Playlist and Notes: 7 February 2023

On today’s show we have several themes and start some month-long retrospectives. In the honor of Black History Month we will profile some of the great blues singers during February, featuring two artists each week. In another segment, we will listen to jazz music from, and inspired by, Africa. But to start the show today, we begin with an acknowledgement that it is winter in Central Pennsylvania with a couple of songs about the season.

Joey Alexander – Winter Blues

Kieth Jarrett – Blackberry Winter

Michael Brecker – Midnight Mood

Blind Willie McTell – Statesboro Blues

Mississippi John Hurt – Coffee Blues

Ramsey Lewis Trio – You Been Talkin’ ‘Bout Me, Baby

Moe Koffman – A Night in Tunisia

Mulatu Astatke – Girl From Addis Ababa

Black Flower – O Fogo

Blues Tribute 

We begin our survey of important blues artists with a person who is not that well known but highly influential: Blind Willie McTell:

• Born blind in 1901 to an unwed 14-year-old mother, who would die in 1920. Many of his song lyrics would reference that he felt alone in the world.
• In 1924, he returned to Georgia after attending blind schools in New York and Macon, Georgia. Spending much of his time in Atlanta he performed on street corners and small venues.  During the 1920s, there was a burgeoning music industry in Atlanta, and McTell recorded over 80 sides in the city. But the onset of the Great Depression effectively ended the recording industry in Atlanta.
• McTell would often play at the Jaeckel Hotel in Statesboro during tobacco season, where salesmen would sit on the front porch and listed to him play.
• His most recognizable song is “Statesboro Blues,” which references what his considered his home Statesboro, Georgia. The song was covered by Taj Mahal and brought new, posthumous, attention to McTell in the 1960s and 1970s.
• Blind Willie McTell died in 1959.  

Mississippi John Hart