Features

In December 1965, Sam Charters (1929-2015) went to Chicago to record Blues musicians who were playing in the clubs of the Black neighborhoods on the south and west sides. Charters, a white man, had written "The Country Blues" published in 1959. It was the first book about rural blues and while it contained many factual inaccuracies, it was entertaining romantic storytelling and helped foster the interest of young White folk fans in acoustic Blues. The glaring failing of "The Country Blues" was Charters’ insistence that “real blues” was dead, that Lightnin’ Hopkins was the last living blues singer (!), that postwar electric Blues was diluted, crude, loud, monotonous and that, “The blues have almost been pushed out of the picture and the singers who have survived at all have had to change their style until they sound enough like rock and roll performers to pass with the teenage audience.” Opinionated, though he may have been, Charters remained open minded and observant and within a few years, realized that the music being played in the small bars in the Black neighborhoods of Chicago was an urban, modernized version of the rural southern blues he admired so much and served the same social purpose for its audience. 

Concluding our multi-part exploration into pioneering Japanese synthpop group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), this week we’ll analyze the trio’s work from 1983’s Naughty Boys to the present day. We’ll only focus on the core catalog albums; as good as non-album tracks like “Chaos Panic” and “M-16” are, coverage of those would interest only maniacal completists. Those who aren’t yet caught up can view the series’ previous features below:

On March 6, 1961, world-class tenor saxophonist and vibes player Tubby Hayes (1935-1973) regarded as the finest musician on the British modern jazz scene signed a contract to record for the U.K. Fontana label. He had previously recorded for small jazz specialist label Tempo. Though the new contract didn’t provide for an advance or a money guarantee, Fontana was a major label that issued all types of recordings and could provide for his records better distribution and promotion including possible U.S. distribution. Hayes was the first bop generation British musician awarded a major label contract. Hard as it may be to imagine today, the signing was not only jazz news, but major music news worth of a “Melody Maker” cover story.

A few weeks ago I visited a woman in Portland, OR whose husband ran tape duplication services for GRT Records (GRT owned the Chess catalog in the early 70s and provided tape duplication services for many labels).