This is a “just listen” day. In other words, if you really are interested in the backstory on this cat, open a new window and google it. I’m just providing you with sonic wallpaper for your quest.

For some reason, harmonica giant Billy Boy Arnold’s best tune, the original single version of “Rockinitis,” is available only in used-CD bins or as a download from the 1993 multi-artist Vee Jay sampler A Taste of the Blues, Volume One. Blues fans deserve better — like a whole Billy Boy compilation from the late ’50s to early ’60s. (”Rockinitis” was issued in 1957 as Vee Jay 260.) What a rockin’ young harp buck this guy was.

Sigh. Of course, Vee Jay made a bunch of dumb mistakes (like dropping that crappy group the Beatles from their lineup before they were famous), so what do you expect?

Chuck Berry made rock and roll what it is today. This critic would fight — and win — a cage match with any other writer who’d take Elvis as the more significant contributor.

Elvis was a Mount Rushmore figure, for sure, but come on: Berry’s style (oh, and that writing-about-cars-and-girls-thing, which he didn’t invent but made a trademark) launched a million bands and can be heard everywhere from the Beatles to the MC5, from the Dead to the Stones and everyone since.

Ever the ironic bastards, us rock fans gave Berry his first and only #1 hit with “My Ding-A-Ling,” a gawd-awful novelty record. What an embarrassment to the legacy of a player who contributed as much to rock as Monet did to painting.

Which leaves blogs like Popdose to set the record straight, and we’re doing it right here. Not only did Chuck Berry show us how to rock, he was one mean blues slide player, too. Biggest proof of that lies in “Deep Feeling,” here from Rhino’s phenomenal anthology Blues Masters, Vol. 15: Slide Guitar Classics. Subtle, expressive, beautiful. If you can’t dig this — regardless of whether blues turns you on or not — you have no soul. Period.

Musicians who appreciate rock history appreciate Chuck Berry. Stud guitarists Arlen Roth and Sonny Landreth recorded “Deep Feeling” together for Roth’s new record, Toolin’ Around Woodstock with Levon Helm. In the process they lay down their own tribute to Berry and that groove on this YouTube video (we’re not allowed to embed this particular one — apparently Arlen’s worried what kooks like us are gonna do with it — so you’ll have to click and not whine about it, you lazy bum).

Innovation in the blues milieu can be tough: Old-skool fans like old-skool sounds and themes, and if you change it up too much, they get a little uncomfortable. Like if you pass a Winston off to an old-guard Pall Mall smoker. Just ain’t cool.

Yet if you play the same old stuff and don’t add your own interesting spin to, say, the Muddy Waters style songs, it just sounds tired or worse yet, faker than fake.

Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Bnois King strike the perfect balance: Kubek is a hard-line Stevie Ray-style screaming guitarist. He’s the real deal, not some cardboard-cutout wannabe pretty boy the major labels like to prop up every couple years—and bilk the next generation of record buyers out of their paper route money. His bandmate and singer-guitarist Bnois King, however, brings a smoother jazz side to contrast Kubek’s rough-and-tumble Texas git-ar. Together they make searing blues with sophisticated style.

Best part about them is King’s lyrical commentary on present-day life. You’d never have caught Willa Mae “Big Mama” Thornton singing about road rage (even though she was the driver for her band and legend has it she could get up a good head of steam in the road-rage department) back in simpler times, when it hadn’t been defined as a social phenomenon.

But King does. “Damn Traffic” from Take Your Best Shot is one of my favorite cuts Kubek and King have done in their nearly 20-year run. In its quick blues-verse poetry the song encapsulates the traffic jam — with Kubek’s slashing guitar as a backdrop, the lyrics capture the grind of commuter life. And that’s how they put a current spin on the blues.

