Frank Beacham's Journal

Honeyboy Edwards, Blues Royalty, is Dead at 95

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was blues royalty. He traveled every blues highway many, many times, and played with virtually every major blues musician of the 20th and 21st Century. He was the real thing, and now he has died at age 95.

It’s hard to underestimate Edwards' authenticity in the blues. He is believed to have been the oldest surviving member of the first generation of Delta blues singers. He was born in 1915 in Shaw, Mississippi, and at 14-years-old he began performing with Big Joe Williams. He was on the road until last April, when his health declined. Just shy of his 96th birthday, he played his last gigs at the Juke Joint Festival and Cathead Mini-Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi on April 16 and 17.

Edwards played with them all, including Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, Sunnyland Slim, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Walter, Little Walter, Magic Sam and Muddy Waters.

He was the last living link to Robert Johnson, widely considered the King of the Delta Blues. Johnson and Edwards traveled together, performing on street corners and at picnics, dances and fish fries during the 1930s.

“We would walk through the country with our guitars on our shoulders, stop at people’s houses, play a little music, walk on,” Edwards said in an interview with the blues historian Robert Palmer, recalling his years with Johnson. “We could hitchhike, transfer from truck to truck, or, if we couldn’t catch one of them, we’d go to the train yard, ’cause the railroad was all through that part of the country then.” He added, “Man, we played for a lot of peoples.” 

In 1942, Alan Lomax recorded Edwards in Clarksdale, Mississippi for the Library of Congress. He recorded a total of fifteen sides of Edward's music.

Edward’s career included several hit songs, such as "Long Tall Woman Blues," "Gamblin Man" and "Just Like Jesse James." He won two Grammy awards, in 2008 for best traditional blues album, and a 2010 lifetime achievement award. Edwards' biography is titled "The World Don't Owe Me Nothing.”

Until the end, Edwards traveled from juke joint to nightclub to festival, playing real Delta blues. He was a friendly man who always met his fans after a show. Here he is shown at B.B. Kings in New York City on Sept. 29, 2005.

 Honeyboy Edwards in 2005 at B.B. Kings Club. All photos by Frank Beacham

Steve Jobs Is a One-of-a-Kind Genius Very Rare in Today's World

When 20-something tech “journalists” tell you Apple Computer will be just fine without Steve Jobs, don’t believe a word they say. They know nothing. We lived through the period when John Sculley and Gil Amelio ran Apple, and it wasn’t a pretty picture.

Most corporations today are run by committees of lame—sometimes stupid—people. Most MBA-era executives are constantly fearful with little real instinct about how to make anything—much less brilliant products that people want. They always worry about the bottom line.

Steve Jobs was never like them. He is an original thinker with a singular instinct for the next great thing. Apple has never done focus groups. Jobs goes by his gut instincts and is usually right.

In an interview Jobs once said that Microsoft's Bill Gates would "be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." That statement was not a joke. It’s perhaps a dirty little secret today that psychedelic drugs pushed the computer and Internet revolutions forward by demonstrating that reality can be profoundly altered through unconventional, highly intuitive thinking. It was not like the government told you.

Steve Jobs could take one look at Microsoft and know exactly what was wrong. “They just have no taste,” he told PBS in 1996. “And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.”

A year later, Jobs added to the New York Times that Microsoft’s products suck. “There’s no sex in them anymore.”

After suffering through what passed as personal computers in the early 1980s, I was elated when Jobs announced the Macintosh in 1984. I bought an original Mac and haven’t looked back. It changed my life. It allowed me to make a living without working for a corporation. As Jobs once said, it was the equivalent of “a bicycle for our minds.”

When Jobs left Apple after being axed by John Sculley, the company entered dark times. But what would one expect from a computer company being run by former a Pepsi Cola salesman? It went on this way until Jobs came back and started introducing his “next insanely great things.”

Not only have I been an avid Apple user since the first Mac, I’ve also covered Apple for years as a reporter. I have interviewed all the former presidents of Apple, including Steve Jobs. I have watched Jobs repeatedly enchant audiences with his amazing keynote addresses, and smiled knowingly as Jobs used the music of our kindred spirit Bob Dylan to open and close those sessions. 

