Bonnie Raitt’s 66th birthday was yesterday. The singer-guitarist (she qualifies as bandleader, songwriter and activist, too) was born in Burbank, CA on November 8, 1949, the daughter of the late Broadway actor John Raitt, whose major credits included Oklahoma, The Pajama Game, and Carousel. Wikipedia’s entry on Papa John (“He set the standard for virile, handsome, strong-voiced leading men during the golden age of the Broadway musical”) gives a likely hint as to why Bonnie was so at home hanging with and learning from many of the hyper-masculine leading men of blues in the sixties.
Her background (WASP, upstate New York Quaker summer camp and boarding school, Radcliffe) suggested a quite different direction in life than female blues-rock icon, and that’s an understatement, for there were very few white women immersing themselves in blues culture in the sixties, and even fewer actual musicians among them to serve as role models.
Bonnie’s immediate predecessors included Nancy Harrow, Judy Roderick, Maria Muldaur, and Tracy Nelson, each of whom tended toward the Classic blues of Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, and Chippie Hill; it was Raitt alone who broke new ground in developing an identity and mastery of guitar-driven Delta blues.
Bonnie’s early models were Odetta and Joan Baez. In Baby Let Me Follow You Down, The Illustrated Story of the Cambridge Folk Years (which I quote throughout this piece), she said she “learned to play guitar” off an Odetta album that she first heard at Camp Regis in 1959. “Then I heard Joan Baez and fell in love. I wanted to pierce my ears and grow thin cheekbones.” Next came the Elektra album Blues at Newport ’63. There she heard Mississippi John Hurt, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Rev. Gary Davis, John Lee Hooker, and John Hammond, Jr. It drew her in and made her eager to attend the following summer’s Newport Folk Festival, but at 15, her elders deemed her “too young.” From the album, John Hurt’s “Candy Man” was especially appealing. “When I heard that, I went, ‘I don’t know what that stuff is, but this guy is so cute, his voice is so cute, and his guitar is so pretty.’ I just had to learn about it.”
BONNIE RAITT was almost a folksinger, part of the plethora of guitar-playing protesters of the Sixties led by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Sitting in her girlhood bedroom in a house atop Coldwater Canyon’s peacefully affluent Mulholland Drive, Bonnie, born in Burbank, California, in 1949, was inspired by loneliness to teach herself guitar. “If I’d been able to hang out with other kids, I’d never have gotten into it,” says the daughter of successful Broadway actor John Raitt, best known for his leading roles in musical comedies like Pajama Game,Oklahoma, and Carousel.
The Raitt house—last stop on the school bus route—though somewhat isolated and not particularly conducive to visits with friends, hardly seemed located within earshot of the whiney, mournful tones of a generation of blues guitarists whose techniques and repertoire Bonnie came to adopt. Blues developed far from what Raitt describes as the Los Angeles “blonde-streaked surf scene” whose “political and intellectual vacancy” drove her to a progressive Quaker boarding school in upstate New York. There, feeling more in her element among, as she calls them, “the precocious children of leftist lawyers and actors into modern theater of the absurd and Marxism,” Raitt listened to Pete Seeger records and expressed her own discontent playing Peter, Paul, And Mary and Kingston Trio-type laments on her guitar. “For years,” she recalls, “I wanted desperately to get old enough to be able to go to civil rights demonstrations and peace marches, be a beatnik, grow my hair, and have cheek bones like Joan Baez.”
Encouraged in a musical home where “my mother was my father’s accompanist, and we’d all sit around singing together,” plus five years of piano lessons, Bonnie first turned to guitar, a Stella given to her as a Christmas present by her parents and grandparents, at the age of ten. She enthusiastically pursued her hobby through several summers at camp, in Massachusetts, where her counselors inspired even more longing for contact with the outside world, with their exciting reports of musical events at the nearby Newport jazz and folk festivals.
