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Moor Mother and Billy Woods: The Blues Remembers Everything The Country Forgot
Song of the Day: Dark, soulful vocals, field recordings, great hip-hop and trip-hop, jazz and a brilliant title, this powerful and profound racial history number by the American poet, musician, and activist from Philadelphia, comes from the 2020 album BRASS, with additional instrumentation by Sons of Kemet
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The Groundhogs
Song of the Day: Deliberately one day after the traditional date of Groundhog Day, life and music repeats itself with two songs by the British 60s band were inspired the great American bluesman and one of his numbers
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Lead Belly
Song of the Day: Also known as In The Pines, and Black Girl, today we move onto another traditional song variously interpreted, dark and brooding, haunting in its melody, and simmering with suspicion and jealousy
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Son House - in many ways the true daddy of the blues
Song of the Day: On the same day as we publish playlists of songs about authenticity, continuing in our blues thread, none can match that musical description more fully than the original or all origins who influenced all after him
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Bo Carter (1893-1964)
Song of the Day: The dirty blues historical exploration continues, with an emphasis on food innuendo, with the Mississippi singer also born Armenter Chatmon (1893-1964)
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Blind Boy Fuller
Song of the Day: After Lucille Bogan screaming with laughter at the dirtiest of lyrics, let's move on to only slightly more subtle material from the voice of the Piedmont blues singer from Wadsboro, North Carolina, who who also had a clever line in ragtime
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Taking 'dirty' blues to a whole new level: Lucille Bogan 1897-1948
Song of the Day: After Clara Smith, more so-called dirty blues from the 1920s, with a fabulously filthy number and also a then-taboo lesbian song from the singer born as Lucille Anderson, but had two performing names
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Clara Smith
Song of the Day: After yesterday's sprinkling of tragic and dirty songs by Bessie Smith, let's get a little filthier courtesy of the so-called Queen of the Moaners from South Carolina who actually had a chirpy, perky, high voice
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Bessie Smith, carrying more than weight on her famous shoulders
Song of the Day: After a series of early bluesmen, it's time to sprinkle some attention on the first true star of of the blues crossing into jazz, who not only mixed a little dirt into her powerful voice, but also into her lyrics
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Blind Willie McTell (1898-1959)
Song of the Day: Today's deep-south exploration goes to the Piedmont blues style of the man born in Thomson, Georgia, whose ragtime-like picking style and voice is so clearly a huge influence on Bob Dylan, Jack White and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant
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Mississippi John Hurt (1992-1966)
Song of the Day: Pictured with Skip James on yesterday's Skip James post, his friend and contemporary Hurt was a blues country singer-songwriter known for his distinctively intricate fingerpicking style
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Skip James (1902 - 1969)
Song of the Day: Following Rev. Gary Davis, let's turn to the Delta bluesman from Bentonia, Mississippi, who was not only influential in his playing, but had a distinctive, almost ghostly voice that captures the fearful fragility of this Depression-era song
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Reverend Gary Davis (1896-1972)
Song of the Day: Moving from Blind Willie Johnson and his bottleneck guitar style, the finger-picking pioneer from Laurens, South Carolina who does a classic and clever talking version of this traditional number
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Blind Willie Johnson (1897-1945)
Song of the Day: Following Solomon Burke and The Blind Boys of Alabama, let's take it way back to the great blues and gospel singer and bottleneck guitarist who was raised in Marlin, Texas
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Song of the Day: Following a series of gospel sings, let's move into a mixture of blues, soul and an even wider theme with song that brought this star back into the public eye in 2002, backed by The Blind Boys of Alabama
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Sister Rosetta Tharpe, singing and guitar-playing superstar, in action at Chorlton station in 1964
Song of the Day: After the great Mahalia Jackson, another superstar who could not only sing, but whose guitar playing was a major influence on Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, and therefore everybody since them
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Tinariwen
Song of the Day: After Ali Farka Touré's African-origin-blues crossover, another fork the musical track, from those Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert in northern Mali, from their 2014 album Emmaar
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Canned Heat
Song of the Day: Leaping back out of Springsteen's Pink Cadillac, we continue our road journey with two 1968 hits by the Los Angeles blues band – a cover of a cover a cover – and also go back down the dusty track to see where it all came from
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The Spencer Davis Group, featuring Stevie Winwood
Song of the Day: After yesterday's Helen Reddy track, let's compare that brave feminist anthem to a similar-era powerful man cry, performed here with Hammond-heavy brilliance by Stevie Winwood and co from 1967
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Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet – musician, artist, visionary.
Song of the Day: With the recent passing of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and all the songs, tributes and stories that have followed, it now seems only appropriate to follow up with music Smith loved by one of his major influences
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