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Bonnie Raitt will present Buddy Guy with Lifetime Achievement Award

on May 2, 2010 No comments

2010 Blues Music Awards

2010 Blues Music Awards Gets Sweeter With Live Performance by Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Buddy Guy on May 6, 2010

Memphis, TN (Vocus/PRWEB ) April 16, 2010 — Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, The Blues Foundation confirms that the legendary blues musician Buddy Guy will perform at the 2010 Blues Music Awards on Thursday, May 6th, 2010. 2010 Blues Hall of Fame inductee Bonnie Raitt will present, the night after her own induction into the Blues Hall of Fame, the Lifetime Achievement Award to Guy. The award is a one-of-a-kind creation of Patterson & Barnes, who also created the original artwork that serves as the basis for the 2010 poster. The guitar master will also be feted with oral, video and musical tributes.

Buddy Guy obliterated the perceived chasm between blues and rock, leaving the term “crossover” to awkwardly define the efforts of lesser artists in both camps trying to bridge the racial, generational and stylistic borders of each. And he did it with a sense of dynamics and bravado that are rare in artists of any age, but which have been consistent for him throughout his career. You knew you were experiencing a Buddy Guy lick in the first few lines of any number he did in 1960, and the same can be said today. Buddy has been nominated for 41 Blues Music Awards and has received 28 such Awards.

Along with Buddy Guy, among the more than 25 nominees scheduled to perform are top nominees Tommy Castro, Rick Estrin, Louisiana Red, Duke Robillard, Super Chikan and Joe Louis Walker. And, as always at the Blues Music Awards, there will be surprises.

The Blues Music Awards are universally recognized as the highest honor given to Blues artists. The presenting sponsor is The Gibson Foundation and the sustaining sponsor is BMI. Additional 2010 BMA sponsors include ArtsMemphis, Casey Family Programs, Eagle Rock Entertainment, FedEx, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, I55 Productions, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. For tickets, please visit www.blues.org or call (901) 527-2583.

The Blues Foundation is Memphis-based, but world-renown as the organization dedicated to preserving our blues music history, celebrating recording and performance excellence, supporting blues education and ensuring the future of this uniquely American art form. Founded in 1980, the Foundation has 3500 individual members and 185 affiliated local blues societies representing another 50,000 fans and professionals around the world. Its signature honors and events make it the international center of blues music. Its HART Fund provides the blues community with medical assistance while its Sound Healthcare program offers musicians health insurance access. The Blues Foundation’s Blues in the Schools programs and Generation Blues scholarships expose new generations to blues music. Throughout the year, the Foundation staff serves the worldwide Blues community with answers, contact information and news.

Source: © Copyright Cision PRWeb

31st Blues Music Awards

The Blues Foundation has done it again. The party of the year for Blues music has once again left its mark on Memphis with a two-day marathon event, kicking off on Wednesday with this year’s induction ceremony for the Blues Hall of Fame, and culminating last night with a seven plus hour celebration of the Blues Music Awards. Presented by The Gibson Foundation, the Blues Music Awards are universally recognized as the highest honor given to Blues artists, and are voted on by fellow performers, industry representatives, and fans from around the globe who are members of The Blues Foundation.

This year, the awards ceremony honored winners in 26 categories, presented by some of the most influential members of the Blues community, including artist Mickey Thomas, Washington Blues Society President Eric Steiner, Blues Foundation board member Steve Bryson, and Nashville Blues Society charter member Kathy Bolmer.

This year’s big winner was Tommy Castro, named the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year and collecting a total of four awards, in all four categories in which he was nominated including Band of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, and Contemporary Blues Male Artist of the Year. Bonnie Raitt – an inductee in this year’s Blues Hall of Fame – presented Buddy Guy with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Also presenting at last night’s ceremony was Koko Taylor’s daughter, Cookie Taylor, to present the renamed Koko Taylor Award (formerly Best Traditional Female Artist) to its first-ever recipient, Blues guitarist Debbie Davies, whose album Holdin’ Court was released last fall.

Blues pianist Pinetop Perkins was on hand to present his namesake Piano Player Award to this year’s winner Eden Brent, recipient of two 2009 Blues Music Awards and winner of the 2006 Blues Foundation International Blues Challenge.

Joe Louis Walker, who received the most nominations this year with a total of five, received one for Album of the Year for his Between a Rock and the Blues album release.

Of this year’s event, The Blues Foundation Executive Director Jay Sieleman said, “There is a great vibe to this event but the real secret is not a secret at all-great music by performer after performer.”

