If you want to see and understand where the blues is going, you have to look back and see where it has come from and what it’s been through!
First of all, let me say congratulations to the winners of the Northeast Ohio Blues Association 2014 Blues Challenge: The Whiskey Shambles out of Cincinnati in the band category and Bongo Joe and Little Steve-O, from Akron, in the solo duo category. Good luck to all of you at the International Blues Challenge.
July Births:
July 1, 1899 - Reverend Thomas (Georgia Tom) Dorsey
July 14, 1912 - Woodrow “Woody” Guthrie
July 31, 1907 - Roy Milton
July 1, 1899 - Reverend Thomas (Georgia Tom) Dorsey
July 14, 1912 - Woodrow “Woody” Guthrie
July 31, 1907 - Roy Milton
Blues Question: This bluesman plays piano and organ and blends two types of blues to create his own style. He’s worked at his trade for 81 years, both as a front-man and as a session player for many “big name” bluesmen. He is still active and playing at the age of 89. He has recorded for at least 8 different labels. Any idea as to who this man is?
Blues Trivia: I chose to write about this woman, Mable Hillery, because she should be known of. She was born July 22nd, 1929, in LaGrange, Georgia, to sharecropper parents. The family moved to Kieta County when she was 6 months old. They lived and worked on a plantation along with about 500 others, farming cotton, corn, wheat, oats and peaches. The plantation was about 8,000 acres, owned by Otto Hutchinson. She was paid 5 cents per day as a water carrier. By age 8 she was working a full day plowing, planting, fertilizing, thinning and then harvesting and storing in the barns. She listened to the blues being sung by the field workers and developed a respect for the music and the stories told in it. Her grandparents, who owned a “Victoria” wind up record player and had both religious and blues records (the blues ones where kept hidden) but would not allow blues records to be played on it. When her grandparents were not home she would play the record of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup titled “Big Legged Woman”. Yes the family attended the traditional Saturday night fish fry, where, after the children were put to bed (called at that time a “pallet on the floor”), the adults usually had a single man with a guitar playing the blues. Even though the older people were listening to the blues, they always told the children that “the blues was the devil’s music”. This “growing up” period laid the basic foundation for her blues singing career.
Before she pursued her singing career, she worked a short order cook. She was selling ice cream on St. Simons Island, Georgia, when Alan Lomax came there to film and record. People thought he wanted to film more modern rock and roll performances, but he wanted the original (blues and spirituals) music of the area . Sadly, there is no record of who actually performed at those sessions. Married at 15, she had 6 children by the age of 25.
Some years later, in 1966, she performed with Otis Spann at the Toronto Blues Festival and recorded a single, “How Long” accompanied by Skip James. In 1964, at a concert in Minneapolis she performed with “Mississippi” John Hurt the song “Salty Dog”. She did record 1 album, when she was 38, in Germany, which was released in the U.K. It was titled quoting something her grandfather used to say:” It’s so hard to be a ni**er”, when she was a small child.
And NO, I didn’t pick this person or this album with any intent to insult anyone, but rather to honor and respect what some have had to go through. Mable titled this as a simple statement of fact, of what the plantation slaves were born into, lived every day, and died with. Sadly she passed away April 26th, 1976, in New York City. Yet another great blues singer who actually lived the blues and remains almost unknown.
Oh, by the way, that album of hers is extremely rare and therefore highly
Before she pursued her singing career, she worked a short order cook. She was selling ice cream on St. Simons Island, Georgia, when Alan Lomax came there to film and record. People thought he wanted to film more modern rock and roll performances, but he wanted the original (blues and spirituals) music of the area . Sadly, there is no record of who actually performed at those sessions. Married at 15, she had 6 children by the age of 25.
Some years later, in 1966, she performed with Otis Spann at the Toronto Blues Festival and recorded a single, “How Long” accompanied by Skip James. In 1964, at a concert in Minneapolis she performed with “Mississippi” John Hurt the song “Salty Dog”. She did record 1 album, when she was 38, in Germany, which was released in the U.K. It was titled quoting something her grandfather used to say:” It’s so hard to be a ni**er”, when she was a small child.
And NO, I didn’t pick this person or this album with any intent to insult anyone, but rather to honor and respect what some have had to go through. Mable titled this as a simple statement of fact, of what the plantation slaves were born into, lived every day, and died with. Sadly she passed away April 26th, 1976, in New York City. Yet another great blues singer who actually lived the blues and remains almost unknown.
Oh, by the way, that album of hers is extremely rare and therefore highly
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