Then, an album, Blues At Newport ’63 (on Vanguard, S79145) containing tracks by John Lee Hooker, John Hammond, Mississippi John Hurt, as well as several other blues and folk artists fell on Raitt’s fourteen-year-old ears with enough impact to permanently change the direction of her music. “From that point on,” she remembers, “I was split into two parts. One side of me was all Joan Baez, my early idol, or Childe-type ballads, while the other suddenly had to learn whatever the hell it was Mississippi John Hurt was doing on ‘Candy Man’.’’ Being Bonnie Raitt, she learned “Candy Man.”
An acceptance from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts—they didn’t have curfews there—further assured Raitt’s entanglement with the blues. Though she began by majoring in African studies with plans to do a community development, political organizing program, she soon came into contact with a leading figure of what she terms the blues “mafia.” Dick Waterman, manager and promoter for many blues artists and events, seems to have been the catalyst who turned Bonnie’s guitar hobby into a pursuit of somewhat greater intensity. It was at Waterman’s Cambridge apartment that Bonnie met Son House, the first in a long chain of encounters with aging blues giants who were to definitively shape the young woman’s entire career. She did not become a political organizer or a white Odetta (another of her childhood influences). The black woman with whom she is most identified is Sippie Wallace, a blues artist now in her eighties who has been making records since the Twenties, and many of whose songs—”You Got To Know How,” “Mighty Tight Woman”—have become Raitt standards.
Hindered, she says, by a voice more Judy Collins than Memphis Minnie, Raitt has worked continuously for nearly ten years to combine her evocative Delta-style slide guitar with her “white girl’s” vocals to create a memorable sound. Her playing has expanded to include electric explorations on a Gibson ES-175 and a Fender Stratocaster, in close coordination with a five-member band, while her voice has noticeably matured. She’s a long way from the bonier days of just “Freebo [her bassist from the beginning], my little dog Prune, a Matthews amp, and me.” In some ways. Upon the release of her sixth album, Sweet Forgiveness, Raitt does not deny her impatience for the long awaited, frustratingly elusive hit. Yet she maintains a unique hesitancy about making it big. Despite half-hearted forays into the realm of commercial appeal with her last two LPs, Streetlights and Home Plate, she seems to have returned to staunchly guarding her independence. Her most fervently expressed hopes focus on taking the blues into a new form; finding her own sound.
“I’ve been almost making it for a long time,” she says with traces of irony. “My records are never everything to everybody, but I’ve always got another chance to make something new. Once you have a hit, you’ve got to follow it up; that becomes your object or you won’t stay around.” Raitt is apparently not about to disappear from today’s music scene.
How did you first learn to play slide? I just broke off a wine bottle! Well, the style was called bottleneck, so I figured that’s what it was. The only problem was you couldn’t get wine bottles too easily if you didn’t drink, and at boarding school there weren’t a whole lot of wine-drinking orgies.
Were you still playing the Stella? No, after the Stella I got a red Guild with gut strings. No idea of the model number, but I remember wanting the red one because everyone else had white-topped guitars, and the red one went with my hair. I thought it made me look like an Irish Setter. Later I saved up and bought my first Guild. I forget the number, but I always play an F-50 now. My first National was a copper-colored metal one but it was painted. They used to paint them to look like wood. The one I have now is around a 1929. It has a wooden body which is very unique.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a turning point for you. What happened there? I went there to go to college. I just played guitar as a hobby, but I ran into a lot of blues freaks at the Harvard station, WHRB, and at Club 47 in Harvard Square, a major outlet for musicians like Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Taj Mahal, and Canned Heat, not to mention John Hurt and Skip James. Strangely enough. I’d rushed to get old enough to catch this great Greenwich Village folk scene I’d heard about, and naturally the year I moved to Cambridge the club closed, and along came The Ultimate Spinach and acid rock. This whole incredible political scene went to pot, literally, but that’s when I met Dick Waterman.
By coincidence? No, I was already a blues freak when I left California. There was a kind of blues mafia between New York, Philadelphia, and Cambridge—all these esoteric people talking about their blues idols’ eating habits, the obscure 78s they’d find, and Dick was a kind of liaison, but he was unique in his concern for taking care of artists who were still alive rather than trying to revive an era that was dead. Everyone at the Harvard station knew him, and if you wanted to do a blues show, you’d call Dick Waterman. Periodically Son House, Skip James, or Arthur Crudup would come to town. Anyway, one afternoon a friend of mine invited me to this apartment on Franklin Street, and who was there housesitting for Dick Waterman, but Son House. I was just floored. Then I began to meet them all.
