Ray Charles

Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known professionally as Ray Charles, was an American singer-songwriter, musician, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians, he preferred being called "Brother Ray." He was often referred to as "The Genius." Charles was blind from the age of seven.

He pioneered the genre of soul music during the 1950s by combining blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic Records. He also contributed to the integration of country music, rhythm and blues and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.

Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by country, jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues artists of the day, including Louis Jordan and Charles Brown. In the late forties, he became friends with Quincy Jones. Their friendship lasted until the end of Charles's life.

Frank Sinatra called him "the only true genius in show business," although Charles downplayed this notion.

In 2002, Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," and number two on their November 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time." Billy Joel observed, "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley".

His style and success in the genres of rhythm and blues and jazz had an influence on a number of highly successful artists, including Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Van Morrison, Billy Joel, and Steve Winwood. According to Joe Levy, a music editor for Rolling Stone, "The hit records he made for Atlantic in the mid-50's mapped out everything that would happen to rock 'n' roll and soul music in the years that followed". Charles was also an inspiration to Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, who told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet: "I was about 15. In the middle of the night with friends, we were listening to jazz. It was "Georgia on My Mind", Ray Charles's version. Then I thought 'One day, if I make some people feel only one-twentieth of what I am feeling now, it will be quite enough for me.'"

It's back to the blues for the Rolling Stones.

The band that first made its name covering songs by American blues artists announced to release a blues album in December. The "Blue & Lonesome" album will be their first studio release in more than a decade.

Wedding of Cat and Bono

Tim and I were cordially invited to celebrate the wedding of  Cat and Bono.

I think most of the readers know Cat and Bono. Cat is a deejay and a blues lover. But I think she loves all kind of music. When Cat has a gig T.R.A.C.S she always finds the best songs in theme. I met Cat for the first time when she was deejay at the Guitar Museum. One day I dear to ask her if she could do a gig at the beach on River Island and she said yes. After the party she told me that she loved the beach and the beach house and asked me if she could rent it. Sure she could and she still lived there till her marriage with Bono. 

Bono is owner of the Guitar Museum. I started to go often to the Guitar Museum because there were lots of great performants of life artist. On one night he told me than he was a guitar player in real life and on a day, after the guest left, he let me listen to some of his guitar play. Sometime after that he started to accompany a solo artist (sorry I forgot her name). Months later he went solo and plays almost daily at several venues on SL. 

Me, at our house, getting ready to go to the wedding

The Groom

Tim

Miss Cat had the idea that I had to "give her away". So here Bono and I are waiting till the ceremony would begin.................

and we waited even more.
Than the ceremony started

The group picture

It was wonderful to see and hear Lisa (Brune) again at the wedding party

I did send my brother Caasper a taxi to listen to Lisa. He was to shy to come near because he was not dressed for a wedding but he loved her singing.

The party went on with more music and artists. Tim and I had a great time.

Musician Joe Cocker dies at age 70

The British singer Joe Cocker died Monday at the age of seventy from the effects of lung cancer. The singer was known for his raspy voice and jarring movements as he sang. In 1964, the singer internationally known as blues and rock singer. He broke through with his blues take on The Beatles' song With A Little Help From My Friends, which he performed at Woodstock in 1969. 

John Robert "Joe" Cocker (20 May 1944 – 22 December 2014) was an English rock and blues singer, who came to popularity in the 1960s, and is known for his gritty voice, his spasmodic body movement in performance and his cover versions of popular songs, particularly those of the Beatles.

His cover of the Beatles' "With a Little Help from My Friends" reached number one in the UK in 1968, and he performed the song live at Woodstock in 1969. His version also became the theme song for the TV series The Wonder Years. His 1975 hit single, "You Are So Beautiful", reached number five in the US. Cocker is the recipient of several awards, including a 1983 Grammy Award for his US number one "Up Where We Belong", a duet with Jennifer Warnes. In 1993 he was nominated for the Brit Award for Best British Male, and in 2008 he received an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music.

Rest in peace, Joe.

BLUES IN BLUE PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

This is not our first blues party. More about the blues on this blog at:

http://christo-second-live.blogspot.nl/2013/05/got-blues.html

http://christo-second-live.blogspot.nl/2013/05/got-blues-part-ii.html

T.R.A.C.S at Timothy Plaza on River Island

Land Mark: http://slurl.com/secondlife/River%20Island/221/249/22

FRUIT

Miss Peaches

Two years ago, on January 20, 2012, Etta James, the legendary songstress behind “At Last,” “I’d Rather Go Blind,” " I Just Want to Make Love to You," “Tell Mama” and “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” passed away at 73.  
Miss James had been diagnosed with leukemia in 2010.

A powerful woman with a powerful voice, James was always about substance over style, about vocals over looks, about music over package.

Born Jamesetta Hawkins, “Miss Peaches” hit the top of the R&B charts as a teenager in 1955 with “The Wallflower (Roll With Me, Henry).” She overcame demons like a heroin addiction and remained a staple of the rhythm & blues and soul genres for her entire life.

