The Blues List

VANILLA FUDGE

You Keep Me Hangin' On


(OK I'm going to make 2 posts here before I post them on my IG page. I just ran across a little music trivia, started digging into it (and started digging it), and realized I wanted to write this stuff before I forget it!

The past two posts that I posted on the IG page, which are several years of posts after the Brandon Santini post above) involved the very first songs to ever use power chords---Howlin' Wolf's, How Many More Years, followed by James Cotton's, Cotton Crop Blues. You could say that power chords were first written into a Spanish Flamenco song, but they are meaningless as power chords without the electric guitar, an amp, and distortion, because that is what gives meaning to a power chord (a chord that uses only two notes--the root and the fifth, but that under distortion has the unique property of expanding the 3:2 ratio of the chord, to ocatves above and below, as opposed to a regular chord which under distortion just creates distorted sound of multiple frequencies). Many people credit Link Wray and his song, Rumble, as the start of the power chord, but it was actually Howlin Wolf, and then James Cotton. Without the Power Chord, there would be no heavy metal, no acid rock, no punk, or any other style of hard rock.

I wanted to do a post on Link Wray and his song Rumble next, but I have been too busy to do it---then I came across this trivia I referred to, so, I will let you guys have it first even though it is fitting after the three posts on power chords, which on this page will come later.)


This song is, of course, what we called Acid Rock. But you can certainly see the blues influence on it. Some might say it has an obvious R&B influence. But back in the early days of the blues, R&B and Blues were often lumped together under the same label, and even if you define them separately, you cannot deny that they are brother and sister at the least. But it is actually an R&B cover song---it was originally a Motown hit recorded by the Supremes.

But the reason I am posting this complete gem of a song, is that I want to take you back to the second half of the 1960's. Vanilla Fudge put this song out as their first single in 1967. It quickly climbed the charts. The band was formed by two rock musicians (Mark Stein and Time Bogert) who liked the organ-heavy sound of The Rascals. It was managed by Philip Basile, who was reputed to be a member of the Lucchese Crime Family, and operated several popular clubs in New York.

But listen to this song, and place yourself into the minds of the people who really loved this back in 1967 and '68. And then you hear they are coming to town to do a concert. 'Man! You've gotta go see them!' ...In fact, let's set it for a specific concert----December 26th, 1968 at the Denver Auditorium Arena.

And man, you are in for a big surprise (the subject of the next post)...

 

LED ZEPPELIN

As Long As I Have You


This is for all the Zep fans out there. And for many of you, chances are, you have probably never heard this song. I had intended to do a post on Led Zeppelin as they covered a lot of great blues songs. This song too is a cover of an R&B song, recorded by Garnett Mimms in 1964. It was, without a doubt, groundbreaking music and completely new, but it has been categorized as rock-blues. Many say it was the birth of Heavy Metal, but, as I have pointed out before, bands like Blue Cheer were already on the scene.

Now, lets go back to that December concert in Denver, 1968. You are all set to hear Vanilla Fudge. About 10 days before the show, the Denver Promoter Barry Fey gets a call from the agent saying, "Barry, I want to add an act to our show." Barry responded, "Ron, all the tickets are sold."

"You've got to do this for me Barry, this is a big, big act. Their name is Led Zeppelin." Fey turned the agent down. And then he called Barry back 10 minutes later saying, "Vanilla Fudge is going to give you $750 and if you give $750 of your own money, we still can put Led Zeppelin on the show." It took a little convincing but Fey finally gave in. This was Led Zeppelin's debut concert in the US, and it almost didn't happen because of Barry Fey and $750. No one had heard of Led Zeppelin, and Fey at first thought it was a joke. Fey recalled that he got up on the stage and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, give a warm Denver welcome to Led Zeppelin." There was a polite applause and as he said, "They started playing and it was incredible. It was an unbelievable show; people were gasping. That was a big day in Denver history."

The next day local radio stations were inundated with callers asking, 'who played at the Vanilla Fudge concert lastnight,' and requesting songs. Fey had been given an album in a white cover, and that is all the music anyone had. They opened their debut concert with this song, As Long As I Have You. This is an amazing rule-breaking piece of music, which gives snippets and clues to just about all future Led Zeppelin songs. To quote a brilliant description of it that someone posted on YouTube, "This is the kind of music that is dangerously good because it breaks all the rules about what music is supposed to be, and it just is what it is in a class all by itself! The rapid-fire careening time signatures, juxtaposed shifting key changes, have been smashed together head on and then torn apart in in abandon by Robert Plant's impossibly beat poet/operatic lullaby, wailing shamanistic voice and Jimmy's metamporphic guitar soaring, diving, and ripping through everything they can attack with this wall of sound. All four of them are creating sounds beyond any expectations of what music was until this moment... Even so, ALL the rule breaking in this piece works into creating all of its really weird effortless gestures of musical coordination, although it shouldn't. That's a triumphant musical accomplishment almost beyond comprehension. I don't know how they pulled this nearly haphazard but brilliant, tottering, storm within a storm of reverberating melodies punctuated with near cacophony into a writhing monument of cascading collisions of all kinds of compellingly tight but loose music." (@sharonrichardsweiser31)

This first tour set list included other blues hits, like, Train Kept A-Rollin, I Can't Quit You Baby, and, You Shook Me. Unfortunately, because Barry Fey did not want to book them, they held a grudge, and never returned to any town where he promoted---a great disappointment to all of us that lived in Denver! Ironically, Robert Plant later moved to the small mountain town of Nederland, with all its artists and the nearby world famous Nederland Recording Studio, up above Boulder, Colorado.

