Sangamon Valley Roots Revival Radio Hour

Pokey LaFarge and the South City Three 2/24 at the HCFTA

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:15:00 +0000

Eilen Jewell and Pokey LaFarge February 24 at the HCFTA

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 21:11:00 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 02:55:00 +0000

Ten years ago in a small bar with corrugated aluminum sheets for siding called The Alley, the Sangamon Valley Roots Revival was born. Call it what you will...honky-tonk, rockabilly, hillbilly, alt.country, roots rock or just good American music, the SVRR has made Springfield a regular stop for traveling troubadors. Inspired by the likes of BR549, Wayne Hancock and the legendary Big Sandy, we wanted to do our part to pass along and preserve the roots of American music. The SVRR, built on the punk rock spirit of DIY (Do It Yourself), owes its success and longevity to the thousands of roots music fans of the Sangamon Valley.

So if the good lord's willing and the creeks don't rise, join us at the Hoogland Center for the Arts on September 24. You'll be dazzled by Big Sandy and his Fly-Rite Boys, Two Tons of Steel, Caffeine Patrol, plenty of friends and fellow music lovers dancing to the bop. Come one, come all, sinners and the saved alike. It's music man, it's the beat, the beat, the beat. It get's in your soul and you have no choice but to get real gone!

Artists that have graced a SVRR stage:

Johnny Dilks

Ray Condo and his Riccochets

Ryan Adams

Deke Dickerson and his Ecco-fonics

The Lucky Stars

Dave Stuckey and his Rhythm Gang

The Ranch Girls

Junior Brown

Southern Culture on the Skids

Big Al Downing

Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys

The Bellfuries

Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys

Wanda Jackson

Link Wray

Charlie Louvin

Marti Brom

The Four Charms

BR549

Mandy Barnett

Del McCoury Band

Robbie Fulks

Kim Richey

The Woggles

The Cynics

The Black Diamond Heavies

Nick Curran and the Nitelifes

Cigar Store Indians

Infamous Stringdusters

The Romantics

Sarah Borges

The Shazam

The Boss Martians

Los Straitjackets

The Forty-fives

Dale Watson

Charlie Robison

Bare Jr.

Rosie Flores

Hot Club of Cowtown

Crazy Joe and his Mad River Outlaws

Carl "Sonny" Leyland

The Honeybees

The Sprague Brothers

Chris Scruggs

Dallas Wayne

Wayne Hancock

Justin Townes Earle

The Bottle Rockets

The Deadstring Brothers

Jason Ringenberg

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Little Rachel

Sonny Landreth

Wanda Jackson's hair 1966

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:48:00 +0000

That my friends is some great hair!!

Taste Of Downtown American Music Show

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:37:00 +0000

Taste of Downtown (Springfield)
American Music Show lineup:

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Former member of the Drive By Truckers, Jason Isbell explores the roots of his Florence, Alabama home recording his second solo release at the famed FAME recording studio in Muscle Shoals , AL. Soulful with country styling, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit inhabit the world of southern rock that blends every element of the American music catalogue into something rooted yet new.

Spin Magazine 4 Stars - Southern rock is a minefield of rebel flags, drinking songs, and dudes yelling "Free Bird!" With Drive-By Truckers, singer-guitarist Jason Isbell learned to embrace some of those clichés; on his gritty, vibrant second solo album, he begins to transcend them. "However Long" personalizes working-class disaffection into a defiant anthem; stormy rocker "Soldiers Get Strange" is almost certainly the best tune ever written about post-traumatic stress disorder; and multiple tales of warm, lonely barrooms and the warm, lonely relationships they breed uncover new truths while traversing well-trod emotional terrain.

The Lucky Stars

The Lucky Stars play raucous good time dance music that sets the mood for a rollicking Saturday night on the town, as well as their very own brand of heart-broken blues that can provide the perfect soundtrack for the inevitable Sunday morning hangover.
The characters behind this music, Sage Guyton and JW (Jeremy Wakefield) stumbled upon each other one whiskey-soaked night at The Cattle Call Saloon, a long forgotten Hollywood Honky Tonk. The Hillbilly band that Sage was playing with that night caught J.W.'s ear, especially since he'd recently started learning to play the steel guitar and was looking for a band to join up with. Several bottles later, the two were waxing philosophical about their mutual interest in 1940s and 1950s Western and Hillbilly artists such as Merle Travis, Tex Williams, and Bob Wills, and by the time last-call rolled around they had decided to band together in the hopes of creating original music that would help keep the spirit of the music they loved alive.
Many of their heroes, were among the mid and south westerners who moved to California during the 1930s and 1940s in order to pursue employment during the depression and war years, bringing their musical culture with them. As a result, the music that flourished in Los Angeles at that time was an inventive hybrid of Celtic fiddle music, Blues, Cowboy folk tunes and early Dixieland jazz--music that later became known as Western Swing. Fittingly, The Lucky Stars are based in Hollywood, the town in which this music reached the height of its popularity via the burgeoning film industry.
Described as "kick-ass" and "heart-warming " by young and old respectively, The Lucky Stars appeal to diverse audiences, and are equally comfortable performing for a room of WWII veterans at The Elk's Lodge or opening for an all-ages Melvins' show at the Whiskey A Go-Go (which is, incidentally, how they got their record deal). So, whether you feel like cutting a rug or crying into your beer, The Lucky Stars have just the right musical accompaniment to suit your mood!

JEFF the Brotherhood

Lo-fi rock in all of its glory. Praise be to rock!

“Right now it doesn’t get any better than rock team JEFF The Brotherhood. They’re very awesome and weird, and I think everybody here in a band should see them. Their sheer lack of professionalism combined with their seemingly unintentional disregard for by-the-book “rock rules,” combined with their right-on teenage humor makes them by far the most interesting live group in Nashville.” - Nashville Scene
”Depending on the song, Nashville’s Jeff the Brotherhood can recall either a metallic stoner-rock outfit or a melodic power-pop band. The group sounds confident and convincing in either guise.” -Time Out New York
"JEFF The Brotherhood are a duo comprised of singer/guitarist Jake Orrall and drummer Jamin Orrall (fake?), blew my mind with speedy riffs, frenetic drumming, and loose solos. JEFF take big ’70s rock and squeeze it into the basement, creating a kind of D.I.Y. stadium sound, one that fuses the divergent genres of punk- and blues-based rock ‘n’ roll." –Limewire

Otis Gibbs

A modern day folk troubadour with Midwestern roots. Billy Bragg’s a fan and Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill look on admiringly. What more do you need?

