Pat Blythe – The Women of Blues Revisited, Part I….

I am swamped with another project that is sucking up all my time during the waking hours. I have less than two weeks to complete it and it’s seems to be growing arms and legs I wasn’t expecting. So…..just to rehash a bit of blues history, specifically the ladies, I thought I’d have my editor post this again as many of you have probably not seen it. I wrote three series, Women of Rock, Women of Blues and Women in Song. The Women of Blues was actually inspired by a contemporary whom I saw for the first time a couple of years ago. She had dedicated her latest album to a female blues artist I had never heard of. Read all about her and the women who contributed so, so much to the genre we call the blues. The famous and not so famous. They were tough, talented, single-minded, sexually liberated, passionate and most of them had more balls than the men. Read on, you might even learn something.

Pat Blythe …and The Blues Continue – Big Mama Thornton

Who pops into your mind when you hear the song title “Hound Dog”? How about “Ball and Chain”? Big Mama Thornton? Probably not. However, “Hound Dog” was her biggest hit, selling more than two million copies when it was first released in 1953. “Hound Dog”reached number one on the R&B charts and made Thornton a star. However, her total compensation was the paltry sum of $500. Elvis Presley recorded it three years later and with it (for Presley) came fame and great financial reward. After meeting Big Mama, Janis Joplin recorded “Ball and Chain”  with her band Big Brother and Holding Company, but it was Joplin’s famous performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 that made this song a hit (note Cass Elliot’s face in the crowd) with “bluesaphobes” everywhere, reintroducing the genre to a brand new audience and rekindling interest in Big Mama herself.

Pat Blythe: The Women of Blues

Prologue….

Anyone heard of Memphis Minnie? How about Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Lucille Hegamin, Julia Lee or Maxine Sullivan? Me neither. How about Bessie Smith, Etta James, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin, Big Momma Thornton, Dinah Washington or even Janis Joplin. The latter are a smattering of the ladies most frequently thought of or mentioned when we think of great female blues singers….the former, not so much.

Pat Blythe: CMW — Over and Out Part 2 – Until We Meet Again

I was overwhelmed with what CMW had to offer. So much to see and do, so many contacts to make, so much to learn and waaaay too many clubs to hit. Impossible in ten days but we all do our very best.

Roxanne Tellier: My Toronto – Part One

Cam Carpenter’s recent DBAWIS column on Toronto venues reminded me of how impressive the city’s music scene was back in the day. In the late 1970’s and early ‘80’s, the city was awash not only in great clubs, but in terrific musicians working six or even seven days a week, entertaining delighted, enthusiastic  crowds.

You couldn’t toss a rock without hitting a working musician back then. We were everywhere, making a decent living, doing what we loved to do. Demand for live music was high, and most of us tried our damndest to rise to the listener’s expectations.

Roxanne Tellier: Snow on the Rooftop, Fire in the Furnace

This must be a nightmare of a year for young weather forecasters. They probably get up in the morning, check a stone outside their front door to see if it’s wet, snowy or dry, and then fling a dart at a weather board, sobbing “Oh who cares what I say – it’s always wrong anyway. I’m never gonna finish paying off my tuition!”

GARY PIG GOLD: TWELVE YOU MAY HAVE MISSED IN 2012

Those Beach Boys and Rolling Stones weren’t the only septuagenarian rockers celebrating 50th (give or take) Anniversaries over the past twelve-or-so months, absolutely not. Just about each and every singer/songwriter/guitarist still standing – well, those with lucratively deep catalogues ripe and ready for recycling, that is – had multiple multi-media packages (and, in the Stones’ case, four-figure-plus concert tickets) competing for what remained of a loyal boomer’s nest egg throughout 2012.