For over fifty years, Mavis Staples has been a national treasure, working her vocal magic on the highways and byways of gospel, folk and soul music. With both her family group, the Staple Singers, and as a solo artist in her own right she has helped to define much of what is righteous and soulful in American music. In the early 1960s, the Staple Singers began to work with Dr. Martin Luther King singing in support of the Civil Rights movement.

With We'll Never Turn Back, Mavis Staples has come full circle, singing songs that were seminal to a movement and time that helped form her as an artist. Alongside songs that were inextricably part of the Civil Rights movement, many of them associated with the Freedom Singers, Mavis co-wrote the title track with producer and guitarist extraordinaire Ry Cooder, sings a Cooder original, "I'll Be Rested," and opens the CD with a cover of bluesman J.B. Lenoir's "Down in Mississippi," connecting the disc to her own roots down South.

We'll Never Turn Back may have started off as an homage to a period in which everyday citizens exhibited incredible bravery and, in the process, wrought incredible changes to American society. It ended up being a deeply personal account of Mavis' life from childhood days in Mississippi, through the Civil Rights era and on up to her current anger and indignation over the fact that many Americans are still treated as second class citizens. The net result is perhaps her greatest life work and one of the most moving albums this writer has ever heard. If there is any justice, We'll Never Turn Back will inspire many of us to find bravery in our own hearts, conquer the rampant apathy that blankets our society and take action to right the wrongs in our present day society."

1. "Down In Mississippi" (JB Lenoir)
2. "Eyes On The Prize" (Traditional)
3. "We Shall Not Be Moved" (Traditional)
4. "In The Mississippi River" (Marshall Jones)
5. "On My Way" (Traditional)
6. "This Little Light" (Traditional w/ lyrics & arr. by Ry Cooder)
7. "99 And A Half" (Traditional w/ lyrics & arr. by Ry Cooder)
8. "My Own Eyes" (Mavis Staples, Ry Cooder)
9. "Turn Me Around" (Traditional)
10. "We'll Never Turn Back" (Bertha Gober)
11. "I'll Be Rested" (Ry Cooder)
12. "Jesus Is On The Main Line" (Traditional)

Posted by Joski at 3:11 PM | 1 comments  
Labels: Mavis Staples

What can we say ?

Reverend Gary Davis was a towering figure in at least two realms. As a finger-style guitarist he developed a complex yet swinging approach to picking that has influenced generations of players, including Jerry Garcia, Ry Cooder, Dave Van Ronk, Jorma Kaukonen and Stefan Grossman.

And as a composer of religious and secular music he created a substantial body of work that has been recorded by, among others, Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Peter Paul & Mary and the Grateful Dead, not to mention Davis's own releases.

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The Mississippi Sheiks were the most popular blues artists of the 30s. Their repertoire drew upon all facets of black and white rural music: hard-edged blues, pop music, hokum, white country and traditional songs. Their rendition of "Sitting on Top of the World" has become an enduring standard.

The Sheiks were a blues-playing string band of the 1930s. Their story begins with the Chatmon family, who figure so importantly in the history of the Delta blues. The Chatmons lived in the hills near Bolton and Jackson, Mississippi, just outside of the Delta. Henderson Chatmon, the family patriarch fathered numerous children by his
first wife. As an older man, he remarried and started another family of 11 children,most of whom were deeply involved in music.

The band was named after the Rudolf Valentino movie, 'The Sheik,' which came out in 1921. They may have started using that name by the middle 1920s, but they did not record until 1930. The core of the Mississippi Sheiks was Lonnie (on fiddle) and friend Walter Vinson (on guitar). Ironically, little is known of blues fiddler Lonnie Chatmon (1888-1942), who barely appears in standard references. He and Laurie were twins.

Between 1930 and 1935, the Sheiks toured throughout the South, as well as making it to Chicago and New York. They apparently played Chicago quite a bit, staying with Tampa Red and gigging at the Flamingo club. The Sheiks recorded about 70-80 sides for OKeh, Paramount, and Bluebird. Many of these were filled with double entendres, such as their song, "Bed Spring Poker." Their biggest hit was 'Sitting on Top of the World'(1930) which Howlin' Wolf later reworked. Eventually, the tune would also be covered by Cream, Bob Wills, Bob Dylan, Bill Monroe, Frank Sinatra, the Grateful Dead, and Harry Belafonte. "Stop and Listen Blues" (taken from Tommy Johnson's "Big Road Blues") also was a minor hit. They also played behind Texas Alexander on some of his tracks. Their records were bought by both whites and blacks.

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Labels: Mississippi Sheiks

Born January 25, 1904, in Ripley, Tennessee, Sleepy John Adam Estes was one of a sharecropping family of ten. His father Daniel was a guitarist, and this influenced his son to play. Young Estes was blinded in his right eye from a baseball accident at the age of six, limiting further athletic endeavors. His interest in music prompted him to build crude guitars from cigar boxes, which he played at local house parties as a child. His nickname "Sleepy" stemmed from a chronic blood pressure disorder that gave him fits of narcolepsy.

