'Early in the Morning' - C.W. Stoneking

"Well I'm never goin back, to that country again,
If I live for a long, long time,
Where my guitar played itself, leanin by the wall,
It give me a worried mind"

The first song by C.W. Stoneking I remember hearing was The Marching of the Drum, a song that was popular in Ann Arbor for ballroomin' (also elsewhere, but I'll keep to immediate experiences). I always assumed, based on the 'faded' quality of the recording that C.W. Stoneking was some obscure artist who recording in the 40s. As usual, my initial assumptions were incorrect. The ragged, weary voice and mournful plucking of the guitar that comes through on 'Early in the Morning' is actually that of a contemporary Australian. He varies how he records his music to get that almost stereo-typically vintage sound of his album Jungle Blue, of which 'Early in the Morning' belongs.

I enjoy 'Early in the Morning' for two reasons. The first, it is simply a unique song to dance to, and secondly, it falls under a 'crossover' category in my DJ brain. As a dancer, I appreciate this song for its overall simplicity with rhythmic subtlety. Instruments come in almost in a round and the song ends the same way, with first the vocals, percussion, bass, and finally the guitar fading into silence. In my own movement this inspires light traveling, moments of suspension, and if my partner is feeling it with me isolation exploration with the banjo line.

As a DJ, I appreciated the versatility this sound brings to the floor. The picking in the banjo keeps a delta/country feel to my ear pervasive throughout the song. However, the bass line is a tuba-possibly sousaphone-chugging underneath the voice and guitar. These elements combine to make a song that allows me to shift gears to go deeper in a delta/country blues feel, or Jazzier as the case may be. It's a song that is hard not to DJ too much, lest it become stale.

C.W. Stoneking himself, as said before, is Australian. He was first introduced to blues by rummaging through his father's music collection and listening to Living With The Blues, an early blues compilation album. In the biography section of his website, Stoneking writes:

“When I first heard it I thought it was kinda funny music”, he told a Dutch interviewer a few years ago, “because it was so deconstructed and not really adhering to any rules that I’d been told music [should] fit into. And the more I listened to it, I just liked it more and more.”

C.W. Stoneking received many ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Award nominations for Jungle Blues', eventually winning 'Best Blues and Roots Album' for Jungle Blues.

I was reminded of the Blues Dance World Podcast episode on the history of BluesSHOUT with Sara Cherny. She was musing on how blues dancing and the music has spread from the United States and been embraced the world over. Larger portions of the attendance of BluesSHOUT are made up of international dancers from European countries, Australia, and South Korea to name a few. Blues music and dance is appreciated the world over, and a young Australian really digging into that sound fits into the larger pattern.

I couldn't find any covers of this song, as it is an original composition.

Sources:
http://www.allmusic.com/song/early-in-the-mornin-mt0018683736
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._W._Stoneking
http://www.cwstoneking.com/
http://bluesdanceworld.com/2016/12/31/january-1st-2017-blues-dance-world-podcast-season-2-ep-09-a-decade-of-shout/

The Blues Collins Shim Sham

The Blues Collins Shim Sham

The swing dance world has a number of line dances/choreography, the most famous being the Shim Sham. The Shim Sham itself has a number of variations. A popular variation with Balboa dancers is the Dean Collins Shim Sham, created by (you guessed it) Dean Collins. This version differs from Frankie Manning's largely in aesthetic. The DC Shim Sham looks like a line dance a classic Balboa dancer would do. There are more foot fans, less movement in the hips, the body is treated more as a whole unit with no asymmetries.

For a performance in Chicago I learned Nick William's Dean Collins Shim Sham styling and interpretation. I felt like I could immediately connect with a partner in a close embrace Balboa connection and still do the footwork. I wondered what a more 'blues-y' version of this would look like. While learning this routine, there was a moment while we were practicing it slowly (about 135bpm) when sliding into the whole break I let my hip go, creating an angular line. I began to play with changing the lines and the grounding of the whole break. This inspired me to try to create an aesthetically blues version of this dance. This was in part and exercise to answer the question "At what point does this look like blues?". I reference this activity in my piece on movement cross-training.

I enlisted the help of some dancer friends and we hammered out a structure and refined months later. We had some initial challenges. The biggest one; the Shim Sham is a jazz dance with a different musical structure than a twelve bar blues. We set the dance to 'Come on Home' by Eddie Boyd. We ended up modifying our phrases to include another four bars so we were not splitting phrases with movement ideas. Another was the jazz steps happening on the 8. Some of the steps we kept, but for the Fishtails these happened on one. Aesthetically overall we considered grounding, angularity, asymmetries, Instead of stomp offs, for example, we did around the worlds (or four corners, I'm not sure of the nomenclature there). We Strut out to the end of the song. As a humorous homage, I dubbed it the Blues Collins Shim Sham.

