When the weather is hot like it’s now, there only two kinds of music I can listen to: Old school dub reggae or the Blues. Since I guess there might be some people among my subscribers who love the Blues as much as I do, I am offering you a bunch of rare concert clips – some of them actually quite long – featuring masters of classical electric blues playing.

The first clip features something different though: Legendary singer Jimmy Witherspoon who is more out of the vintage r’n’b /jazz school. Here is Witherspoon in Nice on July 9, 1979 .

 Witherspoon is accompagnied by Eugene Edwards (g),  Roy Alexander (org) and Maurice Simon jr. (dr). They are playing Everyday I Have The Blues,I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water, See See Rider, and Jimmy Reed’sBig Boss Man.

And here are 26 minutes from the same festival featuring the Muddy Waters Blues Band on July 10, 1977

With Clark Terry (tp) as a guest on one track (I had published that on youtube before) , Bob Margolin (eg), Guitar Junior (eg), Pinetop Perkins (p), Calvin Jones (eb) and Willy “Big Eyes” Smith (dr).

They Are Playing:

Honeydripper Intro, Soon Forgotten, Baby Please Don’t Go, What’s the Matter with the Mill, Stormy Monday Blues (feat. Clark Terry) andEverything Gonna be Alright

The next clip comes from still the same festival. Here multiinstrumentalist Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown is featured with the Wallace Davenport New Orleans All Stars giving us some Street Corner business.

Gatemouth Brown appeared at the festival again on July 14 1977 accompgnied by Billy Mitchell (ts); Lloyd Glenn (p); George Duvivier and J.C. Heard (dr). I had already put up a part of that gig on youtube and had presented it in this blog entry. In this part here they are playing: Lets Groove (you know that ain’t it’s title) and If You’ve Ever Been Mistreatedin which Brown changes to violin. Gatemouth Brown deserves to be much better known!

 

Next up is half an hour of B.B. King from the 1984 Montreux Jazz Festival. A lot of B.B.’s Montreux apperances are already on youtube, but this one wasn’t up to now. If you know who is playing with B.B. here, please let me know. I do not have the patience to check the setlist right now, but I know you enjoy checking it yourself:

And here is another one from Montreux, this time from 1989: The man with the Flying V, Albert King. Playing with Albert are Amar Sundy (guitar); Nate Fitzgerald, Steve Wilson, Wayne Preston (horns); James Washington (keyboards); Lonnie Turner (bass); Joe Turner (drums) (Thanks, Marc D.!)

And finally from Chicago here is Otis Rush, filmed in an unidentified venue somewhere in  Switzerland around 1986 (not from Montreux  as far as I can see). Otis is playing with Professor’s Blues Revue: Professor Eddie Lusk (keyboards), Anthony Palmer (guitar), Fred Barnes (bass), Eddie Turner (drums). (Thanks to Mark D. for information!) Beware though: It takes a while before Mr. Rush appears.

Enjoy!