There are very few drummers who even come close to racking up the number of sessions that Bernard “Pretty” Purdie has done and the Oct. 9 edition of Greasy Tracks spotlighted just a fraction of what the legendary timekeeper has accomplished.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Dating to the late 1950s, Purdie — once considered the “house drummer” of Atlantic Records — played on 25,000-plus sessions, has appeared on more than 4,000 albums and recorded with 2,500-plus different artists. He also has a deep catalog of solo releases.
Artists he has appeared with, running the gamut from jazz to rock, include Miles Davis, James Brown, Steely Dan, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Louis Armstrong, Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, BB King, Joe Cocker, Bob Marley, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Mongo Santamaria, Peter Frampton, Hall & Oats, Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff to name only a few.
Employing an innovative use of triplets against a half-time backbeat, Purdie developed an immensely distinct and impactful technique known universally as “the Purdie Shuffle”.
The Sept. 25 edition of Greasy Tracks featured a spotlight on the legendary drummer Billy Cobham.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Perhaps best known for his work with Miles Davies — beginning with the groundbreaking Bitches Brew — and Mahavishnu Orchestra, Cobham has played with dozens of other artists and bands and has a massive catalog of solo releases.
Not to slight the importance of Alexis Korner or Gram Bond when it came to having an eye for talent on the burgeoning British jazz and blues scene of the early1960s, but there was ultimately no better proving ground than John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
The Sept. 11 edition of Greasy Tracks spotlighted many of the incredible musicians who did time in one of Mayall’s line-ups.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Forget the obvious Mayall alums Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, but consider such fantastic players as Harvey Mandell, Gerry McGee, Ansley Dunbar, Keef Hartley, John Almond, Jon Mark, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Jon Hiseman, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Freddy Robinson, Larry Taylor, Don “Sugarcane” Harris, Blue Mitchell and Clifford Solomon to name but a few.
In the grand scheme of things, what one individual — directly or indirectly and through no fault of his own — proved to be a unique catalyst for David Bowie, John Mellencamp and Lou Reed reaching stardom?
Just Another Night: Ian Hunter (left) and Mick Ronson on stage in 1980. (Manfred Becker photo)
Only the very savvy would answer, and likely rather quickly, “Mick Ronson” without a second thought and they’d be correct.
Music from across Ronson’s career was featured on the Sept. 4 edition of Greasy Tracks.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Bowie, Mellencamp and Reed remain the best examples — although there are many the talented guitarist and producer worked with over the years — but the remarkable notoriety and commercial success that trio attained due to their work with Ronson is incredible.
Things starting bubbling for Bowie following Ronson’s collaborating on his The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory releases, but when Bowie put out The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972, the impact proved to usher the turning point of Bowie’s career as a recording and touring artist.
It was Ronson’s rearrangement and adding of some lyrics and vocals to Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane” — a track that probably would have never seen the light of day if not for Ronson getting ahold of it. Mellencamp would make it a late addition to his American Fool album in 1982. It was the second single released from it and would spend four weeks at No. 1 in the Billboard Hot 100, while American Fool would eventually reach platinum status five times. The Recording Industry Association of America named “Jack & Diane” one of the songs of the century and it remains Mellencamp’s most successful single.
A Spider Backing Ziggy: David Bowie (left) and Mick Ronson during Bowie’s prolific early 1970s era. (Jack Kay photo)
Similar to Bowie, Reed had released several albums and singles and made no lasting impression as a solo artist following his taking leave of the Velvet Underground in 1970. It should be noted that Bowie and Reed were admirers of each other’s work and it was when Bowie and Ronson co-produced Reed’s Transformer. Ronson also played lead guitar on the album. Bowie and Ronson were fans of the Velvet Underground.
Transfomer and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars are regarded as go-to albums when it comes to glam or glitter rock. Minus the distinctive vocals of Bowie and Reed, the other “voice” that was on each of those releases and is also easily identified was the guitarwork of Ronson.
Affectionately known as “Ronno” to most and the “Jeff Beck of Hull” to others, Ronson was a native of Kingston upon Hull, England, where he got his start playing in the early 1960s.