I had a great deal of fun creating this. It was challenging at times, feeling like we were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, but once we settled on the music there were serendipitous vocal queues in the song that just felt right. For example, 'one more time' when we are on our last whole break into the let twists. Or 'walk with me' when we get into the half-breaks (modified with a hip hitch and drag). I think it is a useful vehicle for improvisation grounded in a shared movement idea. Simple enough to learn, simple enough to variate, but continually interesting.

Pictured in the video left to right:
Tim O'Neil
Ross Blythe
Grace Jones-Taylor
Olivia Yu
Laney Barhaugh

Come On Home - Eddie Boyd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRy3XuLMDTg

'I'm a Bad Luck Woman' - Memphis Minnie

I'm a Bad Luck Woman - Memphis Minnie

I was working on a post about C.W. Stoneking (still in the works), but in researching his influences I saw he credited the music of Memphis Minnie as inspiration. My library, as it turns out, has been sadly lacking her music. A few hours of listening and purchasing later, I've addressed that problem. The limited sample I've listened to so far is her earlier work. Later, as blues became amplified in Chicago, she started playing with an electric guitar instead of an acoustic. She was one of the musicians who changed her sound as the technology and the times/tastes changed.

I like her song "I'm a Bad Luck Woman" for it's energy. It has an infectious groove (and mostly because I've been practicing a lot of Struttin' recently I want to Strut to this song). The lyrics I found pretty humorous, sort of tongue and cheek about a lack of success in a relationship. Though I do not know who her accompaniment is here, I think it is her playing with one other musician to help create the driving beat.

About the artist herself, Memphis Minnie was born Lizzie Douglass in 1897. Her recording career spanned the 1920s to 50s, recording for labels Decca, Vocalion, Okeh, Bluebird, and Columbia Records. She recording over 200 sides during that time.

She ended up in Chicago in the 1930s. She and Big Bill Broonzy had a cuttin' contest. Broonzy is often cited as a one of the key figures in 20th century blues music. Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy each played a couple of their songs, and at the end she was judged to be the winner. She and Broonzy became friends and would often play together locally and also tour.

She would be in and out of Chicago, living alternatively in Indianapolis and Detroit in the 40s, and returning to Chicago in the 50s. As mentioned in the beginning, she started playing electric guitar in the early 40s. She would play at Chicago's 708 club, often joined by Big Bill Broonzy, Snooky Pryor, and/or Sunnyland Slim.

She would move to Mississippi in the 50s, as demand for her music began to decrease. She played for Big Bill Broonzy's funeral, was active in the local radio stations, and encouraging women to pursue blues music. She died in 1973 after suffering a stroke. Bonnie Raitt would later provide a headstone for Memphis Minnie, in 1996.

I think it's telling that a website devoted to her history poses the question:

Why has this musician, with her enormous body of recordings, who was well-loved by the Black blues audiences of the ’30s and ’40s been comparatively ignored by later, whiter audiences? Perhaps it’s because Memphis Minnie doesn’t fit the myth of the young, tragic, haunted blues man and she is too complex of a character to be easily marketed. She shaped a life very different from the limited possibilities offered to the women of her time. She lived a long life, was at her best in middle age, and would spit tobacco wearing a chiffon ball gown.

More fun than reading my synopsis, Del Rey wrote a song called 'Memphis Minnie' that catalogues Minnie's life. It is definitely worth a listen.
Memphis Minnie - Del Rey

Other Version:
I'm a Bad Luck Woman - Emiliana Torrini

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Minnie
http://memphisminnie.com/
http://www.mtzionmemorialfund.org/p/memphis-minnie.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bill_Broonzy

Everybody's Got To Change Sometimes - Barrelhouse Chuck

"Sooner or later
We all goin' down
in that lonesome ground"

Barrelhouse Chuck died on December 12th, 2016. I wanted to highlight one of my favorite songs he did as a way to acknowledge the enjoyment his music brought. It seemed appropriate that my favorite song by Barrelhouse Chuck (born Charles Goering) has the line about going down into the ground.  I always loved the force of this song, the power behind the percussive piano hits, the voice that carried throughout. The song itself is a cover, possibly of Sleepy John Estes' 1938 song of the same name (he is listed as the artist on the track information). I found another version by Taj Mahal (both versions are linked below). I enjoy the version Barrelhouse Chuck wrote because he drops the tempo, pulls in more instruments, and the piano is front and center. It's an emotionally full song that doesn't let up until the final chords ring out and the band goes silent.

