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And here is Bo Diddley & Chuck Berry -- Bo's Beat from Chuck Berry & Bo Diddley -- Two Great Guitars

Only Solitaire blog gives it a bit of side eye

More of an historical curiosity here than an actual good album — but a terrific historical curiosity all the same. ...the album is never remembered as a particular highlight for any of those guys; however, in some ways it is a rather unique artifact of the era. Even if you find it horrible, you won't ever forget how you found it horrible, that is for sure.

All the same here are the two men in concert all of 45 years later:

Chuck Berry & Bo Diddley Together LIVE (2009)

And down the tesseracted rabbit hole we go... [more inside]
posted by y2karl on Nov 24, 2022 - 9 comments

Recording under quarantine, a musical trio gives a classic blues song an Arabic twist, exploring new depths for Black-Palestinian solidarity. [+972 Magazine] For Kareem Samara, a British-Palestinian multi-instrumentalist, composer, and sound artist, it was naseeb — meant to be. One day in 2020, American-Palestinian filmmaker and music producer Sama’an Ashrawi messaged asking him to play “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” an American blues standard, on the oud. Ashrawi was curious what the blues would sound like in the quarter tones of the Middle Eastern instrument. Minutes later, Samara sent him a recording of the tune. “It’s a song I’ve always loved,” says Samara. “That song is in my bones.” [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani on Sep 4, 2021 - 8 comments

Janis Joplin, To Love Somebody (The Dick Cavett Show, July 8, 1969) [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol on Mar 23, 2021 - 18 comments

Zeal & Ardor (previously) has released a live-in-the-studio video of "Blood In The River" [THIS IS LOUD]. Good mood music. Loudwire has more about Z&A.
posted by Johnny Wallflower on Jun 20, 2017 - 17 comments

10 year-old is handed a guitar, shrugs off the blues
posted by a lungful of dragon on Oct 17, 2014 - 23 comments

On September 27, 1963, at the New Era Club in Nashville, Tennessee, Etta James rocked the house. The result was "simply one of the greatest live blues albums ever captured on tape". [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen on Aug 26, 2012 - 6 comments

The rock era saw a few white female singers, like Janis Joplin, show they could sing the blues. But one who could outshine them all -- Jo Ann Kelly -- seemed to slip through the cracks, mostly because she favored the acoustic, Delta style rather than rocking out with a heavy band behind her. But with a huge voice, and a strong guitar style influenced by Memphis Minnie and Charley Patton, she was the queen. - AllMusic [more inside]
posted by Egg Shen on Aug 2, 2012 - 13 comments

"Charley Patton" by Robert Crumb (recommended listening: "Down the Dirt Road Blues", "High Sheriff Blues", "A Spoonful Blues", "You're Gonna Need Somebody When You Die") (very previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl on May 25, 2012 - 8 comments

A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich cinematography (a pioneer of digital color grading), its whimsical humor, fluid vernacular, and many subtle references to Homer's Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out: the music. Assembled by T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from cheery ballads and angelic hymns to wistful blues and chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage, a paean and uchronia of the Old South. Though the multiplatinum album was recently reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian D. A. Pennebaker's Down from the Mountain, an extraordinary yet intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by John Hartford, an accomplished fiddler, riverboat captain, and raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on Hulu and YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of the set list's fascinating history. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi on Dec 22, 2011 - 107 comments