The duo have a new album, Blood Brothers, out on Alligator that’s well worth investigating. Here’s a little shot of Kubek and King live from earlier this year, performing “Blues Feeling”:

You can’t get away from Professor Longhair, a.k.a. ‘Fess. Piano freaks who appreciate all players and who don’t just specialize in jazz or classical will tell you it’s a dead heat between him, Ray Charles, and Booker T. Jones for the title of Greatest American Keyboard Player of All Time — and by “greatest” I mean possessing that trifecta of skill, entertainment value, and influence on future players. (Patented Mojo Aside®: Gershwin and Liberace fans, you heard me right. You too, Chick Corea, Bernie Worrell, and Alicia Keys freakazoids. And it really pains me to leave Herbie Hancock, Memphis Slim, and James Booker off that list. Anyone who wants to pound me in the comments section for it, you’re justified. In fact, if the comments for this post become a “Who is the greatest American piano player and why?” free-for-all, I’ll enjoy participating.)

The Professor’s “Big Chief (Part 2)” is especially ubiquitous thanks to Lily Allen’s appropriation of its riff on “Knock ‘Em Out,” thus opening the ears of a whole ‘nother musical generation. There’s a little bit of a debate on who deserves the credit for this song — sometimes it’s Earl King, sometimes ‘Fess, and sometimes both. I’m on the ‘Fess side of the fence, because if there’s no deadly right-hand groove with that rock-solid left hand, there’s no legendary cut. He just plays it over and over and over and over, and at the end of a couple good minutes you’re under its spell. That, and the whistling. Who the hell does that? Yet here the whistling’s perfect. And the piano riff!

Part 2 is more commonly known than Part 1, I think; a lot of people who know “Big Chief” know just the second half because it’s the half with lyrics. Part 1 is the instrumental half, which I don’t yet have in my MP3 archives. However, a YouTuber posted it. Give it a spin …

Semi-obscure guitarist Brewer Phillips died in 1999. His playing was a key element of Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, the legendary band that launched Alligator Records, one of the key forces keeping blues alive.

The classic Chicago groove “Hen House Boogie” — which Phillips helped perfect in his time playing with Memphis Slim, Roosevelt Sykes, and Taylor — comes from Brewer’s 1996 solo album Homebrew, which has one of the all-time great blues CD covers: Phillips walking through his (or his woman’s, or his woman’s other lover’s) house with a hammer. One would presume he’s planning to hang up a certificate of commendation of some sort on the wall, but the look on his face says it’s possible he’s planning to cave someone’s head in.

The blues, sometimes, is about how big my schlong is. Or, other times, how long me and my monstrous schlong can go in the sack before we blow our top. Or, still other times, how good I am when we do, finally, get down to bed for that protracted session with my big schlong. Some songs, also, give specific instructions to the wimmen, like when Joe Turner says “Get outta that bed…get into the kitchen, make some noise with the pots and pans.” Put another way: making sure you got yours from me and my big schlong can make for a hungry man.

Is it any wonder, hanging out with these guys, the wimmen rebel? That typically leads to another classic type of blues: The lament. “37 Years Old,” by Rochester, NY resident Joe Beard, is a particularly tasty groove off his record For Real, with Beard and well-known sidemen Duke Robillard on the guitar, Jerry Portnoy (harmonica), and Bruce Katz (Hammond B-3).

Beard learned guitar at the side of Son House, who taught Muddy Waters the blues way back when, and also influenced Robert Johnson. Unaware that his early recordings were considered national treasures, House lived in obscurity in Rochester, N.Y. until, late in life during the 1960s, he was rediscovered. Beard just thought the neighborhood blues guy played some mean slide; he was just as stunned as anyone to realize he’d learned to play with one of the all-time legends of the blues.

We’re stunned at the beautiful sound these seasoned musicians make together. Bon appetit!

“I’m gonna tell you, in plain English — just as plain as I can — I’m gonna love you like woman,” Koko says. “But I’m also gonna fight you like a man.”

Holy crap. I broke down The Politics of Ike Turner last time around. Chances are, when old Ike plucked a teenage Tina out of a church and helped her launch a rocket ride to stardom in the late 1950s, Koko wasn’t in his sights. But if she was, this here song would make his blood run cold. And with its threat of violence, make his balls shrivel up and ache.

Funny thing is, Koko Taylor insinuated she was a fairly reserved, conservative person in real life back when she recorded this track. She confessed she was mortified when mentor Willie Dixon first got her to sing “Wang Dang Doodle,” basically a radio ad for one nasty upcoming bar fight — including knife play. It went on to become her signature song.

