Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, October 20th, (1:00-2:30 pm).
It’s election day in Canuckistan. Not a lot of time on election night to put this blogpost together of the program itself, for that matter. At the heart of the program this week, a brief and not entirely representative survey of Roosevelt Sykes‘ recording career. The Southern Piano Ace was a star of the 1929-1942 era of blues and still an important name in blues and R&B in the post-war era, known as “The Honeydripper” after his 1936 recording with that title. He was also part of the Blues Revival (We don’t like the term but we don’t have a better one) of the 1960s and later. No piano player in the blues made more commercial singles. He also contributed some memorable songs to the blues songbook including “Driving Wheel” and “The Night Time Is the Right Time”. He worked solo and in duos, trios and quartets in the thirties, then adapted his style to approximate what the R&B jump combos were doing in the post-war era. On this program we’re touching on a few points in Sykes’ career and we are likely underemphasizing his early recordings from the period when he was most popular but we’ll return to that period in a future program. Sykes could fairly have expected more recognition in the later years and he possibly deserves more recognition even today when almost all of his early music is available.
Also on this week’s program, a bit of African-American rock and roll, a pair of tracks collected by Art Rosenbaum, first recordings of a couple of songs whose origins interested us and some latter-day soul.
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On the Show: Eunice Davis – Willie Egan – Leon Bridges – Hokum Boys – Scrapper Blackwell – Lee Green – Roosevelt Sykes – Johnny Rawls & Otis Clay – et al.
Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msumcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until November 16th.
Contact Us: To reach us with comments or queries, write us at sweartotellthetruth@gmail.com. You can also follow the program at sweartotellthetruth@nosignifying on Twitter.
Next week (October 27th)
TBA
cmc
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