Otis Gibbs is an old-school troubadour out of Wanamaker, Ind., who sounds only too happy to pick up the mantle of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger in championing the working stiff and blue-collar America in song. On "Grandpa Walked a Picketline," due Jan. 20, he sings of everyday folks, not always the desperate or destitute, but the overlooked and underappreciated.
"Calling out tonight to anyone who's tired of being down," he writes in "To Anyone," echoing Guthrie's famous line about hating a song that makes you feel no good, or born to lose.
"Caroline" follows a woman much like the matriarch in Dolly Parton's "To Daddy," who leaves her family behind when she lights out in search of fulfillment after a lifetime of neglect. Gibbs gets impressively Dylanesque in "Preacher Steve," about a charlatan who uses religion rather than snake oil to fleece his flock: "Preacher Steve could walk on water while the whole world's dying of thirst."
Gibbs brings his characters to life with a vocal growl that sounds just one pack of Camels shy of Tom Waits, and he's assisted ably by a team of roots-music veterans, including bassist Don Dixon, steel guitarist-Dobro ace Al Perkins, mandolinist Tim Easton and producer Chris Stamey.
There couldn't be a better time for a voice this insightfully compassionate. – Randy Lewis LA Times

Lucky Patterson and the Wolf Crick Boys

Hee-Haw lovin, white lightin’ drinkin’, juke joint jumpin’, Sunday mornin’ repentin’ outlaws from the sticks of Sangamon County

Carl Smith RIP

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 03:50:00 +0000

Updated: Country Music Hall of Famer Carl Smith dies at 82
Published by Peter Cooperon January 17, 2010in News. 56 Comments
Tags: carl smith, CMA, country, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, feature2, feature4, goldie hill, grand ole opry, johnny sibert, merle kilgore, obituaries, waylon jennings.

Click to see a gallery of Carl Smith photos.
Master honky-tonk stylist Carl Smith, the dashing “Country Gentleman” who was among the most successful Nashville-based artists of the 1950s, died Saturday, Jan. 16 at his home in Franklin. The Country Music Hall of Famer was 82.

“From the minute he came out, I wanted to look like him, tried to comb my hair like him and learned every song he ever recorded,” Waylon Jennings once said of Mr. Smith, who retired from music in 1978 and bred champion cutting horses for decades. Many other artists of Mr. Smith’s generation spent the 1980s and '90s working on stages. Mr. Smith preferred spending time on his 500-acre Franklin ranch, with his horses, his dogs and, until her death in 2005, his wife, singer Goldie Hill.

“I just wanted to play cowboy,” Mr. Smith told The Tennessean’s Tim Ghianni in 2003. “My philosophy is doing what I want to do.”

In his youth, what Mr. Smith wanted to do was sing country music. He was born in 1927 in the small East Tennessee town of Maynardville, also the birthplace of Roy Acuff. As a boy, he listened to Knoxville radio stations WROL and WNOX, and to the Grand Ole Opry, and he mowed neighbors’ lawns to pay for guitar lessons. In 1944, while in high school, he began singing on Cas Walker’s WROL radio show.

Three years later, after a Navy stint and several other radio residencies, he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry as a guest of Hank Williams. In May of 1950, he signed a recording contract with Columbia Records and a radio contract with WSM.

“My first job at WSM was six or seven days a week at 5:15 in the morning,” he told The Tennessean. “The announcer would put me on and then just leave. I started being on the Opry pretty regularly. They didn’t say you were a ‘member’ of the Opry back then. You just were on it or you weren’t.”

Radio exposure on WSM and on the Opry helped Mr. Smith to gain notoriety, as did his tours with Hank Williams and others. Beginning in 1951, he launched a streak of 21 straight Top 10 country hits, including “Loose Talk,” “Hey Joe!” and “Let’s Live A Little” and eight-week No. 1 “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way.” His singles sold between 100,000 and 500,000 copies each, making him one of country’s most popular artists. And that popularity was enhanced by a stage presence that blended an East Tennessee drawl with a measure of refinement.

“He was on shows when I was real, real young,” said Hank Williams Jr. “The guy was real striking to the ladies. I remember their reaction when he went on stage.”

One of the ladies impressed by Mr. Smith was June Carter, who married Mr. Smith in 1952. They divorced after four years together and after the birth of daughter Carlene Carter, who became a renowned singer-songwriter. In 1957, he married singer Goldie Hill, who gave up her promising music career to become a housewife.

“When I married her, I thought she was going to support me,” Mr. Smith said in 2003. “Instead, I had to support her.”

Mr. Smith’s easy manner and sharp stage wear (he preferred elegant suits to gaudy rhinestones) led to his “Country Gentleman” moniker, but his appeal was not strictly visual. By late 1951, he was leading one of country music’s finest bands, called The Tunesmiths, a group that featured steel guitarist Johnny Sibert, now a member of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame.

With Sibert, Mr. Smith forged a sound that, as journalist Chet Flippo wrote in liner notes to Columbia’s The Essential Carl Smith: 1950–1956, “fell almost precisely on the line dividing traditional from modern country.” Emotional ballads nodded to the work of forerunners like Acuff, but Mr. Smith’s uptempo recordings possessed a snarl that preceded rock 'n' roll by several years and that came to be of great influence to new-era honky-tonk revivalists such as BR549 and Chris Scruggs (whose mother, Gail Davies, had a Top 5 hit in 1981 with her cover of Mr. Smith’s 1952 hit, “It’s a Lovely, Lovely World”).

In 1954, Mr. Smith was one of four founders of the Cedarwood/Driftwood publishing company, which grew into a place as a major Nashville publisher. He left the Opry in 1956, and began working often on television (he was a part of the first live television broadcast from Nashville, on WSM Channel 4). His Carl Smith’s Country Music Hall show ran for five years in Canada, bringing “hillbilly” music to our northern neighbors.

Mr. Smith’s run of hits cooled in the 1960s, though he reached No. 10 on Billboard’s singles chart in 1967 with “Deep Water” and had several other top 20 records. In 1973, after 23 years and around 15 million records sold, Mr. Smith ended his association with Columbia Records. He recorded briefly for Hickory Records before deciding to take what he called “early retirement.”

In the 1990s, many of Mr. Smith’s fans and friends began making noise about the fact that the Country Gentleman had not yet been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Waylon Jennings did not attend his own 2001 induction, saying that he would not go into any hall of fame that didn’t include Mr. Smith.

“People forgot about Carl Smith, because he got out of the limelight,” said “Ring of Fire” cowriter Merle Kilgore in 2003. “He made money and made good investments in property, and he stopped singing.”

When Country Music Association members voted Mr. Smith into the Hall in 2003, Hank Williams Jr. said, “That took a while, didn’t it? Something went right today.”

Informed of his induction on August 5, 2003, Mr. Smith said, "I appreciate it very much. I was afraid I was going to have to die before this happened."

That fear was unrealized. Mr. Smith’s Hall induction was an acknowledgment that his time as a hit-maker and innovator had not in fact been forgotten, and that his quiet retirement years did not lesson the import and impact of his bustling 1950s.

The well-loved singer's visitation will be Monday, Jan. 18 from 5–8 p.m., at Williamson Memorial Funeral Home, 3009 Columbia Ave., in Franklin. His funeral service will be Tuesday, Jan. 19, at 11 a.m., and both the visitation and the service are open to the public.

Reach Peter Cooper at 615–259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:42:00 +0000

Bedrock 66 Live Shows in 2009

Here's who will be heating up the Hoogland:

February 27

Nashville "A-list" singer/songwriters Kim Richey and Sally Barris

Kim Richey released two of the best country flavored roots rock albums of the nineties. Although the records were critically acclaimed, they remained in the John Hiatt ranks of roots music, that is terribly good but not omnipotently profitable. Leave that part to others, Richey's songs did make a considerable amount of fame and fortune for the likes of Trisha Yearwood (Believe Me Baby I Lied), Radney Foster (Nobody Wins), not to mention Brooks and Dunn, Mindy McCready and many others.

