'I'm Free' - Lucky Peterson

Lucky Peterson found his breakthrough in the late 80's and early 90's, blending blues with soul and R n B. He is a gifted guitarist and pianist and continues to perform and record today.

Here's a slow blues from his album 'Triple Play' from 1990:

New Blog Banner Design

I hope you like the new banner design I got from Mojohand.com, a fully dedicated blues art and design website.

Grego, the owner, has been in the business for a while and has made designs for famous blues and other artists, as well as t-shirt, CD, and folk art design.

Look out for a more in-depth look about Mojohand in the coming days.

Earth Day Concert by Nawaf Gheraibah & Friends

Once again, I have the honor to perform with one of Kuwait's musical visionaries, Nawaf Gheraibah. I have worked with Nawaf on his Bija Concert which sent waves across the country. He also made the Samsara event last year as well to much acclaim.

And now, a smaller version of his events will be held for Earth Day, on the 22nd and 23rd April at the Kuwait National Museum, and I will be on bass duties once more.

Check out the teaser video below, and hope to see you there!

Jazz Cover of the Game of Thrones Theme!

If you're like me and addicted to Game of Thrones (what a great start to season 4 eh?), then you will enjoy this cover of the main theme.

The 'smooth jazz' version of the theme is performed by Dave Koz (9 time Grammy winner) on sax, Adam Kubota on bass, Allan Mednard on drums ans Scott Bradlee on piano. And it kicks ass!

If you think the epic intensity of dragons, incest, blood and gore, and backstabbing is too much, then hear this and think of your loved one, gazing over King's Landing.

The Blues Magazine Now Available in the Middle East

Well this is a surprising find! Who would have thought that a blues exclusive magazine would find itself in Kuwait?

I wrote about the state of blues magazines not too long ago, and I've been following a relatively new one called The Blues Magazine out of the UK. You can check out their blog [here]. They are also on Facebook and Twitter.

This particular issue is number 12, and covers a range of topics in 130 pages like:

- The 1964 Blues & Gospel Tour of Europe featuring Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and others

- Article on Robert Cray

- 60 Years of the Fender Strat (I did that too!)

- Article on Jack Bruce

and a dozen other things like reviews, tour information, hundreds of color photos and editorials.

It also comes with a CD, which was removed from my copy due to Kuwaiti customs (still the devil's music eh?). As you can see the cover has been ripped and the CD taken out. 

So go on over to your local bookstore and get your copy and support the blues!

The Legacy of Muddy Waters

The 4th of April marked the 101st birthday of McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters.

Muddy Waters is my hands down favorite bluesman of all time. His music is where I draw my musical inspiration from, like the hundreds of others.

Like many bluesmen before him, Muddy traveled to Chicago from his native Mississippi. But it was his new 'electric' sound that brought him to the public and national light. Before this, music was all acoustic, and in live situations the guitar (and by extension the bass) was near inaudible over the drums and a horn section. Once he tried plugging in his guitar through an amplifier, the sound of the blues was changed forever. But it was also his Mississippi Delta upbringing that also gave his blues a raw feel. His use of amplification is cited as, the  missing link between Delta Blues and Rock 'N' Roll.

I Can't Be Satisfied, released in 1948, arguably 'the song' that changed music.  

Soon enough, it was hit after hit during the 50's, and his music defined the Chicago blues, such as Hoochie Cootchie Man, Rolling Stone, Mannish Boy, You Shook Me, and many more. His music and the evolution of rock n' roll dominated the scenes in the 1960's and 1970's. You owe him for many of the British bands of the day, like The Rolling Stones, Clapton, and Led Zeppelin. He has 3 albums in the Top 500 Albums of all Time. 

He has won Grammys, has a Lifetime Achievement Award and is a Rock n' Roll Hall of Famer. I could go on forever.

Here's the first track off of Muddy's comeback Grammy winning album 'Hard Again', featuring a new and dazzling version of Mannish Boy. Happy birthday Muddy!

New Photos Found from Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' Session

I've talked about John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme' many times, and I still don't mind talking about it. It's a really supreme (don't mind the pun) album.

And now, David Stewart, son of Chuck Steward who was taking photos on the day of the recording in December 1964, found 6 never seen before pictures of that session.

You can go to NPR's Jazz Blog 'A Blog Supreme' (a name very relevant to this news!) and check out the whole story [here].

Everytime I Get to Drinkin' - Sunnyland Slim

Sunnyland Slim (real name Albert Luandrew) was born in Mississippi, and took the great migration to Chicago, like many of his fellow bluesmen. He became one of Chicago's greatest blues pianists and cut many tracks with dozens of musicians including Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters. 

This track is from the 1964 American Folk Blues Festival which was held in various places in Europe (this one specifically from the UK show).

Master bluesmen Willie Dixon and Hubert Sumlin are on the bass and guitar respectively on this low down blues.

Shredding the Blues

Steve Vai, shred master

It takes quite a lot of skill and technique to play shred guitar (playing rapidly with quick successive notes and sweeps, scales and arpeggios); I certainly don't have this ability. Shred guitar is not only used to to effect in certain musical genres like metal, but, in my opinion, to also show off in front of people.

We've all been in that situation where in a jam session someone will be the 'guitar master' and will shred the guitar so hard that it looks like it will explode and will leave everyone in awe. Unfortunately to many, it seems that if you don't have such skills, it means you suck as a musician.

To me, I can care less if people play better than I do (of course it doesn't hurt to be an all round musician) but I play what I like and feel. It's not just about skill, but also about the message. I've been in situations where I've played with great classically trained musicians but they were playing off of sheet music while I was winging it. They were rigid. I was flexible, and had more fun because I was playing what I felt, and not what someone else told me to play.

It's about taste.

So what if you got a shredder and put him in a blues situation? Again, the skills are top notch, but musically, I call it wanking, because all I hear is a barrage of notes flying at me with that distorted humbucking destruction. The blues is not about technical showmanship, as most of the old (and new) blues musicians were not musically trained and they learned how to play just by imitating others. It's about the song and the feeling; blues solos have some breathable space in between.

Here's NOT how to play the blues:

'Chain Gang Blues' - Kokomo Arnold (1935)

one of the only photos of Kokomo Arnold

"Kokomo" was a popular brand of coffee back in the day, and was the subject of Francis "Scrapper" Blackwell's first recorded blues in 1928. When slide guitarist James Arnold covered that song as "Old Original Kokomo Blues" for the Decca record label in 1934, little did he know that this would soon become his permanent stage name: Kokomo Arnold.

Arnold recorded 88 tracks for Decca in the 1930s and was an influence on Robert Johnson, however he quit the music business in disgust in 1938 and went into factory work in Chicago. He was rediscovered there by blues researchers in 1962, but didn't show much enthusiasm for reviving his musical career, and certainly did not resume recording. Kokomo Arnold died of a heart attack at the age of 67.

This next song from 1935 is a gritty blues number, about murder and serving jail time, as such: 

'I'm layin' in jail, with my back tied to the wall;

I'm layin' in jail, with my back tied to the wall;

Says this whiskey and old bad women, WHOA, was the cause of it all'