Stacks of Wax – Blues

Welcome to the Stacks of Wax – Blues! Our little podcast takes a look back at the history of the music we all love.  This time, it’s all about BLUES music.  Blues is the music that influenced our influences. Many of us heard Jimmy Page or Keith Richards or Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck talking about people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.  They spoke with reverence about people like Son House and Robert Johnson. In the early 70s, a band called ZZ Top emerged from right here in Texas with a lineage more directly linked to The Blues.  Billy Gibbons actually SOUNDED like John Lee Hooker and Willie Dixon.  They even took their name, partially, from a bluesman named “ZZ Hill“. So, I called up Bill Netherton for a brief chat about this mysterious music!  Netherton has always appreciated good music, and he’s never been shy about confessing his love of jazz and blues.

T-Bone Walker said “The Eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play. Sunday I go to church, I get on my knees and pray” in Stormy Monday. That’s the blues, doing what it does best: speaking for America’s everyman. BB King said “Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin’ too!” which is ‘TheBlues’ showing its gut-bucket humorous side. Muddy Waters said, “The blues had a baby, and they named it rock and roll“.  If it weren’t for blues, there wouldn’t BE any rock ‘n’ roll.  That’s a fact. Chuck Berry started out jamming with the Johnnie Johnson Trio, playing blues and swing standards. A young man named Elvis Presley used to haunt Beale Street in west Memphis, getting into lord-knows-what and soaking up the music. Songs by Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup and Big Mama Thornton. The Blues –>to –>rock ‘n’ roll is a lineage is as direct as the one from your  grandmother to your dad. It’s fun to trace these lines of musical heritage. We’ll lay it all out on Saturday evening, and here on this episode of Stacks of Wax – Blues!

Oh! And ZZ Top is here in Amarillo on April 23rd for a show!  So enjoy the podcast, get tickets to see ZZ Top, tune in to Saturday Night Solid Gold and keep rockin’ that wax!