Sally Barris is a Minnesota native, a folk singer with a beautiful voice and the co-writer of a Grammy nominated song performed by Trisha Yearwood and Keith Urban! As a Nashville songwriter, Barris is part of the country music industry that is both legendary and relatively unknown. As a writer she has had her songs performed by the far better know, Yearwood and Urban, Martina McBride, Leann Womack, Kellie Pickler, and Kathy Mattea. As a performer, Barris doesn't quite fit in the mainstream country scene. Her voice and style are more reminiscent of Nanci Griffith or Allison Moorer. Barris is plugging her third cd Resless Soul and is predicted by many reviewers to be on the brink of a break through herself. www.sallybarris.com

For her most recent release, Chinese Boxes, Richey worked with the legendary son of Beatles Producer George Martin, Giles Martin. The result is a lush pop album that is both rooted in America but flavored through an English lens. www.kimrichey.com

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $17

March 14

Justin Townes Earle with Jason Ringenberg
One of the most talked about debut albums has been Justin Townes Earle's "The Good Life". Named for the legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt by his equally legendary father, Steve Earle, Justin Townes Earle has lived up to the hype on his first record. At 25, Townes Earle is an old soul and his music reflects it. He has written songs about the civil war that illicit a feeling of centuries ago. He also writes about lost loves and life's travails that one wouldn't guess that a twenty-five year old could experience. He's also a traditionalist in terms of the music. Steel guitars and Hank Williams influences appear along side of organ drenched blues that could have come out of Muscle Shoals. It's clear that Justin Townes Earle's first record would have sold simply because of his famous names. The truth is his record would be great by any other name and more importantly he will sell many more to come. http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/justin-townes-earle

Listen to Justin on Morning Edition, December 29th, 2008
Read "World's Forgotten Boy" article about Justin
Jason Ringenberg is a true Illinois treasure. Growing up on a hog farm in north central Illinois and later a bar hopping country punk playin' rocker at SIU-Carbondale, Ringenberg went on to found one of the Eighties most inspired infusions of American roots music and punk rock, Jason and the Scorchers. Termed "cow-punk" at the time the Jason and the Scorchers recorded for the major label EMI. It wasn't long before the band was playing nationally and then internationally. (sharing a stage early on with a relatively unknown R.E.M.) After the Scorchers broke up (only to reappear on special occassions) Jason released a number of critically acclaimed solo lps that continue to mine the fertile land between the Ramones and Hank Williams, Sr. After becoming a family man himself, Jason created a new release for his creative passion, Farmer Jason. Farmer Jason has penned and performs such classics as "Punk Rock Skunk" and Moose on the Loose". (Famer Jason will perform at 2 PM on the 14th at the Suggs Studio on campus at UIS, more info to come.) www.jasonringenberg.com

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $20

April 17

The Del Moroccos
The Del Moroccos are a powerful new 8 piece Rock n' Roll band (guitar, bass, drums, piano, tenor/bari sax, and 3 sexy frontwomen) who put out an awesome full-length show of dirty R'N'R, R&B material with girl group vocals. Knock the Ray-ettes and Link Wray together, with a blast of garage, a hit of late '50s black rock n' roll, dress 'em up like Johnny Cash, and you get a raucous, mean mix of "'50s garage". The members are veteran Chicago musicians from the rockabilly, surf, ska, jazz and R & B scenes, from bands including: Mighty Blue Kings, Jimmy Sutton's Four Charms, Deals Gone Bad, Cave Catt Sammy, The Stranger, Kevin O'Donnell's Quality 6, Reluctant Aquanauts and The Stacks. The Del Moroccos lead guitar player Jimmy Sutton, hand picked the line up for this relentless new sound. The Del Moroccos set list features choice selections of obscure, rockin' early independent record label songs and wild originals, capturing a sound that teeters somewhere between the 50's and 60's, and is performed with the emotion of early punk and mod revival. New on the scene, the Del Moroccos have shared the stage with SUN rocording artist Hayden Thompson, and the Queen of rockabilly, the legendary Wanda Jackson.http://www.myspace.com/thedelmoroccos

Tickets in advance - $15 | at the door - $17

Lux Interior of the Cramps R.I.P

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:14:00 +0000

Lux Interior dies at 60; founder, front man of punk band the Cramps
By August Brown

9:39 PM PST, February 4, 2009

Lux Interior, the singer, songwriter and founding member of the pioneering New York City horror-punk band the Cramps, died Wednesday. He was 60.
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FOR THE RECORD:
Lux Interior obituary: The obituary in Thursday's California section of Lux Interior, the founder and front man of the horror-punk band the Cramps, said he died Tuesday. He died Wednesday morning. It also stated that he was 60 and was born on Oct. 21, 1948. In fact, according to his family, he was born on Oct. 21, 1946, and died at the age of 62. The obituary also said the Cramps had toured as recently as November; they have not performed since November 2006.

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Interior, whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, died at Glendale Memorial Hospital of a heart condition, according to a statement from his publicist.

With his wife, guitarist "Poison" Ivy Rorschach, Interior formed the Cramps in 1976, pairing lyrics that expressed their love of B-movie camp with ferocious rockabilly and surf-inspired instrumentation.

The band became a staple of the late '70s Manhattan punk scene emerging from clubs such as Max's Kansas City and CBGB, and was one of the first acts to realize the potential of punk rock as theater and spectacle.

Often dressed in macabre, gender-bending costumes onstage, Interior evoked a lanky, proto-goth Elvis Presley, and his band quickly became notorious for volatile and decadent live performances.

The Cramps recorded early singles at Sun Records with producer Alex Chilton of the band Big Star and had their first critical breakthrough on their debut EP "Gravest Hits."

The band's lack of a bassist and its antagonistic female guitarist quickly set it apart from its downtown peers and upended the traditional rock band sexual dynamic of the flamboyant, seductive female and the mysterious male guitarist.

The group was asked to open for the Police on a major tour of Britain in 1979 and reached its critical apex in the early '80s with such albums as "Psychedelic Jungle" and "Songs the Lord Taught Us."

While the Cramps' lineup revolved constantly, Interior and Rorschach remained the band's core through more than three decades. The Cramps never achieved much mainstream commercial success, but instead found a reliable fringe audience for more than 30 years -- they even played a notorious show for patients at Napa State Hospital in Napa, Calif.

"It's a little bit like asking a junkie how he's been able to keep on dope all these years," Interior told The Times some years ago. "It's just so much fun. You pull in to one town and people scream, 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' And you go to a bar and have a great rock 'n' roll show and go to the next town and people scream, 'I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.' It's hard to walk away from all that."

The band's influence can be clearly felt among lauded minimalist art-blues bands, including the Black Lips, the White Stripes, the Horrors and Primal Scream, whose front man, Bobby Gillespie, allegedly named his son Lux.

The Cramps' most recent album, a collection of rarities, "How to Make a Monster," was released in 2004, and the band continued to tour well into the later years of its career, wrapping up its most recent U.S. outing in November.

Interior was born in Stow, Ohio, on Oct. 21, 1948. A Times report in 2004 said that he and Rorschach (born Kristy Wallace) met in Sacramento, where they bonded "over their enrollment in an art and shamanism class and a shared affection for thrift-shop vinyl before hitting the road for New York City."

