March 19th, 2011

Categories: Events - RNRB, The Blues Dude News

On March 11th, 2011, Robin's Nest Rhythm and Blues celebrated it's 1st Year Anniversary!!! And what a party it was...Tons of Great Musicians stopped in to show their support. From Bernard Purdie, Jay Gaunt, The Gas House Gorillas, Gary Wright and Steve Johnson, Big Frank Mirra, Dave Fields, Nikki Armstrong, and Sandy Rose, just to name a few.

**Plus, many of our Family Members!!!! We wanna say, "Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!!" Without your support, we never could have done it!**

The following night, “ Michael Hill's Blues Mob”, packed The Nest as The Party Continued...

Your Hostess---Robin....

The Highlight of the night was the Fantastic job done by Dean Shot. For the unending hard work and dedication, he's put into Robin's Nest!! Kudo's to Dean...You ARE FAMILY!!! If this is what the 1st Year was....well... I can't wait for what's in store for the 2nd....

August 17th, 2010

Categories: Blues Education, The Blues Dude News

The history of the harmonica, as we know it today, is an amazing tale which begins in the year 1821. It was then that sixteen-year-old Christian Friedrich Buschmann registered the first European patents for his new musical invention. His so called "aura" was a free-reed instrument consisting of a series of steel reeds arranged together horizontally in small channels. An awkward design, it offered only blow notes arranged chromatically.

Buschmann described his new instrument to his brother as "a new instrument that is truly remarkable. In its entirety it measures but four inches in diameter...but gives me twenty-one notes, and all the pianissimos and crescendos one could want without a keyboard, harmonies of six tones, and the ability to hold a note as long as one would wish to."

Harrison Harmonica's B Radical - http://www.harrisonharmonicas.com/

Initial designs by Buschmann were widely imitated, leading to many modifications and advancements. A Bohemian instrument maker named Richter may have made the most important advancements in early harmonica design. Around 1826, he developed a variation that consisted of ten holes and twenty reeds, with separate blow and draw reed plates mounted on either side of a cedar comb. Richter's tuning, utilizing a diatonic scale, became the standard configuration of what Europeans referred to as the Mundharmonika or mouth organ

In 1857, the history of the harmonica changed dramatically as German clock maker Matthias Hohner turned to manufacturing harmonicas full-time. With the help of his family and a hired workman, he was able to produce 650 instruments that year. Soon after, he added local workers and developed mass production techniques.

Young Hohner was an outstanding businessman and showed his marketing savvy by developing the charactoristic ornate cover plates bearing the producer's name.

Hohner USA

He introduced the harmonica to North America in 1862, a move which would propel the Hohner company to its status as world leader in harmonicas. By 1887, Hohner was producing more than one million harmonicas annually. Today, Hohner produces over 90 different models of harmonica, with a variety of styles and tunings which allows the player freedom of expression in all forms of music, from Classical and Jazz to Blues, Country and Rock, to music of the people worldwide.

But, who writes history?
If it was not for the Le Oskar Major Diatomic (C) sitting besides my computer
would we write about Harmonicas, today?
Or, is it because, we drew (and blew) our first breath on an Hohner and ........?

August 17th, 2010

Categories: Gallery, The Blues Dude News

Historically, the origins of most cigar box guitars performers are found in poverty... CBGs were made and played by Depression-era jug band members who specialized in making instruments out of anything. Follow in the footsteps of Blind Willie Johnson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Hound Dog Taylor, Big Bill Broonzy and many other old-time blues legends -- it has been documented that all of these legendary old-time folks rocked on a cigar box guitar at one time in their career!

We've all heard stories about famous bluesmen or country singers that started their careers on a simple homemade cigar box guitar. With a list of artists including Jimi Hendrix, Roy Clark and Carl Perkins, the cigar box guitar has been the precursor to many great careers and countless inspiring stories. It is a wonder that nobody has documented its magnificent history until now.

Cigars were extremely popular in the nineteenth century; many empty cigar boxes would be left around households. The 1800s were also a simpler time for Americans, when necessity was truly the mother of invention. Using a cigar box to create a guitar, fiddle, or banjo was an obvious choice for crafty souls.

The earliest know pic, of a cigar box fiddle

The earliest proof of a cigar box instrument is an etching of two Civil War soldiers at a campsite -- one is playing a cigar box fiddle. The artist, Edwin Forbes, was from France and worked as an official artist for the Union Army. The cigar box fiddle appears to sport an advanced viola-length neck attached to a "Figaro" cigar box. The etching is dated 1876.

