Remembering Son Seals: The Son Seals DVD

"A Journey Through The Blues: The Son Seals Story" is the only authorized video biography of blues legend Son Seals. It follows his humble beginnings in Arkansas, his move to Chicago, and his rise to the largest blues stages in the world through documentary footage, interviews with friends and fellow musicians like Bruce Iglauer, Koko Taylor, Steven Seagal, Dr. John and Lonnie Brooks, as well as from the legend himself. Of course the live performances included on the DVD may speak the best of the influence of Son Seals. This is a rare and special glimpse into the life of one of the great Chicago bluesmen."
--Product description of "The Son Seals Story."

His studio work was inconsistent, but the best of it, represented by Midnight Son (1976) and Nothing But The Truth (1994), was extremely powerful; Rolling Stone called the first "one of the most significant blues albums of the decade". Nothing But The Truth had a four-song sequence -
Before The Bullets Fly, I'm Gonna Take It All Back, Life Is Hard and Tough As Nails - that was the most exciting stretch of music on any of his albums, the declamatory vocals accompanied by a firework display of inventive guitar. Seals twice headlined the Chicago Blues Festival and was featured in a television commercial for Olympia Beer; he had an extensive American touring schedule and made half a dozen trips to Europe. He won WC Handy blues awards in 1985, 1987, and 2001, and a 1980 Grammy nomination for his contribution to the album Blues Deluxe.
--The Guardian

The daddy has a number of white friends who play music,
including blues guitar. And, consistently, they speak with
excitement about some new blues guitarists on the scene, the next Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughn. Interesting enough, invariably this next Clapton or Vaughn is a young white male. And, invariably, the great black blues guitarists from whom the Claptons and the Vaughns learned is never mentioned. They never mention the next B.B. King or the next T. Bone Walker or the next Big Bill Broonzy. So, recently, when the daddy has been told about the next Clapton or Vaughn, he's been asking:

"Who does Eric Clapton remind you of?"
"Who does Stevie Ray Vaughn remind you of?"

This is my way of reminding them that what is called
"urban blues" or "modern blues" didn't start with Clapton
or Vaughn. However, it was highly influenced by B.B. King,
whose licks and approach Clapton used well and often. It was influenced and-- some would say-- taken to another level by Albert King; and, as many know, King was Vaughn's main guitar influence and mentor.

It's also my way of reminding them that, while a lot of young white males from various white garage bands are getting on Jay Leno and the Dave Letterman show, a lot of young and old good polished black blues musicians are either getting little notice or no notice at all as they play in small bars and languish in relative obscurity and poverty. From the daddy's point of view, a very good guitarists who got some recognition but not nearly as much as he deserved was Son Seals. Yes, he had a 30 year relationship with Alligator Records headed by Bruce Iglauer, who recorded and managed him. Yes, he eventually became known all over the world. Still, he was viewed mostly as a second tier blues guitarists, when he was really one of the world's greatest modern blues guitarists.

One distinguishing feature of Seals is that is often overlooked is that he was great at both rhythm and lead guitar. Another interesting facet of Seals is that he was a very good songwriter. He didn't just write about women who left him or who still hasn't come home at 3 O'clock in the morning. He wrote about the concrete reality of being poor, black and male in an urban city where white males run a corporate world. He said, "When I had money/I was the talk of the town/Now I'm broke and raggly/and they don't even want me around/It's bad bad, boy/how your friends can let you down/I think I'll pack my rags and move to some other town."

Seals wrote about the inability to pay the rent, about the "landlord at my door." He wrote of women and just about everyone else despising a "loser," saying "Everybody congratulates you/when they think you're doing fine/but when you're down and out they don't even waste their time/Nobody wants a loser/everybody wants to win/and the precious game of life/is the hardest one to win." No, with Seals, you didn't need any transference to figure out what he was saying. He said it upfront: Existing, or subsisting, as a poor black man in racist white America is the blues.

