Coming up on The Blues & Beyond on WXPN:

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Blues & Beyond #292: In this hour of The Blues & Beyond, a new album called Circle Without End from funky bassist Frank Russell. We'll hear something you don't often hear, funk in 5-4 time, and also Russell's tribute to Ladysmith Black Mambazo. We'll also hear Ladysmith Black Mambazo themselves, signing in their inimitable way from their album Songs From A Zulu Farm isuued last year. We have new music from singers Amy Cervini and Liz Childs. Cervini's album is a tribute to the late Blossom Dearie. Also the new release from pianist Sunnie Paxson, and concert recordings of pianist Chick Corea, bassist Eddie Gomez, and the late drummer Paul Motian, recorded in New York last May, from the album Further Explorations. Bobby McFerrin will join Jack DeJohnette on the new DeJohnette album Sound Travels with some other-wordly singing. DeJohnette, a drummer, pianist, and composer recently won a Jazz Masters lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment For The Arts.

Now Streaming: Listen to a continuous stream of our three most recent shows
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Blues & Beyond #291: In this hour of The Blues & Beyond, we remember two greats, whose lives and careers actually intersected, Etta James who died on January 20th at age 73, and Johnny Otis, who died at age 90 three days earlier on January 17th. Etta James, one of the greatest R&B singers of all time, was discovered by Otis in the early 1950s. He produced her first hit, a record considered too risque for radio called "Roll With Me Henry" an answer song to Hank Ballard's banned "Work With Me Annie." Otis and James retitled it "The Wallflower" of all things and managed to get it on the radio, and to reach #1 on the Billboard R&B charts. Etta James went on to a troubled but successful career. Johnny Otis did everything in music, played, led bands, wrote, produced, scouted talent, owned a label... We'll only scratch the surface, but at least we'll manage to do that, in this hour of The Blues & Beyond.

Blues & Beyond #290: In this hour of The Blues & Beyond, music from the late blues pianist Omar Shariff, who started out known as Dave Alexander, after leaving his hometown of Marshall, Texas with no intentions of ever returning and moving to California. To his surprise as much as anyone else's, he did move back to Marshall in the last years of his life where he played regularly. We also have new blues from Joe Louis Walker, a high-energy album called Hellfire. Plus the latest from a musician who has always defied simple categorization, pianist, drummer, and composer Jack DeJohnette - - with Esperanza Spalding, and Jason Moran, and other great players. And we'll hear a piece from the trio of Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez, and the late Paul Motian, recorded last May in concert from an album on which they pay tribute to their mutual mentor, Bill Evans.

Blues & Beyond #289: In this hour of The Blues &: Beyond, songs and stories that connect with the spirit of the Martin Luther King Day holiday. We'll hear from Sam Cooke, The Neville Brothers, and Johnny Copeland, as well as his daughter Shemekia Copeland, and from B. B. King, and others, including Big Bill Broonzy. We'll hear some of Broonzy's remarkable 1947 talking and singing session with Memphis Slim and John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, recorded by Alan Lomax, but not issued until many years later, and even then with their names initially disguised - because it just wasn't safe for them otherwise. The session is known as Blues In The Mississippi Night, and I'll talk with Bob Riesman who wrote the breakthrough biography of Big Bill Broonzy in 2011 about it as well.

About The Blues & Beyond and Jonny Meister:

The Blues & Beyond is a weekly hour of blues music and some of its musical relatives. The family tree includes jazz, old and new, and folk music from around the world, and contemporary musical explorations - music with energy, texture, spirit, soul, and meaning.

Host Jonny Meister has been playing the blues on WXPN since March 1977. Meister grew up with old blues records in the house. His father played boogie woogie on the piano, which Jonny learned at about the age of 12. Later he played in rock bands and did a few solo gigs as a singer-songwriter. His interest in blues grew and he became especially interested in the history of the music, a history not always revealed by the rock musicians who drew heavily on the blues and their promoters.

Jonny spent a week with the family of the late, great blues musician J. B. Lenoir in 1979, and he was one of the consultants for the Wim Wenders film The Soul Of A Man which featured Lenoir, in the recent PBS film series The Blues. He won the "Keeping The Blues Alive" award for work in Public Radio for The Blues Show in 2000 and a "Best of Philly" award from Philadelphia Magazine in 1996 for "Best Local Radio Show".