All through Waterman? Dick at the time managed Junior Wells, Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Luther Allison, J.B. Hutto, as well as many other traditional bluesmen. The reason it made sense to have so many under one agency was to protect them from the abuse of white blues promoters. Club owners would play one bluesman against the other. They’d say, “Well, we can get Bukka White for $200 less, so why bother with Son House?” Then Son’s manager would have to drop his price in order to get the guy a gig at all. Dick was outraged, and by keeping them all under one agency he could protect their rights. “You’re not going to get any of them to play unless you pay what they deserve,” he’d say. I started traveling around with Dick, driving Son, Skip, or Sleepy John Estes to the blues festivals, and I became real tight with them. With Buddy or Junior Wells, guys in their forties, that was fun, but with the older men friendship was difficult. John Hurt died right before I met Dick, and that was just the beginning of a series of five or six deaths, which was terribly painful for those who knew them. But still, meeting them and knowing them was overwhelming; I can’t describe it.
Of all these legendary figures, who influenced you the most? That’s impossible to say. One of them had to be Fred McDowell, who stayed with Dick when he was in town. He thought it was really funny, this little eighteen-year-old girl playing guitar, but he was flattered at my interest, and he taught me. Also, I’d say I emulate Muddy Waters’ style.
Did you actually try to imitate him or any of the others? Not exactly. You can’t help but learn if you sit and play music with somebody. It was like being stung with a guitar style, and I had to play that way, or else it didn’t feel good. It’s not like a singing style where you try to avoid sounding like someone else.
When did you develop confidence in playing ‘their’ style? During my first gig with Taj Mahal one afternoon. I took out my National and started playing some Fred McDowell stuff, and Taj, who didn’t know me, looked over and said, “hey all right.” He came over, took out his guitar, and we started playing a wordless duet, him playing Willie Brown to my Charley Patton [both Delta blues figures]; you know, just throwing blues licks off each other, not saying anything. Finally he reached out his hand and said, “Hello, my name is Taj Mahal.” [Blues interpreter] John Hammond has been a great help to me. I had a crush on him for years. Being a girl helped. These musicians came in, heard me sounding—or trying to—just like them, and they’d be flattered, and helpful. If I’d been a young guy doing a show just like John Hammond’s, he might have felt a bit threatened. I wasn’t playing as good as them, but they were real tickled that I was into their style.
How did you develop your own style out of the traditional blues? My style is probably the result of a problem. My voice, actually soprano, is around five keys up from where Robert Johnson or Son House would do a song, say in Spanish open G tuning. I can’t tune the strings up or down to get that open octave; I have to capo up three or five frets to get the same tuning, which is the only way to make the guitar part sound good. You lose the octaves—with no cutaway you can’t get your hand up there, and you’ve got only around three frets left to play slide. My National has a new, hybrid neck with fourteen frets, and that’s one of the reasons I went to electric, for the longer neck. Just adding my voice to a Fred McDowell guitar part would bring about a unique style, though.
Do you have trouble with your voice? As my throat doctor says, “You’re trying to sing that Afro style.” I lose my voice often, because I do push it a lot to sing more blues, soul, or R&B. It was hard to do “Walking Blues” (on Bonnie Raitt) for instance, but I was not born with a voice like Mavis Staples or [contemporary English blues singer] Jo Ann Kelly who sounds uncannily like Memphis Minnie, or any ballsy, chesty blueswoman. My voice is neo-Judy Collins.
