WATCH & LISTEN: Self-taught 21-year-old blues guitarist from Racine is a finalist in national competition journaltimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from journaltimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Rare 1989 local performance video unearthed
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Blues star James Harman is battling stage 4 cancer of the esophagus and begins chemo treatment over the coming week.
Leslie James Harman began piano lessons at age four, and also sang in his local church choir. Harmonicas owned by his father were stored in the piano bench, and Harman tried playing them after his piano lessons ended. In time, he became capable in several other musical instruments, including guitar, electric organ, and drums.
Harman performed as a blues harmonica player and singer in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere before moving to southern California in the 1970s. Here, his Icehouse Blues Band played alongside Big Joe Turner, John Lee Hooker, Freddie King, Muddy Waters, Albert King, B. B. King, T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulsom, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Johnny Guitar Watson, and Albert Collins.
Who Is Ma Rainey? How the Mother of the Blues Became an Icon Author: Latifah Muhammad Updated: 9:00 AM MST December 18, 2020
Ma Rainey’s title as the “mother of the blues” is an ode to her unremitted genius in transforming the genre despite a relatively short recording career. Now streaming on Netflix,
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis as the brazen blues legend and Chadwick Boseman in his final film role, has brought new attention to Rainey’s mystifying story.
Adapted from August Wilson’s Broadway play of the same name, the film explores an intense 1927 Chicago recording session between Rainey and her band members, with Davis delivering an unapologetic portrayal of the singer.
Esoteric
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This is an excellent four-CD set by the doyens of the ’60s counterculture the trailblazers of political heavy rock.
Their 1969 debut album Wasa Wasa was cut for EMI’s underground label Harvest.
Nary a gig ended without mass chanting of Out Demons Out started by the The Fugs who carried out an exorcism of the Pentagon in 1967.
Fights and vandalism broke out at some student union gigs and Tony Blackburn made their Hotel Room 1971 single his record of the week.
The four album’s include Bandages (NEMS), Live Hits Harder (BB Records), Parlez Vous English (Babylon) and Superchip The Final Solution (Telex Records).
Blues music and the greats are deep in the heart of Texas history
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Texas blues artist T-Bone Walker (aka Aaron Thibeaux Walker) had an influence on almost every blues guitarist after him. Show MoreShow Less
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Mance Lipscomb, Navasota blues singer. March, 1962.Ed Valdez, HP staff / Houston ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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Blues guitarist Sam ‘Lightnin’ Hopkins in 1959.Andrew A. Hanson, HP staff / Houston ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
Two blues enthusiasts an ocean apart spent nearly two decades collaborating on a book they envisioned as the definitive history of the blues in Texas. Robert “Mack” McCormick was a Houston-based folklorist and Paul Oliver was a music historian from England. At one point in the 1970s, their correspondence turned to the title of their book as they considered some variant of “Blues Come to Texas Loping Like a Mule” from a “Blind” Lemon Jefferson song. They pondered the line. Did it refer to the b