During his passionate live shows, often Seals would say: "I got the blues. I can't help myself." And toward the end of his show, just before his final song "Hot Sauce," where he would go crazy on his axe, he would advise the audience: "Don't forget these damn blues. They're good for you."

Speaking of live shows, Seals' "Live and Burning," recorded in a Chicago blues bar among supportive musicians, raucous fans and loving friends apparently loaded on alcohol (who were talking, yelling and screaming throughout the set) is right up there with Otis Rush's live set at the Wise Fools and Junior Wells set at Theresa's as one of the best live blues albums of all time.

So, today, the daddy is feeling "A Journey Through the Blues: The Son Seals Story," a DVD about him. He died last year of complications related to diabetes. But he left us some great music. And from the daddy's point of view, he was one of the greatest persons to see live. Like fellow Chicago guitarists Buddy Guy and Hound Dog Taylor, Seals played with such soul and such passion, you couldn't help but want to stand up and cheer, get out on the dance floor or sit, nodding your head as the moans and screams from his guitar went all the way to your bones.

The daddy says pick up "A Journey Through the Blues: The Son Seals Story." It'll be good for you.

Waiting to Exhale Made Him Misty But the Daddy Didn't Cry

Listen up. The daddy wants to ask you something. Have you ever been awaken late a night to the sound of a woman screaming? The daddy was; and he said to himself:

“Okay, daddy, a woman may be getting assaulted just outside your front door! You talk about being a man. Be one!

"Be a good citizen!

Do your duty! Help a woman in distress!

"Quick! Get dressed!

"Quick! Get out there...and take your piece!”

Hold up! Hold up, citizen. It hit the daddy. The phony scream and the damn cable tv brought him back to reality, helped him to figure it out. The daddy went to bed with the tv on, rolled over onto the remote and woke up to a sorry porno flick.

The daddy watched a woman having sex with two men for a minute. Okay, maybe two or three minutes. And he came immediately to one inescapable conclusion: These were the worse actors he had ever seen. Even old Ronald B-grade-movie Reagan or a drugged up Brittany Spears could do better than this. Maybe this is why they were in porno movies.

Now, the daddy hates bad acting, porno or no porno. The only possible exception of course are bad actors who firebomb buildings, chase bad guys through dark, dangerous streets at breakneck speed, mow them down in the middle of the street with a trusty AK 47, then trap the thug leader in an alley and face off against him one on one, rearranging his nose and sexual organs via the route of some serious ass-kicking, karate style.

Ha!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

My Boy Wesley!

So the daddy punched the remote just once and there he was, Wesley Snipes, one of the baaadest ass-kickers of all times. But what’s this? Instead of chasing a bad guy down an alley, he’s sitting in a hotel, talking to a woman, his voice barely carrying over elevator music worse than the phony jazz of Kenny G.

What’s this? Instead of standing up to a bad guy on a dark street in the hood (probably called Martin Luther King Drive or Avenue. When thugs want to dance, they don’t let no preacher stop them, even if he got the Nobel Prize!), Wesley is sitting close to a lady at this hotel bar. And no karate kicks or nothing. He’s not even talking; he’s listening!

(Note:: Listen to a woman without undressing her with your eyes. Hmmn. Could be a lesson for the daddy).

But a brotha knew that Wesley would soon spring into action, that some eye-roving, woman-leering, drug dealing thug was going to come up and touch Angela (She so fine-Lawd, have mercy!) Bassett and Wesley would mop the floor with him and his two sidekicks, sweep a fainting Angela (She so fine-a little mercy, if you please!) Bassett off her feet, take her to his hotel room, do The NASTY and some serious screaming for real!

But what’s this? Instead of rearranging the nose of a drug dealer, Wesley is talking, ratting on hisself, confessing that he’s married to a white woman, that he loves her, that she’s dying but that he intends to see the situation through (I never heard a brotha give a pick-up line like this). And she didn’t throw a drink in his face, curse him out, call him a traitor to his race or anything!

