Little Sonny - Blues With A Feeling (Live)

Bitrate: 320K/s
Year: 1996
Time: 69:44
Size: 160,2 MB
Label: Sequel Records
Styles: Blues
Art: Full

Tracks Listing:
 1. Introduction by Michael Turner / The Creeper Returns - 2:09
 2. They Want Money - 6:32
 3. A Woman Named Trouble - 7:59
 4. Goin' Down Slow - 7:25
 5. Hot Potato - 7:33
 6. Honest I Do - 5:23
 7. Blues With A Feeling - 3:54
 8. Sad Funk Medley: Sad Funk / No Nights By Myself / Sweet Little Angel / Sweet Sixteen - 9:38
 9. John Sinclair Interview - 3:12
10. The Creeper - 3:04
11. Latin Soul - 2:07
12. Stretchin' Out - 2:58
13. Little Sonny Interview - 7:42

The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival was a remarkable undertaking in 1972. Produced by a community-based non-profit organization staffed by long-haired music business professionals and left-wing cultural revolutionaries like this writer, it brought together a strange concatenation of modern blues giants, leading avant-garde jazz musicians, and an audience of 12,000 hippies and college students for a three-day extravaganza of Black music, sunshine and fun in a field next to Huron High School.
Following on the Ann Arbor Blues Festivals of 1969 and 1970, a pair of artistic and critical successes which unhappily lost a considerable sum of money for the student group at the University of Michigan that had sponsored them, the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival reached out beyond the traditionally small knot of identifiable blues devotees to tap the curiosity of rock & roll lovers who were--in 1972 -till open to new musical experiences and anything else that could stretch their cultural horizons.
Funded by means of a chance meeting with a young man who wished to make socially righteous use of a small inheritance, the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival offered this writer--as its co-producer, creative director and music programmer--the opportunity to create a musical blend previously unrealized in the USA, and this welcome opening was pursued with zeal and considerable glee.
The opening night presentation on September 8, 1972, offered 45-minute sets by the Seigel-Schwall Blues Band, Detroit's Contemporary Jazz Quintet (CJQ), Jr. Walker & The All-Stars, Sun Ra & His Arkestra, and Howlin' Wolf.
The next afternoon featured the Music of Chicago, with performances by Muddy Waters, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers, and Mighty Joe Young with Lucille Spann and Koko Taylor, including a surprise appearance by the Bard of Vicksburg, Mr. Willie Dixon.
Sunday afternoon brought to the stage Freddy King, Archie Shepp, Sippie Wallace with Bonnie Raitt, Luther Allison (who proved to be the Festival's true star), and Ann Arbor's Mojo Boogie Band.
Sunday night climaxed the Festival with Miles Davis, Otis Rush (with Jimmy Dawkins), Leo Smith & Marion Brown, Lightnin' Slim, Boogie Woogie Red, and unannounced guests Robert Jr. Lockwood and Johnny Shines.
The Saturday night show was intended as the ultimate piece de resistance: the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop, the great Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Dr. John's "Nite-Tripper" revue, and Detroit's own Little Sonny, soon to be acclaimed by his promoters at Stax Records as the "New King of the Blues Harmonica."
It turned out to be impossible to feature Charles Mingus--an unavoidable figure in this writer's pantheon of available musical greats--until the following year due to his prolonged illness, and he was replaced by the Pharaoh Sanders Quintet. Bobby Bland and Dr. John met every expectation, and Little Sonny opened the show with a well-paced set of originals and blues classics that showed off his vocal and harmonica mastery.
At the time Little Sonny, long one of this writer's favorite modern bluesmen, was enjoying the small surge of popular success that had followed the release of his first Enterprise LP, Black & Blue, produced by Al Bell and Zorn Productions for the Stax Records subsidiary.
It seemed exactly the right time to present Sonny to the largest audience he had faced to date, and the response his performance elicited was heart-warming indeed.
Little Sonny has his own memories of the occasion, as he recalls for Tom Gelardi in the audio memoir included at the end of this disc:
"Hello ladies and gentlemen, I am Little Sonny. I was in Memphis doing a tour of promotion. I was promoting the album Black & Blue. We went into New York, Texas, New Orleans and went into Memphis and St. Louis, Missouri.
"After I was out there for about two weeks promoting, I came back home and picked up my sons and then we went back on the road again.
"I was called by Mrs. Rodgers her booking agency was Rodgers & Rodgers. She called me at the hotel that morning and asked me to do the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. I told her to get the contracts together and I accepted.
"We came and we got our automobiles and we drove up to Ann Arbor to do the show. We got in and we was there in the range of about two hours or more before we got a chance to go on stage. We did not have a sound check we went on without a sound check, and actually we was the opening act of that particular show.
"We opened up and started the first number and the crowd just dived in with me and everybody started having a good time. Everybody seemed like they were glad to see us because this was the first time that we played the Ann Arbor Festival. The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival was one of the largest festivals I ever played."

Live