Bluesin' Round Town

M o n d a y, May 22

Blues Beyond the Neon

Edward "Little Buster" Forehand
R&B, Blues & Soul Brother

Biography:

Edward "Little Buster" Forehand was born on September 28, 1942 in Hereford, North Carolina, and began singing as a young boy. By the time his eyesight began to fail, he had taught himself the guitar, and he often played while at the North Carolina School for the Blind. As a teenager, he traveled north, stopping first in Philadelphia, and then settling in Westbury, Long Island, where he had family. As early as 1959, he began to perform in local bars and clubs.

His big break came in 1964, when he won the Tip Top Bread Talent Contest at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. Performing "I've Got Tears in My Eyes" with Henrietta and David Buchanan, Buster won the $750 prize and came to the attention of Steve Blaine, whose father, Jerry Blaine, ran the Jubilee and Josie record labels. Buster's composition, "Lookin' for a Home", was released on Jubilee in late '64 and became a radio hit in many local markets. As a result of the record's success, Buster went out on the road, appearing in venues such as Philadelphia's Uptown Theater. Al Kooper, a lifelong fan of Buster, covered "Lookin' for a Home" on his "Kooper Session" album.

Buster continued to perform and record for Jubilee and its sister label, Josie, throughout the 1960's. His biggest hit was with "Young Boy Blues", released on Josie in 1968. It met with a great deal of success in places like Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and Buster again travelled in support of the disc Doc Pomus, the song's writer, preferred Buster's version of "Young Boy Blues" to other recorded versions, including the Ben E. King original. After the Jubilee/Josie label began to decline, Buster cut one final single in 1970 on the Minit label, "City of Blues", backed with "Cry Me A River". Arranged by George Butler with orchestral arrangement by Horace Ott, the single is another "lost masterpiece" of the era, but barely sold at the time. Around the same time, Jubilee collected many of Buster's single recordings and other tracks and prepared an LP, entitled "Looking for a Home", for release, but few if any copies were actually issued by the faltering label.

With his recording career on hold, Buster turned his attention to performing. During the early 1970's, he taught himself how to play blues guitar and added more blues to his live repertoire. The nucleus of the Soul Brothers band also began to take shape, and Buster started entertaining a new generation of Long Islanders and New Yorkers with blues, soul classics, and original material. Little Buster & the Soul Brothers paid their dues as the opening band for artists such as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Etta James, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Albert King, Al Kooper, and many other musical greats. While making occasional out-of-town appearances, the band mainly played the bars and clubs of Long Island and New York City, expanding their playlist, working up new original numbers, and tightening their sound.

After numerous false starts, Little Buster & the Soul Brothers finally recorded an album in 1995, primarily featuring Buster's originals. "Right on Time!", released on Rounder's Bullseye Blues label in July of that year, received critical acclaim from around the world and was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award in the category of "Best Blues/Soul Album". The CD was alwo a runner-up for "Best Soul/Blues Album of 1995" in the Living Blues Magazine Critics' Awards. The album's release also created new opportunities for the band, leading to appearances on "CBS This Morning", "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", "The Chris Rock Show", and Dan Ackroyd's "House of Blues Radio Hour". Buster and the Soul Brothers have also been featured in magazines such as Juke Blues(UK), 20th Century Guitar, New York Music Guide, Newsday, and Voices from the Shadows(UK).

Since the release of "Right on Time!", the band has graduated to headliner status at clubs such as Tramps, Terra Blues, and Manny's Car Wash in New York City, and has played at the Celebrate Brooklyn Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival in Saratoga, the Atlantic Jazz Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Park Tower Blues Festival in Tokyo, Japan. As a change of pace, Buster has also started to perform "solo" from time to time, for the first time in his career. The members of the Soul Brothers are:

Edward "Little Buster" Forehand - Guitar, vocals, harmonica; Jerry Harshaw - Tenor Saxophone; 'Saxy Ric' - Tenor Saxaphone; Eugene DaCosta Cordew - Keyboards; Robert Schlesinger - Hammond B-3 Organ; Alan Levy - Bass; Frank Anstiss - Drums

JazzBeat Nevada

T-Bone Walker Biography
Encyclopedia of Popular Music

Somewhere between the blues-jazz of Lonnie Johnson and Charlie Christian and the electrified blues of B.B. King, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Guy is Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, the man who fused influences of the past and reshaped them into modern guitar blues. A master showman as well as a brilliant guitarist and singer, Walker is a performer whose influence cannot be underestimated: nearly every blues guitarist of the past half-century has paid props to the man. His best-known song, "Stormy Monday," is a staple of every bar band's repertoire.