(Note: Be open and honest with a woman. Hmmn. Could be a lesson for the daddy).

The Scene That Did It

But this is the scene that kind of got to the daddy. See, It’s about a year later, Angela (She so fine-Lawd, I’m on bended knees!) Bassett is divorced from her husband, and she’s back home spending a little quality time with her beautiful daughter. Then, while her daughter is checking out

mommy's makeup in the bathroom, Angela (She so fine-Lawd, I’m getting dizzy!) Bassett reads the letter from Wesley. He says he's still watching his wife die day by day, that he still loves his wife, that he’s still going to see it through, but that he'll never forget that night-- that night when they met in the bar, forgot about ass-kicking and spent time with each other. And You can see from the water in her eyes that she agreed with him...a brotha gotta say that this scene brought a little water to the daddy's eyes...made him... a little misty...He had to step back and remember that he was an ass-kicker himself back in the day, that he held his own between the ropes boxing at the neighborhood vet club, that he dunked a few times in a high school basketball game, that he was a young terror catching balls and scoring touchdowns on the football field (Sigh). The daddy had to check hisself.

(Note: A woman loves it when a man is loyal to a relationship. Hmmn. Could be a lesson for the daddy).

Okay, the movie was alright. The writing was good, with no phony ending or predictable solutions but more like life itself: incomplete. You learn from mistakes and try to do better in the next relationship.

Okay, the acting was good by all, even by those who weren’t the big stars. Okay, the directing by Forrest Whittaker was alright. But that was expected because, when it comes to movies or the theater, that brotha can do anything. And, okay, the daddy learned that ole Wesley can do more than kick ass. He can do some serious acting and maybe dispense a lesson or two.

But don’t go badmouthing the daddy, saying he had to use a bunch of Kleenex, because he got weak-kneed and started boo-hooing over some chick flick. A little bit of water welled into his eyes is all.

The daddy is a man.

He Fought to Keep the Blues Alive But Couldn't Stay Alive Himself

“Over and over again, I would tell him about a great blues legend passing. He was very philosophical about it. He’d say, ‘It’s going to come to all of us. That’s one thing we know for sure.’ "
--Ms. Dorsey, station manager of WEVL

Today, the daddy, along with Memphis, is still feeling the loss of Dee Henderson (known as "Cap'n Pete" by many), a well-loved DJ who was shot in the backyard of his home apparently by his grandson, whose blues radio program "Cap'n Pete's Blues Cruise" gave the bitter life of poverty, hard work and low pay in Memphis a little bit of sweetness, making the rise out of bed each morning less difficult to do.

Yes, Mr. Henderson is dead, but Ms. Dorsey said she plans to continue Cap'n Pete's Blues Cruise in some form. She said she taped many of the shy Henderson's programs without his knowledge and plans to play them. So "little Cap'n Pete", Henderson's grandson, will continue to hear grandpa keep the blues alive in Memphis.

Yes, the blues on radio will continue in Memphis, where life is hard, crime is rampant but pockets of sweetness lie and persist just beneath the surface.

Here's more info on Cap'n Pete's passing:
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The Blues Silence a DJ Who Knew Them Well

By JOHN M. HUBBELL
published August 3, 2008

MEMPHIS — Violence and heartbreak have long shaped the music that makes this city synonymous with the blues. But when the police were alerted to the slaying of Dee Henderson, a disc jockey whose soft voice piloted “Cap’n Pete’s Blues Cruise” on the city’s volunteer radio station, WEVL, for 26 years, the death seemed more like the lyrics of the Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters songs he so loved than his friends and fans could stand.

The silencing of Mr. Henderson, 72, a man whose gentle demeanor was far removed from the raucous Beale Street nightclubs where legions of blues players got their breaks, came during an especially violent period for the city.

