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Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals 1972-1973-1974 |
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Friday, 10 February 2006 00:25 |
The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals 1972-1973-1974
By John Sinclair
The Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival brought together a wild mixture of modern blues masters and cutting-edge jazz creators with a riotous crowd of long-haired hippies and music lovers of every description to brew up an exhilarating blend of African-American music, sunshine and merriment for three glorious days in September of 1972.
This heady experiment in cross-cultural programming filled Otis Spann Memorial Field with 12,000 ecstatic celebrants for five shows that combined Howlin' Wolf, Jr. Walker & The All-Stars, and Sun Ra & His Arkestra; Muddy Waters, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Koko Taylor, and Hound Dog Taylor & the Houserockers; Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Pharaoh Sanders, Dr. John, and Little Sonny; Freddy King, Archie Shepp, Sippie Wallace, Bonnie Raitt, and Luther Allison; Miles Davis, Otis Rush, Lightnin' Slim, Leo Smith & Marion Brown, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Johnny Shines.
The festival returned in 1973 with an even more ambitious agenda, offering five insane combinations which presented on the same stage performances by Roosevelt Sykes, Leon Thomas, the Count Basie Orchestra, and Freddy King; Yusef Lateef, John Lee Hooker, CJQ, and a Motor City Blues Revue including Baby Boy Warren, Washboard Willie, Dr. Ross, Eddie Kirkland, Boogie Woogie Red, Eddie Burns, Bobo Jenkins, and One-String Sam; Ray Charles, Charles Mingus, Big Walter Horton, and Jimmy Reed; the Johnny Otis Show, Ornette Coleman, King Biscuit Boys, and Victoria Spivey; and Luther Allison, Hound Dog Taylor, and Sun Ra--three perennial favorites with the Ann Arbor audience.
Problems with city authorities prompted the organizers to move the Festival to Windsor, Ontario--across the river from Detroit--in 1974. Attendance shrunk and disaster struck when Canadian border officials turned back thousands of American music lovers bent on seeing and hearing B.B. King, Cecil Taylor, James Brown, Sun Ra, the Persuasions, Sunnyland Slim and other blues and jazz stars at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival In Exile.
This brought the series to a shuddering conclusion, but the extraordinary music made at the three Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals was preserved on tape and may be heard on a continuing series of CDs produced by this writer. And the striking images of the artists captured in performance at Ann Arbor by photographer Leni Sinclair and presented in these pages surely convey the excitement and thrills felt by everyone in attendance when they encountered--most of them for the first time--some of the greatest musicians of our time.
Photo Captions:
Bonnie Raitt, Freddie King, Muddy Waters
Ann Arbor first met the blues in the summer of 1969 when a University of Michigan student group engaged a galaxy of blues stars to perform at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival. During its two-year run, a stunning array of blues giants--including Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, T-Bone Walker, Lightnin Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Magic Sam, Big Mama Thornton, Luther Allison and many others--were introduced to an enthusiastic new audience.
Muddy Waters, whose Blues Festival show had been cut short by a Howlin Wolf set which extended well into Muddy's alloted time, returned to Ann Arbor in 1972 with a vengeance. Playing and singing with ferocious intensity, relentless precision and amazing grace, Muddy led his brilliant band through a stunning program of selections from his Chess Records catalog and left no question as to his status at the very top of the blues world.
Bonnie Raitt was just beginning her long and fruitful career when she took the stage at Ann Arbor on Sunday afternoon, September 10, 1972. Beside her was an extremely special guest, Ms. Sippie Wallace, a seminal blues star of the 1920s who was just emerging from the quiet obscurity of her home in Detroit to share her immense gift with the world. Bonnie was visibly thrilled to be performing with her idol and musical role model and rose to the occasion with a fine set of slide-guitar blues.
The Master of the Telecaster, Freddie King was riding high in 1972 as one of the most popular and influential blues guitarists in the world. Fronting an excellent band and boasting a string of strong albums for King/Federal, Atlantic/Cotillion and Shelter Records, Freddie had found a new audience on the hippie ballroom circuit and was a sensational hit at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival. He was invited back in 1973 to close the opening night show and turned in a spectacular performance in front of 15,000 raving music lovers.
