A Personal Playlist , Volume #1

For listening to whilst strolling in the Old Town of Manchester, and lingering outside the lights of an old Tudor pub on a night off, on tour - after the sun goes down...

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of playlists that Jon will be creating for paid Substack subscribers. Today’s is free, so you can get a taste of what he’ll be doing here. In the future, you’ll have to subscribe to listen. Go ahead and take care of that today!

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I liked Eddie Bo. The first time I was on a gig with him was at Jed’s on Oak Street. Me, Eddie and Earl King, who was the headliner. Earl got so drunk that in the middle of a guitar solo, he fell back on his amp, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes and fell asleep - in front of a cheering, packed house. He was too far gone to continue, and we had to pass him over the heads of the audience, everyone reaching, palms up, to support him and gently deliver him to the exit as the promoter loudly exclaimed to rounds of applause: “Ladies and Gentlemen, Earl King”. I remember, Wayne Bennet - the guitarist on all those intense, broody, Duke label Bobby Bland records - was on the gig too.

Eddie was cool - as a bunch of large Cucumbers. Like Earl, he had an impish, mischievous grin, and I used to enjoy going over to his club, the ‘Check your bucket’ across the street from Anita’s Grill on Tulane Avenue to hang out with him and play his piano. I miss those cats.

Phylis Dillon. This is my favourite era of Jamaican music. Rock Steady! Put everything down immediately and start dancing.

Art Neville was a kind-hearted fella, always very friendly to me. I have a lot of respect for him and was very sad to see him go. He was hugely important in the development of the new funk sounds coming up in the seventies, and he bridged that gap when keyboard players started moving from the piano to the organ (cos it was louder and you could turn it up!) This is from the Larry Williams, Specialty Records era. Groovy stuff.

Mahalia Jackson. Good Lord! You can recognise that voice immediately. This era of gospel piano playing informed so much of the R&B that came out of New Orleans. You can’t separate the soul and the swing and swagger from the church.

Johnny Adams. Another New Orleans voice that is like no other. He had respect from all the best singers in town. I did a lot of gigs with him over the years: in New Orleans and internationally, and studio recordings too. In another universe, he would have been a famous and lauded Opera singer and given Caruso a run for his money. This is one I just stumbled across and is new to me. Killer.

Les Bantous de la Capitale. I dig what the Congolese musicians did, cats from Brazzaville and Kinshasa, Capital cities facing each other across the broad Congo river who absorbed the music of Cuba. Sounds that were taken from Africa via Senegambia to the Caribbean on slave ships and then exported back again on 78 rpm records from Havana - a hundred years later. I don’t know much about this band other than that it’s composed of some of the guys who were with Franco in his band, OK Jazz. Franco is one of Africa’s legendary guitarists, and I have a couple of his OK Jazz 45s from the Congo on my Jukebox at home. I could listen to this stuff all day and all night. I wonder if Arsenio Rodriguez ever heard this? If he did, he must have flipped out!

Mack Rice. Love the mix on this record. I love the hard panning left and right. So much stuff going on and yet so much space.

I’ll approve of pretty much anything by Little Richard. he could sing the operating manual for a battery-powered lawnmower, and it would be cool, hip and sexy. What must it be like to be able to open your mouth and make sounds like that? It seemed like he never stopped talking, and I wouldn’t either if I had that voice; I’d never shut up. This is not from his New Orleans era, but it’s a great example of his churchy chops. Brilliant.

One of my favourite records ever is ‘Wish I Had a Girl’ by Little Beaver. I’ve worn out several copies of this pretty obscure 45 on the ‘Cat’ label. The B side ‘Six Foot Hole’ is fantastic too, if you can find it. This is the hippest thing that ever came out of Miami, in my humble opinion. I love everything about this arrangement. I especially dig the line that he sings at the end: ‘Your Love is so good - Just like I knew it would’. You might be surprised to learn that his real name is not actually ‘Little Beaver’. His real name is in fact, Willie Hale. He’s originally from Arkansas, and he started in Miami with a band called ‘Frank Williams and the Rocketeers’. He’s on a bunch of cool records that came out in the early ‘70s from that Florida stable that included Timmy Thomas, Gwen and George McRae, Latimore and Betty Wright. That’s him playing all the cool guitar parts on ‘Clean Up Woman’. Genius. Before CDs, I would search high, low, far and wide for Little Beaver singles and LPs. A big influence on me.

Bill Frisell. Farewell to Cheyenne. I don’t know anything about this record other than Bill Frisell always seems to play the right notes. Simple as that.

I hope you enjoy this music from these gifted players. Thanks.