This Week In The Blues: Nov 17 - Nov 23, 2024

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of Nov 17 - Nov 23, 2024.

Some of the highlights include Louisiana native and Cajun blues guitar maestro Tab Benoit, blues legend R.L. Burnside, and the Voodoo man himself, New Orleans own Dr. John.

We just covered some of the highlights here. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:
https://bigtrainblues.com
https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Photo credits (if known) and past episodes are posted on our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@BigTrainBlues

Here are links to a few of the artists or songs we've referenced in this week's episode:

Tab Benoit - "Night Train" Live At Telluride Blues & Brews Festival - https://youtu.be/G6zbOFZO24k?si=AEVYLPAqK44UlwV3

R.L. Burnside - "See My Jumper Hanging On the Line" - https://youtu.be/K_DOnKJ232M?si=XBrxcycxI7HZxIj9

Dr. John - "Such a Night" - https://youtu.be/SCRrXZP8b0I?si=0ZQrGhRcyEtwp4Wk

Join me every weekday from 12:15pm-12:45pm CT to watch a live stream on Facebook of the longest running blues radio show program. https://www.facebook.com/DeltaCulturalCenter


We’ll have a new episode next week – we’ll see you then!

ARE YOU A FAN OF BLUES HISTORY? US TOO!

If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to visit our website or follow our Facebook page:

https://bigtrainblues.com

https://www.facebook.com/BigTrainBlues

Transcript

 This Week In The Blues Nov 17 - Nov 23 2024

Louisiana native and Cajun blues guitar maestro Tab Benoit was born November 17, 1967! A guitar player since his teenage years, Benoit appeared at the Blues Box, a music club and cultural center in Baton Rouge run by guitarist Tabby Thomas. Playing guitar alongside Thomas, Raful Neal, Henry Gray, and other high-profile regulars at the club, Benoit learned the blues first-hand from a faculty of living blues legends. 

blues singer and guitarist L.F. "Jack" Owens was born in Nov 17 1904 in Bentonia, Mississippi. When he was a child, Owens learned to play the fife, fiddle, and piano, but his chosen instrument was the guitar. Owens did not seek to become a professional recording artist. He farmed, sold bootleg liquor, and ran a weekend juke joint for most of his life. Owens first record album was Goin' Up the Country in 1966.

guitarist, singer, record producer, and songwriter Mike Zito was born November 19, 1970 in St. Louis. He got his start in music by singing at local events at a young age, and as a teenager he picked up the guitar and began playing regularly around his hometown.  In 2008 he signed with Eclecto Groove Records and had his first release titled Today. The following year he releases Pearl River, and Zito was awarded Song of the Year at the 2010 Blues Music Awards for the title track off that album. 

Photo Credit Scott Lukes Photography

blues guitar player, Chris Cain, was born on November 19, 1955! Cain was something of a late bloomer, not cutting his first album until he was past 30 and releasing a breakthrough comeback effort when he was in his early sixties. But if it took the public a while to catch on to his music, he’d long had the respect of his peers, with hotshot guitarist Joe Bonamassa citing him as one of his favorite players. As a guitarist, Cain’s style shows the influence of B.B. King and Albert King, both of whom were friends and mentors

Duane Allman, the blues and rock guitarist, session musician, and founder and original leader of the Allman Brothers Band was born November 20, 1946. Allman went from musical unknown to one of rock’s most revered guitar virtuosos, only to die a legend, all in about 24 months. He barely had time to establish his legacy, much less his name. Allman is best remembered for his brief but influential tenure in the band and in particular for his expressive slide guitar playing and inventive improvisational skills. He died following a motorcycle crash on Oct 29, 1971, at the age of 24.

the Voodoo man himself, New Orleans own Dr. John was born November 20, 1941. Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. became "Dr. John" on stage and took the sounds and traditions of New Orleans blues, jazz, and R&B and twisted them into new forms. As time went by, he would later become one of the strongest proponents of the Crescent City’s musical heritage, celebrating the songs and artists that made that city great

R&B pianist, bandleader Lloyd Glenn was born November 21, 1909. He was a pioneer of the "West Coast" blues style. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Glenn played with various jazz bands in the Dallas and San Antonio areas. He moved to California in 1941, joining the Walter Johnson trio in 1944, and finding employment as a session musician and arranger. He accompanied T-Bone Walker on his 1947 hit "Call It Stormy Monday", and later the same year made his own first solo records, billed as Lloyd Glenn and His Joymakers.

Happy birthday to the King Biscuit Time blues radio show that first aired on November 21, 1941.  It’s still the longest-running daily American radio broadcast in history. The program is broadcast each weekday from Delta Cultural Center on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas. Join me and tune into the program every day 12:15 to 12:45 online when they stream the show straight from the studio on Facebook. The link is in the show notes.

On November 22, 1982, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble started recording their debut album "Texas Flood" which was released on June 13, 1983 by Epic Records. The album was named after a cover featured on the album, "Texas Flood", which was first recorded by blues singer Larry Davis in 1958. Texas Flood was recorded in the space of three days at Jackson Browne's personal recording studio in Los Angeles. Vaughan wrote six of the album's ten tracks.

Blues pianist, singer and whistler Whistlin' Alex Moore born November 22, 1899 in Dallas, Texas. He is best remembered for his recordings of "Across the Atlantic Ocean" and "Black Eyed Peas and Hog Jowls". Although his family did not own a piano, a young Moore learned the instrument by watching others. In 1915 he performed on Dallas radio station WWR and continued to play for tips at various social gathering places and juke joints in Dallas.

blues legend R.L. Burnside was born November 23, 1926. When I was helping with sound at one of his shows in Iowa, he once asked me "what's the food in the jail here like?". Burnside made his home in Holly Springs, Mississippi in the hill country above the Delta. He learned his music from his neighbor, Mississippi Fred McDowell. Up until the mid-’80s, Burnside was primarily a farmer and fisherman and it wasn’t until the 1990′s that he really began recording and touring. His music was a kind of raw, unadulterated blues with barebones electric guitar.

On November 23, 1936, Room 414 of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, Texas was the scene of a historic recording session by blues artist Robert Johnson. In the following three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections and recorded alternate takes for most of them. Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom", "Sweet Home Chicago", and "Cross Road Blues", which later became blues standards.

Well blues fans, we just covered some of the highlights here. If you want to know more about these artists or other things that happened this week in the blues, be sure to follow our social media pages or visit our website at Big Train Blues.com. We’ll have a new episode next week – we’ll see you then!