In 1987, there were widespread rumors of Interior's death from a heroin overdose, and half a dozen funeral wreaths were sent to Rorschach. "At first, I thought it was kind of funny," Interior told The Times. "But then it started to give me a creepy feeling."

"We sell a lot of records, but somehow just hearing that you've sold so many records doesn't hit you quite as much as when a lot of people call you up and are obviously really broken up because you've died."

august.brown@latimes.com

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AMS at Taste '08

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:02:00 +0000

RIP BO

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:00:00 +0000

Bo Diddley, Who Gave Rock His Beat, Dies at 79
By BEN RATLIFF
Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79.

The cause was heart failure, a spokeswoman, Susan Clary, said. Mr. Diddley had a heart attack last August, only months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.

In the 1950s, as a founder of rock ’n’ roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped to reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.

His original style of rhythm and blues influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock ’n’ roll.

It can be found in Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive,” the Who’s “Magic Bus,” Bruce Springsteen’s “She’s the One” and U2’s “Desire,” among hundreds of other songs.

Yet the rhythm was only one element of his best records. In songs like “Bo Diddley,” “Who Do You Love,” “Mona,” “Crackin’ Up,” “Say, Man,” “Ride On Josephine” and “Road Runner,” his booming voice was loaded up with echo and his guitar work came with distortion and a novel bubbling tremolo. The songs were knowing, wisecracking and full of slang, mother wit and sexual cockiness. They were both playful and radical.

So were his live performances: trancelike ruckuses instigated by a large man with a strange-looking guitar. It was square and he designed it himself, long before custom guitar shapes became commonplace in rock.

Mr. Diddley was a wild performer: jumping, lurching, balancing on his toes and shaking his knees as he wrestled with his instrument, sometimes playing it above his head. Elvis Presley, it has long been supposed, borrowed from Mr. Diddley’s stage moves; Jimi Hendrix, too.

Still, for all his fame, Mr. Diddley felt that his standing as a father of rock ’n’ roll was never properly acknowledged. It frustrated him that he could never earn royalties from the songs of others who had borrowed his beat.

“I opened the door for a lot of people, and they just ran through and left me holding the knob,” he told The New York Times in 2003.

He was a hero to those who had learned from him, including the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. A generation later, he became a model of originality to punk or post-punk bands like the Clash and the Fall.

In 1979 Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of the Clash asked that Mr. Diddley open for them on the band’s first American tour. “I can’t look at him without my mouth falling open,” Mr. Strummer, star-struck, said during the tour.

For his part Mr. Diddley had no misgivings about facing a skeptical audience. “You cannot say what people are gonna like or not gonna like,” he explained later to the biographer George R. White. “You have to stick it out there and find out! If they taste it, and they like the way it tastes, you can bet they’ll eat some of it!”

Mr. Diddley was born Otha Ellas Bates in McComb, Miss., a small city about 15 miles from the Louisiana border. He was reared primarily by Gussie McDaniel, the first cousin of his mother, Esther Wilson. After the death of her husband, Ms. McDaniel, who had three children of her own, took the family to Chicago, where young Otha’s name was changed to Ellas B. McDaniel. Gussie McDaniel became his legal guardian and sent him to school.

He was 6 when the family resettled on Chicago’s South Side. He described his youth as one of school, church, trouble with street toughs and playing the violin for both band and orchestra, under the tutelage of O. W. Frederick, a prominent music teacher at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Gussie McDaniel taught Sunday school. Ellas studied classical violin from 7 to 15 and started on guitar at 12, when a family member gave him an acoustic model.

He then enrolled at Foster Vocational School, where he built a guitar as well as a violin and an upright bass. But he dropped out before graduating. Instead, with guitar in hand, he began performing in a duo with his friend Roosevelt Jackson, who played the washtub bass. The group became a trio when they added another guitarist, Jody Williams, then a quartet when they added a harmonica player, Billy Boy Arnold.

The band, first called the Hipsters and then the Langley Avenue Jive Cats, started playing at the Maxwell Street open-air market. They were sometimes joined by another friend, Samuel Daniel, known as Sandman because of the shuffling rhythms he made with his feet on a wooden board sprinkled with sand.

Mr. Diddley could not make a living playing with the Jive Cats in the early days, so he found jobs where he could: at a grocery store, a picture-frame factory, a blacktop company. He worked as an elevator operator and a meat packer. He also started boxing, hoping to turn professional.

In 1954 Mr. Diddley made a demonstration recording with his band, which now included Jerome Green on maracas. Phil and Leonard Chess of Chess Records liked the demo, especially Mr. Diddley’s tremolo on the guitar, a sound that seemed to slosh around like water. They saw it as a promising novelty and encouraged the group to return.

By Billy Boy Arnold’s account, the next day, as the band and the men who were soon to be their producers were setting up for a rehearsal, they were idly casting about for a stage name for Ellas McDaniel when Mr. Arnold thought of Bo Diddley. The name described a “bow-legged guy, a comical-looking guy,” Mr. Arnold said, as quoted by Mr. White in his 1995 biography, “Bo Diddley: Living Legend.”

That may be all there is to tell about the name, except for the fact that a certain one-string guitar — native to the Mississippi Delta, often homemade, in which a length of wire is stretched between two nails in a board — is called a diddley bow. By his account, however, Mr. Diddley had never played one.

In any case, Otha Ellas McDaniel had a new name and the title of a new song, whose lyrics began, “Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring.” “Bo Diddley” became the A side of his first single, in 1955, on the Checker label, a subsidiary of Chess. It reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart.

Mr. Diddley said he had first heard the “Bo Diddley beat” — three-stroke/rest/two-stroke, or bomp-ba-domp-ba-domp, ba-domp-domp — in a church in Chicago. But variations of it were in the air. The children’s game hambone used a similar rhythm, and so did the ditty that goes “shave and a haircut, two bits.”

The beat is also related to the Afro-Cuban clave, which had been popularized at the time by the New Orleans mambo carnival song “Jock-A-Mo,” recorded by Sugar Boy Crawford in 1953.

Whatever the source, Mr. Diddley felt the beat’s power. In early songs like “Bo Diddley” and “Pretty Thing,” he arranged the rhythm for tom-toms, guitar, maracas and voice, with no cymbals and no bass. (Also arranged in his signature rhythm was the eerie “Mona,” a song of praise he wrote for a 45-year-old exotic dancer who worked at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit; this song became the template for Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away.”)

Appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1955, Mr. Diddley was asked to play “Sixteen Tons,” the song popularized by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Without telling Mr. Sullivan, he played “Bo Diddley” instead. Afterward, in an off-camera confrontation, Mr. Sullivan told him that he would never work in television again. Mr. Diddley did not play again on a network show for 10 years.

For decades Mr. Diddley was bitter about his relationship with the Chess family, whom he accused of withholding money owed to him. In her book “Spinning Blues Into Gold,” Nadine Cohodas quoted Marshall Chess, Leonard’s son, as saying, “What’s missing from Bo’s version of events is all the gimmes.” Mr. Diddley would borrow so heavily against projected royalties, Mr. Chess said, that not much was left over in the final accounting.

