What better way to kick off the Smokin Blues Guitar blog than to pay homage to one of greatest blues guitarists and all around nice guys still on the blues circuit today.
Hubert Sumlin was born on November 16th, 1931 in Mississippi and raised in Arkansas – endorsed by the great Howlin” Wolf who brought him up to Chicago. There he learned his chops, developed his style and created the sound behind some of the best blues classics of all time.
Do yourself a favor and head over to his official website now – check out his Gallery where you will see nearly every influential music star that matters, all of them want to be with Hubert.
I had the chance to see Hubert up close this past weekend here at the Ottawa Blues Festival where he hung out for 3-days before moving on to Mt Tremblant – a couple hour drive from here to join Robert Cray.
My first siting was watching local band Monkey Junk (a hugely talented trio in their own right), where I see this person doing some mean air drumming and air guitar to the tastey blues licks of the boys. Since I was right up front, I poked my ahead around to see stage right and there is Hubert Sumlin jiving away with Monkey Junk – that was Friday evening, he had arrived for a set of gigs on Saturday and Sunday.
The local guys – Tony D, Steve Mariner and Matt Sobb were humbled and giddy at the fact that Sir Hubert was taking in their set, and purely enjoying what he was hearing by the way.
Along came Saturday and Hubert took the Hard Rock Stage (one of 6 stages at Ottawa Bluesfest), it was a terrific set with some very tastey blues.
It struck me like thunder how many giant blues hits he has put his own flavor to over the last 50-years – Killing Floor, Going Down Slow, and my personal favorite from this concert, Sitting On Top of The World!
As if that weren’t enough, I got to say hi to him (and received a huge Hubert smile and wave) as he passed by a group of us lined up to see Doyle Bramhall perform later that afternoon.
Sunday came, and yet another priveledged Hubert Sumlin concert – this time he put something extra into the mix throwing some additional songs into the mix, sometimes completely mystifying his band, but he sure knew what he was doing – they had to catch up.
Here’s a terrific set of clips of “Hubert blues licks” – see if you don’t recognize some of these:
What struck me more than anything else though over these 3 days is how vibrant, energetic and positive a person Hubert is. He brought the festival to life – he walks with the aura of thousands of blues greats before him and will have influenced thousands after…their aren’t many gentelman left in this world like Hubert Sumlin…it just so happens he is also a living legend of the blues guitar.
Do you have a Hubert Sumlin story or favorite moment to share? Leave a comment and let us hear about it.
Filed under Blues Legends by on Jul 15th, 2009. Comment. 
Well, tonights headline act at The Ottawa Bluesfest is KISS – needless to say, I’ll be skipping that one which gives me time to tell you a little about my meeting with Doyle Bramhall – a great blues song writer, drummer, singer and performer.
Many people know about Doyle Bramhall II – the son of Doyle Bramhall 1 (in case you hadn’t figured that out, I’m a little punchy from the late nights and libations!).
Doyle Bramhall II is one of the two guitarists that made up the Arc Angels along with Double Trouble (Tommy Shannon and Chris Layton of SRV fame) back 17-years ago (1992) when they hit the scene with one of the coolest CD’s the blues/rock world has ever heard – it was a self-titled CD “Arc Angels”
Since then Doyle II has come out with solo albums, extensively toured with Eric Clapton along with Derek Trucks – learning a ton about life, the business and guitar I would imagine and done a ton of work with others – all of it incredibly creative and great.
Back to Doyle Bramhall 1 who brought his act to Ottawa Bluesfest for two shows this past weekend, along with Casper Rawls – a cool country-flavored guitar picker who once played with Buck Owens.
I had to chuckle as a bunch of us waited in line to see Doyle’s first show inside the Barney Danson theatre – I overheard several of them saying how good he was in the Arc Angels (I had to break it to them that this was the other Doyle Bramhall!) All was well though – he blew them away just the same.
An intimate theatre that holds around 200 people with only about 75 people in attendance, incredible acoustics and some great music made for a very memorable evening.
Top that off with being able to walk up and chat with Doyle for a few minutes after the show and you have a night to remember – that I will!
Doyle has a knack for writing tastey rhythms surrounded by straight ahead rock (how about The House is Rocking from Stevie Ray Vaughan – or as Doyle called refers to him – Stevie Vaughan) and “Shape I’m In” with his son Doyle II to straight ahead blues on the co-written (again with SRV) “Change It” all the way to “Lost In The Congo” off of his newest CD “Is It News”
Check out Doyle’s latest CD Doyle Bramhall: Is It News
I sometimes imagine being around theVaughan’s and the Bramhall’s in Texas back in the 70’s and 80’s when things were rich with music and creativity – great to see that Doyle 1 and Doyle II are still pushing the envelope, stretching music but always keeping it real, with feeling – maybe there is still hope for music after all.
Filed under Blues Legends by on Jul 16th, 2009. Comment.
How healthy is the future of the blues?
B.B. King, Hubert Sumlin, Buddy Guy are still rocking us with their original blues guitar and there certainly are some great prospects coming up from Kenny Wayne Shephard to Doyle Bramhall II – but what about the next generation?
How about 9-year old Tallan Latz?
With idols like Stevie Ray Vuaghan and Jimmie Hendrix – he is choosing his models well. And so far he is learning the blues guitar classics like Freddie King’s Hideaway — but most of all, he has that certain MOJO that blues performers must have to make it big…watch this video (which has over 2Million views on YouTube by the way):
By starting off at age 5, Tallan has a great lead and way to enter the blues stream – he can use that time to learn from the masters he will no doubt meet in the coming weeks and months. As much as he can learn technically from them, hopefully he can learn how to put on a show, how to get along and protect yourself in the music and entertainment business so that he can continue to bring us the blues for years to come while he learns to live a well-rounded life as a kid too.
