sweartotellthetruth

July 14, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 188 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, July 14th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

A couple of areas of focus on this week’s program. We sample some LPs of guitar blues from the Carolinas, music issued on Britain’s Flyright label in the 1970s and pretty difficult to find today, we’d guess. The recordings, some obtained by Bruce Bastin, author of two studies of the area’s music, Crying For the Carolinas and Red River Blues, complement the recordings issued on Pete Lowry’s Trix label but the Trix albums are still available and the Flyright LPs include some performers not recorded by Trix. Several tracks from a 1973 blues festival at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill.

The greater portion of the show is dedicated to a second feature dedicated to some of the more obscure but very capable performers from the Classic Era of Blues–the style sometimes referred to as Vaudeville Blues. Recordings by women who recorded blues between 1922 and 1929. Some of these singers, most of the singers in the feature, recorded just one 78 rpm disc. This is the promised followup to a program we did in December but we were surprised to see how much time had elapsed since that earlier program.

On the Show:

Mel Brown – Snooks Eaglin – Henry Johnson – Guitar Shorty (John Henry Fortescue) – Anna Meyers – Anna Lee Chisholm – Margaret Thornton – Josephine Byrd – Helen Savage – Edna Gallmon Cooke with the Radio Four – Brother John Sellers – 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 August 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.

Next week (July 21st)

TBA

cmc

July 7, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 187 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, July 7th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

We wound up having to rush this show together. We move around quite a bit in this week’s program. R&B from the Federal and Recorded In Hollywood labels, Texas barrelhouse piano, South Louisiana blues and R&B are in the mix. Also, Otis Rush and trend-setting record producer Ralph Peer, who will be the subject of an upcoming program. Some of the program refers back to earlier shows and some looks ahead to upcoming shows we have planned, like the Ralph Peer special and the Louisiana special later this month.

On the Show:

Willie Wright & the Sparklers – Dolly Cooper – Linda Hayes – Bozo Nickerson – Grey Ghost – Otis Rush – Wonder Boy Travis – Juke Boy Bonner – Paramount Singers – Etta James – 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 August 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 (July 14th)

TBA

cmc

June 29, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 186 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

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

This week we go to air the day before Canada Day, July 1st. It was known once as Dominion Day but we threw off that vestige of our colonial past. This is not a program that specializes in Canadian blues-oriented music. Week to week, we concentrate on aspects of the history of blues, r&b and soul in the classic years and we play recent or contemporary music when we judge the music connects with something in that classic tradition, whether the music comes from Canada or elsewhere. Other blues-oriented programs are more up-to-date and more expert about newer music that is placed in the blues category. We play some of what those other shows play and a lot we don’t.

Notwithstanding anything stated above, we will be playing only Canadian music on June 30th. Some of the recordings are more current. Others go back a few years. A lot of Canadian artists have gone deep into the music and found something of what is essential in it. We play those artists when we find their music and this week we turn the entire 90 minutes to Canadian recordings.

On the Show:

Kendall Wall Blues Band – Little Miss Higgins – Harpdog Brown – Sue Foley – King Biscuit Boy – Amos Garrett – Paul James Band – Jackson Delta – Michael Jerome Browne – 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 July 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 (July 7th)

TBA

cmc

June 23, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 185 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, June 23rd, (1:00-2:30 pm)

No single theme on this week’s program. A lot of acoustic string music this week and some music from before the blues. We go from African-American banjo players to white country blues to sacred steel over the course of the show. Also, recordings made for LSU folklorist Harry Oster. Music from North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

On the Show:

Julian Dash & His Orchestra – Dink Roberts – Carolina Chocolate Drops – John Jackson – Smoky Babe – Roscoe Holcomb – Marshall Lawrence – Holmes Brothers – Aubrey Ghent – Denise LaSalle

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 July 21st.

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 (June 30th)

TBA

cmc

June 16, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 184 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, June 16th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

Our program for Juneteenth. Juneteenth, trditionally June 19th, the date marking the American government’s enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas when Texas was slow to comply. It’s been observed in other places but its roots are in Texas and we are using the occasion to feature traditional music from Texas–not the music of the slavery era but the music that postdated slave times and by performers who grew up in the shadow of slave times.