Kicking off the two-day event on Wednesday night, a committee of scholars, record producers, radio programmers, and historians inducted the following performers into the Blues Hall of Fame: Louisiana-born, Chicago-based bluesman Lonnie Brooks, highly-esteemed blues singer and harpist Charlie Musselwhite and singer, songwriter, guitarist and social activist Bonnie Raitt. The Blues Hall of Fame committee is chaired by Jim O’Neal, founding editor of Living Blues.

The Blues Music Awards brings together Blues performers, industry representatives and fans from all over the world to celebrate the best in Blues recordings and performances from the previous year. The presenting sponsor is The Gibson Foundation and the sustaining sponsor is BMI. Additional 2010 BMA sponsors include ArtsMemphis, band Village, Casey Family Programs, Eagle Rock Entertainment, FedEx, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, I55 Productions, and the Tennessee Arts Commission.

For those who were unable to attend this epic event in Memphis, The Blues Foundation will make The Blues Music Awards ceremony available on DVD later this year. As with the DVD releases of the 2007, 2008, and 2009 ceremonies, the 2010 edition will include all the evening’s winners and performances on one memorable disc.

Here are the winners.

1. Acoustic Album – You Got to Move David Maxwell & Louisiana Red
2. Acoustic Artist – Louisiana Red
3. Album of the Year – Between a Rock and the Blues – Joe Louis Walker
4. B.B. King Entertainer – Tommy Castro
5. Band of the Year – Tommy Castro Band
6. Best New Artist Debut – Tiger in Your Tank – Monkey Junk
7. Contemporary Blues Album – Hard Believer – Tommy Castro
8. Contemporary Blues Female Artist – Ruthie Foster
9. Contemporary Blues Male Artist – Tommy Castro
10. DVD – Delmark Records – It Ain’t Over! Delmark Celebrates 55 Years of Blues, Live at Buddy Guy’s Legends
11. Historical Album – Chess – Authorized Bootleg -Muddy Waters Live
12. Bass – Bob Stroger
13. Drums – Cedric Burnside
14. Guitar – Derek Trucks
15. Harmonica – Jason Ricci
16. Horn – Deanna Bogart
17. Instrumentalist-Other – Buckwheat Zydeco (accordion)
18. Pinetop Perkins Piano Player – Eden Brent
19. Rock Blues Album – Already Free Derek Trucks Band
20. Song of the Year – “Pearl River” Cyril Neville & Mike Zito
21. Soul Blues Album – Ace of Spades – Johnny Rawls
22. Soul Blues Female Artist – Irma Thomas
23. Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year – Curtis Salgado
24. Traditional Blues Album – Chikadelic Super Chikan
25. Traditional Blues Female Artist – Debbie Davies
26. Traditional Blues Male Artist – Duke Robillard

Source: © Copyright Jazz News See also:
The Official Buddy Guy Site
The Blues Music Awards But wait, there's more!

Raitt performs at Hill in a blues celebration

on November 4, 1975 No comments

It was Sippie Wallace’s birthday Saturday, and Bonnie Raitt threw a party for her in Hill Auditorium.

By JO MARCOTTY

The entire evening was a blues extravaganza, from Robert Williams to Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, 77-year-old Wallace and culminating in a fine performance by Bonnie Raitt and her four piece band.

By the time she came on stage, the audience was ready for her, and by the time she left they were in love with her —with good reason.

She sang old songs like “I’m a Fool For You Baby,” and new ones like “I’m Blowin’ Away” in her usual clear and effortless style. And it was obvious from the very start that she loved doing it.

“If I could do this every night.” she said near the end of the show, “play with friends for people like you, I’d die doin’ it.”

Her ‘friends’ consisted of Freebo on the fretless bass, Alan Hand on the piano, Dennis Whitted on the drums and Will McFarlane playing electric guitar. And all five of them together were a mesmerizing combination.

They were tight, and played excellent music without loosing their individual styles. But aside from the musical professionalism, there was none. There was an almost tangible, silent communication between them and the audience. It wasn’t just another stop in a concert tour. Bonnie and her band were playing for this particular audience, for Ann Arbor.

© Michael Dobo

But Ann Arbor is a regular stop for Raitt. And on Saturday she reminisced about two of her previous visits here, the 1972 Blues and Jazz Festival and another time during that same year.

“I remember this as being the biggest concert hall I’d ever seen,” she said about Hill.

Raitt’s versatile talents were at their height. She breezed through “Love Me Like a Man,” belting it out like the demanding woman the song describes, and sang John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery” with the hopeless, tired tone of an old woman.

Her newer music is still the same combination of blues, and ballad, but nowadays it’s slicker, directed at a wider audience. ‘Funk’ has made a definite appearance, especially around the piano player Alan Hand.

At one point the guitarist, Will McFarlane, went off into a long guitar solo which had clear traces of rock and roll.