Check out Tallan’s website and discover what the world is calling the next great blues prodigy. By the look of his upcoming shows, he’s going to have a very busy summer.
What do you think – where will he be 5-years from now?
Filed under New Blues by on Jul 16th, 2009. 1 Comment.
I’ll have to admit I’m a little biased when it comes to the guys that now form Monkey Junk – a great sounding blues band out of Ottawa, Canada. After all, they are comprised of 3 top Ottawa blues musicians starting with blue guitar virtuoso Tony D, with some Maple Blues Award winning harp from Steve Mariner all backed by the solid beat of Matt Sobb.
Throw it all together and it works like dynamite.
These guys assembled last year after many years of solo efforts and you know how sometimes things just seem to have a chemistry? Well that’s what happened – 2+2+2 equals far more than 6 in the case of these guys.
Tony D is a masterful blues guitar man that has honed his chops in different parts of Canada, Europe, Texas and just lately – Memphis at the International Blues Challenge and came in 3rd over 100 bands. He is a veteran of the Ottawa blues band scene and has taught his art to many aspiring guitarists around Ottawa.
Steve Mariner is just too talented to believe! This guy is equally proficient and passionate singing, playing harp, banging out a backbeat on his bass, wringing the keys on keyboard – and probably a few other instruments we haven’t even scene yet.
Most of all, these guys are great entertainers and throw and element of songwriting into the mix. I’ll be watching for more from Monkey Junk, suggest you do the same.
Check them out over at their Myspace page – prepare to be hooked.
Jeff
Filed under New Blues by on Jul 17th, 2009. 1 Comment.
Larry Garner Blues Guitar
After 15-years of attending Ottawa bluesfest, this year was no exception – each year continues to get better and better.
As usual, it’s often the side stages that bring the performances that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, and those moments of pure musical genious when talented musicians combine to meet that perfect moment of synchronization with the heavens. For the audience, suddenly the 40 or 50 feet between us and band disappears and we are the blue guitar god, the masterful beat master drummer or the honkey tonk keyboard player.
With 6-stages, every musical genre covered, Ottawa bluesfest has world musical event. Only at this festival could you have rapper Ludicrous playing on a stage right before Lynard Skynard take the stage with their Southern Rock experience.
Blacksheep Stage
So – who was great, who was good and who wasn’t?
That’s a subjective thing of course and any one person’s opinions can only be issued based on the acts he is able to take in – after all, we are only human.
Here’s a quick summary from my perspective —
1. Los Lonely Boys were my walk-away favorites. They had it going on…Henry Garza (one of the 3 brothers) is an incredibly talented guitar player, the closest I’ve seen to Stevie’s ability to channel his soul through the guitar and touch the crowd. Not to slight the JoJo and Ringo on bass and drums respectively – they were incredibly tight while the entire night they knew exactly how far to push it to the line.
2. My second favorite was Doyle Bramhall – yes the senior one. Not exactly the showman many may have thought, but a terrific songwriter, musician and entertainer just the same
Hard Rock Cafe Stage
3. Larry Garner put on a terrific show and although one would have liked to have had more time to hear his blues guitar shine -his show was certainly one of the best received with his gracious ode to the crowd, festival organizers and Sugar Blue who contributed his drummer when Larry’s was unable to come at the last minute because his mother had broken a hip in a fall.
4. Oh yes, and a big positive for the Subway Rockband Guitar tent – an esecially big hit with my two kids while Dad watched some more blues
5. Who had off nights – the sound was horribly muddy at Lynard Skynard, they faught through and put on a giant show, but much of the fine guitar work all sounded like one big electrical surge – too bad on that one.
Ottawa Cisco Systems Bluesfest
6. Jeff Beck – he may be one of the world’s finest technical guitar players – but he could learn a thing or two from Eric Clapton on keeping it simpler, but really touching the soul of his audience. Many stared in wonder, but then wondered why they left unfulfilled
All in all, it was a terrific festival this year – for us fans of blues guitar, there was enough to keep us happy, though I can’t help but notice there seems to be a little less each year – hopefully Mark Monahan sticks with the blues and keeps us coming back for more.
Filed under Blues Festival, Blues Legends by on Jul 20th, 2009. Comment.
It always makes me smile when I see how crazy the tour schedule is for some of these blues musicians. Take Sugar Blue, the grammy award winning blues harp player that has been on the scene for some time, but has a renewed passion and fire to his performances lately.
He was in our home town of Ottawa, Canada and Cisco Systems Bluesfest on the July 17th where he put on a terrific show – coming from Mt Tremblant the night before (a ski resort about 2-hours from Ottawa). Then I see that he played the Bay City Blues Festival in Michigan on the 19th and brought the house down on a night that saw blues legend Kenny Neal and blues guitar great Johnny Winter in the headliner slot.
I still recall a special evening in downtown Ottawa at the Rainbow – one of our mainstay blues venues in the city – seeing Sugar Blue, it must be more than 15-years ago. That too was an incredible show of blues standards with the fire and passion than Sugar Blue brings to every performance.
From all reports it turned out to be a magical evening of music where three very different artists managed to communicate their passion for blues music to the crowd, each in their own way.
You’ve got to love the summer – remind me next year, I’m going to take 3-4 months and just travel from blues festival to festival – to hell with working!
Filed under Blues Festival, Blues Legends by on Jul 22nd, 2009. Comment.