Mick Ronson playing his iconic Gibson Les Paul. (Michael Putland photo)
Classically trained as a child, Ronson became proficient on piano, violin and recorder as well as the harmonium — Ian Hunter said Ronson was an excellent keyboard player. He initially wanted to be a cellist, but moved to guitar upon discovering the music of Duane Eddy — there’s no denying that tell-tale twang — and then there was no looking back.
Ronson played with a slew of primarily Hull-based groups before being recruited to join The Hype, a in-the-works backing band for David Bowie in 1970. The band was short-lived, but Ronson made an important musical connection with Bowie. A series of albums and tours later, Bowie was a household name and Ronson was an in-demand guitarist.
While hardly as theatrical as his on-stage relationship with Bowie, his time spent working with Ian Hunter produced a solid body of work and some of the tightest rock and roll line-ups around on stage.
Transforming Lou Reed: Mick Ronson (left) co-produced and played on Transformer, the breakthrough album by Lou Reed (right).
His touring, session and production work ran the gamut as he was associated with such artists/groups as Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn, Pure Prairie League, Mott The Hoople, Elton John, Morrissey, among others, including Connecticut’s own, Roger C. Reale.
Sadly for Ronson, his label wanted to make him into a star, a role that the guitarist was never truly comfortable in. He only released two solo albums before his death in 1993 at the age of 46.
The Aug. 28 edition of Greasy Tracks featured the music of and interviews with Sam Morrow and Peter Parcek.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Parcek is out supporting the release of Mississippi Suitcase (Lightnin’ Records), while Morrow is on the road following the release of Gettin’ By On Gettin’ Down (Forty Below Records).
A decidedly different sound than his country-tinged Concrete and Mud in 2018, Morrow, who says he prefers to write music first before dealing with lyrics, opted for a more-swampy/grooving feel for his all-original Gettin’ By On Gettin’ Down, giving a big nod to Lowell George of Little Feat fame. Morrow will include a Little Feat set at Arch Street Tavern.
Parcek’s Mississippi Suitcase — a mix of originals and some interesting covers — followed his 2017 release, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven and was gained a nomination for best blues rock album in the 2021 Blues Music Awards (the former W.C. Handy Awards).
A native of Portland, Conn., Parcek is currently based in the metro-Boston area. He has released four albums and has had some interesting concert experiences.
In the 1960s, a London-based band he was briefly in played at a party that the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd was involved with. Closer to home, on May 3, 1970, a band he was in was one of a handful of local groups that opened for the debut appearance of the Grateful Dead in Connecticut when they played Wesleyan University along with New Riders of The Purple Sage. Parcek remembers Jerry Garcia being very complimentary of his (Parcek’s) playing, but warned him not to drink anything in the backstage area.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
The extended feature included interviews with King Crimson vocalist/guitarist Jakko Jakszyk and bassist Tony Levin as well as guitarist Mike Kenneally and guitarist/vocalist Ray White from The Zappa Band whose members include a number of Zappa alumni.
King Crimson, led by guitarist Robert Fripp, continues to feature an unconventional, yet very innovative line-up of three drummers (Pat Mastelotto, Gavin Harrison and Jeremy Stacey) at the front of the stage with Fripp, Mel Collins (saxophone, flute), Levin and Jakszyk on a raised platform behind them.
On its current North American jaunt dubbed the “Music Is Our Friend Tour” — it was rescheduled from 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic put a kibosh on concerts — the band is going deep into a catalogue that encompasses 50-plus years of recordings. King Crimson is the first British band to play the United States following the COVID-19 shutdown.
In addition to Keneally, who was part of Frank Zappa’s final touring band — arguably one of his best line-ups — and White who first played with Zappa in 1976 and would continue to work with him through the 1984 tour, The Zappa Band line-up includes long-time sidemen Scott Thunes (bass) and Robert Martin (keyboards/sax/vocals) as well as Zappa Plays Zappa alums Jamie Kime (guitar) and Joe Travers (drums/vocals).