In March, the city endured its largest multiple killing in 15 years when six people — including two children — were found dead in a home. That and other lesser-noted killings have made Memphis’s violent crime rate the second highest in the nation, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Memphis has a nasty old crust on the outside,” said Steffen Schreiner, 49, a fellow D.J. at the radio station. “But if you dig underneath, there are these pearls, these diamonds — and WEVL is one of them.”
For the full story, see the New York Times.

And This is Free: The Life and Times of Chicago's Legendary Maxwell Street," A Film to Check Out

“You used to get out on Maxwell Street on a Sunday Morning and pick you out a good spot, babe. Dammit, we’d make more money than I ever looked at. Put you out a tub, you know, and put a pasteboard in there, like a newspaper. I’m telling you, Jewtown was Jumpin’ like a champ, jumpin’ like mad on Sunday morning.”
-- Hound Dog Taylor, slide guitarist and former regular player on Maxwell Street.

This evening, the daddy is feeling a film called "And This is Free: The Life and Times of Chicago's Legendary Maxwell Street." Maxwell Street was a place my father and countless other black musicians went to pick up some extra cash by playing the blues.

Called "Jewtown" by many (because most of the immigrants in the neighborhood were Jewish), it was also a place to get a bargain on clothes or just about anything else. My father
was one of the many blues guitarists who made a little extra chump change by playing there. So Maxwell Street has a special place for me; and hearing "I Held My Baby" by Hound DogTaylor reminded me of Maxwell Street and the passionate blues played there.

Here's some info about the film:

"After languishing out of print for many years, Mike Shea’s legendary film on Chicago’s Maxwell Street Market, And This Is Free, has finally been reissued by Shanachie and I imagine news of this will stir up quite a bit of excitement in blues circles. Shanachie has done an exemplary job with the packaging; housed in a soft covered fold out set is a two disc set containing the 50 minute documentary And This Is Free, the 30 minute documentary Maxwell Street: A Living Memory, some fascinating archival footage, an interview with sound man Gordon Quinn, a separate CD of performances by artists associated with Maxwell Street plus an illustrated 36 page booklet."

To read more about the film, see Big Road Blues. To see photos of Maxwell Street, check out Maxwell Blues photos.

The daddy's Got the Blues and He Can't Help Hisself

"I’m just getting started and I hope I can continue to make music that will connect with people. These days people need the blues more than ever…takes your mind off other things."
--Lurrie Bell

So the daddy is sitting in his living room in his comfortable home. But he remembers when it wasn't always so. He remembers when he first came to Minneapolis, Minnesota and washed dishes at a local restaurant for food and a place to stay. And then, like a slap upside the head, the words of Chicago blues guitarist Mighty Joe Young (He played for R&B great Tyrone Davis and was also a side man to blues greats Jimmie Dawkins and Otis Rush, respectively) rises up from some place deep in his soul; and the daddy begins to sing:

"Nothing in my pocket but the bottom.
More than I can say for my shoe.
Speaking of the blues I got em.
That's all I can afford to lose.
You know I need,
yes, I need someone.
Oh, before you reach the end.
You, too, might need a friend."

To shake this feeling, the daddy goes for a walk and...BAM!...gets hit again like Toni Soprano whacks a mafia underling on a late Sunday night, in the middle of some dark woods, somewhere outside New Jersey. This time it's Lurrie Bell singing a slow blues with a heavy back beat and a bitter-sweet tone of resignation, asking someone but no one in particular:

"What can a poor man do
you know, when the blues keeps following him around?
What can a poor man do
you know, when the blues keeps following him around?
Get him a pint a liquor
sit and drink it on down.

You know sometimes I feel
like drinking me some gasoline.
Oh, sometimes I feel
like drinking me some gasoline.
Striking me a match
and blow my fool self up in steam."

Let's face it: the daddy's got the blues, and, like an addict who has reached rock bottom, he just can't help hisself.