You don’t really sound like her. Well, I’ve beaten my voice down over the years by pickling it with alcohol and screaming and yelling, so it’s gotten lower. If I was to sit here and play some blues for you now, and not worry about singing, I’d play what I feel is real good. I’d have liked to play more Fred McDowell and Robert Johnson stuff, but I have kind of this bird voice. As I was learning how to sing in public, I found that putting the tune in my key took away a lot of beautiful positions. My style is not a B.B. King lead guitar solo style, but just kind of half rhythm, usually in the key of E or A drawn from Muddy Waters, Brownie McGhee, John Hammond, Fred McDowell. It limits what I can do. Instead of doing a song in D, like most guitarists who really know their way around the neck, I move the capo around because I don’t want to miss that Muddy Waters-type blues riff. That’s the only way I can get the sound I want.
An Interview with Bonnie Raitt by Bob Norman (Editor)
In a short two or three years, Bonnie Raitt has built up a wide reputation as a proficient blues guitarist, a soulful writer and interpreter of contemporary songs, a warm and irrepressible entertainer. She has appeared regularly at the Philadelphia Folk Festival, and she has performed in scores of little clubs around the country. Last summer she was one of the few white musicians to appear in the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival.
Bonnie and I did this interview last summer after the release of her first album (Bonnie Raitt, Warner Bros. WS 1953); she’s since put out a second album (Give it Up, Warner Bros. BS 2643). During the interview, our conversation constantly returned to two of Bonnie’s main concerns: her deep regard for traditional blues music and for the many great blues musicians she has known, and her intense awareness of the problems and responsibilities incumbent on an increasingly popular and successful musician (the New York Times recently concluded that she could become “the premiere female vocalist of today’s rock ”).
Bonnie is the daughter of Broadway singer John Raitt. As a child she was often backstage (“that’s the most plastic level — Broadway musicals”), and she learned at an early age “that the music business is fucked-up.” Her parents are Quakers, and in the early sixties they sent her to a politically-oriented summer camp in the East — later to an activist Quaker high school — to counteract the stultifying atmosphere of suburban Los Angeles. The camp fostered Bonnie’s love for music and a political consciousness that is still evident in her attitude towards her work.
Bonnie is committed to doing benefits for political causes, and she refuses to turn her bookings over to an agency. She is intent on having some say in the places she plays, the people she plays with, and how much people have to pay to hear her sing. At twenty-two, she projects the image of a strong and determined woman (though the songs she chooses to sing seldom go beyond the traditional stereotypes of women as the victims of love). She is trying not to be consumed or co-opted by the omnivorous American music industry — a very difficult task, I think — and I hope that she’ll succeed.
. . . I mostly got into music at that camp. It was a political camp, and the people would go on marches, and there would always be music. I had started teaching myself to play guitar when I was about ten or eleven, and at camp I got into political music, people like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, that whole community feeling that came out of that music. And then, in ’62 or ‘63, I heard John Hurt and other blues singers on records; and I liked it a lot; and I was drawn to it. So then I started playing blues.
I got very much into country blues. I liked the delta style the best — Robert Johnson, Fred McDowell, Son House, Tommy Johnson. I wasn’t particularly a Charlie Patton or Willie McTell fan, though I like ’em. And I also like Jimmy Reed and Arthur Crudup, that back-beat, real simple modern kind of blues. I didn’t like the classic blues so much, although there’s one woman whose songs I do. Her name’s Sippie Wallace, and she’s really an incredible singer; her voice is a little too funky, a little too nasal to be that straight kind of jazz singing. I always liked her songs, and she also happens to be one of the few of the old-time women blues singers who are still alive.
I met Dick Waterman when I was a freshman in Cambridge, at the time when the Club 47 was still open. Dick manages most of the blues acts, and we’ve been close friends now for years. I travelled around with him and Son House and Fred McDowell1*Fred McDowell, from Rossville, Mississippi, was one of the last great delta bottleneck guitarists. He died in Memphis at the age of 68, on June 3, 1972, not long after this interview took place. Fred McDowell and Bonnie Raitt were good friends and often played guitar and sang together in clubs, concerts, and at festivals. When she performs now, Bonnie will often include, in his memory, a medley of his songs. An interview with Fred McDowell appears in Sing Out!, Volume 19, Number 2. His albums are available on Arhoolie, Testament, and Capitol, and his songs are included in the Atlantic Southern Folk Heritage series, the Prestige/lnternational Southern Journey series, and the Vanguard Newport Folk Festival recordings. and Robert Pete Williams, Buddy Guy and Jr. Wells, and all the people that he manages, and I became real good friends with all of them. I used to carry the liquor, and I would be the one who would watch them; because, you know, everybody has different levels at which they can drink and still be able to play.