Jobs was always driven by far more than money. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me,” he once said. “Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.” How many modern CEOs would admit that?

I would like to think that Apple could continue to function as the genius company that it has been. But I know better. It will return to Earth, especially when it’s time to invent that next great thing. Real genius is very, very rare—especially in today’s world. Steve Jobs has it, while others don’t. It’s a sad fact that geniuses like him come very rarely.

Jobs has the moral compass of a man who came of age in the 60s. It’s a proud legacy, and one I understand and admire. Others might learn from it, if they only could.

  Myself and Tamara Ball, my assistant, in late 1984, at Television Matrix in Hollwood, CA. That's a vintage Apple Lisa, upgraded to a Macintosh, between us.

Stax Records Tribute Endures a Pouring Rain in New York City

Sometimes great concerts have to be earned by everyone—from the members of the audience to the performers to the stage crew. Such was the case in New York City Sunday night at an outdoor tribute to Stax Records at Lincoln Center.

It rained, even poured at times. Crews pushed water off the stage during breaks, as performers marveled at the endurance of the tiny crowd shivering under a sea of umbrellas.

But the music was too good to be stopped. Stax Records of Memphis was a major factor in the creation of Southern soul music, as well as a conduit for gospel, funk, jazz and blues recordings in the 1960s. 

As former Stax president Al Bell watched from the side of the stage, the Bar-Kays performed with James Alexander, 63, playing bass guitar. Alexander was the bassist for the band when, in 1967, four of the six band members were killed in the same plane crash that took the life of Otis Redding, the biggest Stax star.

 

Alexander was the only Bar-Kays member not aboard that flight as the plane, a Beechcraft owned by Redding, only held eight occupants (Redding, five of the Bar-Kays, the pilot and Redding's road manager); it was Alexander's turn in the rotation to board a commercial flight to the next destination. Alexander had the task of identifying the bodies of his bandmates, as well as that of Redding.

After the crash, Ben Cauley, the sole survivor among those who were aboard the plane, worked with Alexander to reform the band. Subsequent work included the soundtrack recording of the Academy Award-winning theme song from the 1971 feature film "Shaft," on which Alexander played bass guitar. As of today, Alexander continues on as the only original member in the still-active Bar-Kays.

  A smoke after a soggy performance!

---

Steve Cropper was guitarist for Stax’s house band, Booker T. & the MG's. He has backed artists such as Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla and Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor, also acting as producer on many of these records. Cropper co-wrote "Knock On Wood" with Eddie Floyd, "In the Midnight Hour" with Wilson Pickett and "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" with Redding. He later gained fame as a member of the Blues Brothers band. Rolling Stone lists him 36th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Cropper assembled an all-star group of musicians to perform a tribute to The 5 Royales. It’s called “Dedicated,” a title everyone in the rain found more than a little amusing. Singer Bettye LaVette was one of the singers to perform with Cropper at the Lincoln Center tribute.

Though the night was full of familiar soul music, two newer bands almost stole the show. Big Sam’s Funky Nation is an urban funk band from New Orleans that one writer said “is tight enough (and hot enough) to turn coal into a diamond.” He’s right!

The band is led by Big Sam Williams, former trombonist for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and one of the top horn players in New Orleans. Between his playing and dancing, Sam is a locomotion powerhouse. But in the pouring rain, even he had trouble getting many of the audience members to dance with him. 

Eric Vogel, below, on drums:

Totally remaking the sound of Mississippi Delta blues is an amazing group called the North Mississippi Allstars Duo, made up of Luther and Cody Dickinson. They are the sons of acclaimed musician and legendary producer, Jim Dickinson. 

Inspired by local heroes RL Burnside, Fred McDowell and Junior Kimbrough, the brothers began performing in 1996 and have already recorded several albums.  Their sound is a modernization of the old blues, though they still play a group of homemade instruments like this guitar made from a coffee can (below).

At the end of their set, the duo played a version of “Amazing Grace” that was startlingly reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s classic “Star Spangled Banner.” In fact, I was so wet and cold at the moment that I instantly flashed back to July 4, 1970, when also just as wet and cold but much younger, I heard Hendrix play that song to fireworks at the Atlanta International Pop Festival. 

