd Price and Professor Longhair's "Tipitina" and countless other variations. Though Jack was the quintessential New Orleans barrelhouse player, he moved to Halifax, married a Yorkshire lass and got a major feature in the Sunday Times Colour supplement.

Our STAR BLUES playlist on 10th July took the track from the set of Champion Jack's Okeh recordings and raritiess issued by Columbia/Legacy in the early 1990s.

Tale #26.Little Richard Can't Help It

The 1956 film "The Girl Can't Help It" was, on one level, a vehicle to showcase the curves and comedy of Jayne Mansfield. While the plot wasn't up to much with the happy ending obvious from the start, the soundtrack written by Bobby Troup was outstanding.

Jayne played the girlfriend of small time mobster who was set on her success as a singer, despite there being no obvious signs of talent. He hired a publicist to hawk her around various night clubs where we get to see acts like Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, the Treniers and Little Richard. Each gave a magical performance, none more so than Richard who ripped through the title track: "The Girl Can't Help It". This was a man at the very top of his game on a winning streak of hit singles, his followup was "Lucille".

Our STAR BLUES playlist on 3rd July took the song from a collection of the hits from Richards first spell with Specialty: "The EP Collection". The disc is no longer in print.

Tale #25.Lowell Fulson at Three O'Clock

Lowell Fulson was part Choctaw Indian and was born in March 1921 in Tulsa Oklahoma but became best known as purveyor of both Texan and West Coast blues. After his National Service he returned to Oakland and met up with Bob Geddins, who promised to record Fulson when he had enough material. So it was he did a session for Bob's Down Town label helped by his brother Martin on a self-penned song: "Three O'Clock Blues".

Their version was very different to the cover later done by B B King and Lowell's own style rarely sounded as raw again. (He also did "Everyday I Have the Blues" before B. B. King) His other contributions to late 20th century music were pretty significant, he wrote and recorded "Reconsider Baby" but Elvis Presley had the hit with it; and his song "Tramp" was made more famous by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas.

Our Star Blues show on 26th June used the long out-of-print collection of Fulson's earliest recordings issue by Zircon Bleu: "Three O'clock Blues" by Lowell Fulson.

Tale #24.Healing Blues

The urban myth surrounding John Lee Hooker's re-discovery from obscurity by Carlos Santana and Canned Heat is only marginally based on truth. He stayed very active in the blues community: Into the 1980's his Coast to Coast Blues Band worked consistently from its base in San Francisco and John added regular sessions on others' blues albums to his "Jealous" project - as well as that appearance in the Blues Brothers movie. By 1987 he was in the studio with Charlie Musselwhite and three of Canned Heat and a year later with Bonnie Raitt and then with Carlos Santana and his group. Those recordings were put together in Summer 1989 for the "Healer" project that brought John Lee Hooker back into mainstream focus and kick-started an interest in a newly cool genre, blues.

Purists disliked the album and its subsequent projects, decrying Hooker's involvement as cameos on his own albums. Putting those observations on one side he did include some haunting solo pieces as good as any he'd done 40 years earlier. He still approached the music in his own inimitable way with varying bar counts.

STAR BLUES on 19th June 2011 chose the title track of the turning-point album "the Healer" to mark the tenth year since John's death on 21st June 2001.

Tale #23.The Guitar Master's Swing Out Rhythm

The single-stringing style of Lonnie Johnson [rn: Alonzo Johnson, born 1899] was the inspiration for B. B. King, Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian. We think it common place for electric rock guitarists but Johnson perfected his technique before going electric and he used his gifts for dozens of jazz, blues and r&b recordings.

Initially he was signed to the Okeh label and he duped many with his pairing with Blind Willie Dunn (in reality white jazz player Eddie Lang). After some commercial success, both solo and as a duo, Okeh dropped him out of the blue and for five years he looked for work outside music. By November 1937 he was in the studio again to record "Swing Out Rhythm" - a piece of dexterous grace and beauty with Joshua Altheimer on piano. It would be another two years before he got chance to record again for labels like RCA Victor and King.

His 1952 song "Tomorrow Night" was a hit for him but he got the big royalty cheques for the versions recorded by Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Ironically the coming of rock'n'roll made him seem old-fashioned and he slowly drifted out of music again.

Our STAR BLUES playlist on 5th June took "Swing Out Rhythm" from the 4-disc survey of his career up to 1952 called "Original Guitar Wizard" issued on the Proper label some while ago.

Tale #22.Blind Willie Johnson's last record

Over the space of a couple of days in April 1930 the Columbia recording team were in Atlanta and captured some seminal recordings, including what proved to be the final session from the visiting Blind Willie Johnson [born 22nd January 1897, Texas]. Much of his work had been proven from his street performances and he'd already recorded "You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond" under a slightly different title a couple of years earlier. His gruff vocal on this gospel piece is sweetened with a female voice, long thought to be his second wife Angeline though this is now disputed. In a recording career of just three years and thirty sides, his composition credits also include "Nobody's Fault But Mine". "John the Revelator", "Soul Of A Man" and "Dark Was the Night Cold Was the Ground".

"You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond" was covered in 1994 by Eric Bibb for the album "Spirit and the Blues" [Opus3] with deft bottleneck guitar accompaniment from Goran Wennerbrandt. On STAR BLUES on 29th May 2011 we featured both artists as a back-to-back feature. The anthology of Atlanta blues on Fantastic Voyage was the source for Johnson's 1930 version and we went to Eric's album on the audiophile label Opus3.