Etta James is a member of three Halls of Fame — she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008.

Etta James (born January 25, 1938 in Los Angeles, California – died¸ just five days before her 74th birthday, at Riverside Community Hospital in Riverside on January 20, 2012) was an American singer-songwriter. Her style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, R&B, soul, rock and roll, jazz and gospel. Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as "The Wallflower", "At Last", "Tell Mama", "Something's Got a Hold on Me", and "I'd Rather Go Blind" for which she wrote the lyrics. She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album Seven Year Itch.

James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists.

As 14-year-old girl she met musician Johnny Otis. Stories on how they met vary including Otis' version in which James had come to his hotel after one of his performances in the city and persuaded him to audition her. Another story came that Otis spotted the group the Creolettes (a girl group Etta did form) performing at a Los Angeles nightclub and sought them to record his "answer song" to Hank Ballard's "Work with Me, Annie". Nonetheless, Otis took the group under his wing, helping them sign to Modern Records and changing their name from the Creolettes to the Peaches and gave the singer her stage name reversing Jamesetta into "Etta James". James recorded the version, which she was allowed to co-author, in 1954, and the song was released in early 1955 as "Dance with Me, Henry". Originally the name of the song was "Roll With Me, Henry" but was changed to avoid censorship due to the subtle title. In February of that year, the song reached number one on the Hot Rhythm & Blues Tracks chart. Its success gave the group an opening spot on Little Richard's national tour.

Commercials

By the mid-1990s, James' earlier classic music was included in commercials including, most notably, "I Just Wanna Make Love to You". Due to exposure of the song in a UK commercial, the song reached the top ten of the UK charts in 1996.

BLUES IN BLUE JEANS PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

On Saturday May 11th we had, at TRACS, a blues party.

So more about blues at: 

http://christo-second-live.blogspot.nl/2013/05/got-blues-part-ii.html

This time we have a Blues in Blue Jeans Party.

We specially made the theme for DJ Cat but she has, sadly, no internet connection at the moment. 
But we got a great DJ to replace her:

DJ Anj ...and the Cat.

Hope to see you all Saturday at;

T.R.A.C.S at Timothy Plaza on River Island

Land Mark: http://slurl.com/secondlife/River%20Island/221/249/22

GOT THE BLUES part III

Bono Fouroux

Bono Fouroux is a guitar player and composer from Amsterdam (the Netherlands).

He is playing from his youth till now guitars in different originals bands. Also did just a few cover bands next to a theater band.

Favorite guitars are Gibson and Fender, but he also built his own or does customize them.

Bono, is always trying to make different characters of sounds. He mostly plays solid body guitars. Not acoustics.

Bono likes to play the blues in SL. Originals and some Pink Floyd related music as well.

He is doing dual streaming with Swina Allen, Yumichan Allen and Veronica Weksler. He also played with Grif Bamaisin and a few others.

On Bono's Facebook he tells allot about his interests: https://www.facebook.com/bono.fouroux#!/bono.fouroux

Bono's favorites are Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, all the blues music, white and black and Pink Floyd or related.

You can find Bono often on his own venue: Bono's Hangout, where they have events too.

GOT THE BLUES part II

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll is characterized by specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues chord progression is the most common. The blue notes that, for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent (minor 3rd to major 3rd) in relation to the pitch of the major scale, are also an important part of the sound.

The blues genre is based on the blues form but possesses other characteristics such as specific lyrics, bass lines, and instruments. Blues can be subdivided into several subgenres ranging from country to urban blues that were more or less popular during different periods of the 20th century. Best known are the Delta, Piedmont, Jump, and Chicago blues styles. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues-rock evolved.

The term "the blues" refers to the "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness; an early use of the term in this sense is found in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.

Origins of the blues

Little is known about the exact origin of the music now known as the blues. No specific year can be cited as the origin of the blues, largely because the style evolved over a long period and existed in approaching its modern form before the term blues was introduced, before the style was thoroughly documented. Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik traces the roots of many of the elements that were to develop into the blues back to the African continent, the "cradle of the blues". One important early reference to something closely resembling the blues comes from 1901, when an archaeologist in Mississippi described the songs of black workers which had lyrical themes and technical elements in common with the blues.

Electric blues

Electric blues is a type of blues music distinguished by the amplification of the guitar, bass guitar, drums, and often the harmonica. Pioneered in the 1930s, it emerged as a genre in Chicago in the 1940s. It was taken up in many areas of America leading to the development of regional subgenres such as electric Memphis blues and Texas blues. It was adopted in the British blues boom of the 1960s, leading to the development of blues-rock. It was a foundation of rock music. It continues to be a major style of blues music and has enjoyed a revival in popularity since the 1990s.

Blues in popular culture

Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal music, hip hop music, reggae, country music, and pop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s. In the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy was the first to popularize blues-influenced music among non-black Americans.

