Pat Blythe – Women of Blues Revisited – Part II

This piece first ran in DBAWIS just over two years ago.  It all started with the a series called Women in Song, based on a collection of CDs (made in Canada dontcha know) I had rediscovered when cleaning out “stuff”. One thing leads to another, a name is mentioned, I start to poke around, one person leads to another and the next thing you know I’m down, waaaay down the rabbit hole. There are an incalculable number of stories and in one fashion or another, they are all linked. If one had to create a “family tree” of music…..well…..it would be “yuge” and nigh on impossible to follow. Just in our little music community here in Toronto, everybody is “related” somehow. I’m about to embark on another project and meet with an individual who has been around the business so long he is full of stories…..I’m sensing another rabbit hole….

Pat Blythe: Women of Blues 2 – Ma Rainey – Mother of the Blues

I just finished watching the movie Bessie starring Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith and Mo’nique as Ma Rainey. Suggested watching by Roxanne, my friend and fellow writer, and an excellent recommendation it was. Thank you Rox…. the timing couldn’t be more perfect. A great segue for this column and also for the series. Ma and Bessie were two completely different women singing their own style of the blues together, and apart, one learning from the other and taking the blues to a whole new audience. I’ll start with the groundbreaker.

Frank Gutch Jr: The Pac Northwest— Redux….. In the Way of Explanation

When I wrote this past week’s column about the Pacific Northwest music scene (read it here), I left it feeling as if it wasn’t quite done.  You may have gotten an idea of what it was like but unless you lived it, you don’t.  I knew my little corner of the Willamette Valley and I am sure that Seattle people my age knew Seattle and Portland people knew Portland, but if you weren’t there it was a different planet.  I came to that realization while re-watching the documentary which highlighted the aforementioned column— the one laying out EJD Enterprises and the part Ed Daugherty played in the lives of so many musicians and teens back in the sixties’ Willamette Valley of Oregon.