According to Keneally, a good portion of The Zappa Band set will include tracks featured on the just-released Zappa ’88 The Last U.S. Show.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Back In Connecticut: JJ Grey (above) and his band Mofro play The Ridgefield Playhouse on Aug. 8. (Nick Sonsini photo)
Jacksonville, Fla.-based Grey and his band formed in the 1990s, released their debut in 2001 and have since put out six studio albums and one live collection spotlighting their mix of horn-laden, soulful rock and heartfelt ballads.
Mofro will be the lone band at the Ridgefield date, a change from the co-headlining status they’ve shared with Blues Traveler on a 11-date tour that runs through August, having been rescheduled from 2020 due to the pandemic.
The band last played the state in 2019 when they made stops at Infinity Hall in Hartford and two days later at The Katherine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook. The concert was filmed for the CPTV series The Kate. This marks their first Ridgefield appearance since 2017.
The July 17 edition of Greasy Tracks focused on the oft-overlooked harmonica with nothing but music featuring some of the best harp players of all time.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
Included in the program was an interview with harmonica enthusiast Nic Clark who discussed his just-released Love Your Life: Songs For The Whole Family(Little Village Foundation).
Traditionally associated with blues and folk music, the versatile harmonica – also known as the French harp or mouth organ — often is found in rock, jazz, country and classical music.
The July 10 edition of Greasy Tracks featured Alligator Records which celebrates 50 years of “genuine houserockin’ music” in 2021. Included in the program was an interview with Alligator founder Bruce Iglauer and music from across the 350-plus albums the label has released.
Click here to check out an archive of the program, while a playlist is here.
The iconic label — born at a perfect time when “underground”, “freeform” and “progressive” F.M. radio was on the rise — was in the thick of things as selling vinyl soon included analogue tape and in time, compact discs and then . . . streaming — has managed to prevail.
A native of Ann Arbor, Mich., Iglauer grew interested in what would become a lifetime passion: blues music. While a student at Lawrence Universirty in Appleton, Wisc., he attended a concert by Mississippi Fred McDowell at the 1966 University of Chicago Folk Festival which provided a personal revelation: he had to be involved with blues music.
Where It All Started: Hound Dog Taylor (left) and the HouseRockers, drummer Ted Harvey and guitarist Brewer Phillips. Bob Keeling photo.
Following a move to Chicago in 1970, Iglauer met Delmark Records’ founder Bob Koester and signed on for $30 a week as a shipping clerk at the independent, primarily jazz-focused label that would increase its’ blues roster over the years. At the same time, he was one of the founding writers of the then-quarterly Living Blues magazine in Chicago which was the nation’s first blues-specific publication.
Immersed in one of the nation’s traditional blue’s hotbeds, Iglauer now had the ability to see big-name players literally within blocks of singers and musicians who were either starting to gain attention or were completely unknown.
Hound Dog Taylor was one of those players who wasn’t that widely known and the person who would be the catalyst for Iglauer becoming the founder of a record label.
Alligator Founder: Bruce Iglauer got the label off the ground in 1971, releasing the first full-length album by Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers. (Chris Monaghan photo)
For nearly a year Iglauer tried to convince Koester to sign and record Taylor and his band, The HouseRockers, but each time, Koester said he wasn’t interested and suggested that Iglauer record Taylor.
Dedicated to making good on his goal to get Taylor recorded — at that time he and his group had released but two singles — Iglauer scraped together $2,700, got studio time and recorded the band on two-track and printed about 1,000 copies of what would become the debut release by Alligator Records: Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers.
Juggling his work at Delmark and trying to shepherd his new label were massive challenges for Iglauer who was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of an efficiency apartment, using was two sawhorses and a slab of wood as a shipping table and often subsisting daily on an order of fries and a Quarter Pounder with cheese — a new sandwich introduced by McDonalds in 1971.
At one point, Iglauer was driving around major parts of the country, stopping at every freeform commercial and college radio stations he could manage to personally introduce Hound Dog Taylor and the Alligator label to on-air hosts.
In many cases, the reaction was immediate and positive as the album often went right on the air and got regular airplay. Iglauer signed on with distributors and left stacks of albums with them, ultimately forcing him to return home to get more printed. In the first year, Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers would sell 9,000 copies, a substantial amount considering the independent status of Alligator. The album would also catapult Taylor out of tiny taverns and onto larger stages across the country and as word spread, performing as far away as Australia.
