This Week In The Blues: March 30 - April 05, 2025

HEY BLUES FANS - Here's the latest episode of "This Week In The Blues" for the week of March 30 - April 05, 2025.

Some of the highlights include blues guitar player Eric Clapton, the ORIGINAL "Sonny Boy Williamson", and the day that Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar live on stage for the first time. 

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:

Eric Clapton Unplugged - "Walkin Blues" - https://youtu.be/2DKXi9lfYhE?si=B4lU5q6aVlazpxAI

John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson - "Shake the boogie" https://youtu.be/pFoaDuT82Kw?si=libmxo4BqDCdGkky

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: Mar 30 – Apr 05 2025

blues guitar player Eric Clapton was born on March 30, 1945! Clapton rocketed to fame in the 1960s as the guitarist for the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and Cream. Clapton eased into a solo career in 1970, but he was so hesitant to step to the front of the stage he adopted the pseudonym Derek & the Dominos for the album, Layla. After 1992’s "MTV Unplugged" reconnected him with the blues roots he had built his career upon, he continues to record blues inspired albums. The first was 1994's"From the Cradle", which became one of his most successful albums.

the ORIGINAL "Sonny Boy Williamson" was born on March 30, 1914. John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson was one of the most influential figures in blues history, a master harmonica player who not only brought the instrument onto equal footing with guitar and piano as a solo voice, but a singer, songwriter, and frontman who established a prototype for harmonica-led bands that’s been followed ever since, albeit with modernizing enhancements along the way. He died at the age of 34, at the top of his game from a violent beating that occurred during a strong-arm robbery on the South Side.

blues and soul singer and piano player Harold Burrage was born March 30, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois. Burrage did session work as a pianist in the 1950s and 1960s as well as recording under his own name. Burrage's backing bands included the likes of Otis Rush, Willie Dixon, Wayne Bennett, and Jody Williams, while Burrage supported Magic Sam, Charles Clark, and others as a pianist. Burrage's only national hit as singer was the 1965 Chicago soul song "Got to Find a Way", which reached number 31 on the US Billboard R&B chart. The following year Burrage died in Chicago at the age of 35, from heart failure.

Piedmont blues guitarist and singer Etta Baker was born on March 31, 1913. Picking up the guitar at the age of 3, she played guitar for 90 years. She’s influenced artists like Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. She was born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County, North Carolina, and was taught guitar by her father who was a longtime player of the Piedmont blues on several instruments. She played both the 6-string and the 12-string acoustic guitar and the five-string banjo. She was one of eight children, and all of her siblings played instruments.

West Coast blues guitarist Lowell Fulson born March 31, 1921 on a Choctaw reservation in Atoka, Oklahoma. After T-Bone Walker, he was the most important figure in West Coast blues in the 1940s and 1950s. At the age of eighteen, he moved to Ada, Oklahoma, and joined Alger "Texas" Alexander for a few months in 1940. He then moved to California, where he formed a band which soon included a young Ray Charles. In 1993 he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, as was his recording of "Reconsider Baby". In 1995 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included "Reconsider Baby" in their list "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".

On March 31 1967, Jimi Hendrix set fire to his guitar live on stage for the first time when he was appearing at The Astoria in London, England. It was the first night of a 24-date tour with The Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens and Engelbert Humperdink. I just like saying the name Engelbert Humperdink. ANYWAY The Fender Stratocaster burned on stage by Hendrix sold at a 2008 London auction of rock memorabilia for HALF A MILLION dollars. 

Blues singer Lucille Bogan was born April 1, 1897 probably in Birmingham, Alabama. She was among the first blues singers to be recorded. She also recorded under the pseudonym Bessie Jackson. Many of her songs were sexually explicit, and she was generally considered to have been a "dirty blues" musician. She first recorded vaudeville songs in New York in 1923 and later that year recorded "Pawn Shop Blues" in Atlanta, Georgia. She also recorded the original version of "Black Angel Blues", which was covered by B. B. King and many others.

Texas pianist Amos Milburn was born April 1, 1927 in Houston, one of thirteen children. In the decade after WWII, he bridged the gap between Blues and Rock & Roll, banging out uptempo boogie-woogie "jump blues" rhythms on piano. He was also the first to chart with "One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer".  By the age of five, he was playing tunes on the piano. He enlisted in the United States Navy when he was fifteen and earned thirteen battle stars in the Philippines. He returned to Houston and organized a sixteen-piece band playing in clubs in the city.

Here’s a little Chicago blues history for you. The Checkerboard Lounge was a blues club on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, established in 1972 by L.C. Thurman and Buddy Guy. In 1985, Buddy Guy left to start his own club called “Legends”. Thurman was a legend on the Chicago blues scene, keeping “the home of the blues” going during good times — like in 1981 when the Rolling Stones jammed there with Muddy Waters— and bad — when the club almost closed on numerous occasions.

New Orleans blues guitarist John Mooney was born April 3, 1955. He has developed a unique music style by combining Delta blues with the funky second line beat of New Orleans. He is especially known for his slide guitar work. Growing up in Rochester, New York, Mooney took to the guitar as a ten-year-old and quickly became obsessed with the instrument. He began his professional performing career at 13, at first playing many shows with Rochester area blues guitarist Joe Beard. By his mid-teens, Mooney had worked out a few Son House tunes on his guitar, using his slide.

Blues legend McKinley Morganfield, who you probably know as Muddy Waters, who was born April 4, 1913. He is arguably the most important blues musician in the post-war blues scene, and is often cited as the "father of modern Chicago blues". Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica, emulating the local blues artists Son House and Robert Johnson. He was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. 

Mississippi bluesman Robert Cage born on April 4, 1937 in New Orleans. He worked as a truck mechanic when not playing in juke joints, and later when his fame grew, played at larger US and international festivals. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Natchez and from there to Woodville, Mississippi, a small woodsy town forgotten by time, even by Mississippi standards. Robert’s father owned a grocery store and it was there, on the porch, where Robert heard Scott Dunbar play and sing, as well as another performer named Pig.

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 and talk about Texas blues man Mance Lipscomb and blues singer Shemekia Copeland – we’ll see you then!