Mr. Diddley’s watery tremolo effect, from 1955 onward, came from one of the first effects boxes to be manufactured for guitars: the DeArmond Model 60 Tremolo Control. But Mr. Diddley contended that he had already built something similar himself, with automobile parts and an alarm-clock spring.

His first trademark guitar was also handmade: he took the neck and the circuitry off a Gretsch guitar and connected it to a square body he had built. In 1958 he asked Gretsch to make him a better one to the same specifications. Gretsch made it as a limited-edition guitar called “Big B.”

On songs like “Who Do You Love,” his guitar style — bright chicken-scratch rhythm patterns on a few strings at a time — was an extension of his early violin playing, he said.

“My technique comes from bowing the violin, that fast wrist action,” he told Mr. White, explaining that his fingers were too big to move around easily. Rather than fingering the fretboard, Mr. Diddley said, he tuned the guitar to an open E and moved a single finger up and down to create chords.

As his fame rose, his personal life grew complicated. His first marriage, at 18, to Louise Woolingham, lasted less than a year. His second marriage, in 1949, to Ethel Smith, unraveled in the late 1950s. He then moved from Chicago to Washington, settling in the Mount Pleasant district, where he built a studio in his home.

Separated from his wife, he was performing in Birmingham, Ala., when, backstage, he met a young door-to-door magazine saleswoman named Kay Reynolds, a fan, who was 15 and white. They moved in together in short order and were soon married, in spite of Southern taboos against intermarriage.

During the late 1950s Mr. Diddley’s band featured a female guitarist, Peggy Jones (stage-named Lady Bo), at a time when there were scarcely any women in rock. She was replaced by Norma-Jean Wofford, whom Mr. Diddley called the Duchess. He pretended she was his sister, he said, to be in a better position to protect her on the road.

The early 1960s were low times. Chess, searching for a hit, had Mr. Diddley make albums to capitalize on the twist dance craze, as Chubby Checker had done, and on the surf music of the Beach Boys. But soon a foreign market for his earlier music began to grow, thanks in large part to the Rolling Stones, a newly popular band that was regularly playing several of his songs in its concerts. It paved the way for Mr. Diddley’s successful tour of Britain in the fall of 1963, performing with the Everly Brothers, Little Richard and the Rolling Stones, the opening act.

But Mr. Diddley was not willing to move to Europe, and in America the picture worsened: the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan and the Byrds quickly made him sound quaint. When work all but dried up, Mr. Diddley moved to New Mexico in the early 1970s and became a deputy sheriff in the town of Los Lunas. With his sound updated to resemble hard rock and soul, he continued to make albums for Chess until his contract expired in 1974.

His recording career never picked up after that, despite flirtations with synthesizers, religious rock and hip-hop. But he continued apace as a performer and public figure, popping up in places both obvious, like rock ’n’ roll nostalgia revues, and not so obvious: a Nike advertisement, the film “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphy, the 1979 tour with the Clash, and inaugural balls for two presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

His last recording was the 1996 album “A Man Amongst Men” (Code Blue/Atlantic), which was nominated for a Grammy. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 and in 1998 was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame as a musician of lasting historical importance.

Since the early 1980s Mr. Diddley had lived in Archer, Fla., near Gainesville, where he owned 76 acres and a recording studio. His passions were fishing and old cars, including a 1969 purple Cadillac hearse.

The last of Mr. Diddley’s marriages was to Sylvia Paiz, in 1992; his spokeswoman, Ms. Clary, said they were no longer married. His survivors include his children, Evelyn Kelly, Ellas A. McDaniel, Tammi D. McDaniel and Terri Lynn McDaniel; a brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes; and 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.

Mr. Diddley attributed his longevity to abstinence from drugs and drinking, but in recent years he had suffered from diabetes. After a concert in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on May 13, 2007, he had a stroke and was taken to Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha. On Aug. 28 he suffered a heart attack in Gainesville and was hospitalized.

Mr. Diddley always believed that he and Chuck Berry had started rock ’n’ roll, and the fact that he couldn’t financially reap all that he had sowed made him a deeply suspicious man.

“I tell musicians, ‘Don’t trust nobody but your mama,’ ” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 2005. “And even then, look at her real good.”

American Music Show at MySpace

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:18:00 +0000

myspace.com/americanmusicstagetods

July 12 American Music Show

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:07:00 +0000

’08 Lineup announced

American Music Show at the Taste of Downtown 2008

American Music Show

5th & Washington, Downtown Springfield, IL

Featuring: Dale Watson, Deadstring Brothers, Marti Brom, Rocky Velvet, the Hi-Risers and the Eva Hunter Band

This year's American Music Show at the Taste of Downtown music lineup should please the tastes of all kinds of music fans. Each act is a true artist in their genre. $2 admission

Headline Performer Dale Watson 8 PM

Dale Watson is a hard country singer/songwriter that champions country music's golden age. Haggard, Jennings, Jones, Owens and Nelson - country music doesn't get much better. While much of the commercial country industry experiments with seventies era rock to draw a 21st century audience, Dale Watson, refreshingly, remains an old soul. His country music is as authentic as country can be.

Watson's most recent release, From the Cradle to the Grave, was recorded at a cabin in the Tennessee mountains currently owned by friend and fan, Johnny Knoxville. More importantly to country music fans, the cabin was once owned by Johnny Cash. Whether or not the Cash spirit truly affected the recording, the result would have made him proud. Reviews for From the Cradle to the Grave have been unanimously positive.

"Dale Watson writes songs that wouldn't sound out of place on one of Johnny Cash's best albums -- songs that will endure...addressing matters of life and death, truth and justice, loss and longing in a voice that rings -- make that, rumbles -- with conviction." - The Washington Post

"...honky-tonk songs that look back to Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, with fiddle and pedal steel guitar to ease the music onto the dance floor." - The New York Times

"I'm one of Dale's biggest fans - I enjoy all his records and think he's great. I think there's a great deal of similarity between Dale and Waylon and myself...Kris and all the guys who just want to play their music and not have to go through all the bullshit. Dale stays true to what he believes in...whatever they say made me and Waylon 'Outlaws,' I think he's the same...if WE were, HE is."

..Willie Nelson

http://www.dalewatson.com/

Late Night Guests 10 PM
Deadstring Brothers
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Rolling Stones flattered the best. And if the Deadstring Brothers are a deadringer for Exile-era Stones, well then, that's a pretty serious compliment. Not unlike the Black Crowes, the Deadstring Brothers weren't content to simply imitate the Stones but have dug deep within the well of American roots music for inspiration. Similar influences to their predecessors, but a unique sound. We are thrilled to have them close the American Music Show.

