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