Little Walter

Where to start with the music of that sly titan of 20th century music Muddy Waters? Some will advise an inquisitive newbie to invest in an exhaustive multi-disc box set that retails in the neighborhood of a Franklin, while a closet Johnny Winter-aficionado might recommend one of his late-‘70s LPs for the Blue Sky label (and that’s definitely not the place to begin.) However, the most sensible way to commence a journey into the everlasting goodness of McKinley Morganfield is to simply follow the path many thousands have already made, and it leads directly to the doorstep of 1958’s extraordinarily enlightening The Best of Muddy Waters. While a certifiable embarrassment of great LPs have been made since the format was first introduced in 1948, they don’t all command the same level of historical respect, even from individuals that happen to hold a deep relationship to the sounds those less revered records contain. For instance, after giving the realms of heavy-duty music connoisseurship a good inspection, there is no doubt that the Best of/Greatest Hits LP continues to shoulder something of a bad reputation, with its appeal often denigrated as being directed mostly to dabblers. These records, awarded to artists who had managed to secure a handful of creative and/or commercial highpoints either in one fast spurt or in some period of sustained longevity, are reliably frowned upon by more intense listeners as essentially being easy primers designed by cash hungry record labels with the intention of giving more casual ears a quick fix and some level of conversance (a sort of career Cliff Notes, if you will) to discographies of considerable distinction. That’s not necessarily an incorrect assessment. But there are other elements in the scenario, as anyone who ever got turned on to Donovan through their parent’s well-worn copy of his wildly popular Greatest Hits LP can surely understand. And when handed down by older siblings as they slouched off to spend four years in a cramped college dorm, the Best of/Greatest Hits album has surely functioned as a gateway into substantial musical discoveries of all types. When these records are conceived and promoted as anthologies they seem to gather a bit more acceptance (see The Beatles’ 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, for example). Perhaps it’s because the gesture can appear more annotative (and therefore admirable) and less purely mercantile and reductive. But in fact many Best of/Greatest Hits collections have served as a major eye-opener into the work of the musicians they contain, particularly when the songs were originally released exclusively on singles. Or in the case of Muddy Waters’ prime early junk, the tunes were engraved onto fragile old shellac 78s. And many a wiry old blues nut will tell you that Waters’ best period came during the years 1947-’57, but what gets discussed far less frequently is that the man’s stuff didn’t get issued on LP in any form until the very end of that span. Like the vast majority of pop-focused performers during this era, Muddy didn’t make albums, he instead cut side after side that fueled interest in his constant club dates which in turn sent patrons scurrying out to the closest all-night record shack for the take-home version of his aural delights. Along the way he also made a hefty sack of spending coin, both for himself and for the Brothers Phil and Leonard Chess, the founders of the label that led the way in bringing the Chicago Blues worldwide recognition. But if a crucial aspect in the history of recorded music as we know it, Chess Records was a small independent operation that thrived on the healthy jukebox business and sales to consumers who purchased their blues, R&B and vocal group offerings on a budget, and the imprint didn’t begin issuing long-playing records until at all until 1958. Along with a comp from that eternally smooth mouth-harp scientist Little Walter Jacobs (a major component in the state of affairs described below) and the debut album fro

I've just spent a sunny day at "Europe's largest public research archive on jazz", the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt. Since 1997 it has been based in a small but rather fine house, a four-storey hunting lodge. The much-restored building originally dates from the 1720's, and is called the Kavaliershaus. Darmstadt is a small city, with just 150,000 inhabitants, but which has long held the ambition to punch above its weight. The Darmstädter openly scoff at the pretensions of their nouveau-riche neighbour Frankfurt (700,000). Until 1945, you still hear them say, Darmstadt was capital of Hessen - population now 7 million, and only lost that status to Wiesbaden because it had been so heavily bombed.These ambitions translate into a sense of the significance of Darmstadt as cultural beacon. In the early twentieth century, Darmstadt was known for promoting the work of innovative architects and designers. Then, immediately after the war, an initiative was taken to develop a world-wide reputation as a centre for contemporary music. The first Ferienkurs (holiday course) was held in 1946, to provide a platform for the modern composers whose work had been banned under the Nazis. That activity has been reinforced and has developed into today's "Internationales Musik Institut The Jazz Institute started as part of the activity around contemporary music, but has been an independent entity, and under the leadership of its present director Wolfram Knauer since 1990. It has a staff of three, plus volunteers and an archive dog, a miniature schnauzer called Lotte. A statue of blues harmonica player Little Walter stands outside. Little Walter and Wolfram Knauer The archive originally developed from the personal collections of Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1922-2000), who had got involved in radio in the French-controlled zone of Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war working for the military command, and who then ran the jazz department of the radio station SWF from 1950 until 1987.Berendt states in his 1996 autobiography that he had given the collection to the City of Darmstadt to help form the institute, but it immediately became an open secret that he had in fact sold it to them. Berendt did continue to support the work of the institute until his death - which happened crossing the road as a pedestrian, an accident apocryphally attributed to his colour-blindness at a traffic light.The Jazzinstitut has substantial collections of music (LPs and CDs) onsite, with its collections of 78s and cassettes at a different location just outside the town. It also has collections of books, periodicals, photographs, posters and other research collections (listed here). It has an eighty-seat performance venue in the basement with a good piano and a faourable acoustic. The venue is always referred to in listings with painstaking Germanic accuracy as "Das Gewölbe unter dem Jazzinstitut" (the vault below the Jazz Institute). The archive itself presents eight “Jazz Talk” concert/talks a year. Other promoters come in and present jazz most weeks of the year. The ethos of the institute from the beginning has been to be completely connected to the current scene rather than to live exclusively in the past. It has published the most comprehensive guide to jazz in Germany, entitled Wegweiser Jazz. Since 1992 it has become something of a bible. The most recent issue, the sixth, with over 400 pages, was published in 2009. The information in the book is available online, but the book itself has developed a following, and is likely to be published again next year. Jazz, at the heart of so many communities, gains from having the statistical work done to aggregate it and measure it across a country, and the Institute's work will certainly have helped the cause of people in jazz in Germany seeking to gain a more solid funding base. LondonJazz News has one common trait: we both send out a Wednesday newsletter.Digitisation at the archive tends to follow demand rather than to be

