Big Joe Williams
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Big Joe Williams
Joseph Lee "Big Joe" Williams (October 16, 1903 – December 17, 1982) was an American Delta blues guitarist, singer and songwriter, notable for the distinctive sound of his nine-string guitar. Performing over five decades, he recorded the songs "Baby Please Don't Go", " Crawlin' King Snake" and "Peach Orchard Mama", among many others, for various record labels, including Bluebird, Delmark, Okeh, Prestige and Vocalion. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame on October 4, 1992. The blues historian Barry Lee Pearson (''Sounds Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story'', ''Virginia Piedmont Blues'') described Williams's performance: :When I saw him playing at Mike Bloomfield's "blues night" at the Fickle Pickle, Williams was playing an electric nine-string guitar through a small ramshackle amp with a pie plate nailed to it and a beer can dangling against that. When he played, everything rattled but Big Joe himself. The total effect of this incredible apparatus produced the most buzz ...
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Oktibbeha County, Mississippi
Oktibbeha County is a county in the east central portion of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census the population was 51,788. The county seat is Starkville. The county's name is derived from a local Native American word meaning either "bloody water" or "icy creek". The Choctaw had long occupied much of this territory prior to European exploration and United States acquisition. Mississippi State University, a public research university and land-grant institution, is in Oktibbeha County. Oktibbeha County is conterminous with the Starkville, MS Micropolitian Statistical Area. The county is part of the Golden Triangle region of Mississippi, designated for joint regional development strategies. History The name ''Oktibbeha'' is a Native American word meaning either "bloody water" (because of a battle fought on the banks) or possibly "icy creek". Indian artifacts more than 2,000 years old have been found near ancient earthwork mounds located just east of Starkvil ...
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Da Capo Press
Da Capo Press is an American publishing company with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. It is now an imprint of Hachette Books. History Founded in 1964 as a publisher of music books, as a division of Plenum Publishers, it had additional offices in New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Emeryville, California. The year prior, Da Capo Press had net sales of over $2.5 million. Da Capo Press became a general trade publisher in the mid-1970s. It was sold to the Perseus Books Group in 1999 after Plenum was sold to Wolters Kluwer. In the last decade, its production has consisted of mostly nonfiction titles, both hardcover and paperback, focusing on history, music, the performing arts, sports, and popular culture. In 2003, Lifelong Books was founded as a health and wellness imprint. When Marlowe & Company became part of the imprint in 2007, Lifelong's range was expanded to include the New Glucose Revolution series and numerous diabetes titles, as well as books on healthful ...
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Joe Williams (jazz Singer)
Joe Williams (born Joseph Goreed; December 12, 1918 – March 29, 1999) was an American jazz singer. He sang with big bands such as the Count Basie Orchestra and the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and with his combos. He sang in two films with the Basie orchestra and sometimes worked as an actor. Life Williams was born in Cordele, Georgia, the son of Willie Goreed and Anne Beatrice ''née'' Gilbert. When he was about three, his mother and grandmother took him to Chicago. He grew up on the South Side, Chicago, South Side of Chicago, where he attended Austin Otis Sexton Elementary School and Englewood Technical Prep Academy, Englewood High School. In the 1930s, as a teenager, he was a member of a gospel group, the Jubilee Boys, and performed in Chicago churches. Work He began singing professionally as a soloist in 1937. He sometimes sang with big bands: from 1937 he performed with Jimmie Noone's Apex Club Orchestra, and also toured with Les Hite in the Midwest. In 1941 he toured wi ...
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Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village also contains several subsections, including the West Village west of Seventh Avenue and the Meatpacking District in the northwest corner of Greenwich Village. Its name comes from , Dutch for "Green District". In the 20th century, Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. Greenwich Village contains Washington Square Park, as well as two of New York City's private colleges, New York University (NYU) and The New School. Greenwich Village is part of Manhattan Community District 2, and is patrolled by the 6th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Greenwich Village has underg ...
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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning more than 60 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and " The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture. Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which comprised mainly traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' the following year. The album features "Blowin' in the Wind" and the thematically complex " A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". Many of his s ...
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Folk Blues
Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is one of the earliest forms of blues music. The mainly solo vocal with acoustic fingerstyle guitar accompaniment developed in the rural Southern United States in the early 20th century. History Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson (Texas), Charley Patton (Mississippi), Blind Willie McTell (Georgia) were among the first to record blues songs in the 1920s. Country blues ran parallel to urban blues, which was popular in cities. Folklorist Alan Lomax was one of the first to use the term and applied it to a field recording he made of Muddy Waters at the Stovall Plantation, Mississippi, in 1941. In 1959, music historian Samuel Charters wrote ''The Country Blues'', an influential scholarly work on the subject. He also produced an album, also titled ''The Country Blues'', with early recordings by Jefferson, McTell, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White, and Robert Johnson. Charters's works helped to int ...