Fred McDowell and Bonnie Raitt photographs by David Gahr
The blues festivals would always be interesting, because a lot of musicians would come together who normally would never have met; and it would be interesting to see how they would be influenced by each other. Skip James would run into John Hurt, and Fred McDowell would do Arthur Crudup’s songs. But it would also be sad to see guys who normally would have led a really quiet life start drinking more on the road. I’ve been to nearly every blues festival in the last four years, and I’ve watched these kids from the Student Activities Committee come back saying, “Ha, ha, I’m going to buy Son House a bottle.” They might mean well, but a lot of these men are really sick. And I can’t help thinking that as nice as it is that they were rediscovered and got to play and got to be appreciated, they still don’t have any real understanding of what’s happened to them.
Buddy Guy and Jr. Wells, they have no faith in white kids. They know that even if white kids happen to like blues this year, they still would rather see Johnny Winter. They know that Janis Joplin was making a certain amount of money, and that Big Mama Thornton was making maybe a fifth of it; and that’s why Jr. Wells does James Brown songs. Why shouldn’t he do something to insure his popularity with black people? White people have been fickle before, and next year the blues might not be their thing; that’s why a lot of blues singers don’t work anymore, why all those clubs closed down. How do you explain to someone like Robert Pete Williams who was playing the Second Fret, playing that whole club circuit, making quite a bit of money, when all of a sudden the rug is pulled out from under him? Dick, I don’t know how he does it; he books blues packages into schools, pretty much ramming them down people’s throats . . . they’d rather have the Jefferson Airplane.
It’s also true that people would rather see me or John Hammond do blues than see Fred McDowell; it’s ridiculous. Eventually it would be real nice to put some of the older blues people on the bill with me and try to educate people; I think it’s really important. But a lot of those musicians are really old, and a lot of them have died.
It’s interesting that as blues musicians get older, they turn to gospel music. Blues and gospel, to us it’s the same music, the same changes, but to them it’s real different. Son House was into blues, and then he became a preacher for years, and he tells the story of how he just couldn’t keep away from it . . . he kept hearing that music. They really feel that they’ve sinned. And John Hurt used to dedicate one to the Lord, do a gospel song, and then it was all right to do some blues. And as Skip James got older, he only did gospel songs.
The thing that made me sad . . . I guess it was a year ago last November, Howard University did a blues festival, the first black-sponsored blues festival . . . and it made me sick. There was hardly anybody black in the audience. For the first time Mance Lipscomb could have stayed on the campus, done some workshops, had people talk to him. They put him up in the biggest hotel, they had limousines, spent lots of money. There was no contact with any of the students. It was just the typical festival. And by the time black kids get into their own kind of music, get into blues, all those guys’ll be dead.
I really like blues, but the way I sing I don’t sound like Mavis Staples, so I kind of do half and half . . . half blues and half modern kind of songs. I play bottleneck, I’ve always really liked it; and I can play all of Robert Johnson and Fred McDowell’s things. I can play a lot of stuff, but when it comes to singing what I play, there’s a real problem. There are two bottleneck tunings and certain positions for each one, and you can’t change the tuning and play the same guitar part; it wouldn’t sound like the same song. But since there weren’t any women playing guitar back then when that style was developed (except Memphis Minnie, and she didn’t play bottleneck), all the songs are in A or E, or G or D; and with my voice I can only sing a couple of songs like that, so I have to capo up. But the whole thing with the bottleneck is in getting that octave, which is at the bottom of the neck; and if you capo up, you lose that octave. So until somebody makes a guitar with a longer neck, it’s just impossible for me to play and sing a lot of those songs at the same time.