But blues is still Raitt’s baby, and when the Wallace, one of grande dame’s of the blues generation sang “Woman Be Wise” with Raitt, it was a startling, but delightful contrast.

Raitt’s voice was young, vibrant, and she sang the words like a know-it-all. Sippie sang it like the wise old lady she is. Her voice was deep, sometimes gravelly, but she sang it with all the power of her 77 years.

“I just hope you see me like that when I’m 77,” Raitt said as Wallace walked slowly off stage leaning on the arm of a young man.

And if Raitt continues in the same vein, we probably will. She’s good. Her singing is excellent. But at the same time she’s different from other female vocalists of equal talent. She has something special, a disarming, engaging stage personality, tremendous wit, (“I’m smiling so hard, it’ll make my dimples bore right through to the back of my head.”) But it goes even beyond that.

Almost no women vocalists get up out of their chairs and play an electric guitar with the style and charisma of a Bruce Springsteen. Almost no women vocalists can stand in front of 3,000 people and tell a friend in the audience to zip up their fly and get away with it. But she did. Raitt is tough, slightly crass and charming, but not cute and sexy. She’s lovely, with her long red hair and freckled face, and sexual, but not cute and sexy. That’s why she’s different. That’s why she’s so likable.

Josephine Marcotty is the feature editor of The Daily’s news department.


Source: © Copyright The Michigan Daily

Daily Photo by KEN FINK

A Celebration…

November 19, 1975

Bonnie Raitt’s singular appeal and strength is in her roots. She reaches all the way back to the classic blueswoman of the Twenties for both her joyful bawdiness and her righteous, don’t-mess-with-me self-assurance, and has come up with a stance as modern as the diaphragm. So it was a rare thrill, not to say a near-miracle, for all concerned that Bonnie could simply turn to the wings and welcome onstage Detroit blueswoman Sippie Wallace, the direct source of much of her inspiration, who, coincidentally, was celebrating her 77th birthday that night.

Bonnie graciously explained later, “It was from Sippie that I first learned this type of song, where I didn’t always have to be on the shaft side of a relationship”, which point of view was potently set out as she kicked into her own “Love Me Like A Man”.

Apparently Bonnie, who is touring nationally with folk poet/drunkard Tom Waits, decided to take full advantage of her Ann Arbor date by arranging with UAC, campus promoters of the affair, to book country bluesman Robert Pete Williams, and Chicago blues artists Buddy Guy and Jr. Wells, in addition to Sippie.
It was an evening of musical entertainment and instruction that easily spanned divers locales, epochs, and idioms, all the while demonstrating the unbroken lineage connecting these artists.

Robert Pete Williams, whose talent was first discovered, or at least first recorded, at the Angola State Prison, played a pleasant, idiosyncratic opening set. The handsome, fiftyish bluesinger eschews the standard 8 or 12-bar forms. He’d sing a line and play his guitar simply and effectively for as long or as short as he felt like. It made for some diverting country music.

Guitarist Buddy Guy and vocalist premier harmonicat Jr. Wells have, in the past 5 years, probably performed their sweaty, boozy more often in Ann Arbor than anywhere else other than their native Chicago. This night the band was relatively subdued, at least visually. Highlights included every solo Buddy took and the band’s performance of Jr.’s greatest hit, “Messin’ With The Kid.”

Bonnie Raitt & Sippie Wallace and Tammy – Hill Auditorium,Ann Arbor,Michigan 1975 © John Rockwood

When Sippie hobbled out (she suffered a bad stroke three years ago) the first thing she did was to improvise a loving tribute to Bonnie on the piano. She then sang a churchy blues, “Loving You The Way I Do,” “Mighty Tight Woman,” and the gospel tune “Stand By Me.” It was all very affecting and the crowd responded with a standing ovation and then sang her “Happy Birthday.”

Bonnie came out with a strong four-man band that was easily able to reproduce her recorded sound, minus the strings, of course (just as well, I say). She was loose and lovely and clearly moved by the affection Ann Arbor showered on her. She wove her spell from familiar material done with her usual passion, including “Everybody Cryin’ Mercy”, “Give It Up Or Let Me Go” (on which she played a beautiful slide guitar solo), “Fool Yourself,” “Angel From Montgomery,” etc.

Sippie came out and she and her protogee muscled their way through “Women Be Wise” and “You’ve Been In Love Too Long,” joined onstage by Sippie’s dancing machine of a granddaughter, Tammy. Everybody was up and rocking – the only way, after all, to end an evening of such energy and inspiration.


Source: © Copyright The Ann Arbor Sun
Ann Arbor Sun – November 19, 1975
Ann Arbor Sun – November 19, 1975
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