Deltachord

 Fandom of classic rock tuneup for the kickoff of VH1 Classic Rock Nights, beginning 05/17/2010–your music blasting on the radio from 7pm to12am Eastern Standard Time. The music, current interviews and archived interviews, guests, tour reports, freebies, and shows from the archives will be the fare. Twenty markets are going to broadcast the show.

Eddie Webb is the host; he has been employed by several big radio stations including XM Satellite Radio. The first week’s guests will be Paul Rodgers (Bad Company), Ray Manzarek and John Densmore (The Doors), and Mick Jones (Foreigner).

After Mayo Williams rescued Josh from the ill treatment of Taggert, he had two more years of recording experience in Chicago. After this, he had the funds to go home to Greenville, South Carolina to care for his mother and siblings.

What would become Columbia Records, then ARC Records in the latter part of 1930 sent two talent scouts hunting for Josh White. ARC wanted to signup the young man that as a boy had been an excellent sessions guitarist, and more importantly had guided the main blind street singers of an era across the U.S.A. He had memorized their collection of  Negro music—a grass roots repertoire of spirituals, folk songs, and blues.

The talent scouts probed the country for months and located him at home with his mother and siblings. Josh was still underage and his mother only agreed to sign the contract with the stipulation he didn’t record the blues, but only spirituals. The contract for $100.00 gave ARC the rights to all of the religious music he had learned. When he turned eighteen he signed a contract to record the blues. He used the name Pinewood Tom for these recordings. As 1933 round around he had become a huge success.

A week after he recorded “When the Sun Goes down” in 1936 he was involved in a bar brawl and slammed his fist through a glass door. He developed gangrene in his picking hand and though advised to amputate he wouldn’t, but his hand was useless. He couldn’t move his fingers at all.

Josh didn’t want to sing without playing guitar. He stopped his recording career and starting working mundane jobs: elevator operator, dockworker, and building superintendent. Still, from 1928-1936 he had a phenomenal recording output of race records, which was the legitimate name of these recordings as defined by the black community. During this era he had recorded as a session guitarist with Buddy Moss, The Carver Boys, Lucille Bogan and others.

To be continued…

References:

JoshWhite
JW

CD

Josh at Midnight: Sings Ballads & Blues

Josh White was a protest songwriter before it became more popularized in the sixties. He portrayed a style more along the lines of a workingman’s protester of skinflint businesses. He is like Woody Guthrie in being a workingman’s voice, but playing a country blues and gospel oriented style. His music branched out into other realms like jazz, cabaret, folk, and Tin Pan Alley.

White’s recordings were prolific on labels like Vocalion Records and Emerson Records, which were black record labels doing business in the 1920’s and 30’s. In the McCarthy era White ended up on a list of people believed to be communists because of his protest songs. Many of his songs were anti-segregationists and concerning human rights.

Josh White had a definite influence on future generations of musicians and singers like Eartha Kitt, Bob Dylan, Odetta, Mike Bloomfield, Merle Travis, Pete Seeger, Richie Havens and numerous others. The unique voicings and styling of his guitar playing has captured the imagination of many guitarists.

Josh White came from a Christian home; he was the son of Reverend Dennis White and Daisy White. They lived in Greenville, North Carolina. He was born in 1914. His parents named him after an important figure in the Bible named Joshua. After his father suffered injustices and was put into a mental institution and then died in 1930…young Josh White felt the grave responsibility of stepping into his father’s shoes.

After his father had been deceased for two months, he started roaming the southern musical circuit with Blind Man Arnold a street performer. Josh soon became adept at singing, dancing, playing the tambourine, and then the guitar.

He collected the money for Arnold who sent Joshua’s mother a sum of $2.00 per week and there were four children at home. He worked with Arnold for eight years; during that time Arnold farmed Josh out to sixty-six different performers who were blind. Two of these artists were Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Joe Taggart. Josh and the blind artists walked wherever they went such as Chicago, Dallas, and Miami.