Howlin Wolf with Eddie Shaw, [woman in audience], Bobby Blue Bland with Dr. John
Howlin Wolf's gigantic physicality was matched only by his gargantuan stature in the blues world of 1972. Topping the bill on the Festival's first night--following incredible performances by Junior Walker & the All Stars and Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra--the Wolf howled, moaned, shouted and stomped the stage to the utter delight of his adoring audience. Saxophonist Eddie Shaw and the Wolf Pack--featuring Hubert Sumlin and Detroit Junior--provided earth-shaking support as the Howlin Wolf really tore up the night.
A Real Good Time was the promise of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival--along with A Rainbow of Sound--and a remarkably diverse crowd turned out to frolic with the music. Jazz buffs, blues enthusiasts, R&B freaks, rockers, hippies, students, old people and little children all came together at Otis Spann Memorial Field to celebrate under the sun--and for many, like the rapt young woman pictured here, the Festival provided bright moments filled with the joy of discovery and the sound of surprise.
The Man, I mean The Man, Bobby Blue Bland and his sparkling band were spotlighted on the big Saturday night show in 1972, recreating the sound of Bobby's magnificent Duke singles and introducing the soulful blues singer to thousands of brand new fans. His old friend Mac Rebennack, who d just turned the place out as Dr. John the Night Tripper with a set of soulful psychedelia and hot New Orleans rhythm & blues, snuck back onstage in civilian garb to offer Bobby some sensitive support on guitar.
Robert Lockwood Jr., Luther Allison, John Lee Hooker
Robert Lockwood Jr, one of our greatest living Americans, remains today the most woefully under-acknowledged innovator in blues history. Robert introduced the sound of the electric guitar to a whole generation of Delta blues players and listeners when he joined Sonny Boy Williamson in 1943 on King Biscuit Time, broadcast daily on KFFA radio in Helena, Arkansas, and he created the template for rhythm guitar in the modern blues band with his masterful recordings accompanying Sonny Boy, Little Walter and many others. A man of keen intelligence and great personal dignity, Robert Lockwood is powerfully portrayed in this photograph from 1972.
Luther Allison burst on the national blues scene in 1970 with his dynamic performance at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival, and he was the big hit of the 1972 Blues & Jazz Festival with his tight, horn-driven ensemble, eloquent guitar and emotive vocals. Picked to close the 1973 Festival, Luther returned with a spare backing trio to tease the crowd for a while before pouring it on with a series of blazing solos. Here you can see in his face the joy Luther always felt when he was playing his guitar for a sympathetic audience.
John Lee Hooker first made his mark on the blues world with a series of idiosyncratic recordings made in Detroit around mid-century for the Sensation label. By 1973 he was a world-wide sensation, with versions of his songs available by everyone from the Animals to the MC-5, and he was invited to Ann Arbor to headline the Motor City Blues revue which closed out the Music of Detroit showcase on Saturday afternoon. He brought his sons, Robert and John Lee Jr., onstage with him and enjoyed a jovial, fun-filled reunion backstage with old Detroit cohorts like Eddie Burns, Boogie Woogie Red, Eddie Kirkland and Baby Boy Warren.
Junior Walker, One-String Sam
Junior Walker and the All Stars exemplified the esthetic basis of the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival with the saxophonist's skillful, hard-rocking synthesis of blues and jazz and his audience-thrilling performance style. Appearing on opening night in 1972 between the Contemporary Jazz Quintet and Sun Ra & His Arkestra, Junior punched out vibrant renditions of his classic Motown hits and sold them hard with his over-the-top tenor saxophonics.
The legendary One-String Sam had languished in utter obscurity since his mid-1950s recording of I Need $100 was released to an unsuspecting world by Detroit's miniscule JVB label. Located in an Inkster housing project in 1973, Sam was added to the Motor City Blues revue and turned his 15 minutes onstage into a rousing, crowd-pleasing tour-de-force, fretting his one-string guitar with a baby-food jar that--stuck up next to the microphone--doubled as an echo chamber for his wailing vocal plaints. The surprise hit of the Festival, One-String Sam remained onsite until the end, entertaining his new fans with a series of impromptu performances backstage and on the festival field itself.
--New Orleans
May 12, 1998
(c) 1998, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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