This cut, if nothing else, established Taylor as the Aretha of the blues, a title that she never really relinquished — although some fans today would say the torch has been passed to Shemeika Copeland. No matter. “Love You Like a Woman” (download) is a classic. Once you hear it, you’ll never forget it.

“I can’t live forever, how long ya think I’m gonna wait — for forgiveness?” growls Ike Turner in a cut from his 2006 Zoho solo effort Risin’ With the Blues.

Longer than you’re going to live, dude. The man died a couple weeks before Christmas — today we learned it was likely from a coke overdose — leaving decades of controversy in his wake. There’s no apologizing for the abuse a coked-up Ike heaped on Tina, whether he denied or owned up to it. And I hain’t doing it here.

Ike’s asking for forgiveness in this cut, but upon examining the lyrics, we’re not sure what he copping to doing in the first place. Having interviewed him in 2006, my guess is that old Ike felt that he probably crossed the line into spousal abuse more than once. But if he admitted he did Tina any particular wrong, it would have been tantamount to admitting that all the dramatized details of the 1993 Hollywood biopic What’s Love Got To Do With it — based on Tina’s book I, Tina — were true. He was pissed off about a bunch of things Tina wrote, and even more enraged about the creative liberties taken in the screenplay that in his view further heaped exaggeration on top of lies.

Worse yet — at least to Ike — when he signed papers in jail agreeing to let the moviemakers tell his story, he wasn’t consenting to that version of it and felt he’d been deceived. (more…)

In New Hampshire, we’ve been shot up good with presidential political shrapnel for more than a year. We get canvassed on our home and cell phones, we get out-of-state college students knocking at our doors to interrupt dinner with a smile and a plug, and (this was the worst) we get Ron Paul henchmen handing us fliers while sitting in traffic on I-93 during a snowstorm waiting for tow trucks to clear an accident up ahead.

In that case, just roll down the window and smile to accept the material, it’s the fastest way to get rid of them. Even though you might be tempted to mess with them and say “Your man Ron says he’s against something he calls ‘birthright citizenship,’ which I sense has something to do with the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil, but my four-year-old in the back seat here is worried you are going to rip him out of our home and send him to Iceland if he gets elected so we refuse to vote for your man.” Just to show those goofy twits that you are paying attention to the race and are ashamed that they have bought into that candidate’s particular brand of jive.

This primary business can be overwhelming, but Jan. 8 is the end of it. We Granite State voters wield zero power nationally once our little popularity contest is over. The candidates won’t be back, ever, whether they win or lose the primary.

So our time is now, and we take our mission quite seriously: Thinning the candidate herd so that voters back in my home state of Ohio, for instance, don’t screw up any worse than they have in recent years.

We listen to debates. We read the papers. We can’t help but hear the spin of every broadcast pundit. Especially the loudest, crassest buffoons on the right: Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and the jack-assiest of them all, Michael Savage — unholy triumvirs who cast a putrid stench on politics, squelch intelligent debate, and in general give so many people permission to feel good about being callous, uncaring, ugly Americans.

While I am proud, flag-waving liberal, I’m also tired of my side’s reasonable, measured responses to this garbage, as John Lee Hooker liked to refer to some of the people in his personal universe. I’m tired of our side meekly offering milquetoast, spineless ripostes to the right-wing TV clowns who focus on issues that completely don’t matter: Who cares about whether gay men and women can marry if the hospital’s about to foreclose on my house because I can’t pay my medical bills? Really? Who gives a flying freak?

It’s all too much. Besides my own self, I trust one other commentator. You want political Wisdom with a capital “W,” you go to John Lee Hooker. That’s why, before I vote, I’m ordering up “Democrat Man” (download), a cold shot from the box set called, simply, Hooker.

He played his guitar in the no-spin zone, where he ain’t got no shoes. Clearly, however, he’s no fool, and can see that he’s not the only one pissed off with the situation at hand, and we’re all gonna vote. Won’t be too long, he says, until election time, and the Democrats get back in again.