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about

"Blues From the Apple"
Oblivion Records OD-4 1974
More here: oblivionrecords.co/tagged/OD4
.....
In the 70s, New York City still had a vital and completely unrecognized blues community.

Producer’s Note
By Fred Seibert 2022
(You can read the 1974 LP liner notes below the producer's note.)

Tom Pomposello was a bluesman. Not a Black American from the South or the inner city, but a bluesman nonetheless. From the time he heard the Animals and the Rolling Stones, he started championing everyone from Muddy Waters to his hero and teacher, Mississippi Fred McDowell (see the notes for Oblivion’s first release, “Live in New York” where Tom accompanies Fred on bass guitar). His dedication to unearthing unheard blues musicians led us to record and release “Blues from the Apple,” an album that was a medley of working New York City musicians in the early 70s.

When I reflect on all the hard work the musicians put into the recording of “Blues from the Apple,” it’s sad to realize it didn’t even sell out the initial pressing of 1000 LPs, Oblivion’s poorest selling vinyl LP. But it’s probably supports the thesis in our record company partner Dick Pennington’s liner notes that “the New York City blues scene has been so far underground that even to the avid aficionado it has remained invisible.” Long Island born and raised, Tom was New York blues biggest supporter. For 30 years he played and advocated local bluesmen on his radio shows at Columbia University's WKCR-FM and New York's non-commercial WBAI.

During a WKCR broadcast in March of 1973 Tom was interviewing New York based (Atlanta born), latter day country blues musician Larry Johnson. He’d brought a friend, guitarist and singer Charles Walker, and they spontaneously broke into an acoustic set featuring Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Decoration Day.” During the interview Tom quizzed Charles about the New York blues scene, since he’d been recording singles for Danny and Bobby Robinson since the 1950s. Tom wasted no time in convincing Dick and me we had to act to start this review of our blues scene.

“Fred,” said Tom in his big brotherly way, “in this business, you can never act too soon.”

His wisdom made sense, even if I was skeptical that we were going to be scooped by Alligator, Rounder or some other 70s indie. We went right to work on what was to be a year of scams, flim flams –more on those later in the downloadable booklet– and yes, some awesome music.

It seemed like we were recording every week, and in fact, my notes show we did well over a dozen sessions to get the album. All the recording was done in WKCR-FM’s Studio 3, recently rebuilt with a custom radio recording 2-track board and Scully recorders, using Neumann, Shure, and AKG microphones borrowed from former student Mark Seiden. Acoustic piano, rollicking drums, electric guitar, and vocals in a tiny room made getting balances pretty tough live to 2-track, but all in all the sound was pretty bluesy.

To me, the special sessions were the ones with drummer Ola Mae Dixon and “Foxy” Ann Yancey in the rhythm section. Ola was a classic 5x5 fireplug, sweet as the day in long. She’d show up straight off the subway, put down her case, and, one by one, extract the entire trap kit from inside of the bass drum. Those tubs could scream under her powerful arms, and to my ears you hear her best on the instrumental “It’s Changin’ Time.” Ann never talked much, and frankly, to this 23 year old suburban white kid, sometimes she was kind of scary. Despite that she captured the whole flavor of the blues best for me the day she showed up on for a Saturday session with a pack of cigarettes, her Stratocaster, and a full length sparkly evening gown ... all at 1 o’clock in the afternoon.

After a year, we retreated to Tom’s almost one bedroom home in Commack, Long Island to edit the hundreds of takes. The coupling Tom’s deep desire to get it right with the overall looseness of the performances made things get hard. We’d set up our sort-of-professional stereo Teac recorder in his living room around 9 o’clock and start work. We’d still be at it when his wife went to sleep in their curtained off bedroom, his three or four year old son Travis would collapse around one in the morning, and when the sun came up we’d still be at it. We’d edit the tracks over and over, trying to capture the perfect feeling, keeping the tempos straight, and working hard around the foibles of a couple of leaders (Charles Walker and Lee Roy Little) who, to be charitable, weren’t always in the best conditions to have consistent takes.

My notebook show that we brought our sequenced sides over to Echo Sound Studio in Levittown where engineer Kevin Behrman helped us balance the levels between sessions and add a slight touch of equalization and echo (WCKR had neither). We sent the reels over to Wakefield Pressing in Phoenix for mastering and the quietest 1000 vinyl LPs made in the United States.

.....
Liner notes from 1974

New York City blues has been one of the Big Apple’s best kept secrets for the past decade and a half. While many local bluesmen have remained “active” at house parties with an occasional gig at a small club, many others, veterans of a by-gone R&B era, have pawned their instruments and abandoned hopes of continuing a career that long ago abandoned them. In short the New York City blues scene has been so far underground that even to the avid aficionado it has remained invisible.