So what does a shaking addict do when he needs a fix? Call the nearest chemical dependency agency and say "I was wondering if you could possibly provide me some assistance?" Please. He goes to a drug dealer, gets a vile of crack and
retires to the nearest dark alley to seek a little release, a little peace, with the only God he knows.

So what did the daddy do to get his fix ? He went to a record shop, copped "Let's Talk About Love" by legendary blues guitar genius Lurrie Bell, sat in his SUV, his personal alley, and got some cathartic release, if only for a day, from the blues that keeps following him around.

"Let's Talk About Love" is honest blues. There's not a lot of loud, fast playing tunes that provide little time to breathe and take it all in. Lurrie takes his time and settles into a groove and plays on the beat just the way his father, Carey Bell, a great harmonica player, used to do it back in the day in Muddy Water's band.

In his playing, Lurrie takes clean breaks and steadily builds on a solo like a bricklayer building a house. But this is not to say the brother doesn't rock. He gets you patting your feet and dancing in the bathroom with several tunes spread appropriately throughout the CD. What it says is that, whether a shuffle or down-and-out-somebody-spare-a-dime wail, Lurrie and his red Gibson moans and soars and screams inside a soulful backbeat that will make you feel it all over-- feel it to your bones.

But the daddy especially loves Lurrie's rhythm playing on "Why Am I Treated So Bad?" and his stirring solo on "Missing You;" And if you got a chance to see the December 2007 Living Blues magazine article on Lurrie Bell, you would understand why. You see, besides battling alcohol, Lurrie has battled a mental disease (schizophrenia) as well. And just when he was getting over it, just when this genius of the blues guitar was starting to wield his axe all over Chicago again, his loving partner and then his mentoring father died. So suddenly he's left to take care of his child and his life alone. And the sound of his red Gibson tells you that the blues still follows him around-- that it's been a struggle, that it still is a struggle.

On the other hand, his honest soul searching and truth-telling with his voice and with his "amen" and "I hear you" response on that red Gibson is one of the reasons the daddy sometimes turns away from other music and plays nothing but the blues for months.

Poet Sterling Plumpp said of Bell:

"He speaks scared chords
a guitar screams in his
eyes. Because he is some
one shot out of a shot
gun house by white
lightning that makes him
a.c.h.a. high
rise resident...
He is a part of speech
therapy we master
to speak sanity"

Has the blues ever followed you around?
---------------------------------------------

Johnny Griffin, One of the Greatest, is Gone

The great jazz tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, who played with many of the greats but chose to live in France, died on Friday. He was 80. The cause of death was unclear. He was found dead on Friday morning in the music room of his home in Mauprevoir in western France by his wife Miriam. Griffin began playing with Lionel Hampton in 1945 and moved on to play with John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Art Blakely in the 50's and 60's.. The 1958 album he cut with Coltrane and Blakely called "A Blowing Session" remains among his signature works. "Jazz," said Griffin, " is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good, in spite of conditions."
All that Jazz did an excellent commentary on Griffin. Here's a sample:
---------------------------------------------
Back in 1963, despite the solid reputation he had established as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Thelonious Monk’s group (and as co-leader of a band with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis), Griffin felt forced to flee to Europe.

During the Sixties, Griffin was one of an elite corps of resident American jazzmen in Europe, a group that included Kenny Clarke, Arthur Taylor, Horace Parlan, Kenny Drew, and, of course, Dexter Gordon (“Dexter’s family to me,” he smiles). He had no trouble finding work there. He played in radio and television studio bands, was installed for long engagements in clubs such as the Blue Note in Paris, played in countless jazz festivals, and continued his recording career unabated. He did everything but return to the United States. And he missed it: “Europeans love jazz very much, but American audiences respond to the music in a really special way.”

Johnny Griffin’s triumphant homecoming in 1978, coming on the heels of Dexter’s, ended 15 years of exclusively expatriate life in Europe. The occasion was one of jazz’s happiest, most heartwarming events in memory. Griffin found himself playing to an entirely new generation of fans, while his older fans discovered the tenor saxophonist to be playing better than ever."

for the full story, see All That Jazz.