On the Show:

Buster Pickens – Lead Belly – Sippie Wallace – Henry Thomas, “Ragtime Texas” – Bat and her Quartet – Black Ivory King – Black Ace – Smokey Hogg – Frankie Lee Sims – Grey Ghost

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 July 14th.

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 (June 23rd)

TBA

cmc

June 9, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 183 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, June 9th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

This week, the promised followup special covering Chicago Soul. We cover a period extending from 1961 to 1975 but most of the recordings are from the sixties. Soul music combined elements of gospel, R&B, blues and, especially in the south, country music. In Chicago, the blues element was more pronounced and singers like Tyrone Davis, Syl Johnson and Lee “Shot” Williams were performing blues before they became known as soul artists. If you doubt that the transition was meaningful, think about Syl Johnson’s initial response when he was asked to perform and record blues again. He thought that he and his music were being dissed by the new blues community. Of course, “soul”, like “blues”, was a marketing concept as much as it effectively defined a genre of music.”Soul” describes music whose characteristics are at least as diffuse as blues.

We’re short of time. Let’s conclude by saying there was a lot of blues in Chicago soul music.

On the Show:

Young Holt Trio – Syl Johnson – Jerry Butler – Ricky Allen – Gerri Taylor – Harold Burrage – Lee “Shot” Williams – Mamie Galore – Otis Clay – Tyrone Davis

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until July 7th.

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 (June 16th)

Juneteenth

cmc

June 2, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 182 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

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

We follow a few different themes on this week’s program. Prompted by the first interview in Steve Cushing’s recent book, Pioneers of the Blues Revival, we decided to devote some space to interviews of bluesmen and blueswomen conducted by Paul Oliver in 1960. Oliver wrote the first real study of blues, published as Blues Fell This Morning, in 1959. The two months he spent in July and August of 1960 might be considered to be the first systematic primary research project devoted to blues, although Alan Lomax’ song hunting for the Library of Congress and his privately funded Southern Journey of 1959-60 captured many blues performances along with old time country and bluegrass.

Also on the program, Los Angeles R&B from John Dolphin’s record labels. Elmore James, acoustic blues and North Carolina fiddler Joe Thompson

On the Show:

Elmore James – Linda Hayes – Peppermint Harris – Brother John Sellers – Stump Johnson – The Vaudevillian – Precious Bryant – Ruby Andrews – Frazey Ford

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until Jun 30th.

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 (June 9th)

TBA

cmc

May 26, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 181 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , — cmcompton @ 4:10 am

Swear to Tell the Truthfor Tuesday, May 26th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

On this week’s program, we present a tribute to B.B. King who died two weeks ago Wednesday. We’ll be mostly following a playlist we developed for a program we presented last July. The show showcased a few of B’s most important influences and then followed the course of his early career on records.

The description we gave for that earlier program explains the approach we took last July:

“Considering his place in blues history, we’ve played relatively little B.B. King over 139 shows. A listener suggested we put a B.B. King feature or special on the air and we thought it was high time that we did that. Whenever we concentrate our attention on a particular artist or theme we find ourselves going back to music we’ve overlooked, forgotten or misremembered and our research turns up information we’d forgotten or never knew about in the first place. In the case of B.B. King, we read the man’s autobiography for the first time, a book co-authored with David Ritz. In the book, King recalls the criticism he and Bobby Bland encountered from new white blues fans during the so-called blues revival. His music and Bland’s was condemned as commercial and a sell-out by people whose point of entry to blues was the folk movement. In time, the folk purism dissipated and British commentators, as well as some British musicians, had a lot to do with the inevitable reassessment of B.’s music and his place in the blues tradition. Still, King recalled the period before that happened as a time when his music was being rejected by both its traditional audience, now engaged by soul music, and the new audience who saw it as a betrayal of a tradition they barely knew about. Today, B.B. King enjoys almost universal and largely uncritical celebration. His dedication to studying his craft and improving his technique appear to have been lifelong commitments, as attested to by former members of his bands. As a DJ and a student of his own tradition he has developed a broad awareness of blues before and after B.B. King and not just blues. B’s musical interest is pretty wide-ranging.