Actress Tricia O'Kelley, from The Secret Life of the American Teenager and The New Adventures of Old Christine, had one hell of time last week. She went through a dognapping, a failed sting operation, countless moments of sheer panic, and then release: Walter, her deaf 11-year-old Miniature Yorkshire Terrier, is now home safe. It started May 16, when Walter was snatched from the backyard of O'Kelley's Hollywood home by dognappers. That night, Trisha received a call from a blocked number, a man who demanded a "reward" for finding the dog. According to Zap2It, when asked how much he wanted, he said, "Why don't you tell me how much your dog is worth? I could keep him; I could sell him ... " Share this image function changeWidth(obj) { if(parseInt($(obj).parent().width()) > parseInt($(obj).width())) { $(obj).parent().css({'width':$(obj).width()}); } if(parseInt($(obj).width()) “I totally knew the second I heard the guy’s voice that he was not a good guy,” she told CBS. The pair sorted out a reward of $1,000, and the man told Trisha and her husband to post "lost dog" filers around the neighborhood stating that there was a "$1,000 reward." This was so the man could tell any interested parties -- like the police! -- that he was simply collecting the reward. It was a good plan. Foolproof, really. Trisha, of course, just called the police, who sent a plainclothes officer over to accompany them to the meeting place. Then, weirdly, it all went to pot. Before they had even left, the man called and said. "You f***ing lied to me ... I'm at the location and there are cops there. I'm keeping your f***ing dog." Trisha believes the dognapper sent a scout to the location, and that person saw an unrelated patrol car there and freaked out. Trisha believes the people who took her dog are part of an Armenian street gang, based on information from witnesses in the neighborhood. "This is like a bad movie," she said. "I want whoever has Walter to know that he's deaf, to know that he's 11 -- he's a senior." Trisha also said the dog has a collapsing trachea and he could be hurt if kept on a standard leash. Share this image function changeWidth(obj) { if(parseInt($(obj).parent().width()) > parseInt($(obj).width())) { $(obj).parent().css({'width':$(obj).width()}); } if(parseInt($(obj).width()) The actress also took to her Twitter account, which was receiving intense play after she had posted a drop-dead-adorable photo of the dog (see above). She began telling her followers to keep an eye out for the dog in the area where they were going to make the exchange. One said: "N Hollywood, look out for a man walking around w/ my dog. Tried to extort $ from us & won't give him back. Please RT" Fortunately, it all ended well. In the midst of increasingly intense interest on social media, the thugs seem to have simply abandoned the dog on the street near Trisha's house. Little Walter was picked up by some Good Samaritans, and he was soon safe at home. A relieved Trisha announced the news with series of "We got him back!!!" messages on her Twitter, accompanied with this photo: Share this image function changeWidth(obj) { if(parseInt($(obj).parent().width()) > parseInt($(obj).width())) { $(obj).parent().css({'width':$(obj).width()}); } if(parseInt($(obj).width()) Yes, that dog is smiling. Via Zap2It and CBS

Judy Collins Birthdays: 1907 - Kate Smith (d. 1986) 1924 - Big Maybelle (Smith) (d. 1972) 1929 - Sonny James (84) 1930 - Little Walter (born Marion Jacobs) (d. 1968) 1933 - Titus Turner (d. 1984) 1939 - Judy Collins (74) 1944 - Reather Dixon (

Little Walter - My Babe When I stuck the recent post about Roy Brown's Slow Down Little Eva up on the Diddy Wah facebook page, Lewis from Bristol left a comment suggesting that it was a Latin-y cousin of today's selection. I think he's onto something a