During the blues revival of the 1960s and '70s, acoustic blues artist Taj Mahal and legendary Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins wrote and performed music that figured prominently in the popularly and critically acclaimed film Sounder (1972). The film earned Mahal a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a BAFTA nomination. Almost 30 years later, Mahal wrote blues for, and performed a banjo composition, claw-hammer style, in the 2001 movie release Songcatcher, which focused on the story of the preservation of the roots music of Appalachia.

Ray Charles

John Lee Hooker

Aretha Franklin

Perhaps the most visible example of the blues style of music in the late 20th century came in 1980, when Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi released the film The Blues Brothers. The film drew many of the biggest living influencers of the Rhythm and blues genre together, such as Ray Charles, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, and John Lee Hooker. The band formed also began a successful tour under the Blues Brothers marquee. 1998 brought a sequel, Blues Brothers 2000 that, while not holding as great a critical and financial success, featured a much larger number of blues artists, such as B.B. King, Bo Diddley, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Charlie Musselwhite, Blues Traveler, Jimmie Vaughan, Jeff Baxter.

In 2003, Martin Scorsese made significant efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of documentary films for PBS called The Blues. He also participated in the rendition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high-quality CDs. Blues guitarist and vocalist Keb' Mo' performed his blues rendition of "America, the Beautiful" in 2006 to close out the final season of the television series The West Wing.

More info about BLUES at Wikipedia  

Blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues

Origins of the blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_blues

Electric blues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_blues

List of electric blues musicians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electric_blues_musicians

GOT THE BLUES part I

Still Got the Blues

Still Got the Blues is a 1990 album by guitarist Gary Moore. Prior to this album Moore's work had consisted of predominantly jazz-fusion with Colosseum II and rock and hard rock styles including his work with Skid Row, Thin Lizzy, G-Force as well as a large repertoire of solo work. This album, as evidenced by its title, is a departure from hard rock to an electric blues style.

Still Got the Blues has been arguably the most successful of Moore's solo albums as it was well received by old fans and also converted many who had never before heard of the Irish guitarist. The album's visibility and success was assisted by contributions from well known veterans Albert King, Albert Collins and George Harrison. Moore chose to record his lead vocal in the control room with the then just released Shure Beta 58 supercardiod microphone rather than the studio typical big phantom powered condenser microphone in a sound booth. It is argued that this assisted him to achieve a greater passion and live feel while still maintaining studio polish.

Gary Moore

Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 1952 – 6 February 2011), was a Northern Irish musician, most widely recognized as a singer and guitarist.

In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore played with artists including Phil Lynott and Brian Downey during his teens, leading him to memberships with the Irish bands Skid Row and Thin Lizzy on three separate occasions. Moore shared the stage with such blues and rock luminaries as B.B. King, Albert King, Colosseum II, George Harrison and Greg Lake, as well as having a successful solo career. He guested on a number of albums recorded by high profile musicians, including a cameo appearance playing the lead guitar solo on "She's My Baby" from Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3.

After a series of rock records, Moore returned to blues music with Still Got the Blues, with contributions from Albert King, Albert Collins and George Harrison. The album was well received by fans. He stayed with the blues format until 1997 when he returned to the harder rock, but with a softer, more pop and ballad-oriented sound on Dark Days in Paradise followed with another change of direction in 1999, when he decided to experiment with modern dance beats on A Different Beat; this left many fans, as well as the music press, confused. He also contributed guitar sections to Richard Blackwood's 2000 album, You'll Love to Hate This.

Death

Moore died of a heart attack, associated with consumption of large amounts of alcohol, at the age of 58 during the early hours of 6 February 2011. At the time, he was on holiday at the Kempinski Hotel in Estepona, Spain, with a girlfriend, who raised the alarm at 4:00 am. His death was confirmed by Thin Lizzy's manager Adam Parsons. Tests revealed that Moore died after consuming alcohol. He had 380 mg of alcohol per deciliter of blood in his system – 30 mg more than the amount usually associated with such deaths.

Moore was laid to rest in St Margaret's Churchyard, Rottingdean, East Sussex, England, which is close to Brighton, in a private ceremony with only the family, and close friends in attendance.

‘Still Got The Blues’ lyrics

Used to be so easy to give my heart away

 But I found out the hard way

 There’s a price you have to pay

 I found out that love was no friend of mine

 I should have known time after time

So long, it was so long ago

 But I've still got the blues for you

Used to be so easy to fall in love again

 But I found out the hard way

 It's a road that leads to pain

 I found that love was more than just a game

 You’re playin' to win

 But you lose just the same

So long, it was so long ago

 But I've still got the blues for you

So many years since I've seen your face

 Here in my heart, there’s an empty space

 Where you used to be

So long, it was so long ago

 But I've still got the blues for you

Though the days come and go

 There is one thing I know

 I've still got the blues for you.