 

Thanks MVW for your extensive and interesting musical knowledge. Hope you don't mind, but my love of slide makes me put this next one in here. We don't hear this one much--if ever.

 

Not at all----Please add music freely!

I actually refer to that song in one of my posts---I don't think off hand I posted it here yet, but it should be in one of the posts coming fairly soon. It is in a post that refers to the original song by, if I remember correctly, Son House.

I had been planning to do a Led Zeppelin post and assumed it would be about one of the blues songs off of one of these first 3 albums. But then I ran across the story of their debut US concert last night. Many of us in Colorado were upset with Barry Fey all through the 70's for angering Zeppelin and thus not being able to have them come here again.

On a side note, I bought this album in Japan so I could listen to it there. They had the lyrics written in English with a Japanese translation on all the songs except for this one, which they wrote in as unintelligible. Everytime I would see that, I would laugh and think---How could they not understand the words?! LMAO

 

Correction----that is the song I referred to in the post of Samantha Fish playing Shake 'Em On Down!

 

JUST FOUND THIS ONE.

 

Those are really good songs----but there is one problem. I first came across Dumpster Grooves about a month or two ago with some dirty blues (blues songs that have a strong sexual connotation). It claimed to be a female blues singer I never heard of, so I did some research. She was completely made up. Dumpster Grooves creates some really good blues------but they are all fictional artists. (Google called Otis Lee Booker a possibly fictional artist). My sincere hope is that someone is writing this music, and I sure wish they would take credit for it and put it out in an authentic manner! Everything I have heard from them claims to be a rare artist from the 20's, 30's and 40's. In their early videos people spotted right away that they were too clean to be from that time frame. Apparently they fixed that as you notice in these ones they sound just like they came off of old LP's with the scratches and nicks that such old records have. But there is still something that seems modern in the recordings.

My fear is that these are generated by AI, and I did hear mention of that somewhere. Not sure if I read it from Dumpster Grooves themselves or if someone suggested that it was AI. But in a way, if AI can generate this good of blues, it confirms something that I have always felt----blues is probably one of the easiest forms of music to create, play, improvise, etc. I always felt like it just seemed to flow naturally if you got the chord patterns, and a feel for the blues scale. I used to sit at a keyboard, or a guitar and just play away, enjoying every bit of it. I also had a friend years ago, that claimed he never learned to play harmonica, but he could play the blues like nobody's business!

Anyway----they are still putting out damn good blues----I just with they would be authentic!

Thank you for posting them-----they are still great regardless!

 

Hey nice thread MVW!

 

MVW---I had a feeling that it was kind of odd to put up the blues songs with still shots of artists. This AI bullshit is , IMO, contaminating art everywhere. The sub title text on tv shows or news , etc, make the dumbest mistakes --so obvious that you know that no human has checked them.( Of course to describe tv as being artful --is a stretch.) Thanks for the info. Several TV and movie artists are upset at the complete fakery of a female that is completely generated by AI. Soon, I suppose, we won't know what or who we are watching or listening to.

 

Thank you! And damn! She is good!

I will definitely have to do a post on her!

 

Yeah, the first one I saw of the woman singing some dirty blues, had me searching for her---HOPING SHE WAS REAL! Then I quickly saw a second really good blues song, and I quickly saw what they were doing.

Seriously----I hope so much that there is actually a person behind these creations! Everything I heard is good. But...

The meaninglessness of AI created art and music is the complete nihilistic inauthentic simulacra that the French philosopher, Baudrillard, warned us about. There are critics who tried to say that he is no philosopher, but here we are heading right into a Baudrillardean nightmare!

 

Ah. A new word--simulacra.

 

IMO, it doesn't get much better than this!!!

 

JOE SATRIANI

S.M.F.


Joe Satriani has a very impressive guitar playing resume. He toured as guitarist with Deep Purple, was the guitarist for Mick Jagger on his solo tour, and was the guitarist for the super band, Chickenfoot with Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony of Van Halen, and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, just to name a few of his accomplishments.

He was playing football in school when he heard that Jimi Hendrix died. He told the coach he was quitting to play guitar.

He is known as a rock guitarist, but he plays the blues too.

S.M.F. is a great instrumental piece of blues. I would pair it with a fine Cabernet, or for something sweeter, a 1990 Port. Pheasant under glass or a good steak tartare would go well with it. Or a beer and a hamburger, or whatever you are eating and drinking----a White Russian in the morning and a cold left over pizza, linguini with a chianti, a Big Mac and coke... whatever!

 

This one is for Scratcho, because I like slide guitar as well.

The band is Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials. I did a post on this band on my Instagram Page, but it is many posts after the one I just posted here, so in the meantime, here is a song with some slide guitar in it:

 

And just in case the slide guitar is not emphasized enough------here's some Canned Heat from the Canned Heat Blues Band album (if anyone thinks this one does not sound like Canned Heat----this is after the deaths of all the original band members except, the drummer, Fito.

I have been wanting to post something from this album on the Instagram page for several years, but havent done that yet:

 

Sorry---I've been busy and haven't had time to copy posts from my Instagram page.

Here is a song to hold you over till I get some time: