Very young he was working with his family in the cane fields. At the age of 18, he moved to New Orleans where he worked in various jobs for a couple of years before returning home in 1948 when, inspired by Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, he began taking guitar lessons from a cousin.
“The kind of blues I’m playin’, now they call it Texas style”, he explained. “But we called it the country blues, you know… It’s the style of picking, with your fingers and all that. It wasn’t any bottle-necking, like Mississippi blues.”
→ Thanks to L. C.
The miraculous album
Born in April 1937 in St. Martinville, Louisiana, in a Creole French speaking family, Hypolite did not learn English until going to school at the age of 6. He had a rough youth, obliged to drop out after the fourth grade to go out and work : from about 12 years old he cut sugar cane, dug sweet potatoes or picked okra and cotton.
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Pete Seeger |
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| Marcus famous avatar |
The album includes only titles “covered” by Domino, some previously sung by Wynonie Harris or Jackie Brenston, as well as two Woods originals with a Domino mood (though one is rather an adaptation). In fact more than a tribute to Fats, it's a tribute to Nawlins piano and pianists by a pianist who's not from the Crescent City. But of course this tribute couldn't take place anywhere else but in New Orleans, Domino's home town, at the prestigious Jazz & Heritage Festival 2018 which took place only five months after Domino's passing.
Except his original “Hungry & Horny”, with a really funny introduction, most of his repertoire on this Live is made of efficient less explicit covers specially designed to make the cruisers dance.
→ Thanks to my unique partners...
Big boss man
Born in 1967, in Williamstown (Massachusetts), 56 today, Albert Cummings was raised in a musical family (his dad played guitar and fiddle in local bands). At 12, unable to wrap his hand around a guitar's neck, he took up the banjo and would have become at best a talented bluegrass player, but life has some funny tricks in stock.
When SRV died in the crash of his helicopter in August 1990, the boy, born in 1979, had celebrated his 11th birthday two months earlier and was already honing his skills at local blues jams in his native Boston. Yes, Boston… though when you hear his guitar you'd rather think of Dallas or Austin ! At these blues jams he had the lucky opportunity to play and learn from such experienced elders as Ronnie Earl, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Matt Murphy or Paul Rishell.
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| The Carolina Chocolate Drops : l. to r., Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson |
Half Afro-American, half of Mexican descent, Flemons was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He studied English at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, where he met Súle Greg Wilson, a local percussionist, banjo player and folklorist who became a mentor to him.
In the end of 2005, Flemons and Wilson, with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson formed the old-time string band, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, based in Durham, North Carolina. While active in the band, Flemons was leading a parallel solo career, but in the end of 2013 he left the group to pursue his "Prospect Hill" project.