The Texas Cannonball, Freddie King, was born 89 years ago today
Freddie King was born 89 years ago today.
Nicknamed "the Texas Cannonball,” King was an influential American blues guitarist and singer. He is often mentioned as one of "the Three Kings" of electric blues guitar, along with Albert King and B.B. King. He was the youngest of the three.
Freddie King based his guitar style on Texas and Chicago influences and was one of the first bluesmen to have a multi-racial backing band onstage with him at live performances.
He is best known for singles such as "Have You Ever Loved A Woman" (1960) and his Top 40 hit, "Hide Away" (1961).
He is also known for albums such as the early, instrumental-packed, Let's Hide Away and Dance Away with Freddy King (1961), and the later album, Burglar (1974), which displayed King's mature versatility as both player and singer in a range of blues and funk styles.
King had a 20 year recording career and became established as an influential guitarist with hits for Federal Records in the early 1960s.
He inspired American musicians such as Jerry Garcia, Stevie Ray Vaughan and his brother, Jimmie Vaughan. His influence was also felt in UK, through recordings by blues revivalists such as Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Chicken Shack.
Near-constant touring took its toll on King (he was on the road almost 300 days out of the year), and in 1976 he began suffering stomach ulcers. His health quickly deteriorated and he died on December 28, 1976 of complications from that and acute pancreatitis. He was 42.
According to those who knew him, King's untimely death was due to both stress and poor diet (he was in the habit of consuming Bloody Marys in lieu of solid food so as not to waste time when setting up shows).
Here, King performs “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.”
Memphis Slim was born 108 years ago today.
A blues pianist, singer and composer, Slim led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums and piano.
A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues,” has become a blues standard, recorded by many other artists. He made over 500 recordings in his career.
Memphis Slim's birth name was John Len Chatman. Born in Memphis, his father, Peter Chatman, sang, played piano and guitar, and operated juke joints. It is now commonly believed that the son took the name to honor his father when he first recorded for Okeh Records in 1940.
Although he started performing under the name Memphis Slim later that same year, he continued to publish songs under the name Peter Chatman. He spent most of the 1930s performing in honky-tonks, dance halls and gambling joints in West Memphis, Arkansas, and southeast Missouri.
He settled in Chicago in 1939, and began teaming with Big Bill Broonzy in clubs soon afterward. In 1940 and 1941, Slim recorded two songs for Bluebird Records that became part of his repertoire for decades, "Beer Drinking Woman" and "Grinder Man Blues."
One of Slim's 1947 recordings for Miracle, released in 1949, was originally titled "Nobody Loves Me.” It has become famous as "Every Day I Have the Blues." The tune was recorded in 1950 by Lowell Fulson, and subsequently by a raft of artists including B. B. King, Elmore James, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, Natalie Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimi Hendrix, Mahalia Jackson, Sarah Vaughan, Carlos Santana, John Mayer and Lou Rawls.
Slim first appeared outside the United States in 1960, touring with Willie Dixon. He returned to Europe in 1962 as a featured artist in the first of the series of American Folk Festival concerts organized by Dixon that brought many notable blues artists to Europe in the 1960s and 1970s.
The duo released several albums together on Folkways Records, including, Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon at the Village Gate with Pete Seeger in 1962. That same year, he moved permanently to Paris and his engaging personality and well-honed presentation of playing, singing and storytelling about the blues secured his position as the most prominent blues artist for nearly three decades.
Two years before his death, Slim was named a Commander in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France. In addition, the U.S. Senate honored Slim with the title of Ambassador-at-Large of Good Will.
Memphis Slim died on February 24, 1988, of renal failure in Paris at the age of 72.
Here Memphis Slim performs “Everyday I Have the Blues.”
Al Jardine, founding member of the Beach Boys, is 81 years old today.
A guitarist, singer and songwriter, Jardine was a member of the Beach Boys from 1961 until 1962, again in 1963 until 1998 and lastly in 2012. Continuing in collaboration with Brian Wilson, Jardine contributed to Wilson's solo album, No Pier Pressure, which was released in April 2015. He also contributed to Wilson's Pet Sounds 50th Anniversary World Tour.
