135 f
seven band members. In addition, there are a small number of traditional tunes. The dance tunes are grouped by their time signatures and dance function so we get jigs, hornpipes, polkas, waltzes and schottisches, then 2/4 and 3/8 bourées and mazurkas. Unlike many cur- rent English tune books the tunes are not shackled by the need to cater for G/D diatonic instruments and tunes in a variety of keys are represented.
Legendary Country Blues
Guitar Solos Stefan Grossman Mel Bay Publications ISBN 978-078-669-846-2
The latest in Stefan Grossman’s series of blues guitar tutorial books, this is a great collection of both real-deal country blues (and St. Louis Blues, which isn’t that at all) by some of the masters of the genre – Lonnie Johnson, Gary Davis, Blind Blake, Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy and, good to see in this company, the undervalued Scrapper Blackwell. As always you get standard musical notation and TAB, which, whilst Grossman’s version is slightly unorthodox compared to the more common style (the notation for hammer-ons, bends and pull-offs, for example), is clear enough and easy to follow once you’ve worked it out – and it’s not hard. There aren’t any instructions for choice of finger to use, which is sensible: as always for anything but Western high-art music, it’s probably best left to use whatever finger feels right.
Of course Stefan knows his stuff inside
out, and it’s essential to follow his advice of listening to the original recordings intensely, as the phrasing in each is paramount and can- not be gleaned from music notation; the introductory hints about slowing the origi- nals down and using computer programs to do this and adjust pitch are very helpful, too, but there’s no substitute for having the piece become part of you before learning it. The intro paragraphs for each piece and photos helpfully give some context and a little histo- ry of each player, so it’s not just about the music but also about the musicians too and their sometimes almost unimaginable lives, all of which helps to get some dirt under the fingernails before you attempt to revive the country blues in your own sweet way. Nice Fred Carlson cover, too.
melbay.com Napoleon Winfield
More Scores Blowzabella ISBN 978-0-9549013-2-5
This year marks forty years of the existence of a band that has achieved a unique distinctive place in English roots music – Blowzabella. Though they now only have Jon Swayne left of the original members, the current line-up has played together for a dozen years.
They have always been basically a dance band equally at home with the English and Eurodance traditions, though with a singer of the quality of Jo Freya in their line-up it would be a sin if they did not perform songs as well.
All three aspects of their repertoire are represented in this book. "We compose the majority of our own music... we find that many of our tunes have become 'standards' in the British/European folk repertoire," says Jon in the introduction; he goes on to prove it by including the scores and/or arrange- ments for 60-odd tunes composed by the
At the end of the book are eight songs; they are all well-known but when you hear that they include items like All Things Are Quite Silent and Searching For Lambs you will realise that they are amongst England's finest. The final entries are the dance nota- tions for a number of their regular dances contributed by their caller and fiddler, Dave Shepherd.
All aspects of this self-published book reflect the very high standards that we have come to expect from Blowzabella.
blowzabella.co.uk Vic Smith There But For Fortune:
The Life Of Phil Ochs Michael Schumacher University of Min- nesota Press ISBN 978-1-5179-0354-1
This is a new edition of a book that was first published in 1996. It’s a comprehensive biog- raphy of Phil Ochs, a singer and songwriter whose greatest success and popularity was during the 1960s. He was a contemporary of Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez had a chart hit with her recording of There But For Fortune, but a drink-fuelled decline into depression in the early ‘70s led him to take his own life in 1975, at the age of 35.
He was a political activist and journalist as well as a songwriter, and may have been more suited to the first two than songwriting and performing (he was crippled by perfor- mance anxiety on occasion). I heard a lot of his music at the time, as several friends had his records, although I was never moved to buy one myself or to learn any of his songs. I saw him live once, at the Beaulieu Folk Festi- val, which I find happened on 6th August 1966 – the only fragment of lyric that has stayed with me was, curiously, “And my shoulders had to shrug/as I crawled beneath the rug/And retuned my piano.” This turns out to have been from a song called The Party, which featured on his third album Plea-
Phil Ochs
sures Of The Harbor – an over-engineered and over-produced work which apparently turned off a lot of his fans.
The book seems thoroughly researched, using a lot of background interviews with Ochs’ friends and family. Only a couple of statements gave me pause; one was that Ochs wrote the words of Crucifixion, one of his most popular and enduring songs, when he was on a short tour in the UK in 1965. Appar- ently he wrote it in the “two-hour drive” from Manchester to London. In a “lorry” driv- en by his tour manager. Hah! And, after his death, when his sister was perplexed as to what to do with his ashes, a friend allegedly brought them to Scotland (Ochs’ mother was from Edinburgh) and arranged a “modest ceremony” with the pipe band of the Queen’s Own Highlanders playing Flower of Scotland whilst the friend released the ashes “from a turret of Edinburgh Castle”. Aye, right.
Maggie Holland The Blue Sky Boys
Dick Spottswood University Press Of Michi- gan ISBN 978-1-4968- 1642-2 £21.49
A surprising and welcome biography of Bill and Earl Bolick, better known as the Blue Sky Boys, who were responsible for many won- derful duets for RCA Victor for whom they recorded from 1936-50. Why the book is sur- prising is that the brothers did not lead a par- ticularly fascinating life, moving from one radio station to another as they looked for work from sponsorship and live dates.
Spotswood does a fine job of weaving the story around the worlds of Bill Bolick (who died in 2008, his brother Earl having died in 1998) who was meticulous in chroni- cling his own career. The biography section makes up only just over a third of the book’s 300-plus pages, the bulk being given to a detailed and valuable analysis of their songs and sources; not just the songs they recorded but almost everything they sang on radio, thanks to carefully preserved logs of their broadcasts. Unlike many of the other brother duets who played a major part in the forma- tion of country music, the Bolicks were not prolific songwriters and so their repertoire was full of interesting material ranging from the old – Barbara Allen, Mary Of The Wild Moor, The Unquiet Grave – to the newer Dust On the Bible and Kentucky written by their peers. There was also a large selection of sacred material including Sunny Side Of Life, perhaps their best-known song and their sec- ond ever recording. At the time they were both just teenagers but their voices had the maturity of seasoned veterans.
A few times the brothers made a come- back, recording in a more modern style for Starday Records in 1963, who added electric instruments to their simple mandolin and guitar accompaniment, and remarkable albums for Capitol in 1965 and Rounder in 1975. They were also booked on a few blue- grass festivals, but in truth their music was too gentle (and not loud enough) to appeal to the banjo-loving fraternity. Spottswood hints at a level of animosity between the brothers, but when I spent a day with Bill Bol- ick the impression I had was that his brother was just not a very active participant in their music. Bill had to find the songs, teach Earl the chords and words and then talk him into performing. In their time the Blue Sky Boys created a wonderful legacy of duet singing, and were a major influence on those to fol- low, including the Louvins and the Everlys. Spottswood’s book is an illuminating guide, in more depth than anyone could have dreamt, to their lives and music.
press.umich.edu John Atkins
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