Adam Bernstein, staff writer of the Washington Post, said of Griffin:

"The Chicago-born Griffin emerged as a top-flight player in the 1950s, when he performed with saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Thelonious Monk's quartet and drummer Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.

Mr. Griffin was a masterful improviser in hard bop, a swaggering, blues-inflected branch of swing music played at breakneck speed.

New York Times jazz critic John S. Wilson once wrote of Mr. Griffin's skill that he "plays the tenor saxophone with long, light, flowing lines that build to tremendously forceful passages, which despite their fierce energy and the power of his attack, always remain completely controlled and smoothly executed."

Lula Reed, Another Fine Voice Silenced

She was versatile, singing urban blues most of the time but switching to gospel for a 1954 session. Reed's strident 1954 waxing "Rock Love" was later revived by labelmate Little Willie John. She briefly moved to the Chess subsidiary Argo in 1958-1959 but returned to the fold in 1961 (as always, under Thompson's direction) on King's Federal imprint. While at Federal, she waxed a series of sassy duets with guitarist Freddy King in March of 1962. Another move -- to Ray Charles's Tangerine logo in 1962-1963 -- soon followed. After that, her whereabouts are unknown.
--Bill Dahl, All Music Guide

Lula Reed, Do you know who she was ? It's alright if you don't. A lot of people never heard of her; and many of those who knew her from her distinctive, flexible voice-- a voice that was equally effective and all her own, whether she was playing jazz, blues or gospel-- and big hit "Drown in my own tears" soon forgot her. Indeed, "Drown in my own tears" war recorded in 1951 and went to the top 5 on the billboard charts. But Ray Charles recorded it three years later; and now, when people here it, they think of Charles, and not Reed.

Like Big Maybelle, Hadda Brooks and a number of other fine women blues singers, Lula was a victim of the ever-present itch of American music lovers for something new and, during the fifties and sixties, that meant mostly males and male groups like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Litle Richard, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. They had a craving-- they had it bad, and that ain't always good-- for Rock & Roll, a bouncy derivative of the blues with a snappy beat and an intoxicating, out-of-this-world crazy feeling to it, a feeling that evoked wild dancing, a lowered inhibitions, and signaled to energetic teeny boppers that, yes, they had a music that was all their own and that, surely, they were one step closer to complete liberation old fogies like mom and dad.

Lula Reed, a great singer in the fifties and early sixties, was silenced by The Creator on June 21, 2008. But, truth be told, she was, in another sense, silenced by an opportunistic music business that sought short-term profits over long-term, artful substance, musical frenzy over musicality. Thus Lula's propensity for sweet, sultry ballads with a soulful voice that reminds you of Dinah Washington went the way of classic blues, folk and spirituals.

After moving from different labels and back again to the same ones, Lula, frustrated, went back to a place where her great voice and good heart would never be out of style: The black church. And the record business never heard from her again.But on the road of quality music, Lula Reed left footsteps for music lovers to follow, and, fortunately, some of that music is coming back. "Boy, Girl, Boy," a sexy duet recorded with the up-and-coming guitarist Freddie King at the Federal Label in 1962, is being reissued. But the first reissue with be Lula Reed 1951-1954 on Classics. "Drown in My Own Tears" will be reissued; and it will feature 24 of her cuts from the Ace label. And of course there are the songs she recorded with collaborator and later husband Sonny Thompson that are a part of the Sonny Thompson collections.

For more on the life of Lula Reed, check out the wonderful piece that was written by Jeff Under on Big Road Blues. Also, see the piece about her obituary in the blog Juke Joint Soul. And purchase Lula Reed's CD with Freddie King or one of the other reissues, play a tune or two and say, to paraphrase the title of one of daddy's favorite tunes, "I will remember you."

Lula Reed, the daddy will remember you.