Welcome to the March edition of BLUES JUNCTION. 

As many of our readers are aware, we lost a member of the BLUES JUNCTION family last month with the passing of Sam Andrew. Born Sam Houston Andrew in Taft, California, in 1941, Sam was best known as a founding member of the San Francisco based rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. The band gained international stardom after they hired a recent transplant to San Francisco from Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin in 1966. Less than a year later that singer and that band...were a smash hit at the very first pop festival that was held down the road a piece in Monterey, California, in the spring of 1967.

The band’s second (and last) album with Joplin, Cheap Thrills turned out to be huge success and a 60’s pop culture phenomenon. It was released on Columbia Records in
1968 and featured three hit tunes, all in the blues idiom.  Piece of My Heart originally recorded by Erma Franklin, Big Mama Thornton’s Ball and Chain and the Gershwin/Heyward standard Summertime. Andrew’s arrangement of this tune from Porgy and Bess is considered a seminal moment in the history of phsycodelia. The album, which featured cover art by underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, also had the Sam Andrew penned Combination of the Two and a Joplin original twelve bar blues entitled Turtle Blues.

Later that same year Andrew and Joplin formed their own group called The Kosmic Blues Band. After nine months and one album, Andrew left and reformed Big Brother. In December of 1970, Joplin died of a drug overdose in Los Angeles at the age of 27.  

Sam Andrew continued making music and occasionally toured with Big Brother and the Holding Company. In 2009, he played in Bethel, New York, at the 40^th anniversary of the famous Woodstock Music Festival. Sam remained a Northern California resident. The former University of San Francisco student will always be associated with the Summer of Love, the late 60’s pop culture and that city’s unique take on American music.

In 2011, I was happy to edit and “publish” a piece Sam wrote called Bay Area Blues Women. I thought as a tribute to Sam, I would again share that essay with our readers. Bay Area Blues Women stand in this month’s Artist Spotlight. I will always be thankful Sam was kind enough to share his talent with us here at the JUNCTION.

Three years after the Monterey Pop Festival and on the exact same stage, The Johnny Otis Show appeared at the long running Monterey Jazz Festival. That performance yielded a double live album. The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey is the subject of an essay I wrote as part of our ongoing series entitled, Re-Visited.

While in the Monterey Bay area I thought it would be a good time to hear from Charlie Lange as he has another Re-Issue Rodeo for our consideration.

From the Monterey Bay, back up the coast to the San Francisco Bay and Greaseland Studios where once again a host of area talent yielded another great blues album. The latest gift from the house of grease is from Kyle Jester. His new CD, After All This, is the subject of our Monthly Album Spotlight.

We also have a feature on a man, a lesser known blues musician, who died on May 7, 1938, yet has a brand new double album out on Document Records. His name is “Papa” Charlie Jackson. Enjoy a look at a mysterious old blues man and an interesting new album.

Getting back to the present one of the busiest bluesmen of this generation, Darrell Nulisch has a brand new album out entitled, One Night In Boston. We have a full review of this CD.

What is going on around here? A reference to the summer of love and two works by Robert Crumb in the letter from the editor.  Am I coming out of the closet as a 60’s era hippie? Where was I during the summer of love? Am I writing this while wearing a tie dye t-shirt. The answer is no, to all of the above. The fact is I was ten years old during the summer of love. I spent the summer of ‘67 visiting my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles in Des Moines, Iowa. I don’t recall any sex, drugs and rock&roll.

I do remember sitting around with my relatives watching a CBS special that first aired on August 22, 1967. It was a documentary film entitled, “Hippie Temptation” hosted by Harry Reasoner. The broadcast  was an eye opening shock to any part of America that was not in the immediate vicinity of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets in that section of San Francisco. Reasoner referred to this neighborhood as a “hippie colony.” In the intervening years, the broadcast has become an entertainment vehicle viewed in some quarters as some kind of camp parody of news journalism. It wasn’t, but at the time put into sharp focus what was an enormous generation gap and huge cultural divisions that existed in this country.

One of the things that I have learned through the years is that African-American musical expression of all kinds, especially the blues, obliterates those divisions. I’ll share with you another example of this. My dad used to sing the song Yesterday in the shower. He thought it was a Ray Charles tune. Brother Ray also had a hit with the song and that version is the one with which my dad had been familiar. When we broke the news to him that it was a Beatles song, he went right back to singing Louis Jordon or Joe Williams in the shower. 

My point being that, for most people, music is largely associated with a certain time and place. The music of Sam Andrew and Janis Joplin was as iconoclastic and as socially subversive as can be imagined in the late 60’s. That music is now part of the mainstream culture of the masses.

Blues music on the other hand never represented any of these things. It remains timeless and outside of the sensibilities and constraints of pop culture. Its value isn’t tied to any social movement. The music only represents that place deep in our souls we reserve for ethereal things that are so precious, so special and so beloved that no amount of time can penetrate that sanctuary.  

Thanks always for the kind words of encouragement. It is always great to here from so many of you. Until next time, be well and be in touch. Peace...

- David Mac