From the Bloodshot Records website:

When the Detroit-based Deadstring Brothers released their critically acclaimed U.S. debut, Starving Winter Report, in the winter of 2006, they took to the road, touring with sidemen on steel guitar while seeking a permanent collaborator with a shared vision. They found what they were looking for in London, where the Heavy Load club scene was packing in rock n' roll fans who danced all night to bands like The Rolling Stones, The Black Crowes and The Allman Brothers….. On meeting Spencer Cullum, a young pedal steel/guitar player with the love of warm, analog rock n' roll, their mission was accomplished. Rounding out the line up were Spencer's brother Jeff on bass and fellow Brit Patrick Kenneally on piano and organ. Their shared musical language is easily explained by a look back to the late 60's, when young players from both sides of the Atlantic took cues from Delta blues players like Blind Willie Johnson and Son House

"This is country rock n' roll with shitloads of soul…one of the most refreshing rock records to hit the shops in many months." David McPherson, American Songwriter

"The Deadstring Brothers' whiskey-drenched blend of Exile-era Stones and ragged nods to Gram Parsons is one of the strongest offerings of twangy Americana in years." Joshua Valocchi, Philadelphia Weekly

http://www.myspace.com/deadstringbrothers

http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/artists/deadstringbrothers/

Marti Brom (w/ Rocky Velvet) 6 PM

Without rival Marti Brom is the reigning queen of the retro rockabilly scene. The original Queen of Rockabilly, Wanda Jackson, even wrote the liner notes for Brom's last cd. Yet to dismiss her as a retro act would simply be wrong. Her latest cd, Heartache Numbers, is a rich country record that showcases her powerful voice on 13 songs that all have a number in the title (Four Walls, A-11, Apartment 9).The Austin Chronicle writes," If Patsy Cline were alive and recording today, this is probably what it would sound like."

The St. Louis native now resides in Washington D.C. after a very productive 15 year stint in Austin, Texas that produced six critically acclaimed albums.

Backing Ms. Brom in Springfield is New York's Rocky Velvet, one of Upstate New York's premiere bands. Metroland, the newsweekly of NY's Capital Region (Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga), crowned them "Best Band" in 2007.

http://www.myspace.com/martirockabilly

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A313558

The Hi-Risers 4 PM

Last seen in Springfield with Kaiser George, Los Straitjackets and the Pontani Sisters, the Hi-Risers return to our capitol city with more early sixties rock and roll. If you love Buddy Holly and the Beatles, don't miss New York's Hi-Risers!

http://www.hirisers.com/

Eva Hunter Band 3 PM

Maybe the most underappreciated talent in central Illinois.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=172864103

Eeefing!

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:03:00 +0000

Stumbled across this NPR story on eefing. Rockabilly guitar god and all around good guy Deke Dickerson contributes to the story. If you are too young for Hee Haw! ask your parents to fill you in.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5259589

Infamous Stringdusters Now a Matinee at 3 PM

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:56:00 +0000

In oder to accomodate the large crowd and the band's requset to film their performance the Infamous Stringdusters show on April 5 has been changed to a 3 PM start. So make sure you get your tickets and tell your friends about the early start. Not only will the show be recorded for broadcast on WUIS, a hi-def film crew will be capturing the video for a future Stringdusters dvd release. Come be a part of the fun!

Bill Kirchen

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:10:00 +0000

Bill Kirchen September 19

American roots legend, grammy nominated, "titan of the telecaster" Bill Kirchen stops in Springfield on September 19 to perform for the Bedrock 66 Live music series. Kirchen is best known as guitarist and sometime vocalist for Commander Cody and the Lost Plant Airmen. In 1972 Kirchen's twangy telecaster runs could be heard all over the air waves on the top ten hit, Hot Rod Lincoln.

Kirchen has shared the stage with the likes of Nick Lowe, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Doug Sahm and Ralph Stanley. He is also a charter member of honky-tonk supergroup The Twangbangers along with Redd Volkaert and Dallas Wayne. He was nominated in 2001 for a grammy in the best country instrumental performance category for Poultry in Motion.

A Bill Kirchen show will leave you reminiscing about the great guitar players of the 20th century. From Hendrix to Maphis, Travis to Burton, Kirchen is a true guitar players' guitar player. Expect an evening of non-stop truck drivin, cryin' in your beer, drag racin', old school honky-tonkin' music.

October 10 Bedrock 66 Live!

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:36:00 +0000

Remember folks, this new series is a work in progress so check back often for updates on who we have lined up. October 10 we are excited to announce the appearance of a fabulous double bill.

The Boulder Acoustic Society and Otis Gibbs.

Boulder Acoustic Society - Blending sounds almost a century old with modern influences, BAS is jazz, country, folk and rock. Something they call, "American Roots music with the edge of punk rock and the grace of chamber music. Ukeleles, banjo, violin (or is that a fiddle), guitar, accordion, bass and percussion mixed to deliver a mesermerizing gypsy sound. In the 1920's when recorded music was young you could hear jazz, country, swing and blues all mixed together. At a BAS performance you still can!

If Woody Guthrie listened to Johnny Cash or if you took Steve Earle's midwestern twang and humanistic lyrics and combined them with Billy Bragg's punk rock socialism you might get Otis Gibbs. One of the things I like best about Otis Gibbs is that he wears his midwestern roots on his sleeve in a way that seems natural and not a cliche. His music is reminiscent of the great Texas singer/songwriters Townes Van Zandt and Butch Hancock, but Gibbs hasn't attempted to reinvent himself as a Texan. Like Mellencamp without the big record deal, the corporate advertising or the overproduction. Maybe I just relate to a guy that tells of meeting a girl "at a truck stop in Effingham". I've never felt the hot west Texas winds blowing the sand across my face but I might have met the "daughter of a truck drivin' man at a truck stop in Effingham" (from Daughter of a Truck Drivin' Man). Or is it his insistence that if we really want to end war and hunger we can, "if we want to" (from I Wanna Change It With You). I wonder, did Joe Hill write love songs?

Bedrock 66 Live!

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:10:00 +0000

Hopefully you've heard the news and yes, it will mean good rockin'! We're so excited to return to staging live music in downtown Springfield. Not only will Bedrock 66 Live! mean great live concerts, it will also be recorded for later playback on WUIS. Kind of our very own Louisiana Hayride (except in Springfield and there will be no hay to speak of)!!! Tickets for the entire series are available for WUIS members for only $91. 9 shows for $91? That's all and if you aren't already a member then clearly this is what you've been waiting for.

The Bedrock 66 Live! Music series begins its run on April 5 at 8 PM with the hottest young bluegrass band in the country, The Infamous Stringdusters. The Stringdusters won 3 IBMA awards in 2007 including Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Emerging Artist at the IBMA Awards Ceremony October 4th at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, becoming the first band in the history of the IBMA awards to win these three coveted awards in one year.

And that's just for starters. Coming June 14th we are proud to announce the appearance of alt.country favorite,

Robbie Fulks

and a soon to be favorite, country traditionalist,

Elizabeth Cook!

