Blues And The Bear
Difficult as it is to imagine today, but back in the 1970s, it was not totally uncommon hereabouts to encounter American Bluesmen in your local supermarket, laundromat or in the…
Big Bear Believing In The Blues
In the wake of our recent office move, we’ve been trying, without notable success, to bring some sort of order to our vast archive of music-related material going back some…
Blow That Harmonica, Son
On January 6th in 1973 I took off on a 5 week tour in the company of Homesick James, Snooky ‘Little Bear’ Pryor, Boogie Woogie Red, Lightnin’ Slim, Washboard Willie…
Little Smokey Smothers
L to R: Billy The Kid Emerson, Jimmy Dawkins, Jim Simpson, Lester Davenport, Little Smokey Smothers, Eddie C.Campbell, Good Rockin’ Charles, Chico Chism. Photo by Jim O’Neal. I met Little…
What Is It With The Blues And All Those Browns? – Part 2
Picking up from where we left off last week in our quest to find as many blues performers with the name Brown as possible, let’s begin with the ladies. There’s…
What Is It With The Blues And All Those Browns? – Part One
Most everyone knows of Charles Brown, the man responsible for the best of all Christmas Songs, “Merry Christmas Baby”, Texas blues giant Clarence Gatemouth Brown and Dallas-born Walter Brown who…
The Ubiquitous Howard McCrary
One of the most extraordinary musicians that I ever had the good fortune to work with was Howard McCrary. Equally comfortable singing and playing piano in gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm…
That Swinging Gate
Digging back into the Big Bear archives is always a fascinating and often surprising business. For instance, I just came across the programme for the 5th year of our Birmingham…
The Other Queen Victoria
One evening in 1974 I had a totally unexpected – and most welcome – phone call. It was Victoria Spivey, who told me that she had heard from other blues…
Cousin Joe From New Orleans
Cousin Joe from New Orleans must be one of the most fondly remembered of all the American bluesmen we toured and recorded. Musicians, promoters, journalists and fans who saw him…