When the Victor recording company sent a field recording unit to Memphis in September 1929, Estes recorded several sides backed by the Three J's, with Jones playing piano instead of the jug. Other acts to record for Victor on this trip included the Memphis Jug Band, Frank Stokes, and Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Victor deemed the four songs Estes recorded during these sessions worthy of release. His stature as a Memphis bluesman was assured when he was invited to record again for Victor in May 1930. This session yielded the uptempo "Milk Cow Blues," a tune Robert Johnson would later record as "Milkcow Calf Blues.

In "Milk Cow Blues," Estes's clear, warbling vocals are propelled by his insistent guitar strumming. Jones pounds his piano in double time while Rachell's mandolin trills echo the vocals.

Pursuing their musical careers, Estes and Nixon moved to Chicago in 1931 where they played parties and the streets. Arkansas bluesman Big Bill Broonzy recalled in his memoirs that in 1933, Estes judged a guitar contest that Broonzy lost to Memphis Minnie.

The Decca label brought Estes to New York City to record in 1937 and again in 1938.

Estes returned to sharecropping in Brownsville in 1941.In 1948, he and Nixon recorded again for the Ora Nelle label but the work went unreleased. Estes went completely blind in 1950 and elected to try his hand at recording again.

Estes was rediscovered in 1962 during the blues revival that revived the careers of Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, and Skip James. He cut several albums for Delmark and returned to touring with Hammie Nixon before health problems confined him to Brownsville.

Sleepy John Estes died June 5, 1977, and is buried at Durhamville Baptist Church in Durhamville, Tennessee.

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There are several gospel standards that use a train analogy for the pathway to Heaven: we're going home on the morning train... this train is bound for glory... the little black train is coming so you'd better get your house in order... etc.
Along those lines, Rev. Gary Davis wants you to meet him at the station:


Reverend Gary Davis also Blind Gary Davis (April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972) was an African American blues and gospel singer as well as a renowned guitarist. His unique finger-picking style was influential on many subsequent artists and his students in New York City included Stefan Grossman, Roy Book Binder, Woody Mann, and Ernie Hawkins. His musical influence, extends from the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and Jorma Kaukonen to Keb Mo, Olabelle and Resurrection Band.

Despite the fact that Davis was born partially sightless and grew completely blind by the time he was an adult, he self-taught himself the guitar.
Davis played on the streets and side corners of Harlem for twenty years, and during that time was drawn to the sounds of gospel, jazz, marches, and ragtime music.
In 1937 he became an ordained minister and refused to pursue his blues career after that. He moved to New York City in the early '40's and recorded seven songs in 1956 that redefined him in the 'folk revival movement'

http://lix.in/9fcc74

peace !

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Robert Timothy Wilkins was a seminal blues guitarist and vocalist. Of African American and Cherokee descent, he was born January 16, 1896, in Hernando, Mississippi, 21 miles from Memphis, Tennessee. He died May 26, 1987.

Robert Wilkins worked in Memphis during the Roaring Twenties, sharing billing with Furry Lewis, Memphis Minnie (whom he claimed to have tutored), Son House, and other musicians for local shows. He also organized a jug band to capitalize on the "jug band craze" then in vogue; like Sleepy John Estes's Three J's Jug Band or Frank Stokes's participation in fiddler Will Batt's string band, this was a necessity for obtaining well-paying gigs.

Though never attaining success comparable to the Memphis Jug Band, Wilkins reinforced his local popularity with a 1927 appearance on a Memphis radio station, a distinction shared by few of his peers. Like Estes and Stokes (and unlike Gus Cannon of Cannon's Jug Stompers) he recorded alone or with a single accompanist. His first sessions for the Victor label in 1928 yielded the droning, one-chord "Rolling Stone," whose title, if not structure, later inspired Muddy Waters. In September 1929, Wilkins recorded for the Brunswick label in Memphis's Peabody Hotel, where he waxed the notable "That's No Way To Get Along," a song he would record later as "The Prodigal Son." In contrast to his previous recordings, this session and a follow-up in February 1930 demonstrated a pronounced diversity of song styles, tunings, and time signatures.


His best known songs are "That's No Way To Get Along" (to which he - an ordained minister since the 1930s - had changed the 'unholy' words to a biblical theme and since titled it "The Prodigal Son", covered under that title by The Rolling Stones), "Rolling Stone" (covered by Muddy Waters and which inspired The Rolling Stones very name), and "Old Jim Canan's". Led Zeppelin also wrote "Poor Tom" which was heavily influenced by "That's No Way To Get Along"

He became an elder of the Church of God in Christ in the 1930s and began playing gospel music with a blues feel.

During the 1960s blues revival the "Reverend" Robert Wilkins was "rediscovered" by blues enthusiasts, making appearances at folk festivals and recording his gospel blues for a new audience. His distinction was his versatility; he could play ragtime, blues, minstrel songs, and gospel with equal facility.

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