sweartotellthetruth

December 29, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 210 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 3:46 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, December 29th (1:00 to 2:30pm)

In the middle of the Christmas break, we present a show with classic R&B and post-war blues. Blues from Chicago, Detroit and the West Coast. A lot of vinyl in this week’s mix.  

                                                                           Black Rocker 45-Homer Walker Jr.-Special Agent-Hear !

No single theme to this week’s show. Just a lot of things you won’t hear every day and you’re unlikely to hear on most other programs. We put together this type of show featuring all post-war electric blues and R&B, maybe, two or three times a year but especially in the week before New Year’s. And we try to find material we’ve overlooked in previous shows. 

Product Details                                      Click here to buy it at ZptdudaMusic.Com                                     Product DetailsOn the Show:

Big Jay McNeely – Five Keys – TV Slim – Jimmy McCracklin – Junior Wells – Good Rockin’ Charles – Zora Young – Deitra Farr – Steve Freund – and much more

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 January 25th.

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 (January 5th)

We stumbled upon a trove of material from a label that features a lot of latter-day Chicago blues. Some of that material will be on the show but the show will also include some R&B, some Gospel and some Soul.

cmc

December 22, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 209 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 6:05 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, December 22nd, (1:00 to 2:30pm)

Our fifth Christmas special at CFMU. Inveitably there will be some tracks we have played before but most will be material new to the program. Blues, R&B, Gospel and, possibly, a bit of soul

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Blues, Gospel and R&B spanning the years 1925 to 2003. Time permitting, some Cajun and Soul. 

Product Details                               Nashboro Nativity : A Christmas Gospel Collection, Vol. 1                              Product Details

On the Show:

Trudy Lynn – Louis Jordan – Ozie Ware – Rev. J.M. Gates – Alphabetical Four – Vera Ward Hall – John Lee Hooker– Alex Bradford Singers –  + (time permitting) – Blind Boys of Alabama – Vin Bruce – Mack Rice – Lowell Fulson

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 January 18th

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Merry Christmas. Season’s Greetings.

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 (December 29th)

New Year’s special – R&B, Modern Blues and not much else in between.

cmc

December 15, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 208 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 7:10 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, December 15th, (1:00 to 2:30pm)

This week’s program a year-end grab-bag of a few new releases, things we’ve had around with a mind to play for a while and a few seasonal tracks.      

 DEEP DOWN R&B 'The Origins of Deep Soul, Volume #2' - 24 VA Tracks                        Blast Off / Rickety Tick                           Product Details                                                                   

Also on the program, a few tracks from the era just before 1920. This was still the era of vaudeville song and ragtime’s influence could be felt but blues had been popular in the south for a few years and the influence of blues was beginning to appear in popular records. Of course, the record industry did not, or preferred not to, believe in the existence of an African-American market with customers possessing the means to buy records so what records were made by African Americans were made with a general audience in mind and not a specifically African-American audience. In fact, while opportunities were limited, African-American performers had been recorded since the 1890s, just not making records directed at their own people. All would change once Perry Bradford secured a recording date for Mamie Smith at OKeh Records. Still, what records were made in the years prior to 1920 couldn’t but influence black recording artists who did make records from 1920 onward. We have  a few records from the 1917 to 1919 period to play this week, by both black and white performers. 

  Product Details                                                                         Product Details

 On the Show:

Drink Small – Marion Harris –  Wilbur Sweatman – McGee Brothers & Todd – Hollywood Fats – Vance Kelly – Cicero Blake – Gospel Starlets – and others

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 January 11th

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.

Errors and Omissions

On last week’s show, we stated that Sonny Boy Williamson (II) was 53 years old when he joined Chess-Checker and not 63 when he died. He seemed that old but we were wrong. He was 43 when he joined the label and only 53 when he died. We might have overlooked this mistake but we had an unrelated conversation with CFMU’s program director in which the question of age and musical creativity was a subject. We also played Lowell Fulson on the program and we could have explained that Lowell began playing blues, sometimes solo or with with his brother accompanying him on second guitar. We consider the records he made at Swing Time to fit under the category of rhythm & blues and his Checker recordings and those that followed put him back in the realm of blues, in our judgement. Finally, we seem to have confused a Chicago drummer with a Nashville singer.

Next week (December 15th)

Our 2015 Christmas special

cmc

December 8, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 207 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 7:18 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, December 8th, (1:00-2:30 pm).

