Living Blues begins 50th celebration
Living Blues #265 (February/March) begins the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Living Blues. Eighty-eight-year-old Leon Blue has had a remarkable, though mostly under the radar, musical career. Through run-ins with Bob Wills, recording with Lowell Fulson, and touring with Ike Turner and Albert Collins, Blue has seen it all. Chicago club stalwart Smilin’ Bobby Smith has been playing the blues since the early 1960s and yet many fans may not have heard of him. Smith plays live most nights, but his lack of recordings has made his career a local one. And he likes it that way. Pennsylvania-based bluesman Clarence Spady exploded on the scene in the 1990s but personal issues put his career on hold. Over the last decade he has been rebuilding his career and tearing up the local festival scene and New York club scene.
In January 1950 Baby Face Leroy Foster, Muddy Waters, and Little Walter recorded a series of sides for Parkway Records that captured a new, raw energy infiltrating the early postwar blues era in this issue’s Let It Roll. Perhaps the grittiest song of all recorded by Foster, Waters, and Walter was their version of Rollin’ and Tumblin’. We trace the history of this classic blues song in Rollin’ and Tumblin’ . . . The Story of a Song. Celebrating 50 Years of Living Blues is a visual tour of 50 years of Living Blues.
Plus What’s Going On, the first of a series of “50” lists from list master Jim DeKoster, and the latest Blues News, record reviews, book reviews, and the Living Blues Radio Charts.
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