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Radio 'n' Magazine 'n' Gigs 'n' Records 'n' T-shirts
RNR666 Rádió
Birth of Rock and Roll
A new photo album with 134 historic images at deluxe size by Dust to Digital. A book with lots of found images. Among those aren’t photos of Bill Hayley, Elvis Presley or any usual person, but there’re ordinary, nameless men, women, and children. Most of the people in the photos wouldn’t have heard of rock’n’roll, much less thought of themselves as rock’n’roll progenitors. Instead, the images capture the gangly musicians, the giddy dancers, and the drunken antics found in smalltown America from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond. All the musical genres that influenced what we know of as “rock” are represented: everything from jump blues and gospel to boogie woogie and Western swing.
The author, Jim Linderman says: “We have this notion that rock’n’roll started in Memphis in 1955, and it really didn’t. Bob Wills was playing in the ’30s and ’40s in Oklahoma, and Chuck Berry modeled Maybellene on a Bob Wills song. The roots of rock go back a lot further than we realize. It came from the church, from vaudeville, from the music played in after-hours clubs, from juke joints. The whole point was pretty much to get together, get drunk, and get laid. That’s the real history of rock ’n’ roll.”
As Muddy Waters said, “The blues had a baby and they called it it Rock and Roll.”
Lead Kindly Light
Another book from the old American life by Dust-to-Digital. Now the theme is the pre-war rural and small-town South with many photos and 2 CDs with extremely rare country, blues and African American gospel songs singing from 1924-1939.
Kid Williams and Bill Morgan – When He Died He Got A Home In Hell, recorded in 1930
A book about the infamous Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman Farm
Penitentiary Blues
In 1931, the Republic Bank of Dallas fails. Among the executives there is John Lomax (1867-1948). He lose his job, like many others in those days. Originally he is an English teacher and folklorist, previously he was full professor at Texas A&M University (Agricultural & Mechanical), later worked as a member of administrative staff at University of Texas, and was co-founder of Texas Folklore Society. He is a nation-wide known figure owing to his anthology of cowboy songs and folk ballads.
In sight of his father’s depression his eldest son encourages him to begin a new series of lecture tours about American folk music. In the course of this they go to New York and Washington. Lomax concludes agreements with a publishing house and the Library of Congress. For the latter he takes to make field recordings on him. In the summer of 1933 his expedition starts. His youngest son, then 18 years old Alan go with him. Go after sounds to plantations and farms, at juke joints and penitentiaries. At Angola Prison Farm in Louisiana he discovers twelve-strings guitar player Lead Belly, who has been sentenced for attempted homicide in a knife fight. In 1934, after his release he become driver and assistant of Lomax’s next round. He gets publicity and recording contract through Lomax, and finally become one of the most influential blues musicians. Just very few names who covered his songs: Abba, Nick Cave, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Nirvana, The Fall, Brian Wilson, Tom Waits.
And there is the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi. There he makes recording with Bukka White (1909-77), who has been imprisoned for shooting assault. Parchman Farm Blues about the hard times was written by him, but this is „When Can I Change My Clothes”, because there’re old pictures from the farm
„Most of the guards were untrained men, employed because they knew how to ‘handle and drive niggers’. We saw with horror that there were sadists among them who took pleasure in persecuting, beating, and torturing the helpless prisoners. We did meet sincere, kindly men trying to better the lot of the prisoners, but they were hampered by the limitations of the institution itself. A report in the New York Post confirms my own impression of a generation ago: ‘The state penitentiary system at Parchman is simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor. The warden is not a penologist, but an experienced plantation manager” – said Alain Lomax. Also here were inmates such famous murderers as Son House (self-defense, pistol, 1902-88) and R.L.Burnside (dice game, pistol, 1926-2005). And there were many nameless prisoners whose songs has been recorded by the two Lomax
1. Bama – I’m Going Home 2. Bama – How I got in the penitentiary (interview) 3. 22 and Group – When I Went to Leland
Bama – How I got in the penitentiary: Well, boss, the way I got in trouble the first time: the folks was barin’ me, and I cut and shoot a feller up. So, I just got in the penitentiary and just worked and worked and worked so much. I had to work. Cut up the fellow, shoot’um up. And then, when I got out of the penitentiary, I thought I had worked enough, and I decided I could make my livin’ without workin’. And I commenced with puttin’ pistols on folks. And that wouldn’t do. And I commenced to stealin’ everything that wasn’t hot and nailed down. And the polices commenced to runnin’ me every whichaway – every way I turn. So, after I got’um started runnin’ me, I just kept on doing wrong – fightin’, stealin’ – you know – an’ robbin’. And sometimes I wouldn’t (doing) be nothin’ but I’d been doin’ so much ’til that when they’d get me, I’d due to been got anyhow. An one, two time they ‘rrest me, an’ I told’um I hadn’t done nothin’, an they said, „Arrest you in egvance – you gonna do sumpin’.” So that way I just stayed in the penitentiary all the time, boss. In and out, in and out, for the last 18 years.
Alan Lomax (1915-2002) , after death of his father in 1948, continued his father’s mission. He introduced Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger and others on radios and in concerts and records. His big fish was Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-72). He also went after songs to the Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa. “Neighborhood investigation shows him to be a very peculiar individual in that he is only interested in folklore music, being very temperamental and ornery. … He has no sense of money values, handling his own and Government property in a neglectful manner, and paying practically no attention to his personal appearance. … He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results” – was written by an FBI agent, for Alan Lomax was observed as a supposed Communist between 1940 and 1980.
44 songs from his Parchman Farm recordings between 1947-59 on 2CDs with 124-page hardcover book have been released this month by Dust-To-Digital. These Negro work songs are perfect for your everyday job.
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essence of delta blues by rnr666
From New Records
Quasi is a funny rock’n’roll duo for 20 years. Their music on Mole City album is a peculiar mix of DEVOesque new wave and classic glam rock.
2xLP by Kill Rockstar
You can listen to the full album here.
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“Whether you’re pining after old things or looking for the new, kindness doesn’t show itself in this world where love is scarce. Miss Whiskey will show you kindness.”
from the Longing for the Past: The 78 rpm Era in Southeast Asia box set by Dust to Digital
The Burmese actor, U Myat Lay sings this very strange, drunken song. It was „original sound track” of a silent film, Miss Whiskey in the 1930s. The silent film songs released on 78 rpm records at that time. These were excellent promotional tools, and frequently, the musicians who recorded a song would also perform when the movie was shown in the big city theaters in Burma.
In consequence of three Anglo-Burmese Wars there were many Scotsmen in that time. The first war officially broke out in 1824, because expansion of the Burmese Empire reached the British sphere of interest in India. In the end of war „The question is not how much you will cede to us but how much we shall return to you.” In 1885, in the end of third war the answer was: nothing. This war was a preventive act, because France took a growing interest in rest of Burma. Otherwise Myat Lay could have sung about Mlle Cognac.
Burma gained its independence in 1947. Since then there: or/and: civil war, coup d’état, military government, rebellion, turbulence.
If you interested in the Burmese weekdays under British rule, there was a police officer in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927, who wrote a novel about it. You can read it in English here. Magyarul itt.