Stroking Time

The Grammy Awards

The Grammys are the time we find out the favorite jazz and blues recordings of the older pop music performers and technicians who dominate the voting. I suspect many of the voters don't pay much attention to either genre. Jazz and blues fans should return the favor by not paying much attention to the Grammys.

Blues has been demoted to a single category. Gone is the old separation between “traditional” and “contemporary” blues, which seemed to confuse the judges anyway. Dr. John won the Best Blues Album Grammy for Locked Down. The other nominees were Shemekia Copeland, 33⅓; Ruthie Foster, Let It Burn; the Heritage Blues Orchestra, And Still I Rise; and Joan Osborne, Bring It On Home. I like Locked Down, but calling it “blues” really stretches the category. I would have given the Grammy to Shemekia or the Heritage gang.

The entire Dr. John album is listenable on You Tube. I'm surprised Nonesuch Records hasn't cracked down on that. I picked “Revolution” because I like the visuals as well as the song.

One category is too few for the blues. One indication of this is that Bonnie Raitt was honored for her CD, Slipstream, in a category called Americana. How about a Blues Song of the Year?

Jazz is spread out over eight categories. Four of them are best CD categories. The most competitive was Best Jazz Instrumental Album, which was won by Pat Metheny's Unity Band. The other nominees were Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez and Paul Motion, Further Explorations; Chick Corea and Gary Burton, Hot House; Kenny Garrett, Seeds From the Underground; and Ahmad Jamal, Blue Moon. I would have given it to any of the other four over Metheny.

The Best Jazz Vocal Album went to Esperanza Spalding for Radio Music Society. Sadly, the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album went to Arturo Sandoval for Dear Diz. I say “sadly” because I was pulling for Ryan Truesdell's Centennial: Newly Discovered Works of Gil Evans, my choice for best jazz CD of 2012. The Best Latin Jazz album was ¡Ritmo! by the Clare Fisher Latin Jazz Big Band.

The remaining four jazz categories are for individual album cuts. The Best Improvised Jazz Solo is a potentially interesting category, if the judges would listen to a large enough sample of CDs. The award went to Chick Corea and Gary Burton for the title cut from Hot House, a bebop standard composed by Tadd Dameron in 1945. Here it is.

The Best Instrumental Composition went to Chick Corea for “Mozart Goes Dancing,” also from Hot House. Centennial did manage to score one victory, the Best Instrumental Arrangement for “How About You?” Finally, the Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist went to Esperanza Spalding and Thara Memory for “City of Roses” from Radio Music Society.

The International Blues Challenge

The International Blues Challenge is a competition among relatively unknown blues performers sponsored by the Blues Foundation. The 29^th annual event was held in Memphis from January 29 through February 2. The winners receive recognition, cash and gigs. A number of well-known artists have competed in the past, including Tommy Castro, Susan Tedeschi and Watermelon Slim. There are two categories of competitors, Blues Bands and Solo/Duo Blues Acts. There are roughly 100 entrants in each category, sponsored by blues societies from around the World. The Blues Society of Western Pennsylvania was represented by the Jimmy Adler Band and the duo of Miss Freddye and Greg “G-Man” Castille. They were not among the 17 finalists.

The winner in the Single Artist category is Little G Weevil, sponsored by the Atlanta Blues Society. Here's a video of his from the competition. I cannot identify the song.

The winner of the Band competition was the Selwyn Birchwood Band, sponsored by the Suncoast Blues Society of Tampa, FL. Persistence pays. They were among the finalists last year. There are several Birchwood videos available on You Tube. It's unfair to judge a performer by amateur videos, but it's my impression that he is a better guitarist than singer. In addition to a standard guitar, he plays a slide guitar in his lap. Here he is doing “Crawlin' Kingsnake,” a song originally recorded by Big Joe Williams, but more recently identified with John Lee Hooker.

The Blues Hall of Fame

The Blues Foundation also announced this year's inductees into the Blues Hall of Fame.  The ceremony is schedule for May 8. Here are the performers:

     Otis Clay, soul singer

     Earl Hooker, guitarist

     Little Brother Montgomery, singer and pianist

     Jimmie Rodgers, country singer and yodeler—a surpising choice

     Joe Louis Walker, singer and guitarist

     Jody Williams, singer and guitarist

Otis Clay, Joe Louis Walker and Jody Williams are still alive and performing.

The non-performers to be honored are:

     Dave Clark, record promoter

     Henry Glover, songwriter and record producer

     Cosimo Mattisa, record producer

The following individual songs are being inducted:

     “Canned Heat Blues,” Tommy Johnson

     “How Many More Years,” Howlin' Wolf

     “Let the Good Times Roll,” Louis Jordan

     “Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” Memphis Minnie

     “Mystery Train,” Little Junior Parker

Does anyone remember "soundies?"

The three albums inducted are all anthologies:

     Louis Jordan's Greatest Hits

     More Real Folk Blues, Howlin' Wolf

     Texas Worried Blues, Henry “Ragtime Texas” Thomas

The society is also honoring the book Soulsville, U. S. A.: The Story of Stax Records by Rob Bowman.

If you're not watching these videos, you're missing the whole point.