This week, we carry on with our survey of blues hits from the R&B charts of the 1950s. We left off our first installment in this series, somewhere in 1954.  In this week’s program we resume our survey of 1954 and move to the year 1955. 1955 was the year that rock and roll emerged as a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, a development that would have a large impact upon blues and R&B. 1955, however, was a year in which there were a significant number of blues hit records within the R&B charts. What we can observe is that down home blues records largely disappeared from the charts  in 1953 and ’54 and what remained, with some notable exceptions, was the electric blues of Chicago, the “urban” blues style of Memphis and Houston, and, from the Coast, the former Memphis Blues Boy,  B.B. King’s recordings. Of course, this is partly a matter of definitions. Was Johnny “Guitar” Watson a figure in blues or R&B? We place him on the R&B side, as we do Earl King, who, for a time, filled engagements for Guitar Slim, whom we have placed in the blues category. We think most people would agree that the artists we will be featuring are “blues” artists. Some may quibble with some of the exclusions.

Product Details                                                            ARTHUR GUNTER - BLUES AFTER HOURS (BLUE HORIZON LP)                           

Whatever else it meant, rock and roll ushered in a new era of youth-oriented music for a youthful audience. Blues and R&B were adult-oriented and came to be seen as something from the past by the new youth audience. But we think there were larger cultural forces at work at the same time. 1954 was the year of the Brown versus Board of Education decision, the legal case that is said to have paved the way to integration and certainly was a catalyst and inspiration for the Civil Rights movement Blues continued to appeal to a segment of the adult population but to an ever smaller demographic.  The rise of Soul music also pushed blues further to the margin in the sixties. There’s a longer argument to be made but we won’t make it tonight.

J.B. Lenoir

Whatever the future of blues in 1955, blues continued to have a strong appeal in the cities of the Midwest, and in the South and blues records could still occasionally attain the upper reaches of the R&B charts. 

On the Show:

Guitar Slim – Howlin’ Wolf– B.B. King – Lowell Fulson – Arthur Gunter – Billy Boy Arnold – Little Junior Parker – Louis Brooks and the Hi-Toppers – J.B. Lenoir– Little George Smith – Little Walter – and others

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 January 4th

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 (December 15th)

TBA

cmc

 

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December 1, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 206 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — cmcompton @ 4:03 am

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, December 1st, (1:00-2:30 pm).

We began our research for the next program in our blues hits of the fifties series of features but we think we’re going to carry on with that series next week. In the mean time, we came up short last week and didn’t get through our playlist, so this week we’re going to carry on with our informal survey of recent reissues in R&B and blues, beginning with the tracks we had to drop last week, and we’ll bring to air a track or two from what we have decided is our reissue album of the year, the Madame Edna Gallmon Cooke Collection 1949-1962 on the Acrobat label.

Edna Gallmon Cooke was one of the leading gospel soloists  of the fifties and sixties but most of her music has not been available on CD. Ace (UK) has had available an excellent 24 track CD of Madame Cooke’s Nashboro recordings and a few from Republic but this set makes available some of her earlier sides for Deluxe, Regal and Gospel as well as digging deeper into the Nashboro catalogue. You might not want 49 single tracks by any artist but this set could be an exception. Acrobat have a record of issuing great gospel from the “classic” era, including the Texas Gospel series, so-named because it made available recordings from the Peacock label of Houston over nine CDs. (The Acrobat label has also been a source of excellent reissues documenting various classic R&B labels, especially labels from the West Coast.) Acrobat appeared to go out of business a while back but seems to have cheated fate and resumed its activity. 

 Product Details                                                               Product Details

We’ve avoided making lists of recommended albums but in each of the last three years we’ve found one outstanding reissue compilation album that fills a particular void. Apart from this years selection, Edna Gallmon Cooke collection, we’ll be featuring tracks from a number of reissue compilations on this week’s show, some of them documenting the output of particular R&B labels from the classic era, others drawing from the host of small indie labels of the fifties and sixties. In this era of digital downloading and streaming, we assume most listeners are not customers for many of the albums we use on the show while other albums are easily researched on the web.  At the same time, we aren’t always up-to-date with new releases. If any of these albums we draw upon this week is intriguing to you, let us know and we’ll provide whatever additional information you may need to find them. 

Product Details                                                                  HG2-p1.jpg  

Also on this weeks program, some acoustic blues of Mississippi and some more gospel. A lot of little known names on the show this week, once again,  but that doesn’t mean it’s not good music. 

On the Show:

Harold Conner – Annie Williams– Doc Sausage – Sonny Morgan – Ironing Board Sam – Cedell Davis – Edna Gallmon Cooke – Sister Shirley Sydnor – Bobby Long – Clarence Samuels – King Curtis  – a.o.

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 December 28th.

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 (December 8th)

We may resume our blues hits of the 1950s feature next week. We’ve done some of the work already..

cmc

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