In addition to the Civil War etching, plans for a cigar box banjo were published in the 1870s by Boy Scouts founder Daniel Carter Beard in St. Nicholas Magazine. The plans, entitled "How to Build an Uncle Enos Banjo" showed a step-by-step description for a playable 5-string fretless banjo made from a cigar box. The plans were eventually published in Beard's immensely popular American Boy's Handy Book.

By the 20th century, times were still lean for many Americans and cigars gained even more popularity. The "television of the day" for some families was the trusty Sears and Roebuck Catalog that encouraged people to dream of items they would love to own. It also provided a catalyst for more homemade creations.

The cigar box guitar has such an awesome pedigree. Blind Willie Johnson made a one-string when he was five – he quickly learned to play melodies up-and-down that lonely string. Later, Blind Willie would record the monumental “Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)” on a standard guitar. The song is a instrumental classic that has droning chords lying in the background while a haunting melody is played up-and-down the high-E string -- a technique he learned on his original one-string cigar box guitar!
http://www.daddy-mojo.com - is where I got this article. They also make some really cool cigar box guitars.

August 11th, 2010

Categories: Blues Education, The Blues Dude News

The juke joints are dying.

“We used to have big crowds, every Friday night especially, and check nights,” said James Alford, manager of Smitty’s Red Top Lounge in Clarksdale, Miss. “But [now] it’s not like that… The casinos have affected this place terribly.” Casinos, home to the gambling that Mississippi legalized six years ago, are also home to free music, free drinks and free food. To a juke joint business already fighting a slow death from more modern entertainment competition, the casinos are accelerating their demise. Perry Payton runs the Flowing Fountain Lounge in Greenville, Miss.: “Right now…I play a band here, I have to charge at least $15. Tyrone [Davis] played [at the casino] and it was free. I think Little Milton was $5. Lynn White was free.” Payton says his business has fallen off 65 percent to 70 percent since the arrival of riverboat gambling.

“As long as you play the machines and give away liquor, you can’t compete with that, you know.” Even the traditional juke-joint back room gambling has taken a back seat to glitzy corporate casinos. They’ve “stopped that business. Done stopped that,” says Chester Johnson of Dublin, Miss. “They don’t look for no crap games and card games now… Everybody be going [to the casinos] now.
“Yeah, that casino got everything they near about wanted. They got them games and whiskey too up there, you know, them drinks… They got the crowd now.” For most of this century, the Delta had as many country jukes and blues joints as it did churches. Casey George, a former professional gambler from Dublin, Miss., remembers a time when “just about every house you pass near abouts, everybody [having a party].”

The rural weekend establishments were usually run by a local bootlegger or by someone selling his product. They provided musical entertainment in homes or in abandoned sharecropper houses as a means of selling food and corn liquor for profit. Juke joints also contributed to the formation of one of this country’s most enduring and important cultural legacies: the blues. If the Mississippi Delta was the cultural crucible that birthed the blues, then the juke joint was the kiln where the musical fires burned brightest. For black Delta sharecroppers, isolated by a lack of transportation, they were a social outlet and a “pressure valve” to vent the week’s stress.

“Sometimes they’d just drive that tractor up there and jump off and go on in there,” Alford said, remembering his mother’s Charleston, Miss., joint. “[You’d] see a lot of tractors, mules and stuff. As long as you on the plantation, you could drive the tractor anywhere you want.” Irene Williams, “Mama ‘Rene” to locals, runs the Do Drop Inn in Shelby, Miss.: “The juke joints, to me, enable the peoples to go out and ventilate. When you work hard, you’re tense... Not able to pay bills, not able to buy the amount of groceries that you need to buy. Not able to do a lot of things that you want to do. And when you go to these places you’re able to ventilate and let off the stress, and you’re able to cope the next week with your problems better.” In the lawless days of early Delta culture, that blowing off steam would often get violent. Legendary slide guitarist Robert Nighthawk sang about that darker side of Delta night life in 1964: I come in home last night just about 4 o’clock, A little moonshine joint in the rear was just beginning to rock.I kind of eased up side to get a bett view, I saw my baby doing the monkey too.Yeah, gonna murder my babyIf she don’t stop cheatin’ and lyin’Well I’d rather be in the penitentiarThan to be worried out of my mind.