The music was just as powerful, but the irony was overwhelming. 

A Sun Records Tribute Assembles Old Timers of Rock & Roll

Sun Records is one of the best known music labels in the world. Started in Memphis in 1952 by Sam Phillips, Sun produced some of the greatest musicians of all time, including Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. 

The music of Sun Records laid the foundation for modern rock & roll. It influenced many younger musicians, particularly the Beatles. The 2010 tribute show, “Million Dollar Quartet” is based on the famous photograph of Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis grouped round Elvis Presley at the piano, the night when the four joined in an impromptu jam at Sun Record's one-room sound studio.

Most of the principles are now dead, but Lincoln Center Out of Doors assembled some of the remaining living Sun artists for a tribute show in New York City on August 13. Even though most are now in their 70s and 80s, these artists still rocked the joint. 

Cowboy Jack Clement was born along Highway 61 in Tennessee, the famous road that brought bluesmen from the Mississippi Delta to Memphis. Now 80, he’s not only a performer, but one of the first businessmen to bring song publishing, music and film production and recording studios together into a single entity.

He worked for Sam Phillips at Sun Records and ran the mixing board for sessions with Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Charlie Rich and Jerry Lee Lewis. Elvis Presley opened for Clement at the Eagle’s Nest, a Memphis club. Clement has 25 Gold Records. He is the subject of a documentary film, Shakespeare Was A Big George Jones Fan. 

Rudy “Tutti” Grayzell was a pioneering rockabilly musician releasing singles first for Capitol and Starday Records, where he released his signature song, 1956’s “Duck Tail.” Grayzell, now 79, then toured with Elvis Presley, who gave him the nickname “Tutti.” In 1958, Grayzell signed with Sun Records, where he recorded “Judy’ b/w I Think of You.” He’s a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

---

Hayden Thompson walked into Sun Records in 1956 and recorded nine songs. One of them, “Love My Baby,” featured then unknown piano player Jerry Lee Lewis playing with reckless abandon. Other members of the classic Sun studio band was Roland Janes’ blistering guitar over a foundation laid by Marvin Pepper and Jammy Van Eaton. Now 74, Thompson is one of the original rockabilly cats who recorded for Sam Phillips in the mid-50's. He’s a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

 ---

Sonny Burgess (left) and the Legendary Pacers began as a boogie woogie group in Arkansas in 1955. They have been playing ever since. The band became rock & roll pioneers and have toured with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Conway Twitty, Patsy Cline, Ronnie Hawkins and Charlie Rich. 

The band's first record was "We Wanna Boogie" in 1956 for Sun. The flip side was "Red Headed Woman." Both were written by Burgess. The songs have been described as "among the most raucous, energy-filled recordings released during the first flowering of rock & roll." Burgess was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of Europe in 1999. 

Marty Stuart used to play in the bands of Lester Flatt in the 70’s and Johnny Cash in the 80’s. He’s a four time Grammy winner and star of the Grand Ole Opry. He played with his band, the Fabulous Superlatives.

Stuart showed a recently discovered guitar that belonged to Johnny Cash. It hadn't been played since 1959. Cash used it to record “I Walk the Line.” Stuart played it for the first time at the Sun Records tribute at Lincoln Center.

At the Lincoln Center show, even the fans got into the act. This one with 50's-era haircut and Sun T-Shirt watched everything standing by the stage.

It's Over!

It’s over!  We thought we’d get one more week at the P&G, but that didn’t happen. The place has been cleaned out and the doors bolted. It was a great run, but the music at the P&G now lives only in our collective memories. Fortunately, we have some pictures and recordings of many memorable shows by a who’s who of fine artists. Hopefully, Jonny Rosch and Friends will show up elsewhere, but that's for the future to decide.

RIP, P&G. You were a place of great times and music. I will never forget you!

Jonny Rosch at the end of the last gig.  Photos by Karen Sasha Smith.