I also can play funkier than I can sing. I would do a lot more bottleneck, but it sounds strange with my voice. I like to play bottleneck, but it’s frustrating; when you accompany yourself, you have to do the rhythm part and the lead part and the bass part all at once, and you can’t really let loose. So every once in a while when I get somebody to play with, it’s really fun . . . we can just let fly.
I started playing in public in ‘69, and it just happened real fast for me. I went back to school and was playing gigs in Worcester and that area while I was in school; and then I played the Main Point in Philadelphia; and then I played the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which was the first big thing I did; and then I played the Gaslight with Fred (McDowell) and got reviewed in the Village Voice . . . that was in 1970 . . . and from there it’s just been incredible. It’s partly because there are no women around who play blues guitar. I have lots of friends in Cambridge, guys that write beautiful songs; they’ve been around for years playing in the same old bars, they’re really fine, they’re as good as James Taylor; but there’s only so much room in the marketplace for guys with a guitar. It’s partly a sexist thing; they’ll stick me on a bill where they wouldn’t stick a guy . . . but also, blues will fit in better on a bill with a rock band. I always get all this, “Oh, you play real good for a girl . . .” I mean it makes me sick; but I understand that one of the reasons that I can work a lot is that there just aren’t that many women around working without a band. Tracy Nelson or Linda Ronstadt don’t play, so they have to take a band with them, so it’s expensive. I’d rather play by myself, though I have a bass player now.
I personally don’t have any ambition to be any big hot stuff. I like to play, I could play second act, or play at Jack’s in Cambridge for the rest of my life. And that’s what I’m trying to do now, to build a base on live appearances, rather than on records. On the other hand, I have a contract from Warner Bros. in which I have complete control; they just give me the money and I give them the tapes. And I do respect Warners for the fact that they’d take an unknown artist like me and give me unlimited artistic control.
My first record was done in a garage. I had heard that Dave Ray was starting a studio in Minneapolis, trying to do it on four tracks, trying to keep down the whole business of studio costs and middlemen in order to eventually put out records for one or two dollars with a complete accounting of how every penny was spent. And he needed something to get him off the ground . . . he needed money of course . . . and someone had to be the guinea pig. Dave had never recorded anything on this scale, none of us had made a record before . . . it was fun. We rented a summer camp, did it in a garage; it’s a real funky record. The sound quality was irrelevant to me; I enjoyed the record; if somebody else can get off on it, that’s fine. My voice was on the same track with the piano and harp, my guitar was on the same track with another guitar and the bass, the horns were out in the driveway, and the drums leaked on everybody’s track . . . we didn’t really care. It’s more important to me that I did it like that, that I had a really good time and brought some fine musicians together.
I would never want to have a hit single . . . although if you happen to do a commercial song and you have a contract with a recording company it’s hard to see how you could prevent it. I feel really sorry for people like Don McLean; if he doesn’t come up with another hit record, he’s going to be considered washed-up. He’s been doing it for years, he’s going to be writing better and better songs all the time, but once your album is on the charts . . . I mean I don’t even want to be in the ball game.
I don’t need much money to live on. I’ve got no aspirations for driving around in a Rolls Royce. I’d rather play in little places that only charge a dollar, be on the bill with people I really like. That’s the only thing that matters to me, that it’s not a rip-off for the people coming in, and that I have a good time. If I had a hit, I wouldn’t be happy; but I think there are some political things that a person in that position can do. If you get to the point where you aren’t ripping anybody off, but you’re really making a lot more money than you need, it’s not like there aren’t a lot of really good things you can do with the money. You can do an incredible amount of benefits . . . but it’s a big responsibility.
I would rather coast for a while, playing a lot of clubs and building up a following. If your whole following is based on records, if you have a lot of airplay and you don’t play live very much and your next record is bad, you’re gone. But if your following is based on consistent, good live performances, coming back to the same little club over and over ‘till you have a group of people who know your songs and really like you, that’s a real friendly kind of thing. I go back to Philadelphia or Boston and people know me . . . they’re almost like friends. And no matter how big the room is, it could be twenty people or five hundred, I know they know what I do; and I know they’ve seen me before, and they like what I do. The album is superfluous to me. If I make a good record and they enjoy it, then that’s fantastic. But I want what I do for a living to be based on live performances, so I can do it for ten years instead of worrying about which record company is going to promote which record.