The first time I met Barrelhouse Chuck was at the Winter Blues Intensive in 2015. There was a panel discussion about blues music: past, present, and future. Barrelhouse Chuck tottered in (I found out later he was fighting cancer) to sit along side Katherine Davis and Mud Morganfield. They talked openly and candidly about their careers, how they got to be blues musicians, and what they thought the future of the genre looked like. After the panel the three of them played and sang a few songs for us, and Barrelhouse Chuck came alive. Whatever hesitancy he had walking vanished when he played with evident and infectious joy.

And he was like that in person. I bought one of his CDs at the panel for him to sign and shared that my favorite song off one of his early albums was "Everybody's Got to Change Sometimes", though I didn't remember the title and could only sing the refrain back to him. He knew it immediately, his face lighting up, and he finished the next verse. "Oh, that's off my first album!" he said excitedly.

In the panel he was a good storyteller, too. He talked about following Muddy Waters around Florida, listening to his music, and eventually opening for him as well. He covered a Muddy song at one show. Afterwards, Muddy came backstage demanding to know who the piano player was. Nervous, Barrelhouse Chuck owned up. Muddy smiled and said, "you play my shit good".

Before that point, he learned to play blues piano from Sunnyland Slim, and eventually the artists Pinetop Perkins, Blind John Davis, Detroit Junior and Little Brother Montgomery. Barrelhouse was always quick to point out who he had learned from, who his influences were. We were fortunate in Chicago to have him play for Bluetopia on a couple of occasions, or get to see him Wednesday nights at Barrelhouse Flat.

Barrelhouse Chuck maintained a presence in the Chicago music scene in addition to tours and other projects. In February 2008, he assisted in recording the soundtrack for the film Cadillac Records. He had numerous appearances at the Chicago Blues Festival. In 2012 he played at the "Howlin' for Hubert" concert at the Apollo Theater. Some accolades included nominations for a Blues Music Award in the Pinetop Perkins Piano Player Category, and his 2014 album 'Drinking from Town to Town' received a nomination for Traditional Blues Album of the Year.

Other versions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duZdbO7v40g - Taj Mahal (Latin blues)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg9a71tQdMI - Sleepy John Estes (acoustic) - possibly Original
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE_ublgroXo - Eric Clapton

Sources:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/reich/ct-barrelhouse-chuck-obit-ent-1214-20161213-column.html
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/barrelhousechuck8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrelhouse_Chuck
http://www.allmusic.com/album/salute-to-sunnyland-slim-mw0000242533

'Baby Doll' - Lavern Baker

I first heard this song to an instructor demo that Julie Brown and Shawn Hershey gave at Baltimore Blues. It quickly became my practice partner and my favorite song to dance to; one we would often end the practice session with.

The song itself I enjoy because of the brassy introduction and continued horns throughout. The textures change throughout the recording as well: quieter sections set the stage for her voices to pick up the lyrical story, muted trumpets punctuate the ends of phrases, and amid the driving feel of the song moments of stillness. Ultimately the song is also accessible. It's a song I like to use to introduce dancers to the jazzier side of blues movements and concepts.

It's also a cover off the album LaVern Baker Sings Bessie Smith released in 1958. I've included a link to Bessie Smith's original at the end of this post. It's interesting to compare the versions (setting aside the difference that 30 years of improvements in recording technology can make) for where the voices fall in the phrases, instrumentation, and what movements and ideas are supported.

Like many singers of the time Lavern Baker was a stage name for the woman born Delores Evans, in Chicago. In the mid to late 1940s she sang and recorded an album under the name 'Little Miss Sharecropper'. While recording for Okeh Records she changed her name to Bea Baker, and when she recorded with Todd Rhodes in 1952 she was billed under the familiar moniker of Lavern Baker. In 1953 she signed on to Atlantic Records and recorded 'Soul On Fire' (also one of my favorite songs she has done). She had a number 4 hit on the charts with 'Tweedle Dee' in 1954, which resulted in an attempted lawsuit against Georgia Gibbs who covered the song exactly and made it to number 1. This resulted in a suit to Congress to change the copyright laws. This is the third artist I've researched who has petitioned Congress with issues related to copyright law.

