Some April Blues Births:
- April 2nd.,1918--John Thomas "JT"/"Big Boy" Brown
- April 17th.,1926-- Sam Carr
- April 25th.,1923-- Albert King, born Albert Nelson
Answer to the March 2016 Blues Question: the bluesman we were looking for is/was Don "Sugarcane" Harris, born as Don Bowman on June 18th.,1938, in Pasadena, California. The Squires, basically a doo-wop group, shortly after their forming, would include Bowman. They recorded between October of 1954, through April of 1956, on several different small labels. The first Squires recording was on the Kicks 1 label and didn't list Bowman in the credits, but did credit it to Dewey Terry. Bowman's name would show up on the next recording, on the Mambo 105 label, and was a 78 rpm record. That was in May of 1955. Some sources list Bowman as the founder of the Squires, but, due to what I just listed, I believe the group was formed by Terry and Bowman joined him shortly after that. The Squires broke up in 1957 but Don and Dewey stayed together. The pair had signed a contract, late in '56, with Art Rupe's Specialty label, so they went on for two years playing rock and roll. They both played guitar and sometimes Dewey would play piano. Don played guitar or bass, whenever or whichever was needed. As a sidebar, Dewey was taught guitar by one of the '50's blues greats-- Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones (best known for his song "The Things That I Used To Do". As a pair, Don and Dewey's music was considered too loud and too "harsh" to get much radio airplay. Some of the other artists at Specialty at the same time were Guitar Slim, Little Richard, Lloyd Price and Larry Williams. The music producer there was a guy named Sonny Bono. Some of the songs written and recorded by "Don and Dewey" were "Jungle Hop", "A Little Love", "Justine", "I'm Leaving It (All) Up To You", "Farmer John", "Big Boy Pete", and "KoKo Joe"(that one written by Sonny Bono). You should recognize some of those songs, as they were recorded and made hits by others, such as Dale and Grace, The Searchers, The Premiers, The Righteous Brothers ( their act was based on Don and Dewey's), The Olympics and others. "Big Boy Pete", for example, was recorded, with different lyrics, by The Kingsmen (of Louie, Louie fame), as "The Jolly Green Giant". As the duo, Don and Dewey, they toured with The Johnny Otis Show in the late '50's into the early "60's. They then toured with Little Richard (about the same time Jimi Hendrix was in Richard's band). They split up as a pair in 1960, but did play and record together, backing other artists. By this time Bowman was now Don "Sugarcane" Harris. The "Sugarcane" nickname was given him by Johnny Otis, because of his reputation as a ladies’ man. By this time, Harris was mostly playing the electric violin. From 1964 through 1998, he was hard at work. Besides making 8 of his own albums (1970-1976), he was featured/performed on two albums with Little Richard, two with Johnny Otis, nine with John Mayall (and the Bluesbreakers), six with Frank Zappa, and one each with John Lee Hooker, Freddie Roulette, and the Sonny Terry/ Brownie McGhee duo, and with six other bands, all scattered over 20 different labels. Some of his recordings were done in the studio, with others being done while live and on tour. If you noticed some of those names that he was recording with, you probably picked up on the fact that he was doing a lot of different types of music. There was also a lot of variation of what he was doing on those recordings: he would play any of his instruments-- guitar, violin, horn, harp, or piano, as a lead or backing player, or he would be doing lead or backing vocals. If he was using his preferred instrument, the electric violin, he would sometimes use a bow and get it to sound either like what it was or like a harmonica, or he would "finger-pick" it and have it sound like a ukulele. He passed away November 30th.,1999, of pulmonary failure.
Blues Question For April 2016: This blues musician was born and raised on a farm near St. Louis, Missouri, one of four children. He was taught to play guitar by his older brother. He eventually ended up living in Detroit, Michigan. He also did extensive touring to perform. He recorded on at least five labels. Any idea who this bluesman is ??
Blues Trivia for April 2016: We are all familiar with the most common instruments used by blues musicians-- guitar, harmonica (sometimes called a Mississippi Saxophone or a pocket piano), bass, keyboard, horns (usually trumpet or saxophone) and droms. Now, forget all that and go back to the earlier days of the blues--acoustic, no amps. Early bluesmen moved around all the time, so being able to bring the instrument along, without too much trouble, made the most common ones at that time, small, stringed ones, the guitar, mandolin, violin and banjo. The other easy one to carry was the harmonica. Piano players weren't so lucky-- they usually got to play either in the studio, on recording sessions, or at venues on the T O B A or vaudeville circuits, because those had a band/orchestra "pit". One of the early piano players was Charles Edward "Cow Cow" Davenport, born April 23rd.,1894, in Anniston, Alabama. His first recordings were done in 1924, his last in 1946. In late 1930 he moved from the South to Cleveland, Ohio, where he would own a music-record shop until sometime in 1932, when he would be travelling/ performing in the South. Somewhere between 1933 and 1935, he moved back to Cleveland, where he would now own and operate a cafe. He travelled/ performed up into 1948, when he opted to work outside the music field. He is credited with 24 songs, but said that he wrote more than that, but sold the songs and rights to them. The trivia part is, in steps, that his father, Clement, was a preacher, and his mother was an organist. Cow Cow learned the organ by age eleven, on his own. At twelve years old he started to take piano lessons. His father, however, did not approve of the "lifestyle" of musicians and sent "Charles" to Alabama Theological Seminary, Selma University, Selma, Alabama, in 1910. Cow Cow was later expelled from there because he, at a social function at the university, changed the musical accompaniment of the hymns to a rag-time and boogie-woogie style of play. It obviously turned out to be a definite no-no!!
Some April Blues Passings:
- April 3rd.,1988-- Clarence "Candy"/"Galveston" Green
- April 14th.,2010--Walter Horn Jr., aka Mississippi Slim
- April 30th.,1983-- McKinley Morganfield, aka Muddy Waters
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