You Got to Know How
Sippie Wallace – photograph by David Gahr
The great Texas blueswoman Sippie Wallace wrote this sly admonition a long time before Masters and Johnson published their findings on the subject. Bonnie Raitt first heard her sing it on an album called Sippie Wallace Sings the Blues, recorded in Copenhagen in 1966 for the Danish StoryviIle label. The version Bonnie sings has several additional verses, composed by Jack Viertel. You can hear the song in its entirety on Bonnie’s second album, Give It Up. Bonnie Raitt and Sippie Wallace appeared together at last summer’s Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, and a recording of that concert may soon be available from Atlantic Records. Bonnie recorded another of Sippie’s songs, “Mighty Tight Women,” on her first album, Bonnie Raitt; and you can hear Sippie Wallace sing it on the album Spivey’s Blues Parade (LP 1012-available from Spivey Records, 66 Grand Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11205).
by Paul Oliver A splendid anachronism, Sippie Wallace; a singular survivor of a long past blues tradition. There was a time, in the Forties, when almost
cover photograph of Tommy Jarrell and Fred Cockerham by Bill Garbus
Editor: Bob Norman; Music Editor: Ethel Raim; Design and production: Brenda Kamen; Business Manager: Francine Brown; Editorial Advisory Board: John Cohen, Michael Cooney, Barbara Dane, Josh Dunson, Bruce Phillips, Pete Seeger, Jerry Silverman, Happy Traum, Israel Young.
Sing Out! v.21#6 – Sing Out!
This issue includes the following articles/features: Music from Round Peak Bonnie Raitt John Davis Rounder Records Women’s Workshop … and all the usual news, reviews and columns … and A SING OUT! SOUNDSHEET. and here are the songs included: Berkeley … Continue reading →
Sing-Out-1972-article.pdf
Footnotes
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*Fred McDowell, from Rossville, Mississippi, was one of the last great delta bottleneck guitarists. He died in Memphis at the age of 68, on June 3, 1972, not long after this interview took place. Fred McDowell and Bonnie Raitt were good friends and often played guitar and sang together in clubs, concerts, and at festivals. When she performs now, Bonnie will often include, in his memory, a medley of his songs. An interview with Fred McDowell appears in Sing Out!, Volume 19, Number 2. His albums are available on Arhoolie, Testament, and Capitol, and his songs are included in the Atlantic Southern Folk Heritage series, the Prestige/lnternational Southern Journey series, and the Vanguard Newport Folk Festival recordings.
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Bonnie has contributed a new recording of "Prison Bound Blues" written by Leroy Carr to a project called Better Than Jail, an extraordinary new album benefiting Free Hearts and Equal Justice USA. Better Than Jail is available everywhere today and features covers of iconic prison songs from Steve Earle, Taj Mahal,Margo Price, The War and Treaty and many more. The album seeks to raise awareness and support for the urgent need to reduce the harm of the criminal justice system. https://found.ee/BetterThanJail.
