Koko Taylor R.I.P.

Koko Taylor feat. Little Walter: Wang Dang Doodle (1967)

“”Blues is my life,” Taylor once said. “It’s a true feeling that comes from the heart, not something that just comes out of my mouth. Blues is what I love, and blues is what I always do.”" New York Times

Koko Taylor “Queen of the Blues” Dies at 80

“”She was of the same generation as Muddy [Waters] and [Howlin'] Wolf, she had those [Mississippi] Delta roots,” he said Wednesday. “Even though she had been living in Chicago since the ’50s, her music was still deeply rooted in the South. She had that rhythmic sense, that sense of where you lay the words and how the band locks in around the singer, that intensity of people who have lived that life.” says Bruce Iglauer, owner of Chicago-based Alligator Records and her producer, manager and friend since 1974.” Greg Kot, LA Times

When the Rolling Stones Discovered The Blues

Howlin’ Wolf & the Rolling Stones: Little Red Roosters

Q:On making a No 1 out of Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster

Keith Richards: We must have been wearing brass balls that day, when we decided to put that out as a single. I think we just thought it was our job to pay back, to give them what they’ve given us. They’ve given us the music and the friendship, and let’s stand up, be men, and give them a blues, and it went to No 1. Mr Howlin’ Wolf, he didn’t mind at all. It was maybe a moment of bravado, in retrospect, but it worked. We have been blessed by the music that we listened to, and let’s see if we can actually spin it back around and make American white kids listen to Little Red Rooster. You had it all the time, pal, you know. You just didn’t listen.”  The Guardian

(It’s edited extracts from an interview with Keith Richards for Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?)

Fresh Interview of Marshall Chess

Etta James: I’d Rather Go Blind

“Harvey Kubernik: What was the wildest shit you ever saw in a radio station in the 1960s?

Marshall Chess: Hmmm. I’m not gonna tell you this DJ’s name, but at a station in Boston owned by a white guy. (laughs). I walked into his office, the radio was on through the speakers, he was sitting behind his desk, and all of a sudden he was squirming around, and all of a sudden this heavy black girl comes up from underneath his desk sucking his dick while he was talking to me! (laughs). That was probably the craziest thing I ever saw.” Harvey Kubernik, Sonic Boomers

Cadillac Records

Cadillac Records trailer

“The music is also a window into history, and “Cadillac Records” is an uncommonly astute treatment of race in America at the end of the Jim Crow era.” Read more from New York Times.

or from LA Times

or from Slate

Chess Records / Motown Records

Chess vs. Motown

Chess Records and Chicago Blues History Fair Documentary

Take a 10 minutes ride with great Chicago blues history

Cadillac Records

“Cadillac Records,  the film that charts the rise and fall of seminal R&B label, Chess Records, starring Beyoncé Knowles, Mos Def and Jeffery Wright, and Adrien Brody (as Etta James, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and R&B magnate Leonard Chess, respectively) has itself a trailer.”, The Playlist

Watch the trailer from The Playlist

“Cadillac Records” Is New Movie About Chess Records

CADILLAC RECORDS chronicles the rise of Chess Records and its recording artists.

“The story of how the blues became popular and gave birth to rock and roll begins at a dingy bar on the rough South Side of Chicago in 1947, where an ambitious young Polish émigré, bar owner Leonard Chess hires a talented but undisciplined blues combo that includes quiet and thoughtful guitar prodigy Muddy Waters and impulsive and colorful harmonica player Little Walter.”

Please, read more from “The Playlist”