Stanley Roque (pronounced "Rock") inherited Roque's Blues Hall from his father, who opened it in 1938. Think about that: With the exception of a short period in the 1960s, Roque's Blues Hall has operated continuously and in the same building at the same location for almost 60 years. If another juke joint can match that record, please send me its name and address. Roque's Blues Hall 235 Carver Avenue Natchitoches, LA 71457

— “Going Down to Eli’s”
Chester Johnson remembers: “If you stayed there till about 10 o’clock and didn’t nothing happen, you better go on home. ’Cause from about 11 o’clock on there’s gonna be some shootin’ going on. Some guy’s gonna whoop his old lady about dancing with somebody.” Despite the occasional violence, and the obvious liquor law violations in dry Mississippi, juke operators and their patrons had little to fear from local law enforcement. “You paid that man to sell that whiskey,” Alford said. “They didn’t say it like that, but that’s all they were doing — paying the sheriff or the chief of police or whoever would let you sell.”

White plantation owners also discouraged police from interfering with the social lives of their tenants. “If they didn’t call the law, you better not catch the law out there,” Johnson said. “[They’d say] ‘Don’t come on the place if I didn’t send for ‘em.’” To survive, some juke joints are changing. Since few Delta club owners make enough from their businesses to live on — even in good times — casino competition has forced many into some creative marketing to lure their customers back, and to reel tourists in.

Alford says today’s crowds that take in the genuine live blues shows at Smitty’s Red Top Lounge aren’t from around Clarksdale. “I’ve had a bus load of Belgians, bus load of Scandinavians,’’ he said. “Most of the crowd I get now is tourists and people from out of town wanting to hear the blues.” Tyrone Jordan who manages the Windy City Blues Club in Shelby, Miss., is one of the many who have added “tease shows” to the lineup, where dancers stripped to the bare essentials, but never got fully nude. “They really work,’’ Jordan said. “At 2 [a.m.] we were still making eight dollars at the door per person. We’ve never done that in this club before.’’

After a recent show, though, a brawl broke out. It took the Shelby police and nearby Cleveland’s force to restore peace and order. Since then, Shelby has imposed a 1 a.m. curfew, hurting the late-night joints’ dwindling business even further. E.V. Wright, who runs the Black Castle in Ruleville, Miss., has moved on a step to avoid the scrutiny of small-town officials who frown on the sexy shows. “I used to have them, but I found out they don’t want you to do that,’’ Wright said. “I let that alone and I told [my son Everett] to start having rap shows. ’Cause a strip show will draw a lot of people, but a rap show will draw more people.”
As recently as 1994, Irene Williams was working to expand her weathered, shotgun shack Do Drop Inn in Shelby. Sunday night live radio broadcasts from the club were packing the house — acts like the Wesley Jefferson band would cook through funky blues and R&B, couples would dance the sensual slow drag and shouts and laughter would bounce off the walls. That was when Mama ‘Rene was selling enough plates of home-cooked food and tall-boy cans of Budweiser to make ends meet. Now the food is still good, the beer is still cold. But those crowds are gone — they’re filling the casinos in Robinsonville and Greenville.
She’s finally let the band go, after a year of paying them out of her pocket. And instead of her dream to retire, run the club on weekends and cook during the week, Williams is looking to sell the club she’s run since 1971, and focus on running her personal care home in nearby Wintonville — assisted living, Delta-style. “Unless something gives, I won’t be here very long,’’ she said. “I’m going to be in Wintonville, just dreaming about the used-to-be… You see the things that mean so much to you just fade away, you know. “You heard that song about it used to be? Yeah, I’ll be dreaming about that.”

©2000 Bill Steber

http://www.steberphoto.com/articles-1.htm

July 20th, 2010

Categories: The Blues Dude News

The second day we where open, was day 2 of "Hurricane March 2010", rain and wind continued to punish the entire northeast. Power was out across parts of NJ, NY, and Conn. Trees lay across roads everywhere. Massive flooding hit all three states. But we where gonna have an all day Jam. Imagine that? Well we did, and all kinds a folks showed up to show their support. There was Chuck Lambert, Rick Fink (Gas House Gorillas), Jerry Scaringe, Jay Gaunt, Arthur Neilson, Gary Wright, Sandy Mack, Eryn Shewell, Pat Baker (came all the way from Middletown NY), Alvin Harrison, Seth Okrend, Russell Alexander and many more.

Russel "The Hitman" Alexander - Jammin' 3/12/10

I gotta say, one more time - "This is THE GREATEST Community of Musicians IN THE WORLD!!" To risk life and limb - not to mention heirloom equipment, siblings, children, and relationships. All to be the 1st to show their support for a new venue. I stand very humble - to this day. And I continue to applaud you this, and every day - for your continued support. It's you participation in the "All Star Jam" every Wednesday, that makes it my FAVORITE night. Like I say - "Ya never know, who's gonna show." Could be you.

Thanks - The Bluesdude

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