A core member of the band, Jardine recorded 25 studio albums with The Beach Boys, and was the lead vocalist on a number of the band's songs, including, "Help Me, Rhonda," "Then I Kissed Her," "I Know There's an Answer" and "Lady Lynda."
Here, Jardine with Brian Wilson perform “Sloop John B” at Capitol Studios in 2016.
Hank Thompson was born 98 years ago today.
Thompson was a country music entertainer whose career spanned seven decades. His musical style, characterized as honky tonk Western swing, was a mixture of fiddles, electric guitar and steel guitar that featured his distinctive, smooth baritone vocals.
His backing band, The Brazos Valley Boys, was voted the top Country Western Band for 14 years in a row by Billboard. The primary difference between his music and that of Bob Wills was that Thompson, who used the swing beat and instrumentation to enhance his vocals, discouraged the intense instrumental soloing from his musicians that Wills encouraged.
The "Hank Thompson sound" exceeded Bob Wills in Top 40 country hits. Although not as prominent on the top country charts in later decades, Thompson remained a recording artist and concert draw well into his 80s.
Thompson's last public performance had been on October 8, 2007 in his birthplace of Waco, Texas. Like many men of his generation, Thompson had been a smoker for most of his adult life, and had been admitted into a Texas hospital in mid-October for shortness of breath.
After having been diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of lung cancer, Thompson canceled the rest of his 2007 "Sunset Tour" on November 1, 2007. Two days later, he retired from singing. He then went into hospice care at his home in Keller, Texas and lost his battle with the disease five days later on November 6, 2007 at age 82.
The 1987 novel, Crazy Heart, by Thomas Cobb was inspired by Thompson's life, specifically by his practice of picking up a local band to back him when he toured. In 2009, Cobb's novel was turned into a successful film directed by Scott Cooper and starring Jeff Bridges.
Here, Thompson performs “Pistol Packin’ Mama” in Germany, 1986.
Bill “Hoss” Allen was a radio disc jockey who attained fame from the 1950s through the 1990s for playing rhythm and blues and black gospel music on WLAC, a Nashville radio station.
Allen was the youngest of a quartet of disc jockeys known as "The 50,000 Watt Quartet." It also included Gene Nobles, "John R" (Richbourg) and Herman Grizzard. Allen had the longest career of any.
He worked for radio stations for 45 years before his 1993 retirement. Like Richbourg, from the 1960s through the 1980s, Allen was involved with Nashville's small but vibrant blues and gospel music scenes.
Allen was reared in the small town of Gallatin, some 35 miles northeast of Nashville, by an African-American domestic who worked for his grandparents. She was primarily responsible for his nurturing and upbringing, which included taking the young boy to church with her on Sundays. This was where Allen grew to love gospel music.
Because of their closeness, Allen identified primarily with black youngsters as playmates and peers, an orientation unusual in the segregated South. Because of Bill Allen's tall, athletic frame, his grandfather nicknamed him, "Hoss."
Allen became a jazz musician as a youngster. During World War II, he played abroad in USO shows. When peace came, Allen enrolled as an English major at Vanderbilt University, where he developed a reputation as a strong amateur actor.
Although he considered joining the professional theater, Allen decided instead to enter what he considered the more promising field of radio. In 1948 he went to work for Gallatin station, WIHN, hosting the "Harlem Hop" show. There he used Gene Nobles' routine of playing R&B and jazz tunes, mixed in with standard pop music. His success was so great, that, after only a few months, he approached WLAC for a job.
Much like John Richbourg, Allen first went on air at WLAC as a talk-show host. He managed to convert that to selling ads and producing programs.
In the mid-1950s, Gene Nobles took a several-years-long leave of absence from his nightly program at WLAC. "Hoss" Allen then established himself in that slot, peppering the playing of numerous songs by Ray Charles, Little Richard, Fats Domino and John Lee Hooker with "jive talk"-style commercials.