Baker had more success with Atlantic Records, with songs that reached into the top ten of the charts throughout the 50s and 60s. She later became the entertainment director of Marine Corps Staff NCO at a Phillipines naval base. She was recovering there from a bout of pneumonia after a USO tour in Vietnam. She ended up staying on as director for 22 years, returning to the United States after the base closed in 1988. Baker was among the first eight recipients of the Pioneer Award in 1990 from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and the second female artist to be inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame (the first being Aretha Franklin). She died in 1997 at the age of 67.

I tried to find additional covers of Baby Doll, but I could only find Lavern Baker's and Bessie Smith's original. If anyone has found other versions of this song I would love to check those out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0FX1l7jdfk - Lavern Baker - 'Baby Doll'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSSsPZG3UOc - Bessie Smith - 'Baby Doll'


Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaVern_Baker
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1109573

On Movement Cross-Training

Cross-training is largely beneficial both for social dancing and competition. Socially, I feel more aware as a lead and better able to respond. Competition-wise, I feel better prepared to take certain risks, more confidence in my ability to move, and regardless of tempo or duration dance without fatigue. This is not to say that anything goes. I want to draw these points this way because I think of cross-training as distinct from Fusion as a philosophy/dance. Cross-training gives rise to options, abilities, and inspirations that accomplish better blues idiom dancing.

In reading Steppin' on the Blues by Jacqui Malone, cross-fertilization is discussed in reference to music: "Many African American musicians developed their artistry by composing and playing in several different, but mutually enriching arenas , including back minstrel bands, military bands, dance bands, marching bands, and bands that performed in traveling shows and musical theater”[emphasis mine] (pg. 144). Further, "many jazz musicians merged their vernacular training with the education they received from women and men schooled in European music." Historically, there has been cross-training within the music, and I do not think it is a stretch to suggest, given the writer's emphasis on the closeness of music and movement (in the same section the emphasis of cross over between military drill groups and dancers) that a person wouldn't just do one dance or kind of dance, rather participate in a range of dances and movement styles. While dancers have the ability to move in a number of ways, that movement is expressed based on the music supports..  

I'm defining cross-training as training in other movement sets outside of a primary set of movements and/or aesthetic. Granted, this is pretty general, so I turned to Wikipedia, which defines cross training as 'athletic training in sports other than the athlete's usual sport. The goal is improving overall performance. It takes advantage of the particular effectiveness of one training method to negate the shortcomings of another.' Dictionary.com offers a similar definition, though with the caveat of 'to learn different, usually related, tasks, skills, jobs, etc.'

In our modern blues scene many of our leaders, teachers, and organizers have multiple dance backgrounds while still being grounded in blues idiom movement. Looking at the BluesSHOUT 2016 All-Star JnJ in particular, most of the finalists have backgrounds or experience in addition to the modern iteration of blues dances. Our competition formats are interesting in that dancers are expected to know and adapt their movement to the genre of blues that is being played (see competitions like Nocturne’s 2016 Challenge Strictly and Snowbound Blues’ All Star Strictly).

I'll divide this into two major themes: cross-training as ability and cross-training as inspiration. I think of these ideas as two broader categories that have intersections, but I will provide few examples for each from my own and other’s experiences.

Cross-training as ability (CTaA)

CTaA I think of as getting access to strength, stamina, or movement I wasn't capable of doing before, mostly coming from non-dance activities like weight lifting, running, yoga, martial arts, etc. This might be in terms of flexibility, ability to dance for longer periods of time, or in my experience comfort with weight sharing. An aspect of the personal and group training I have done at my gym is strength training. We don't skip leg day. I've found that the number of people I can do various forms of weight sharing movements with has increased, more comfort and security in lunges, basing, and other kinds of supported forms. This kind of cross-training ultimately makes me feel like I can keep up or simply be more physically present, both in social dancing and competition.

Another, less physical, example of CTaA would be musical training. Do you have an ear for what the rhythms are likely to do? Laura Chieko, for example, has an ear for clarinet tonality as well as a marching band background. She cites this as her first movement style. Marching band, for those who may be less familiar, is basically about being on beat and keeping up with the tempo of the music.

Cross-training as Inspiration (CTaI)

CTaI I think of as pulling ideas from other dance styles. This could come in two models: the surprise 'hey this thing my body knows how to do works here' or the calculated 'I wonder if I can make this fit here'. Damon Stone gave a talk on the history of Struttin' and Lonestar Strut 2016 in Austin, TX and made a comment about a dance changing naturally over time versus specifically trying to change the dance from the inside.

