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Hey Folks – this is your friendly last-minute reminder that there's a very special blues event on Mother's Day – It's Brian's Mother's Day Matinee Campfire Jam with my guests Ken Whiteley and Rick Taylor, two highly respected players on the Canadian Roots & Blues scene.
I've been promoting it like hell on Facebook then I realized there's a whole world outside of Facebook so I'm taking the liberty of posting this on MaplePost and LinkedIn
This is my (mostly)monthly Blainletter, my soapbox for venting about all things musical and promoting my gigs. And let me say promoting gigs and getting "bums in seats" has been a challenge post-pandemic, especially the older crowd – my crowd.
What follows is edition #157 of the Blainletter and if you'd like to get one every month you can subscribe at www.brianblain.com.
But before that, here are the details for the Mother's Day Matinée:
Sunday, May 14, 2:00 pm
Redwood Theatre Lounge, 1300 Gerrard St E., Toronto
Tickets at SideDoor: https://sidedooraccess.com/shows/qEFe2T7ns7YmRzZoGmCs?utm_source=show&utm_medium=copy&utm_campaign=share&utm_content=qEFe2T7ns7YmRzZoGmCs
Hello to my beloved Blainreaders
As I write this, I'm listening to the Blues Bar Café on Ici-Musique (the French CBC) and when the wife asked me where I was going, I said jokingly that I'm going to my studio to listen to the radio and see if they're playing Brian Blain – and sure enough they did! I'm getting National coverage (albeit in French). Last month, a French CBC TV Show did a profile on me too.
So I got a spin on Blues Bar Café, but instead of playing something from the new CD they dug up a track from two albums ago, "The Day Coke Saved the Blues". I don't know if it was "lost in translation" or whatever but he said something like "of course they're not talking about the 'coke' that you drink"…except that's exactly what I was talking about. Coca-Cola used a Paul Reddick song in a Super-Bowl commercial and NorthernBlues (the label we were both on at the time) made a nice chunk of change that allowed them to put out a few more albums until the label ultimately shut down.
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Happy Birthday Robert Johnson
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Today is Robert Johnson's birthday but can we be sure we've got the right Robert Johnson? Biography of a Phantom, a new book by Mack McCormick, acknowledged as the leading expert on Robert Johnson, has been released by Smithsonian Books and adds more questions than answers to the mystery of Robert Johnson. The reclusive, eccentric McCormick had come up with numerous oddball theories and was not convinced that the Robert Johnson whose face is emblematic of Delta Blues is the same Johnson who made the recordings. Mack McCormick knew more about Robert Johnson than anyone and promised for years that he would publish a biography of the blues legend but it never happened until now, once his estate was settled and his archives were handed over to the Smithsonian museum.
“Mack allegedly had answers to all the open questions about Johnson. He had not only discovered the man who murdered the famous blues guitarist—but had even confronted the killer face to face. And that was just the start of what Mack knew about Robert Johnson and the Delta blues, “ writes Ted Gioia on his Substack blog, The Honest Broker. “Ever since it was announced a half century ago, this work has been eagerly anticipated by blues fans and music scholars—who hoped it would solve all the mysteries surrounding the most enigmatic figure in twentieth century American music. We heard crazy stories about him selling his soul to the devil, or showing up in unlikely cities under assumed names, or finally getting poisoned by a jealous husband who literally got away with murder in the racist South.”
McCormick’s literary executor, Mike Hall published an article in Texas Monthly and wrote “[Mack] said he was having serious doubts that the man whose trail he had discovered back in 1970—the Robert Johnson from Mississippi—was, in fact, the Robert Johnson who’d recorded those immortal songs in Texas. There was no proof, he said—no contracts, no letters….”
In fact McCormick researched 31 individuals named Robert Johnson, narrowing it down to 6 individuals. These theories do not appear in the newly published book because they chose to release an early draft of the biography, before Mack came up with all these conflicting stories late in life, some say as a result of an intense rivalry with other bluesologists and conflicts with Johnson family members, which resulted in the Smithsonian pulling out chapters that were based on information from Johnson’s sisters. You can hardly call this a “definitive” biography when the author admitted he made stuff up, but for Robert Johnson aficionados, it’s a must-read. Biography of a Phantom is available from Amazon and Audible.
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I grabbed this Robert Johnson blurb from this month's MapleBlues (that's OK, I wrote it) and I'd like to highlight another interesting item from the newsletter. Miss Emily, one of the most popular artists on the Canadian Blues scene today asked to publish a response to some blues critics who thought she was “not blues enough.”
She wrote, "I vented my frustration to a friend of mine in music who stated 'It’s just white people making more rules about black music.' And there it was. What feels like an incredibly true statement."
How mixed up is this? Saying a sincere, talented singer like Miss Emily is not blues enough…Then you have some righteous people complaining that Blues Societies are run by a bunch of old white men (and I guess I'm one of them). But if you look out into the audience of a blues show, that is mostly what you see. Old white men, mostly with beards. Not too many young people and not too many black folks. That's just the way it's evolved.
Everybody agrees it's got to change, but blues is such a small scene to start with, why would we want to exclude anyone who wants to be part of it. I like what Jodie Drake said about this in a 1995 impromptu backstage interview. It's my quote of the day and if you want to see her saying it click here:
https://youtu.be/qlgAnzOeR3c?t=2160
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Speaking of the MapleBlues newsletter, I have a little ditty about my "day job" over there. It's a little "inside" but some will get a kick out of it.
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"But the blues...they have to be interpreted and they have to really be felt. And if you don't feel 'em - inside - then you don't have it. If you have to acquire and put it back in, then that's not really... If you have to learn it from the book or the record and then apply it... But if it's really there, inside...it's there!" - JODIE DRAKE
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Thanks for reading this far. I see that the Blainletter gets opened by hundreds of people but not sure how many read through it. But I always seem to hear from someone or other that they enjoyed it and that's what keeps me going.
If you are not subscribed to the Blainletter, go to my website, brianblain.com and click in the top right corner. Feel free to forward this to any friend you think might enjoy my occasional ramblings (and maybe my music, too). These bits and more are always available on my blog, www.torontobluesdiary.com.
Happy Mother's Day - and please come to the show!
BrianB, aka Butch, Nappy, Shaker, Two-Lane Blain, Colorblind Brian, Stringbuster, Buddha of the Blues
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