His most prominent sponsors were Royal Crown Hair Dressing (unrelated to the cola drink) and Buckley's Record Shop, a Nashville-based mail-order business. Allen's popularity grew steadily until 1960, when he decided to branch out into the record business. He took a job with Chess Records as a field representative.
Replacing him at the station for several years was "Hugh Baby" Jarrett. He was a former member of The Jordanaires vocal group, which backed Elvis Presley at his height of stardom. Jarrett turned the "hep cat" idiom to a younger direction, staging sock hop dances, rotating more rockabilly and rock and roll into the blues/R&B playlist, and "pushing the envelope" by dropping sexually suggestive double entendres in the product advertisements.
The latter practice led to his termination by WLAC, after the station was reprimanded by the FCC over an incident. Later Jarrett enjoyed lengthy runs at several Atlanta-area stations.
Allen was willing to return to WLAC in 1963 and resumed his nightly programs. He kept spinning the newest releases from Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters and Aretha Franklin, while paying attention to the new soul scenes developing in the mid-1960s in two nearby cities: Memphis and Muscle Shoals.
His playlist varied from disk jockeys Richbourg, Nobles and Grizzard as Allen emphasized newer releases on his one-to-two-hour shows, heard six nights a week. According to Wes Smith, in his The Pied Pipers of Rock 'n' Roll: Radio Deejays of the 50s and 60s (Longstreet Press, 1989), "the Hossman" took full advantage of his fame to indulge in drinking and womanizing.
These activities led to several run-ins with station management and the occasional problem with police. In the early 1970s, Allen admitted to alcoholism and obtained treatment for his condition, quite likely prolonging his life.
In 1966, Allen hosted a short-lived syndicated television show, The !!!! Beat. It featured most of the artists he played on radio. A Dallas TV station, which had color broadcasting facilities, recorded episodes of the program, one of the few recorded in color. All 26 episodes of the show are currently available on DVD. Allen appeared as host on all but the last show.
Reportedly, Allen was so distraught that the show had been cancelled, that he drank and was unable to host the final show. An enthusiastic Otis Redding appeared in the finale.
In the 1960s, WLAC's television sister had a similar late-night show on Fridays. Called Night Train, it featured many of the artists Allen and his colleagues played on their radio shows. Noble Blackwell, an African-American jockey on a rival Nashville radio station, hosted Night Train.
It was one of the first locally produced programs on a Southern U.S. TV station to feature black musicians prominently. It is believed that Jimi Hendrix made his first appearance on television on that program.
In the early 1970s, Allen chose to adjust to new management's direction and adjusted to playing more funk and smooth soul offerings, discontinuing most of the oldies. His longtime cohorts, Richbourg and Nobles, decided to quit rather than change their programs. New management wanted the station schedule to conform to a pop hits format. By early 1975, "the Hossman" was the lone jockey working at WLAC who had been there as long as five years.
After a brief absence from the airwaves, Allen reformatted his show as Early Morning Gospel Time With The Hossman, a showcase for national and regional black gospel acts. In addition, he moved the show from late evening to the overnight shift.
Since he had been taping his programs since about 1970, he didn't have to adjust his personal schedule. For about ten years, Allen had a lower public profile. In off-station time, he worked as a music producer for several local acts.
In the mid-1980s, WLAC's sister station, WLAC-FM (now WNRQ), used Allen's voice in a promotional campaign. His memorable drawling sound was brought back to public consciousness. Ad agencies enlisted Allen to supply voiceovers on various radio and television commercials. For several years, this became a quite lucrative sideline.
Allen continued his gospel show until 1993, which was a favorite among his longtime African-American listeners. After retiring from the show on radio, Allen continued his instantly recognizable voiceover projects until about a year or so before his death. Allen was the final survivor of the four disc jockeys who comprised "the 50,000 Watt Quartet."
In 1994, Bill "Hoss" Allen was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
In this interview, recorded on August 18. 1994, I interviewed Hoss Allen for my story, Charlie’s Place.
Charlie’s Place is in the new updated fourth edition of my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey Through Music, Mayhem & Murder.
Cabin In The Swamp
Painting by Diane Millsap