(Listen to this interview here.)
The
song is "Mannish Boy." Bo Diddley wrote it, Muddy Waters adapted
and adopted it, and now a supergroup from the Los Angeles blues scene
has taken it as their name.
The song as Muddy does it has a deep Delta groove with Chicago blues instrumentation, and Muddy sings it as a high-energy shaman would, full of boast and swagger: "I'm a man / I spell M-A-N / That represent man / No B-O-Y / That mean mannish boy." A Big City Rhythm & Blues review of the Mannish Boys' first CD, 2004's That Represent Man, notes that "The Mannish Boys had better deliver with so audacious a name, lest the memory of Muddy Waters and a handful of other blues greats from the same era be slandered. Remarkably, this band manages to earn the right to call themselves anything they like."
Joe
Krown carved out quite a career for himself as a sideman. Now he's
reclaiming his role as a bandleader.
"I've
been around it all my life," Calvin Cooke said in a phone interview
when asked how he learned to play steel guitar.
It
started innocently enough. I asked the blues-rock guitarist, singer,
and songwriter Popa Chubby about his recorded output, by his count 15
or so proper albums in the past 15 years.
he
Chicago-based octet has been around since 1985, performing original
music composed by group director and saxophonist Edward Wilkerson.
The
psychedelic conspirators at Melted Mailbox Records have the lysergic
solution, looking to use your tone arm's needle instead of a
syringe to trip your light fantastic. Later this month the
wax-friendly label will issue the first limited-edition 12-inch
single in its new Melted Mailbox Vinyl Club, a bi-monthly program
that for $70 could be the best pen pal an experimental- music
aficionado could ever have.