b. Aaron Thibeaux Walker, 28 May 1910, Linden, Texas, USA, d. 16 March 1975, Los Angeles, California, USA. Walker, whose T-Bone acronym is a corruption of his middle name, was raised in Dallas where his parents operated an "open house" to all the touring blues musicians. During his childhood, Walker was brought into contact with artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, and in fact he became Jefferson's "eyes" around the streets of Dallas whenever the blind musician was in town. Inspired by the more sophisticated blues and singing style of pianist Leroy Carr, Walker took up the guitar, and began performing himself. During the mid-20s he toured Texas as a musician/comedian/dancer with Dr. Breeding's Big B Tonic Show, before joining a travelling revue led by singer Ida Cox. By 1929 he had made a solitary country blues record for Columbia Records as "Oak Cliff T-Bone". His recording career may very well have started and finished there, had he not travelled to Oklahoma City and met Chuck Richardson, the man who was teaching young Charlie Christian (a boyhood friend of Walker's) to play single string solos on the new electrified instrument - "T-Bone" began his instruction alongside Christian that same day. Developing his act as a singer and dancer in the style of Cab Calloway (with whose band he toured for a week in 1930 as first prize in a talent contest), Walker was introduced to the slick world of jazz and big band swing. He moved to Los Angeles in 1934 and obtained a job with "Big" Jim Wynn's band in Little Harlem.

Walker's popularity steadily grew throughout the late 30s and in 1940 he took a job with Les Hite's Orchestra. His amplified guitar, still a novelty, brought a distinctive touch to the ensemble's overall sound while an undoubted showmanship increased the attention lavished upon the artist. Upon arriving in New York with Hite, Varsity Records recorded the orchestra, and Walker's feature, "T-Bone Blues", became a great success - although Frank Pasley and not "T-Bone" played the electric guitar accompaniment. Leaving Hite, upon his return to California, Walker co-led a band with "Big" Jim Wynn at the top Los Angeles nightspots, honing his provocative act which included playing the guitar behind his head while doing the splits - a sense of showmanship that would later influence Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix.

From 1942-44 Walker recorded for Capitol Records with Freddie Slack's band. Slack repaid the compliment by supporting Walker on the first release under the guitarist's name. The two tracks, "Mean Old World" and "I Got A Break Baby', rapidly became standards for the next generation of electric blues guitarists. During 1945/6 Walker was in Chicago, starring at the Rhumboogie Club with Milt Larkins" or Marl Young's Orchestras (Young's band accompanied Walker on the recordings he made in Chicago for the club's own Rhumboogie label and for disc jockey Al Benson's Swingmaster Records). Upon his return to the west coast, Walker was in great demand, both in concert and with his new records released on the Black & White label and its jazz subsidiary Comet (1946-47 - later purchased and released by Capitol Records). These included classics such as "I'm Gonna Find My Baby", "T-Bone Shuffle" and "Call It Stormy Monday". The latter melancholic ballad, also known as "Stormy Monday" and "Stormy Monday Blues", has since been the subject of numerous interpretations by artists as disparate as Chris Farlowe, Bobby Bland and the Allman Brothers.

In the late 40s the second musician's union ban and a heavy touring schedule with his old partner Big Jim Wynn prevented Walker from recording, but in 1950 he secured a four-year contract with Imperial Records where he demonstrated a harder, funkier style of blues, with sessions utilizing T.J. Fowler's band in Detroit and Dave Bartholomew's band in New Orleans, as well as his own working unit from Los Angeles. These experiments continued after moving to Atlantic Records from 1955-59, where he teamed up with blues harmonica player Junior Wells in Chicago and modern jazz guitarist Barney Kessel in Los Angeles. Although nominally versed in blues, Walker often sought the accompaniment of jazz musicians who allowed free rein for the guitarist's fluid style. He continued to record prolifically throughout the early 50s, but gradually eased such strictures in favour of regular concert appearances. He visited Europe on several occasions and performed successfully at many large-scale jazz and blues festivals. Later albums, including The Truth and Funky Town, showcased a virtually undiminished talent, still capable of incisive playing. However, by the early 70s his powers were diminished through ill health, and at personal appearances he often played piano instead of his guitar. In 1974 he suffered a severe stroke from which he never made a recovery. T-Bone Walker died of bronchial pneumonia on 16 March 1975, his reputation as a giant of blues music assured. The continuing reissue of compilations confirms his stature.