The P&G: After Hours With the Sidemen Who Helped Create Rock n’ Roll

Jonny Rosch at the first P&G gig on Sept. 15, 2009
-------

“Always, the best things happen after hours, by accident, while the cat’s away, when the moon goes behind a cloud and there’s no one else around; certainly the best music in America is made after twelve, deep in the rock and roll dungeons, little clubs in New York and California, when whoever’s in town and feeling restless, a bass player from one band and a drummer from another, a couple of guitar players and piano players from a couple of others, rock and roll strays, they get together and jam, sometimes they collide, more often than not they tempt each other to take more and more risks, always they discover something they’d perhaps had in mind but couldn’t quite bring home before, they dare and thrill each other, and, because there’s nothing to lose that’s not best done without, and there’s no one to please but themselves, these loose, peppery, brief encounters between an itinerant few are where musical suspicions are tamed or run amuck, it can be a rare synthesis, or can be gang-rape, but whatever happens, it’s where elemental rock and roll, and especially the blues, begins and ends. When everybody’s gone home, all but the friends and lovers, that’s when the best things happen.”

                                by Michael Thomas

                                (from the liner notes to “Super Session” with Bloomfield, Kooper and Stills)

 ---

Word has come that the P&G Bar in New York City is closing. It was a total shock to me. For the past two years, I have recorded Jonny Rosch and Friends each Tuesday. Those “friends” play on stage in the world’s largest arenas with the likes of Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Steely Dan, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Rod Stewart and Elton John. 

But, when off tour, those same musicians who create the sounds for these major acts play small clubs like the P&G. Actually, the P&G Bar is a great dive bar on New York City’s Upper West Side, the kind of place one can hang out, be comfortable and hear the world’s greatest music. For free.

It’s hard to say how much I will miss this place. It has given me a sense of sanity from the daily work of writing and taking the world far too seriously. When it closes after August 16, there won’t be another place like it -- at least for a while. You see great dive bars are getting to be a scarcity in New York City. They are being replaced by Duane Reades, banks and nail salons.

Playing at gigs organized with Jonny Rosch of the Blues Brothers have been too many to list right now. Most memorable were Tony Garnier (music director and bass player for Bob Dylan), Jon Herington and Keith Carlock (lead guitarist and drummer for Steely Dan), Danny “Kootch” Kortchmar (guitarist and songwriter for James Taylor and Carole King), and Steve “The Colonel” Cropper (guitarist, songwriter, producer and member of the Blues Brothers band and former guitarist for Booker T. and the M.G.s).

Tony Garnier on opening night, Sept. 15, 2009
----

Others included John Putnam (guitarist for Madonna), Jeff Pevar (guitarist for Crosby, Stills & Nash, Ray Charles and Joe Cocker), Chris Parker (drummer for James Brown, Bob Dylan and Miles Davis), Jerry Marotta (drummer for Peter Gabriel, The Indigo Girls, Hall and Oates, John Mayer and Paul McCartney), Josh Dion (drummer and vocalist for Spyro Gyra), Steve Holley (drummer for Paul McCartney and Wings, Elton John, Joe Cocker and Stevie Wonder), Conrad Korsch (bass for Rod Stewart), Anthony Jackson (bass for Steely Dan, Paul Simon and Dizzy Gillespie), Dan Cipriano (saxaphone for Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Wilson Pickett, Jon Bon Jovi, and the Allman Brothers) and Andy Hess (bass player and former member of the Black Crowes and Gov’t Mule).

There was also Jeff Golub (guitarist for Rod Stewart and many others), Stanley Banks (bass player for George Benson), John Conte (bass and vocals for David Bowie, Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Joel), Neil Jason (bass for John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Dire Straits), Shawn Pelton (drummer for Saturday Night Live for over a decade), Anton Fig (drummer on David Letterman Show), Zev Katz (bass for Eric Clapton, Bono and James Brown) and Leon Pendarvis (music director for NBC’s Saturday Night Live).

And who can forget guitarist Marc Schulman (B.B King, Celine Dion and Suzanne Vega), Mike Visceglia (bass for Suzanne Vega) and drummer Sammy Merendino (Cyndi Lauper). Finally, sitting in for so many weeks was the extraordinary New Orleans performer Henry Butler, whose move to New York City was one of the only good things that happened after Hurricane Katrina.

If you can, I suggest you come to the P&G on one of the next two Tuesday nights for Jonny Rosch and Friends. It’s an experience you won’t forget.