I'm so proud to have joined in with so many illustrious artists in creating this very special album in support of rural prison reform. Overlooked for far too long, this issue cuts across all cultural and political divides and deserves all our focused attention to finally bring about some swift and meaningful action. Better Than Jail is one of the most inspired and heartfelt albums I've been blessed to be a part of and I hope it sets a fire in hearts far and wide to join in our efforts." ~ Bonnie Raitt
Released on: 2024-10-04 Executive Producer: Brian Hunt Producer: Kenny Greenberg Producer: Wally Wilson Producer: Bonnie Raitt Recording Engineer: Jason Lehning at Sound Emporium Mastering Engineer: Alex McCollough at True East Mastering Production Assistant: Shannon Finnegan Mixer: Justin Niebank at Hounds Ear Music Publisher: Universal Music Corp. Composer, Lyricist: Leroy Carr ℗ Believe Entertainment Group and Wyatt Road Records
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The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Nothing in Rambling Ft. Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo' & Mick Fleetwood
In celebration of the band’s 50th Anniversary, The Fabulous Thunderbirds have just released Struck Down, their first studio album in eight years on Stony Plain Records. The ten-track album includes a wonderful cover of Memphis Minnie’s “Nothing in Rambling,” featuring longtime friends, T-Birds founding member Kim Wilson, along with Bonnie, Keb’ Mo’, Taj Mahal and Mick Fleetwood. — BRHQ
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Little Feat - Long Distance Call
“I’ve always loved Little Feat and this new incarnation of the band is bringing some serious heat, cred and new blood to their enduring legacy. Every Feat fan loves us some Sam. I’m so glad he’s now gotten a chance to step out front and center and put his spin on these wonderful blues songs. I loved singing "Long Distance Call" with him, always one of my favorites, and Scott slayed on slide. Know you’ll enjoy hanging out with us at Sam’s Place!" -- Bonnie Raitt
“Long Distance Call” was written by blues legend, Muddy Waters. It has Sam Clayton and Bonnie Raitt on vocals, Scott Sharrard on Dobro, Fred Tackett on acoustic guitar, Tony Leone on drums, and Michael “The Bull” LoBue on harmonica. The album also features Bill Payne on piano and Kenny Gradney on bass.
Little Feat have composed an album that’s their love letter to the blues entitled, ‘Sam’s Place.’ “Long Distance Call” plus many other blues classics are on this album. You can stream and order ‘Sam’s Place’ here: https://orcd.co/samsplace
Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, Vol. 2, the anticipated new John Prine tribute record from Oh Boy Records, is out today. Stream/purchase HERE.
Created as a celebration of Prine’s life and career, the album features new renditions of some of Prine’s most beloved songs performed by Brandi Carlile (“I Remember Everything”), Tyler Childers (“Yes I Guess They Oughta Name A Drink After You”), Iris DeMent (“One Red Rose”), Emmylou Harris (“Hello In There”), Jason Isbell (“Souvenirs”), Valerie June (“Summer’s End”), Margo Price (“Sweet Revenge”), Bonnie Raitt (“Angel From Montgomery”), Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats (“Pretty Good”), Amanda Shires (“Saddle in the Rain”), Sturgill Simpson(“Paradise”) and John Paul White (“Sam Stone”). Proceeds from the album will benefit twelve different non-profit organizations, one selected by each of the featured artists.
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Bonnie Raitt - Write Me a Few of Your Lines/Kokomo Blues
60 years anniversary celebration of Arhoolie
December 10, 2020
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Arhoolie Foundation celebrates it's 60th anniversary (1960-2020) with an online broadcast.
Bonnie Raitt - Shadow of Doubt
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival
October 3, 2020
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass celebrates it's 20th anniversary with an online broadcast titled “Let The Music Play On”.
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Bonnie Raitt & Boz Scaggs - You Don't Know Like I Know
Farm Aid 2020 On the Road
Sam & Dave classic written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter.
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Sheryl Crow & Bonnie Raitt - Everything Is Broken
[Eric Clapton’s Crossroads 2019]
Eric Clapton, one of the world’s pre-eminent blues/rock guitarists, once again summoned an all-star team of six-string heroes for his fifth Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2019. Held at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, the two-day concert event raised funds for the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, the chemical dependency treatment and education facility that Clapton founded in 1998.
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'A Tribute To Mose Allison'
Celebrates The Music Of An Exciting Jazz Master
Raitt contributed to a new album, If You're Going To The City: A Tribute To Mose Allison, which celebrates the late singer and pianist, who famously blended the rough-edged blues of the Mississippi Delta with the 1950s jazz of New York City.
NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro talks to Bonnie Raitt about her friendship with the Mose Allison. They're also joined by Amy Allison — his daughter, who executive produced the album — about selecting an unexpected list of artists to contribute songs to the album.
Recorded on tour June 3, 2017 - Centennial Hall, London - Ontario Canada
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