Piano Red: Rockin’ With Red

William Lee Perryman…aka Piano Red…aka Dr. Feelgood…an essential part of the story of American music…1950 “Rockin’ with Red” and “The Wrong Yoyo” the next year, years before Bill Haley…rock and roll was mostly just a racist term trying to convince people that white artists had invented something…Red’s boogie woogie and barrelhouse blues (as well as Louis Jordan’s jump blues) clearly giving Haley his cues…Red’s music clearly showing a bridge back to ragtime…and while the so-called rock and roll is said to have brought black music to white audiences, ragtime had done that in a big way over fifty years earlier…and Red recorded for and played for white audiences years before the so-called rock and roll hit the charts….if Red don’t put a grin to your chin and a tap to your toes you might as well give it up and give up the ghost. — winch

Big Bill Broonzy (LP) Last Session Part One (1957) Verve 3001 (1959)

Big Bill Broonzy
Last Session Part One
Verve 3001
Released 1959
Recorded July 1957
Produced & Directed by Bill Randle  

 

Recommended ****


The first of three sets Verve released in 1959, all recorded July 1957.  The day after the sessions, Broonzy would enter the hospital with lung cancer, and he’d be gone before the release of these albums.

Classic collection of acoustic blues, all good with several highlights including “Southbound Train,” “Joe Turner Blues,” and “I Ain’t Gon’ Be Treated This Way.”