"This generation's Loretta Lynn"... Nanci Griffith

Hank Thompson Obit- New York Times

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:38:00 +0000

November 8, 2007
Hank Thompson Is Dead; Country Singer Was 82
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Hank Thompson, a sequined singer and songwriter who fused jazz-inflected Western swing and hard-edged honky-tonk to produce seven decades of musical musings, seasoned with sly humor, on loving, drinking and dying, died on Tuesday at his home in Keller, Tex. He was 82.
His death was announced on www.hankthompson.com, which said, “There’s a new star in heaven.”
Tracy Pitcox, president of Heart of Texas Records, said the cause was lung cancer, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Thompson sold more than 60 million records. He scored 29 Top 10 country hits from 1948 to 1975, and had 19 more in the Top 20, putting him in a league with other country legends like Tex Ritter, Hank Snow and Faron Young.
From “Humpty Dumpty Heart” in 1948 to “Gotta Sell Them Chickens,” a duet with Junior Brown in 1997, Mr. Thompson made the charts in six consecutive decades. With characteristic offbeat wit, he said in an interview with The Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1997 that this was “a lot easier than doing it in six nonconsecutive decades.”
Mr. Thompson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989, and his band, the Brazos Valley Boys, was Billboard’s top-ranked country band from 1953 to 1965, a record that has never been broken.
Mr. Thompson was perhaps the most prominent representative of a new sort of country music that emerged from the juke joints favored by oil-field roughnecks and roustabouts in the 1940s. It mixed big bands and theatrical vocalists with fiddles and steel guitars. It was meant for dancing.
With his height, Stetson, silver-toed boots and rhinestone suits — and a gravelly, booming baritone voice — Mr. Thompson symbolized the brash new musical synthesis. Unlike Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, who strove for a unified sound in the manner of Ellington or Basie, Mr. Thompson wanted his own voice to be the primary thing.
“I want Hank Thompson up front and the Western swing sound behind me,” he told The Dallas Morning News in 1997.
In the 1950s, his biggest decade, Mr. Thompson was big indeed. He had 21 songs that reached the Top 20 on the country charts, including five Top 10s in 1954. Some of those 1950s hits included “Rub-a-Dub-Dub,” “Waiting in the Lobby of Your Heart” and “Squaws Along the Yukon.”
In 1952 “The Wild Side of Life” was the No. 1 country song of the year and Mr. Thompson was the No. 1 country artist.
His popularity stayed strong into the 1960s, and in 1960 he recorded “A Six-Pack to Go,” one of his biggest numbers in terms of longevity and status as a standard. Though his record sales declined in ensuing decades, he remained in strong demand as a performer, and his influence is often said to be evident in stars like George Strait and Lyle Lovett.
Bob Dylan once commented, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, to Newsweek that he had never felt all that at home with the New York folk-music crowd because one of his own major influences had been Hank Thompson.
Mr. Thompson helped lead the development of the art and business of modern country music. He was host of a variety show in Oklahoma City in the 1950s, said to be one of the first variety shows broadcast in color. He was one of the first country performers to do a straight country show in Las Vegas; earlier, performers like Eddy Arnold had simply inserted themselves into another production. In 1961 his “At the Golden Nugget” was the first live album by a solo country performer.
Mr. Thompson was also among the first country singers to have a corporate sponsor, Falstaff Beer.
Henry William Thompson was born in Waco, Tex., on Sept. 3, 1925, and as a boy won a case of Pepsi by playing the harmonica in a contest. Like his hero Gene Autry, he wanted to sing at the same time he played, so he switched to guitar. His parents bought him a secondhand one for $4. By the time he was 16 he had his own radio show, called “Hank the Hired Hand.”
He enlisted in the Navy, served in the Pacific theater in World War II and then studied electronics at several universities, including Princeton. His expertise meant that he was one of the first traveling country acts to have a sophisticated light-and-sound system.
After the war Tex Ritter helped Mr. Thompson land a recording contract with Capitol Records, which released “Humpty Dumpty.” He went to Nashville to star on a weekly radio show. Ernest Tubb got him a shot at the Grand Ole Opry, but he felt uncomfortable with Nashville’s more bluegrass-influenced music. Not even Hank Williams could talk him out of returning to the Texas honky-tonks. In lieu of a funeral, his memorial celebration will be held in one of them, Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth.
Mr. Thompson is survived by his wife, the former Ann Williams. In 1970 he and his first wife, Dorothy Jean Ray, divorced. Dorothy had persuaded him to record “The Wild Side of Life” despite Mr. Thompson’s reservations that the tune had already been used in two previous country hits. Mr. Thompson’s version contained the line, “I didn’t know God made honky-tonk angels.”
The song’s immense popularity prompted one of the most famous answer songs of country music: “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels” by Kitty Wells. (Errant husbands did, she sang.) It made her the first woman in country music to have a million-seller.

Porter Wagoner Obit

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 01:18:00 +0000

New York Times

October 30, 2007
Porter Wagoner, Singer, Dies at 80
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Porter Wagoner, a country singer who mixed rhinestone suits, a towering pompadour and cornball jokes with direct, simple songs over a career best known for his partnership with Dolly Parton, died last night in Nashville. He was 80.
His death, in a Nashville hospice, was announced by the Grand Ole Opry. Mr. Wagoner, who survived an abdominal aneurysm last year, was hospitalized this month with lung cancer, his publicist, Darlene Bieber, had said. Mr. Wagoner had 81 singles on the country charts, 29 of them in the Top 10. His many hits, typically songs seeking honest answers to hard questions, included “Green, Green Grass of Home,” “Skid Row Joe” and “The Cold Hard Facts of Life.”
For 21 years, appearing on television in flashy suits and a cotton-candy pompadour, he was the host of “The Porter Wagoner Show,” which was eventually syndicated in 100 markets, reaching 3.5 million viewers a week.
Mr. Wagoner recorded some of country music’s earliest concept albums, in which individual tracks combine in a thematic whole. On one, titled “What Ain’t To Be Just Might Happen” (1972), he explored insanity with songs that included “Rubber Room,” derived from his experience in a psychiatric ward. He won three Grammys for gospel recordings he made with the Blackwood Brothers.
For more than half a century, Mr. Wagoner was a fixture of the Grand Ole Opry; in 1992, after the death of Roy Acuff, he became its unofficial spokesman. And if Mr. Wagoner did not exactly discover Ms. Parton, her regular appearances on his television show were the foundation of her career. They won the Country Music Association’s award for duo of the year three times.
Though Mr. Wagoner never achieved the sort of country music sainthood accorded Hank Williams, Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, his pure adherence to traditional forms became esteemed. Waylon Jennings once said, “He couldn’t go pop with a mouthful of firecrackers.”
In its citation honoring his induction in 1992, the Country Music Hall of Fame called Mr. Wagoner “one of country’s elder statesmen.”
Yet he was hardly shy about making waves. After Ms. Parton left his show in 1974, there ensued a six-year, very public legal mess — and not a few tawdry tabloid headlines. One asserted that Mr. Wagoner’s wife had found him and Ms. Parton in bed and shot both.
“There wasn’t nothing to that,” Mr. Wagoner said “with a wink” in an interview with The Tennessean in 2000. “She didn’t even hit Dolly.”
Mr. Wagoner riled country traditionalists in 1979 by inviting James Brown, the godfather of soul, to the Opry. Though Mr. Brown performed the country standards “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Tennessee Waltz,” which Mr. Wagoner had taught him, his rendition of his own “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” generated hate mail.
Mr. Wagoner’s life had elements of an old-fashioned country song. He was born on Aug. 12, 1927, on a farm where mules still pulled the plow, not far from West Plains, Mo., in the Ozark mountains. He sold the pelts of rabbits he trapped to scrape together the $8 he needed to buy his first guitar, a National, from Montgomery Ward. He spent hours pretending that the stump of a felled oak tree was the Opry stage and that he was introducing country stars.
After the family was forced to auction off their farm in the Depression, they moved to West Plains, where a local butcher hired Mr. Wagoner. When he heard him play the guitar, he put him on the radio to sing advertisements. Mr. Wagoner then moved to a station in Springfield, Mo., and signed a record contract in 1952 with Steve Sholes, the same RCA producer who signed Elvis Presley three years later.
In 1953, Mr. Wagoner spent $350 to buy his first Nudie suit, one of the extravagant rhinestone-studded creations by the tailor Nudie Cohn. Mr. Wagoner’s was a peach-colored number with wagon wheels on it. He eventually owned 50 of them, for which he paid as much as $12,000 apiece. A special feature on most was the word “Hi!” in foot-high letters on each side of the lining. He would throw the jacket open when he saw somebody snapping his picture.
Mr. Wagoner recorded, performed in a local television show, joined the Opry and in 1960 started his own television show. In 1967, his vocal partner, Norma Jean, left, and Ms. Parton succeeded her. In addition to doing the show, the two recorded and toured together. They had a string of hit duets, including “Please Don’t Stop Loving Me,” which they wrote. It was No. 1 in October 1974.
Mr. Wagoner had several long periods when he did not record or tour. He sometimes explained that there was little good material available. The lyrics in at least two of his songs came from spending time in a Nashville mental hospital. One, “Committed to Parkview,” was written by Johnny Cash about a Nashville institution in which both men had stayed. It is part of an album Mr. Wagoner released last year, “The Rubber Room: The Haunting Poetic Songs of Porter Wagoner, 1966-1967.”
As a teenager Mr. Wagoner was married for a short time to Velma Johnson. In 1946, he married Ruth Olive Williams; they separated in 1966 and divorced in 1986. He is survived by his children, Richard, Denise and Debra.
As a songwriter, Mr. Wagoner was known for producing surprising literary twists. At the end of “Green, Green Grass of Home,” it is revealed that the story about a happy homecoming is the dream of a prisoner. On “I Knew This Day Would Come,” a young woman leaves her aging husband for a young lover, only to find herself in the same situation years later.
For all Mr. Wagoner’s accomplishments, he could not escape a certain question.“Did you sing with Dolly?” too many people asked.
“No,” he would say with a smile. “She sang with me.”