One example of the 'surprise' idea for me is balboa footwork in Struttin'. This can be tricky, because struttin' has a particular aesthetic, the drop and roll through the hips, whereas balboa is more upright, moving as a unit without the isolation of the hips or torso. One idea I have pulled naturally into my blues movement from balboa is moving through the entire foot, rolling from the ball to the heel or side to side. Certain triple step ideas can be modified as well. These ideas make sense with a certain kind of music. Since these things have sprung up into my dancing I can reflect on how the movements appear within aesthetic and make modifications. These aren't tactical decisions when they happen the first time, but generally happy accidents that can be refined. Early incorporation of Argentine Tango ochos and similar movements into our shared vocabulary might also fall under this framework.

An example of the calculated approach is an idea to reimagine the Dean Collins Shim Sham in the blues aesthetic, humorously dubbed the Blues Collins Shim Sham. A group of us were exploring different choreography ideas and I happened to be learning a Balboa routine at the time which involved learning the whole Dean Collins Shim Sham. The whole break at slow tempos kept inspiring me as I collected under my left foot to drop further into the ground, breaking lines and engaging my hip in a more bluesy kind of way. We came up with a modified take on the line dance thinking about how grounding, posture, and musical structure (12 bar phrases versus 8) impacted how the dance. That was a very targeted and calculated approach when drawing inspiration.

Stepping outside of our normal movement routines can be a great way to get out of a dance rut. If nothing else, spending some gym time with a workout buddy or personal trainer can be a good way to correct movement technique and protect the all important knees. Try the fencing class, some running, yoga, or something else. Ultimately, our understanding of how we move can be informed by working another skill set and give us a different kind of ability and inspiration.

Boogie Chilluns Playhouse - Donnie Williams

Boogie Chilluns Playhouse by Donnie Williams
-Subtitled: when the internet doesn't have all the answers

I found this song off the album 'Fernwood Rhythm 'N' Blues From Memphis'. I originally bought this album to get a song by Willie Cobb (see this post on You Don't Love Me, Baby). I finally got around to sorting the rest of it, and I got to this song that I kept coming back to listen to. It has some similarities with Mississippi Hill Country blues, in that it vamps with sparse vocals. A harmonica and saxophone line bring in different layers, providing a driving melodic line that the vocals do not carry. It has a hypnotic groove punctuated by occasional stops, the electric guitar sustaining a note until the drums kick back in. It was a surprise find from this album, and one I wanted to write about.

The challenge? There is very little I could find about the artist, Donnie Williams. Most references to the song point to a John Lee Hooker song called 'Boogie Chillen' written in 1948. There are some rhythmic similarities, the vamp or repetition of the song. John Lee Hooker's version is just his voice, guitar, and foot stomps without any additional instrumentation. The stops are evident as well, with great opportunities for rhythmic play (from a dancer's perspective).

Wikipedia does have an article on the song itself. Like my initial reactions, "it resembles early North Mississippi Hill country blues rather than the boogie-woogie piano-derived style of the 1930s and 1940s". The chillen/chillun part of the name comes from 'is a phonetical approximation of Hooker's pronunciation of "children"'.

Donnie Williams' version, recorded in 1964, is almost certainly a cover of Hooker's. While the lyrics are absent or don't line up, the characteristic groove of the song is hard to dismiss. 'Boogie Chillen' has been extensively covered, ultimately leading to a suit against ZZ Top for their song 'La Grange', a suit that was settled out of court in 1997. Congress, in 1998, amended the Copyright Act protections for 'many songs recorded before 1978 from entering the public domain'.

As far as the album, Steve Leggett has a review on Allmusic.com, saying this history of the album stems from a garage recording studio set up by Slim Wallace on Fernwood Street in Memphis. Most of the songs apparently never saw reprinting after their initial release. Fernwood also had subsidiary studios, Pure Gold among them, and it was on the Pure Gold label that 'Boogie Chilluns Playhouse' was released.

I couldn't find anything more on Donnie Williams. As far as I could find he had two songs cut on the subsidiary of Fernwood. I really enjoy this recording, and it was a good exercise in research where the information isn't readily available. Hopefully someone will be able to find something more on this artist.

Sources:
http://www.allmusic.com/album/fernwood-rhythm-n-blues-from-memphis-mw0000040952
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie_Chillen'#cite_note-Koda-6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogie_Chillen'
http://www.45cat.com/label/pure-gold-us
http://www.45cat.com/record/nc912861us
http://www.rockabillyhall.com/fernwood.html