Saunders Samuel King: Oakland Electrified Blues Pioneer

As we proceed to study the Blues in my Academic English Development class I'm shifting our focus to artists who were based in West or 'old' Oakland, California from the early to mid 1900's. So it's only fitting we begin with the legendary 'S.K.'

Saunders Samuel King was born March 13, 1909 in Staple, Louisiana and died in Oakland, CA, August 31, 2000. Saunders King in known as the original ‘king’ of the blues; an inspiration to a more current bluesman, Mr. B.B. King. Saunders started out in music singing gospel in his fathers’ Oakland church on 7th Street; evolving musically to play piano, ukelele, and banjo. At the age of 33, while singing tenor in an NBC (SF radio station) group called the Southern Harmony Four, he took up the guitar. After being inspired by a young African American guitarist named Charlie Christian who played with Benny Goodman, he founded his own band in 1942.

The Saunders King song we will be studying, ‘S.K. Blues’ was originally released as Saunders Blues and became a huge hit, making it’s way to blues joints through the South clear to the East Coast. It should be noted that Sanders Samuel King’s version of S.K. Blues was recorded in an ‘electrified’ blues guitar style- predating T-Bone Walker; hence King was a true Blues musical pioneer. King ‘cut’ records for influential recording labels: Rhythm, Modern, and Aladdin- traveling the world playing Blues.

After retiring from music professionally in 1961, he continued musically at his Oakland church: Memorial Tabernacle at 58th and Telegraph. The Suanders musical bloodline continues through his daughter, Deborah Sarah King, whom married famed guitarist, Carlos Santana. The Santanas have 3 children: Salvador, Stella, and Angelica.

Next Up: Ms. Rosetta Tharpe

Last week we analyzed Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton's, Hound Dog.
This week it's Up Above My Head by Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The AED Lesson Materials are posted to the right. Rock On!!


peep this:

"Honey, are ya'..."

The moment your heart breaks?

You’d think heartbreak would be the first step to empathy- to completely imagine, identify, thus ‘feel’ someone else’s pain.

chord usage. song pattern. theme. guitar.
I see guitars and I see ghosts. I have two I learn through and they haunt me.

I’ve got a guitar lesson coming up. Each time I set up to sit down for a finite time with my teacher, there’s usually some distinct question in mind that walks me to their doorbell at the prescribed time. Tonight my paradigm will go in shifted to the process of translating chords to song and their relationship to vocal harmony with a bent on Bluegrass and Blues. I’ll let all the information fall where it lay, picking it up in bits here and there in practice.

My whole idea around a time-to-time journal is sharing the experience- a bridge to connect what makes us all these thinking, feeling and sentient beings. But also as an end to convey what we all actually DO. Our culture of community. All it takes is two; better if there are more. But if anything, sharing through journal is some small statement of keeping the record straight about intent and perspective. If you can’t tell your own story, it only leaves it up to someone else to share it for you- or not.

Some might say thoughts aren’t news. And I would agree that indeed, thoughts on their own aren’t much. But in hindsight of action, previous thoughts are an interesting account towards manifest destiny. If you put your mind to it, you can do it. You may not be doing what you expected, exactly as you thought you would, but in every action, there is a reaction. Energy is never lost, only transformed. Best of all, there are no regrets of ‘what might have been.’

Which brings me to history. We as people walk around; vehicles of energy transformed through experience in time and space- with the biological cards we’ve been dealt. We’ve come a long way in understanding our physical make-up through technology and how best to live in accordance with nature to yield best results regarding physical an emotional health.

Yeah, point being?!

All this hinges on an explicit awareness of these very features that drive us through our lives- inspirations based on what makes us who we are: experiences in time and space within the vehicle of our persons. We become our history as our history becomes us.

I’m thinking about questions in Bluegrass like the Osborne brothers had, “Ruby, are you mad at your man?”
I’ve got questions in Blues on my mind too, like, “How come love done left like it did?”
Also, I think of Nina Gerber’s album after the passing of Kate Bush.

I’m thinking of the last time my heart broke; the engine in long train of heartbreak cars. I think it was seeing my son swim from the wall of the deep pool, out and ‘round his instructors, back to the wall. 3 weeks ago this kid cringed at the idea of getting a shirt wet.

Ahhh heartbreak, and ghosts.

And a lesson’s coming up tonight. With maybe a few in the interim.
Good day, everybody.

Guitar by Schultz, Fiddle by Vandiver and Bluegrass by Monroe

Arnold Schultz was a country and blues man who's blues licks added to Monroe's flavorful arsenal of playing style.
Pictured above with Monroe's fiddling Uncle Pendleton 'Pen' Vandiver (mom's brother), they were credited by Monroe as being the primary influences to his inimitable musical style that he would come to coin as Bluegrass.

Nice.

info as referenced from the Kentucky Blues Society at:
http://www.skybluessociety.org/history.htm
and wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Monroe

"I Say Me for a Parable" These Days

I'm reading the magnetic, I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, narrated to Glen Alyn.

I can't put it down.

But I got a look though of wtf from someone with a middle aged hustler's style on BART taking me in with my son vs. the tome; vying for my attention

Been on a Lipscomb bender because our roots are familiar enough that I wouldn't be surprised if they intertwined:
he from southeast Texas with Native American, African American, and French influences..
my relatives from southwest Texas/Louisiana with Native American, African American and French influences...

And Arhoolie Records @ Downhome Music in El Cerrito didn't do anything but fan my flames of interest.

Can't wait to find out more.