Janis Martin - The Female Elvis RIP

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:11:00 +0000

Along with Lorrie Collins and Wanda Jackson, one of the finest female rockabillies there was. We had the great delight of hearing Ms. Martin perform in Green Bay in 2005 and she not only sounded great but just seemed like the kind of person you'd want to share a beer with. Sad that she seemed to be really enjoying her career the second time that it would end so soon.

SB

From the Washington Post:

Janis Martin, 67; Teen Rockabilly Star Was 'the Female Elvis' of the 1950s
By Matt SchudelWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, September 5, 2007; B07
Janis Martin, 67, a teenage rockabilly sensation of the 1950s who was billed as "the female Elvis," died Sept. 3 of cancer at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. She lived in Danville, Va.
After beginning her career on country-music radio shows in Virginia, Ms. Martin had a short but bright burst of fame in the 1950s with the dawn of rock-and-roll. By 15, she was recording for RCA, had a Top 40 hit and seemed poised for stardom.
She was a ponytailed blonde with a strong, clear, country-inflected voice and had a series of lively, eye-catching dance moves on stage. A convention of disc jockeys named her "the most promising female vocalist" of 1956.
Ms. Martin was also one of the few young women, along with Wanda Jackson and Lorrie Collins, to make a mark in the masculine, raw-edged music that decades later became known as rockabilly.
A 1998 article in the Nashville Scene newspaper described the enduring excitement of the music she made as a teenager: "Forty years later, Martin's records remain some of the most rockin', most thrilling hillbilly music ever to emerge from the Music City."
When Ms. Martin secretly married and became pregnant, her record label dropped her, and she returned to a life of relative obscurity in southern Virginia. Except for a few local appearances, she was all but forgotten until 1982, when she emerged from retirement with a concert in England.
"I can't begin to tell you what it was like -- like stepping back in time," she told the Nashville Scene. "Those kids dressed like we did in the '50s. Here I'd been a housewife and a mother. When I hit the stage, it was like I'd come home."
The song young European admirers clamored for wasn't her Top 40 hit, "Will You, Willyum" but a hard-charging tune called "Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll," which Ms. Martin wrote when she was 15.
"I wrote 'Drugstore Rock 'n' Roll' in about ten minutes," she recalled in a 1993 interview with Roctober magazine. "Everything in that song is actually the scene that was happening for us as teenagers," she said. "The drugstore was the only place we had to go and hang out after school."
Janis Darlene Martin was born March 27, 1940, in Sutherlin, Va., and lived in Akron, Ohio, for eight years before her family returned to southern Virginia. Ms. Martin began playing the guitar at age 4, balancing it upright because it was too big for her to hold.
Pushed by a "typical show-business mother," Ms. Martin finished second in her first talent contest at age 8. In the next two years, she entered 11 more contests and won all of them, including a statewide competition.
By 11, she was a regular on a weekly country-music radio show in Danville. She appeared with country star Ernest Tubb at 13 and became a featured performer with the Old Dominion Barn Dance, a weekly country concert in Richmond broadcast on CBS Radio.
Her influences were country stars Eddy Arnold and Hank Williams, but she soon became interested in Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker and other rhythm-and-blues singers.
"I heard Ruth Brown, and I just found my kind of music," she said in 1993.
She went on tour with country singers Hank Snow and Porter Waggoner, made a demo tape and in short order was recording for RCA with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer, all before her 16th birthday.
She was called "the female Elvis" with the approval of Elvis Presley, her RCA label mate, and sang one of her minor hits, "My Boy Elvis" on NBC's "Today" show. She also appeared on "The Tonight Show" and "American Bandstand" and at the Grand Ole Opry.
Another song she recorded was a teenage anthem to runaway hormones: "Let's Elope, Baby."
"At the time I was recording 'Let's Elope, Baby,' " she later said, "my parents didn't even know I was married."
She had eloped at 15 with her childhood sweetheart, Tommy Cundiff, who was in the Army. On a USO tour in Europe in 1957, Ms. Martin had a rendezvous with her husband and became pregnant. She recorded her final songs for RCA when she was 17 and in her eighth month of pregnancy.
Ms. Martin recorded a few songs in 1960 for a European label, but she seemed to be a show-business has-been at 20. She divorced her husband, settled in Danville to raise her son, then married and divorced a second husband, Ken Parton.
She worked in the office of the Henry County sheriff, then spent 26 years as the manager of a Danville country club. For the past 29 years, she was married to Wayne Whitt, who first saw her perform as a teen at the old Barn Dance show in Richmond.
"She was a cute little old gal in a ponytail just belting out that music that nobody else was doing," he said yesterday.
Ms. Martin's son, Kevin Parton, who played drums in her bands, died in January.
In addition to her husband, survivors include a granddaughter and great-granddaughter.

Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (SVRR Radio Hour) — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 17:29:00 +0000

Welcome to the Sangamon Valley Roots Revival Radio Hour blog! We hope that this site will allows us to exchange information on our collective passion, American Roots Music. Look forward to a calendar of upcoming live events. In addition, I hope to share my thoughts and the writing of music scholars on a wide variety of muisc topics. So visit frequently and add your two cents. Glad to have you listening!