Doug MacLeod
Brilliant singer, songwriter, guitarist and raconteur from L.A. on his fourth Shakedown visit.
Live at St. Kyneburgha Church,
Castor,
P'boro,
7.30pm
Thursday 11th June 2009
Doug MacLeod was born in Virginia circa 1950 and raised in St Louis. He has overcome abuse and a crippling stutter to become a very highly regarded guitarist and singer songwriter on the L.A music scene. His love for blues was nurtured by a mis-spent youth prowling the bludgeoning St. Louis scene on the ‘funky’ side of the city. Here he heard and befriended Albert King, Little Milton and Ike and Tina Turner amongst others.
Enlisting in the Navy he was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia and spent his free time playing and singing to fellow sailors in the rough, downtown blues bars. After discharge he signed on to the Berklee School of Music in Boston for a four-year jazz course. Post graduation he went on the road eventually winding up in Los Angeles where he began running with George Smith and Smokey Wilson around the booming California blues scene.
It was here also that he recorded the wonderful ‘No Road Back Home’ album for Hightone, which was crammed full of original songs. He has since then worked solidly in the blues field writing and recording a further seven excellent albums and becoming a consummate live performer, weaving tales of the road together with performances of songs inspired by these experiences. Many of these songs have been covered by the likes of Albert Collins and Joe Louis Walker, which speak volumes for his stature amongst his peers.
James Jensen of Acoustic Guitar Magazine noted his guitar playing in saying that ‘ Real excitement is created by Macleod’s highly rhythmic acoustic guitar’. (Personally I believe it is in the economy of notes played where his true genius lies)
In the last couple of years Doug has seriously moved up in profile and has cracked both the Asian and Australian markets and is often appearing at festival circuits around the world. I speculated last year that we probably would soon no longer be able to afford him but thankfully we have been able to book him recently at short notice ‘one more time’.
Keith ‘Bluesman’ Little
Cincinnati singer /songwriter / guitarist whose baritone vocals are the blues equivalent of Barry White - one for the ladies!
Live at The Village Hall,
Castor,
Peterborough,
7.30pm
Saturday 20th June 2009
Keith Little was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Clarence and Dosier Little on July 15th 1953. His god-fearing parents moved whilst he was still a babe in arms to Georgiana, Alabama and it was here that he was raised with his brother Larry. His father Clarence was a gospel singer and formed a quartet The Golden Wings in 1957 whilst also singing in the Galilee Missionary Baptist Church Choir on Sundays and high days. The young Keith soaked up this tradition whilst hanging onto his father’s leg.
His first encounter with the blues came when he was 7 years old and courtesy of an old blues guitar player called Willie (“I never did know his last name”) who lived three doors away. Keith was attracted to the ‘blue notes’ and would sit on Willie’s porch for hours listening to the old man play.
When Keith was in the sixth grade his mother bought him a guitar and his brother Larry a drum kit. Together, with their cousins, they settled down to practice gospel music. However, the radios in the neighbourhood were often tuned into music stations and soon the boys began to pick up on the latest B.B. King/Bobby Bland offerings. So when the adults were away the boys began to play ‘The Blues’.
If they were caught they would be given extra bible studies to drag them back into the path of righteousness. Meanwhile not all of the adults disapproved and his uncle, the famous pianist Big Joe Duskin, was always there if they needed encouragement.
In 1973 Keith went back to Cincinnati and formed a band called the ‘Electric Flag’, which featured the Farringdon Brothers singing whilst performing back flips and splits on stage. During this time he also began to hang out with older blues men on the local scene listening befriending and playing with the great Albert Washington, H Bomb Ferguson, Big Ed Thomson, Roosevelt Lee and Pigmeat Jarrett. At the same time he was inducted into the gospel quartet ‘The Original Christianaires’ as a bass player and singer replacing Bootsy Collins who was moving to stardom in a different world.
