The first phonograph records that I was even consciously aware of when I was about four or five years old were by Roy Acuff and the Smokey Mountain Boys on those old lavender Okey 78s and, I think, one on Melotone that my Mom picked up at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. I remember tunes like […]
SAGE ADVICE FROM LOU CURTISS The next big event I’m working on is the Adams Ave Street Fair, which I’ve been doing for the last 15 years or so. Right now, me and a bunch of other noble folk are sitting and listening to four or five hundred audition CDs and trying our best to […]
I’ve talked about lots of different kinds of cowboy and western music in these columns before. Living in the West I first became acquainted with the Sons of the Pioneers in Lake City, Washington, when I was about 10 years old. Now, that wasn’t the original Pioneers of the 1930s with Leonard Slye (Roy Rogers); […]
It was that big pile of 78 rpm records my folks had that started things off. Both Mom and Dad liked country and western, and I grew up with the likes of Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Sons of the Pioneers, Hank Snow, back to Frank Marvin and Haywire Mac and as recent as Hank Williams. […]
I’ve been collecting records since 1952, when I inherited my Dad’s collection of old 78s (mostly country music with some Bing, Beatrice Kaye, Kay Kyser, Yogi Yorgesson, Spike Jones, and Harry McClintock thrown in). One of my Dad’s favorites had been the old Blue Yodeler Jimmie Rodgers and, wanting to add titles to that collection, […]
This city and its environs have a bad habit of ignoring our roots—particularly our musical roots and places where music has been heard. I could name many venues—dance halls, clubs, theaters, coffeehouses—that have contributed in a large part to our musical history, but few of them stand out, notably because the buildings still stand. Something […]
There used to be a club on First and C Streets in downtown San Diego called the College Inn that was a long-time home to country music, country boogie and swing, and rock-a-billy. The audience was mostly navy and a few of us who came for the music. I remember seeing Merle Travis, Roy Hogsed, […]
I guess it all started with Sam Chatmon. It was in 1966 and I’d seen quite a bit of blues: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Skip James, Gary Davis, Bukka White, and even obscure artists like Willie Thomas and Butch Cage, but that was always as an audience member. I […]
Black history on record started with orchestral and gospel music by groups like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Jim Europe’s Military Band, and vaudevillians like Bert Williams, but black jazz started with Mamie Smith’s Okeh 4169 “Crazy Blues”/“It’s Right Here for You.” Both songs were described on the label as “Popular Blue Song”; the time was […]