Our feature deals with the period of greatness when B.B. King and his audience were in the same place and B. was extending the horizon of blues and taking the audience with him.”

On the Show:

B.B. King – Lonnie Johnson – Charlie Christian – Roy Brown

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until Jun 23rd.

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 (June 2nd)

Magazine show – no special theme

cmc

May 19, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 180 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, May 19th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

We went over our database of playtracks last week in preparation for our Specialty label gospel feature and noticed that we’ve never done a feature on Specialty label R&B although we have announced our intention to present such a feature. That changes this week.

When the world at large discovered classic R&B and interest grew in this genre of music, people often learned first about Specialty Records, the label that issued records by Roy Milton and Joe Liggins, not to mention, in later years, Lloyd Price and Little Richard.

Specialty emerged from a gaggle of post-war indie startup record labels in LA. It was actually not founded until 1946 as owner Art Rupe shut down his first label, Juke Box, founded in 1944, and sold off most of the Juke Box masters. Rupe ran Specialty himself, without partners, and he ran a tight ship. He established a roster of name artists and didn’t try to maintain a large and diverse catalogue. For as long as he could he declined to engage in payola, or radio pay-for-play. When he sensed the industry had shifted and his small indie could no longer get by, like Sam Phillips, he wound down the business.

Rupe began from an interest in “race music”, especially gospel. He attributed his success with Specialty to his ability as a producer, part of which would have meant the confidence to identify the acts that could make records he would be able to sell and leave the rest to other labels.

Unlike Sam Phillips, Art Rupe held onto his masters and was able to see them reissued in a comprehensive series of albums, which only enhanced the reputation of Specialty’s catalogue. Two early album\ reissues that surveyed the Specialty catalogue were titled This Is Where it All Began.

Our survey begins in 1944 with the Juke Box label recordings and ends in 1954.

On the Show:

Camille Howard – Sepia Tones – Roy Milton & HIs Solid Senders – Joe Lutcher – Jimmy Liggins & His Drops of Joy – Nelson Alexander Trio – Joe Liggins & His Honeydrippers – Percy Mayfield – Willard McDaniel – Lloyd Price – Chuck Higgins with Daddy Cleanhead

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until Jun 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 (May 26th)

B.B. King special

cmc

Leave a Comment

May 12, 2015

Blues and Rhythm Show 179 on 93.3 CFMU (Hamilton, Ontario)

Swear to Tell the Truth for Tuesday, May 12th, (1:00-2:30 pm)

At the heart of today’s program. a feature on the Specialty label’s gospel catalogue. The first major gospel act to record for Specialty, in 1947, was the Pilgrim Travelers, a quartet from Texas who had recorded for the Library of Congress. The Soul Stirrers joined the label in 1950 and it was the Soul Stirrers with Sam Cooke (after he replaced the group’s original lead, R.H. Harris) who guaranteed the huge attention given to Specialty and its gospel roster, when the larger world discovered African-American gospel and its golden era.

We now know a great deal more about gospel on important labels like King, Savoy, Peacock and Nashboro, and we can appreciate how fine these other catalogues were but there’s no question that Specialty’s gospel catalogue was exceptional. Our feature will be a representation of the best-known acts on the label and a few lesser-known acts.

On the Show:

HowellDevine – Muddy Waters – Steve Strongman – Soul Stirrers – Original Gospel Harmonettes – Chosen Gospel Singers – Pilgrim Travelers – Princess Stewart – Rev. Charlie Jackson – Ruby Andrews

Listen to the program at FM 93.3 in Hamilton or on CFMU online at cfmu.msu.mcmaster.ca. The program will be available to stream or as a podcast until Jun 9th.

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 (May 12th)

TBA.

cmc

« Newer PostsOlder Posts »

Blog at WordPress.com.