Elmore James Has Nothing On This Failure
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Elmore James. Really what more need I say? His sound rests at the bottom of many a rock n roller's oeurvre, and a great many of them don't even know it. As a slide guitarist he certainly stood on the shoulders of giants, his style was heavily influenced by Son House, Willie McTell and Fred McDowell & others that wrote the vocabulary. Elmore was not the first to play electric slide....but he may have been the first to really explore the sonic possibilities of it. His wild articulate style has been oft imitated but....at his best he was untouchable.
Comments (14)
amazin - have albums and CDs and this is a 'New One' 4 me -
where's it from? - ( do'u have 'TV Blues' ...) - Screaming !
Listening for the first time just now to him sing this with his usual intense intensity is an intense thrill. It makes me remember the first time I heard of Elmore James. In the mid-1960's, Sing Out! magazine had an article about R&B by Tony "Little Son" Glover, which may have been the first piece ever written about amplified blues for a white American audience. I think Blues Unlimited magazine had been around slightly earlier in Great Britain, but unknown in the U.S. Anyway, Glover mentioned Elmore James as being rumored to actually be Robert Johnson under a different name, and it being hard to verify because James had unfortunately died recently. The next summer (1966) I got a job through my uncle, working as an engine room wiper on a Norwegian freighter going from Vancouver to Hamburg, and ended up in London where I came across Blues Unlimited and the British LP The Best of Elmore James on the Sue label, a subsidiary of Island.
You might already have his "Stranger Blues" from 1962.
deadmandeadman, did your read somewhere that he was influenced by Blind Willie McTell and Mississippi Fred McDowell? That's interesting because McTell's style was a bit different, and he hardly ever played bottleneck style, and hung out in Georgia and the Carolinas, but he did record a lot in the late 1920's and the 1930's, so anything is possible. McDowell didn't record at all until Alan Lomax found him in 1959, and then his records were aimed at white people.
The great Elmore James. I actually found this compilation LP of some (I assume) earlier recordings that are all just him on acoustic guitar and sound a lot more Robert Johnson influenced. Of course I prefer the electric stuff of his, though.
I own a "best of" collection, but nothing on it features horns as much as this does. Nice.
He should have cut more tunes with horn players for sure - this almost heads into Louis Jordan/Calvin Boze territory in its arragement, with Elmore's slide less prominent than usual. think I might have heard this before, but not for a good few years.
Loved both of those cuts...Here's an acolyte cutting an Elmore tune..and one more from the king
Well, Johnny Winter is still alive, sort of...saw him in Asheville for Xmass celeb with Warren Haynes doing the above Stranger Blues........There are hardly any blues mogs here.....hmmmmmm
I have made a few blues posts, here are some..
Robert Ward
Blind Gary Davis
Dock Boggs
Sometimes folks post blues on Monday.
Cody...I read all of those at the time of their posting. I have long admired your eclectic tastes. (don't get too big-headed, lol. to say that a MOGger has eclectic tastes is to say water is wet.) LOL
I will check them out........thanks
Thank you DMDM..my head is small, very small. It's all full of music though..this does detract from my social skills unfortunetely. All I'm able to do is point DSun to my posts, but DSun should also look amongst the archives of DMDM, Spike, Mousetrap media, and yocothan (i know that spelling is wrong) for some serious blues coverage.
Oh, I would go ape shit, as The Mog Father would say, to go thru Spike's archives & Yours & MousetrapMedia & Willard's & so many others.
It ain't the blues but I could get lost forever the Musikfriend's library & nevr come up for air.
Musikfriend is a world champion poster..very consistent and volume,volume,volume..1993 posts. Mind boggling.
http://mog.com/musikfriend
http://mog.com/yotochan
http://mog.com/mousetrap