While working in Chicago in 1927, his genius as a guitarist caught the attention of Mayo Williams of Paramount Records. Williams gave him a job as a session’s guitarist. But Taggart and Arnold held him under their thumbs until Williams forced them to free him in 1928 by saying he would report them to the cops for mistreating Josh. They still had him sleeping in a horse stable and not allowed to wear long pants or shoes in the cold. Williams made Arnold buy Josh shoes and a suit and he moved Josh into a hotel. He also had to start paying Josh for his recordings. Josh had already had a hit with Taggart called “Scandalous and Ashamed.”

To be Continued…

References:

JoshWhitePiedmontBlues
JoshWhite

CD’s
Josh White Sings The Blues & Sings Volumes 1 & 2

Sings Ballads - Blues

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Our journey through music takes us to an intriguing Victorian guitarist, Catherina Josepha Pelzer, born in 1821 at Mulheim, on the Rhine. Her father, Ferdinand Pelzer, was an important German guitarist, who taught her to play.

She debuted in London at nine years old and her family quickly moved to England. Catherina’s distinction as a soloist grew rapidly. She gained popularity with upper crust of the day and began to teach guitar in their circles. She became a prominent teacher and several guitars were made “to her specifications” relates Freeth and Alexander and she had a photograph of herself playing one of the guitars on her visiting card, they continue.

She wrote an extensive book for classical guitar, “drawing on the work of Giuliani and Sor;” but reports Freeth and Alexander, authors of The Illustrated Directory of Guitars, the average student wasn’t interested in such a complicated text.

The authors explain that she resolved this problem by writing a simpler book entitled Learning the Guitar Simplified by Mme. Sidney Pratten. This book garnered huge success and went through twelve editions before she died in 1895.

According to dolmetsch.com she wrote 250 works and a few methods for guitar and also instructions for playing the gigliera.

She married an Englishman, Robert Sidney Pratten who played the flute and was renowned in his own right. A portrait of her is online. The addy is listed below. There is also one in the book by Nick Freeth and Charles Alexander.

References:

The Illustrated Directory of Guitars, Nick Freeth and Charles Alexander

http://www.dolmetsch.com/cdefsp.htm

http://library.csun.edu/igra/vol1/pergolesi.html

Online portrait:

http://www.npg.org.uk

Dear Readers,

A reader had commented asking questions about the 1999 film by Woody Allen entitled Sweet and Lowdown. I hadn’t seen the flick, so I watched it.

I liked it and particularly the performance of Samantha Morton as Hattie who is mute. Through facial expressions and body language she portrays her character’s emotions perfectly. Emmet Ray played by Sean Penn is an egocentric jazz guitarist, though fictional. He treats Hattie and all women he is involved with badly to say the least.

Allen creates a realistic portrait of a 1930’s jazz musician in that some of them, such as Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton were known to be “managers” that is pimps, as Ray is in the film according to Ira Gitler in the article Sweet and Lowdown: A Jazz History Perspective. Also, during that time period jazz artists traveled the U.S. basically introducing people to jazz music because there were fewer means of communication then.

Howard Alden and Bucky Pizzarelli beautifully play the guitar parts. Also, old recordingas are used. Several classic jazz songs are represented. Penn skillfully draws a picture of the anti-hero, talented musician, that leads a quirky life.

For More Information:

http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/sweetandlowdown/perspective.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_and_Lowdown
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE2D9113FF936A35751C1A96F958260

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Playing the chord melody can add a zing to your playing that will perk up your listerners ears. Here are a couple of lessons to get you started.

Guitar Lesson #720 at WholeNote: Mastering Chord/Melody: The Basics by Jody Fisher

http://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=598

I have a new article at guitarnoise .com, the title is listed below.

Jean Baptiste Django Reinhardt: Gypsy Genius

My Other Articles

• A Giant Guitarist To Note
• Legendary House
• Judy Collins: Biography of a Child Prodigy

Reinhardt played swing, jazz, bebop, and more. Enjoy the articles.

guitarnoise

Videos

http://www.about-django.com/news/videos/minorswing.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD6ZD1Igxr0

Don’t touch that control, Swing ’s Jumpin’ Up Next.

http://swingguitar.blogspot.com/

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