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Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield (April 4, 1913 April 30, 1983), known professionally as Muddy Waters, was an American blues singer and musician who was an important figure in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues". His style of playing has been described as "raining down Delta beatitude". Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson."His thick heavy voice, the dark colouration of his tone, and his firm, almost solid, personality were all clearly derived from House," wrote the music historian Peter Guralnick in ''Feel Like Going Home'', "but the embellishments, which he added, the imaginative slide technique and more agile rhythms, were closer to Johnson." He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time professi ...
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Blues Foundation
The Blues Foundation is an American nonprofit corporation, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, that is affiliated with more than 175 blues organizations from various parts of the world. Founded in 1980, a 25-person board of directors governs the foundation whose stated mission is to preserve blues heritage, celebrate blues recording and performance, and expand worldwide awareness of the blues. On its formation, the foundation organized the annual W. C. Handy Awards to "give recognition of the finest in blues performances and recordings." The awards have since been renamed the Blues Music Awards. The BMAs are generally recognized as the highest honor given to blues musicians, and are awarded by vote of Blues Foundation members. The Blues Foundation is also responsible for the Blues Hall of Fame Museum, International Blues Challenge (IBC), Keeping the Blues Alive Award (KBA) and Blues in the Schools program. Every year, the Blues Foundation presents the KBA Awards to individuals ...
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Bessie Mae Smith
Bessie Mae Smith was an American blues singer from St. Louis, who recorded for the Okeh, Vocalion and Paramount record labels under a variety of names between 1927 and 1941. She is reported to have been married to Delta bluesman Big Joe Williams, who sometimes credited her with writing his song “Baby, Please Don't Go”. Her songs often included surreal imagery and sexual metaphors. There is confusion about her actual name. While she recorded as Bessie Mae Smith, Blue Belle, and St. Louis Bessie, and probably also as Mae Belle Miller and Streamline Mae, her file at Okeh Records listed her as Bessie Martin, a track recorded for Paramount was reissued as by Sara Carter, and songs recorded under the name Streamline Mae have the composer credited as Mary Belle Smith. Her former husband Big Joe Williams, however, stated that her name was Bessie Mae Smith. She is not to be confused with classic blues singer Bessie Smith Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an ...
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Robert Nighthawk
Robert Lee McCollum (November 30, 1909 – November 5, 1967) was an American blues musician who played and recorded under the pseudonyms Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk. He was the father of the blues musician Sam Carr. Nighthawk was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1983. Life and career McCollum was born in Helena, Arkansas on November 30, 1909. He left home at an early age and became a busking musician. After a period traveling through southern Mississippi, he settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee, where he played with local orchestras and musicians, such as the Memphis Jug Band. A particular influence during this period was Houston Stackhouse, from whom he learned to play slide guitar and with whom he performed on the radio in Jackson, Mississippi. After further travels through Mississippi, he found it advisable to take his mother's name. As Robert Lee McCoy, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in the mid-1930s. Local musicians with whom he played included He ...
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Sonny Boy Williamson I
John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson (March 30, 1914 – June 1, 1948) was an American blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter. He is often regarded as the pioneer of the blues harp as a solo instrument. He played on hundreds of recordings by many pre–World War II blues artists. Under his own name, he was one of the most recorded blues musicians of the 1930s and 1940s and is closely associated with Chicago producer Lester Melrose and Bluebird Records. His popular songs, original or adapted, include "Good Morning, School Girl", " Sugar Mama", " Early in the Morning", and " Stop Breaking Down". Williamson's harmonica style was a great influence on postwar performers. Later in his career, he was a mentor to many up-and-coming blues musicians who moved to Chicago, including Muddy Waters. In an attempt to capitalize on Williamson's fame, Aleck "Rice" Miller began recording and performing as Sonny Boy Williamson in the early 1940s, and later, to distinguish the two, Joh ...
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Baby, Please Don't Go
"Baby, Please Don't Go" is a traditional blues song that was popularized by Delta blues musician Big Joe Williams in 1935. Many cover versions followed, leading to its description as "one of the most played, arranged, and rearranged pieces in blues history" by French music historian Gérard Herzhaft. After World War II, Chicago blues and rhythm and blues artists adapted the song to newer music styles. In 1952, a doo-wop version by the Orioles reached the top ten on the R&B chart. In 1953, Muddy Waters recorded the song as an electric Chicago-ensemble blues piece, which influenced many subsequent renditions. By the early 1950s, the song became a blues standard. In the 1960s, "Baby, Please Don't Go" became a popular rock song after the Northern Irish group Them recorded it in 1964. Jimmy Page, a studio guitarist at the time, participated in the recording session, possibly on rhythm guitar. Subsequently, Them's uptempo rock arrangement also made it a rock standard. AC/DC and Aer ...
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