Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Trouble to open Blogspot....
Message on HELP Session of Blogspot.
Update (May 26): We are still working on resolving this bug. This only affects viewers using IE to view the blog; for right now, blog owners can either move the Followers gadget lower in their sidebar, or remove it altogether. Either action will eliminate the pop-up dialog box in IE.
We will update this post when a fix has been made. — latest update on Thursday, May 21, 2009
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Lucia Newell.....
Lucia Newell was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 13, 1952 (a double Pisces and double Dragon). She lived and attended school there until 1968, when she moved to New York City. After graduating from high school, where she was continuously involved in plays and musicals, choirs, garage bands and choral groups throughout her youth, Lucia joined a political theatre group called At the Foot of the Mountain, conceived of and directed by Paul and Martha Boesing and the American Friends Service Committee. During these years she met John Franzen, and they created a contemporary classical group consisting of guitar, flute, violin and voice, called the Albatross Quartet, which played concerts around the Twin Cities. She studied voice with Janis Hardy, a mezzo soprano then singing with the Minnesota Opera, and sang in the chorus of the Opera in their production of Candide. She sang background vocals on albums, radio jingles, and began a career of voice-over work.
During this time, Lucia began singing jazz with the Kevin Hoidale Sextet, and in a group called Four. She then made her first jazz recording demo at Creation Audio, the studio of Steve Wiese, who would later become Newell’s husband. She spent time singing in clubs and concerts, and in the studio, traveling between Minneapolis and Los Angeles. She also sang R&B and pop music in This Masquerade, but found her true love in bebop and the jazz standard repertoire. Her gypsy nature took her to Europe, and in 1978 to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she sang for two years with Osmar Milito, Nilson Matta, Everaldo Ferreira and Marcio Lotts at Clube 21, and with Celia Vaz and the Rio Jazz Orchestra, her first big band experience. There she met and performed with many wonderful Brazilian and international jazz artists, and studied Brazilian percussion with Café. After a period in Buenos Aires, Argentina she moved to Mexico City with Luiz Eça, José Alves and Claudio Caribé in early 1981 to perform for six months at El Señorial.
Lucia’s next move was back to Los Angeles to study jazz at the Dick Grove School of music, where she stayed until returning to Minneapolis in the summer of 1982, where she has lived ever since. She sang backgrounds on several projects for ‘Jimmy Jam’ Harris, Terry Lewis and Monte Moir of Flyte Time, and on many other projects. She has remained busy with both voice-over work as well as live performance and studio singing, teaching, and continues with her life long study of music. Lucia is married to her friend and partner of twenty-three years, Steven Wiese, and is the proud mother of high schooler Collin Wiese.
http://www.lucianewell.com/bio/index.html
Lucia Newell, Body and Soul
Lucia Newell with Chris Lomheim on piano,
Terry Burns on bass,
Phil Hey on drums,
doing a Tribute to Betty Carter at the Artists' Quarter in St Paul, MN
Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen)
Blind Boy Fuller (born Fulton Allen) (July 10, 1907[1] - February 13, 1941) was an American blues guitarist and vocalist. He was one of the most popular of the recorded Piedmont blues artists with rural Black Americans, a group that also included Blind Blake, Josh White, and Buddy Moss.
Fulton Allen was born in Wadesboro, North Carolina to Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker. He was one of a family of 10 children, but after his mother's death he moved with his father to Rockingham. As a boy he learned to play the guitar and also learned from older singers the field hollers, country rags, and traditional songs and blues popular in poor, rural areas.
He married Cora Allen young and worked as a labourer, but began to lose his eyesight in his mid-teens. According to researcher Bruce Bastin, "While he was living in Rockingham he began to have trouble with his eyes. He went to see a doctor in Charlotte who allegedly told him that he had ulcers behind his eyes, the original damage having been caused by some form of snow-blindness". However, there is an alternative story that he was blinded by an ex-girlfriend who threw chemicals in his face.
By 1928 he was completely blind, and turned to whatever employment he could find as a singer and entertainer, often playing in the streets. By studying the records of country blues players like Blind Blake and the "live" playing of Gary Davis, Allen became a formidable guitarist, and played on street corners and at house parties in Winston-Salem, Danville, and then Durham, North Carolina. In Durham, playing around the tobacco warehouses, he developed a local following which included guitarists Floyd Council and Richard Trice, as well as harmonica player Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry and washboard player/guitarist George Washington.
Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry (24 October 1911, Greensboro, North Carolina - 11 March 1986, Mineola, New York was a blind blues musician. He was most widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts. He was also an accomplished Jews harp player.
His father, a farmer, taught him to play basic blues harp as a youth. He sustained injuries to his eyes and lost his sight by the time he was 16, which prevented him from doing farm work himself. In order to earn a living Terry was forced to play music. He began playing in Shelby, North Carolina. After his father died he began playing in the trio of Piedmont-style guitarist Blind Boy Fuller. When Fuller died, he established a long-standing musical relationship with Brownie McGhee, and the pair recorded numerous tracks together. The duo became well-known, even among white audiences, as they joined the growing folk movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This included collaborations with Woody Guthrie and Moses Asch, producing Folkways Records (now Smithsonian/Folkways) classic recordings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgsyWjS_6lQ&feature=sdig&et=1243077036.56
Roots of Blues -- Sonny Terry & Blind Boy Fuller „Lonesome T
Recorded:
New York , April 24, 1944
Blind Boy Fuller, Sonny Terry (h)
In some Places it is said that Woody Guthrie is accompanying Sonny on this Session
Lou Donaldson....
by Scott Yanow
Lou Donaldson has long been an excellent bop altoist influenced by Charlie Parker, but with a more blues-based style of his own. His distinctive tone has been heard in a variety of small-group settings, and he has recorded dozens of worthy and spirited (if somewhat predictable) sets through the years.
Donaldson started playing clarinet when he was 15, soon switching to the alto. He attended college and performed in a Navy band while in the military. Donaldson first gained attention when he moved to New York and in 1952 started recording for Blue Note as a leader. At the age of 25, his style was fully formed, and although it would continue growing in depth through the years, Donaldson had already found his sound. In 1954, he participated in a notable gig with Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, Horace Silver and Tommy Potter that was extensively documented by Blue Note and that directly predated the Jazz Messengers. However, Donaldson was never a member of the Messengers, and although he recorded as a sideman in the 1950s and occasionally afterwards with Thelonious Monk, Milt Jackson and Jimmy Smith, among others, he has been a bandleader from the mid-1950s up until the present.
Donaldson's early Blue Note recordings were pure bop. In 1958, he began often utilizing a conga player, and starting in 1961 his bands often had an organist rather than a pianist. Donaldson's bluesy style was easily transferable to soul-jazz, and he sounded most original in that context. His association with Blue Note (1952-63) was succeeded by some excellent (if now-scarce) sets for Cadet and Argo (1963-66). The altoist returned to Blue Note in 1967 and soon became caught up in the increasingly commercial leanings of the label. For a time, he utilized an electronic Varitone sax, which completely watered down his sound. The success of "Alligator Boogaloo" in 1967 led to a series of less interesting funk recordings that were instantly dated and not worthy of his talent.
However, after a few years off records, Lou Donaldson's artistic return in 1981 and subsequent soul-jazz and hard bop dates for Muse, Timeless and Milestone have found the altoist back in prime form, interacting with organists and pianists alike and showing that his style is quite timeless.