Six months later and hungry for success Keith left both these groups and formed his own R&B outfit ‘The Iceband’ which played soul / funk / R&B and blues and his own gospel group The Goldenaires Gospel Quartet. He went out on the road with both groups looking for fame and fortune. Marriage and five children soon put pay to this idea and Keith began looking for a better paying job and sensibly decided to open his own construction business which paid the bills but restricted him to only playing locally and at weekends. During the next twenty years he also found time to become a play writer, produce a video documentary of the Cincinnati blues scene (Thanks for my Flowers) host a TV show (Mr Little’s Hangout) and become Vice President of the Cincinnati Blues Society.
In 1995 he produced the excellent album of self-penned blues and R&B ‘The Cincinnati Blues Man’ on San-Ton Records. Four years later he formed his own PAES Records and recorded a live album ‘Going Downtown’ at The Jefferson Hall in Cincinnati and in 2001 he released the very fine ‘A Mothers Love’. Last year he sent me a copy of his latest CD ‘Take It Off And Get Loose With It’. His voice by now has mellowed into a smooth baritone and reminds me slightly of a blues version of Barry White. I was asked by the organisers of The Peterborough Festival if we could find a suitable act to open this years proceedings I immediately thought that Keith would be the perfect choice. Stone blues for the men, soulful knee tremblers for the ladies. Luckily Keith was available and Dave Thomas was happy to bring his band for what will be another great party night in Castor.
All proceeds will be donated to The Peterborough Soup Kitchen
Katherine Davis
Wonderful Chicago Blues singer whose forte is the classic period of Ma Rainey & Bessie Smith
Live at The Village Hall,
Castor,
Peterborough,
7.30pm
Saturday 26th September 2009
Katherine Helen Davis was born in Chicago 25 Feb 1953 to Ethel Campbell and Wesley Davis. Her grandfather, Earl Campbell, performed with Louis Armstrong and Count Basie and her mother hunkered after her professional career as an opera singer. Katherine was raised in Chicago’s infamous Cabrini- Green housing project in Chicago’s north side and her family moved as soon as they could across to the south side in 1967. By then Katherine was singing in church and had listened for most of her life to the music of Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey, Dinah Washington, Muddy Waters, Mahalia Jackson and Etta James.
Although she decided as a youngster to sing the blues (at the age of 13 she was chastised by the church choir director as sounding too bluesy) she had also been inspired by family members who were opera singers and decided to study opera at the Sherwood Conservatory of Music in 1982-1985 and then studied musical theory and drama at the Kennedy King College in Chicago. Meanwhile the south side of Chicago also provided Katherine with a plethora of Jazz and Blues clubs wherein she could hear the greats of both scenes on a daily basis.
In 1987 a friend suggested that she audition for an acting job in a play produced by the Kuumba Theatre and Katherine landed the part. She went on to play both Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and was critically acclaimed in the ‘Heart of the Blues’. Though her work in this production she made a number of valuable contacts and was soon singing both jazz and blues in clubs and festivals throughout the U.S, Canada and Europe including the 1986 Chicago Blues Festival where she sang with Erwin Helfer (Shakedown Blues March 1972 on piano). In 1989 she recorded an album with the Chicago Victory Gospelaires and then in 1992 was recorded in Japan as part of the Louisiana Red Chicago Allstars compilation entitled ‘Chicago Blues Night’. She then produced an album in 1993 ‘Live at the Orpheum Theatre’ and the same year recorded again with Roy Rubenstein and the Dixie Stompers. Three years later at the Chicago Blues Festival she met harmonica player Billy Branch that led to an ongoing involvement in the ‘Blues in Schools’ programme. In 1999 joined the upcoming Chicago band Mississippi Heat and it was their very tasty first three CD’s that alerted me to Katherine. When Mud Morganfield came over for the first time he highly recommended that we book his friend Katherine Davis and we are pleased that at last we are able to fit in to her busy schedule.
For the Shakedown nights we have decided to present Katherine together with James Goodwin for an evening of classic blues from the 1920’s for one show and together with Dave Thomas’s Band for the second show. Should be good with all this history and talent this will no doubt go down as one of the great Shakedown shows.