The Iceman Cometh: Albert Collins (left) with Bruce Iglauer.
As business started growing at Alligator, Koester presented Iglauer with a decision his protégé would eventually have to make: was Iglauer going to remain working at Delmark or was he going to work for himself at Alligator?
Iglauer made the choice each man knew was inevitable — Iglauer was going to strike out on his own. Ever the supportive mentor, Koester would keep Iglauer on the payroll for the next eight months even though he was focusing on Alligator on a full-time basis and was technically “competing” with Koester.
It should be noted that Koester would run Delmark — the nation’s oldest jazz and blues independent label — until 2018 when he retired and sold it. Following his moving the label to Chicago from St. Louis in 1958, Koester opened the Jazz Record Mart, a destination for hardcore jazz and blues aficionados. The shop would have several locations around Chicago before Koester shuttered it in 2016. He would go on to open Bob’s Blues & Jazz Mart which he ran until his death in May at the age of 88.
Best Seller: Showdown! in 1985 by Albert Collins, Robert Cray and Johnny Copeland earned a second Grammy Award for Alligator Records.
When he went solo, Iglauer knew he had to put out a successful release each time if he was going to be able to fund a follow-up album. Acting at times as manager, roadie and publicist for Taylor, Iglauer went back to the role of producer and returned the band to Chicago’s Sound where they would record Natural Boogie, which would ultimately be Taylor’s final studio release as he passed away in 1975 at the age of 60.
Since he has since Day 1 at the label, Iglauer continues to be hands on. He has produced nearly one third of the 350 or so of Alligator’s releases. He is always looking for potential signings and to this day, rues his overlooking the opportunity to sign Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray.
“I heard the young Stevie Ray Vaughan. I thought, ‘Wow, he’s the world’s loudest Albert King imitator.’ I got it later; I didn’t get it then.”
–Alligator Founder Bob Inglauer
“I heard the young Robert Cray, too,” he continued. I thought, ‘Wow, he’s really good, but he wants to do all this R&B stuff. I wish he would do more blues.’”
Despite the ones he’s missed, the Alligator stable over the years has included some household names: Buddy Guy, Albert Collins, Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, Koko Taylor, Lonnie Brooks, Johnny Winter, Elvin Bishop, Roy Buchcanan and Shemekia Copeland to name but a few.
Alligator won its first Grammy Award in 1981 for I’m Here by zydeco legend Clifton Chenier. In 1985, Showdown! by Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland and Robert Cray would pave the way for a second Grammy Award for the label and the release remains Alligator’s most successful release.
Queen of the Blues: Shemika Copeland is one of the foremost active blues singers today. (Mike White photo).
One of Iglauer’s younger signings, Mississippi-based guitarist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, represents one of the “future’s” of the blues, according to Iglauer who has known the guitarist since his early teens when he started generating interest based on his immense talent.
Heavily influenced by Muddy Waters, Ingram, 22, releases his second Alligator album, 662 on July 23. He debut, Kingfish, went to the top of the charts following its release in 2019.
The July 8 edition of Radio Kaos featured the second installation of an in-depth focus on the music of Van Morrison.
While only scraping the surface of Morrison’s career — he not only sings but is a multi-instrumentalist — the primary goal is to provide an aural account of the development and maturity of his writing and musical style over the course of nearly 60 years as well as the philosophical and artistic interests he had at different points in his life.
In retrospective style, the multi-part program is a chronological overview of the career of the Belfast Cowboy, tracing his studio and on-stage efforts following his departure from Them in 1966.
Based on the success of such Them singles as “Gloria” and “Mystic Eyes,” there was no questioning Morrison’s ability as a writer and singer, but the extent of his future chart success and longevity as a solo artist couldn’t be estimated based on his infamous combative personality and history of drink-fueled social misbehavior.
Since the first part of the spotlight covered Morrison from his 1967 solo debut, Blowin’ Your Mind through Into The Music in 1979, the second edition will pick up with his 1980 release, Common One and feature at least one track from each of his subsequent albums.
