WPRB Princeton 103.3 FM

New Jersey's Only Radio Station

WPRB is a community-supported, freeform radio station. Our FM signal (103.3) serves central New Jersey, Philadelphia, eastern PA and the northern tip of Delaware. We reach a global audience at wprb.com.

Blues, Off The Record

Jul 8, 2024 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Music

With Sonny Boy Williamson III

10:01 AM		Mississippi Jook Band Hittin' the Bottle Stomp Blind Roosevelt Graves
10:04 AM		Keb' Mo' America the Beautiful America the Beautiful Kind Of Blue Music 2014
10:07 AM		Peetie Wheatstraw Crazy With the Blues Peetie Wheatstraw Document Records 1994
10:10 AM		Blind Boy Fuller Rattlesnake Daddy East Coast Piedmont Style NYC, July 1935
10:15 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
10:15 AM		Robert Petway Catfish Blues Walk Right In
10:18 AM		Alfred Lewis Mississippi Swamp Moan American Primitive, Vol. II - Pre-War Revenants Revenant 2005
10:21 AM		Robert Cooksey & Bobby Leecan Need More Blues Harmonica Blues Yazoo 2005
10:24 AM		Jed Davenport & His Beale Street Jug Band You Ought to Move Out of Town The Great Jug Bands
10:28 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
10:28 AM		Big Joe Williams Baby Please Don't Go Walk Right In
10:32 AM		Furry Lewis Judge Harsh Blues Canned Heat Blues: Masters of the Delta Blues
10:35 AM		Junior Wells Hoodoo Man Chicago Blues
10:38 AM		Jimmy Witherspoon When the Lights Go Out Chicago Blues
10:41 AM		Magic Sam All Night Long Chicago Blues
10:43 AM		Henry Gray I Declare That Ain't Right Chess Blues Geffen 1992
10:47 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
10:47 AM		Chuck Berry Brown Eyed Handsome Man 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Chuck Berry Geffen 1999
10:50 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
10:51 AM		Wynonie Harris Good Rockin' Tonight Jump Blues Classics
10:54 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
10:55 AM		Louis Jordan Choo Choo Ch' Boogie Night Train: Classic Railroad Songs, Vol. 3
10:57 AM		Danny Overbea Forty Cups of Coffee Chess Blues Guitar
11:01 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
11:03 AM		Skip James How Long Today! (Remastered 2024) Craft Recordings 2024
11:06 AM		Blind Blake Dry Bone Shuffle The Best of Blind Blake Yazoo 2000
11:09 AM		Mattie Delaney Down the Big Road Blues Mississippi Girls
11:12 AM		Mae Glover Forty-Four Blues Lillian Glinn and Mae Glover
11:15 AM		Ruth Willis and Blind Willie McTell Experience Blues The Slide Guitar: Bottles, Knives, and Steel
11:18 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
11:19 AM		Ma Rainey Sleep Talking Blues Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
11:24 AM		Henry Thomas Red River Blues The Roots of Robert Johnson Yazoo 2005
11:27 AM		Washington Phillips I Am Born to Preach the Gospel Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams Columbia/Legacy 2016
11:30 AM		Manny Nichols Worried Life Rural Blues
11:33 AM		Muddy Waters & Son Simms Four Pearlie May Blues The Complete Plantation Recordings Geffen 1993
11:36 AM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
11:38 AM		Memphis Minnie and Joe McCoy Jailhouse Trouble Blues The Rough Guide to Blues Behind Bars Geffen 1993
11:40 AM		Walter Davis M & O Blues The Blues Vol. 2
11:44 AM		Muddy Waters Louisiana Blues The Blues Vol 4
11:48 AM		Charley Patton Moon Going Down The Best of Charlie Patton Yazoo 2003
11:50 AM		Booker White Sleepy Man Blues The Complete Bukka White
11:53 AM		Tommy Johnson Button up Shoes Masters of the Delta Blues: The Friends of Charlie Patton Yazoo 1991
11:56 AM		Eddie Lang and Lonnie Johnson Hot Fingers Blue Guitars Volumes I and II

Chat is archived.

Hello all!

@ Sonny Boy Williamson III (host) And good morning to you. I'm listening forward to some cool blues on a hot day.

Peetie Wheatstraw, who styled himself the Devil's Son in Law, was a major influence on Robert Johnson.

He has a vocal mannerism of doing a kind of "woo-hoo" at the end of vocal lines that Johnson adopted directly

Or "oooh-well"

@ Sonny Boy Williamson III (host) Thanks for those interesting factoids on Robert Johnson's influences.

Robert Petway is dynamite! I love his synocpated "Catfish Blues" vocal passages against his insistent chopping but shining guitar vamps. Wow ...

Petway is a major talent. I also really like the recordings of Tommy McClennan, a friend and collaborator of his

@Sonny Boy Williamson III (host) Listening again to Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," it seems to me it's an example of "Black is Beautiful" before there was such a named movement to combat the negative self-images propogated by racism.

Definitely! It's also pretty cheeky and daring. The (presumably white) judge's wife telling the DA he has to let that handsome man go...

@Sonny Boy Williamson III (host) I hear you!!!

Skip James is such an idiosyncratic but compelling piano player. His guitar numbers are understandably better known but there's something I really like about his lurching bursts of notes on the piano.

@ Sonny Boy Williamson III (host) It just shows how very much I still have to learn about the blues and its master performers: I wasn't well aware that Skip James was a solid piano player as well as guitar! But then again, there are probably many people who aren't aware how long Bob Dylan has been playing rock-n-roll piano.

A good comparison! I saw Bob in Camden this last weekend and he was at the keys for a lot of the set. I think that artists of the folk-revival and post rock-n-roll generation tended to fixate on the mythology of the guitar-toting, traveling bluesman. The piano got less attention, perhaps because it's less romantic. You can't hop a freight train with your piano.

@ Sonny Boy Williamson III (host) Exactly! I saw Dylan in Newark late last year and he played piano the entire (excellent) show. As you know, there are pictures and classmates' memories of young Bob at high school talent shows, standing and banging at the keys in the style of his heroes Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

People ask the wrong question: It's not "Why did Dylan go electric rock n roll in 1965?" It's "Why did Dylan travel to Greenwich Village and go acoustic-folk in 1959?"

Very true!

Awesome Show! So many excellent tunes... Glad you're on this Summer... Thanks!

THank you!

@ Mike O. Totally agree!

The poetry of so many blues songs: "I'd go to town/But I'd hate to stand around."

Great show as always!

Thanks all!

And thank YOU! And what a great out-track with the phenominal Eddie Lang & Lonnie Johnson. :-))