Taking a break from the gig narrative, here's a moment from an excellent evening of music and company with DG and Cathy. (FOR PART 3 GO BACK HERE)
- A SEGUE in KC-
Please take your seats, the Professor will be with you presently. For those of you unfamiliar with the Professor, he has been an active participant in the life of Blues in Kansas City for 30 years and counts among his friends and confidantes some of the greatest living Blues musicians still kickin it.
Bitchin.
Auteur, Diplomat and Bon Vivant, Professor Gilley hosts an occasional soiree involving 'BBQ' and the spinning of obscure and interesting choice 78's.
The Southern Gentlemen from the musical combination referred to as a ''S.C' were fortunate to be invited to participate is just such an event, and thanks to the wonders of Moving Pictures, can share this experience with the class.
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Schooled In The Blues
Ok, I gotta keep the info brief as Dawayne would whack me for revealing how awesome he is (like a Boss), but I have some stuff to share from our lesson in the history and nature of how Blues, Jazz, Country, Big Band, Gospel and Folk all mixed and mingled in the mid west. On our second night of R&R, Dawayne and Cathy treated us to awesome Oklahoma Joe's Kansas City BBQ (yum).
Dawayne then proceeded to play us some amazing stuff and explain the intricacies and detail of how they were recorded, who recorded them, who played on whose album, who pinched whose riff and so on. Just amazing.
While my mind was being blown, I managed to take some snaps and record just a fraction of some of the sounds we heard. Enjoy.
Now don't worry about trying to match the videos to the covers, I kind of randomly grabbed stuff in between bites of BBQ and finger snapping :-)
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Totally bad ass.
Dawayne played us examples from every conceivable related cousin of blues - country blues, jazz blues, Champagne blues, Gutbucket blues, blues rock, big band, gospel you name it.
BB King, Johnny Cash, Mavis, Bessie, Kokomo Arnold, Willie Dixon, Count Basie, were all companions as, we travelled through 100 years of styles in one evening.
and the biggest lesson of them all?
Dawayne says there's only two types of music: Good and bad.
The rest is up to you.