One of the principal reasons for the decline of much of New York’s music scene has no doubt been the gradual exodus of the industry from the East to the West coast. In the case of the blues, however, there are a few other less obvious but crucial factors. On one level, blues, which used to have massive appeal to black audiences, has been replaced in the popular genre by contemporary soul music. On another level, New York is indisputably the center of modern jazz, with much of a potential blues audience absorbed in listening to newer black music. And so while pop audiences stand on mile-long lines outside the Apollo, and the musical “intelligentsia” flock to the city’s jazz clubs, blues has become the forgotten fore bearer of the idiom. Combine all this with the fact that public taste is dictated to a large extent by music entrepreneurs, who see little merit in booking anything besides the big draw rock groups and you’ve got some idea of New York. (There are exceptions, of course.)

You might say Blues from The Apple has been fifteen years in the making. It is the first album featuring New York City’s own urban blues artists issued in that length of time. While the recording sessions were a year long study in frustration for all involved, this album more importantly settles for the artists more than a decade of the proverbial dead ends and rip-offs prevalent in the New York scene. It hopefully will bring Charles Walker and members of the band part of their deserved recognition.

CHARLES WALKER, 51 years of age, was born and raised in Macon, Georgia. He began his professional music career when he moved from Newark, New Jersey to New York. During the late fifties, Charles became one of the city’s best known blues musicians. Those were the days when you could walk into a club in Harlem and expect to hear a blues band fronted by Charles or Tarheel Slim or Hal Paige or Buster Brown or maybe even Wilbert Harrison if you went on the right night. You could go into Bobby Robinson’s Record Shack on 125th Street and expect to come out with the latest blues releases on labels like Fury, Fire, Vest, Holiday, Atlas or a score of others. Charles can tell you, he recorded for them all back then. For a city that was once bustling with blues, things sure seemed to change overnight. Charles weathered the “dry” period nicely however, and still kept trying to hold a band together through all those years.

One of the men who has played with Charles fairly regularly since 1959 is LEE ROY LITTLE, a 48 year old Virginia born and bred piano player and composer. Everybody knows him as “Bluebird” after his song of the same title. The name stuck when both Brownie McGhee and B.B. King picked up on the tune. Beside his records with Charles, Lee Roy has also recorded under his own name for the Cee Jay label. Together Charles and Lee Roy wrote and arranged much of the material on this album, with Charles providing the impetus for everything (including Bluebird’s solo numbers).

The credit for bringing Charles to our attention in the first place must go to LARRY JOHNSON, New York’s contribution to the country blues. Although Larry is best known for his fast, finger-picking guitar work (he currently has solo albums on Blue Goose and Biograph), here he backs Charles with some nice, understated acoustic harmonica on Decoration Day. The tune was recorded quite spontaneously one evening when Larry had come up to do an interview for Honest Tom Pomposello’s blues show on WKCR-FM and he brought Charles along. Charles in turn reverted to his roots with some down home acoustic guitar work on Larry’s Martin.

All the other harp work on the album is handled by BILL DICEY and GOODY HUNT. Dicey has been playing since 1950. He met Charles in the late sixties and has played with him in between gigs with Louisiana Red and john Hammond. He’s done local club dates with Johnny Winter and Muddy Waters and just about anybody else who comes to town in need of a strong harp man. He currently fronts his own group, and the fact that he is not a name familiar to many people really baffles all of us who know his musical abilities. Listen to his forceful solo lead work and beautiful phrasing on ‘Scratch My Back’ as just one example.

GOODY HUNT, the man with the big smile and the star-studded tooth, is a harp novice on the other hand. He’s been playing only a short while under the watchful eye of his crony, Charles Walker.

Charles always had an eye for the women and this has to be the first blues LP where female sidemen (how’s that for ambiguity: female sidemen) play a major role. FOXY ANN YANCEY is a guitarist who has gigged with many local bluesmen over the years. She co-authored one of the albums instrumentals, ‘It’s Changin’ Time’, and she contributed to the sessions in the early stages. OLA MAE DIXON runs a record store in the Bronx, and plays drums on the side. To say that her playing epitomizes the term “backbeat” would be an understatement.

Also appearing on drums is BOBBY KING. Originally from New Orleans, Bobby has spent a good deal of time n the road always looking for a gig. He has previously recorded with Charles and nowadays is associated with Larry Johnson. The fact that he works with a single instrument is as much a statement of the financial plight of a musician who makes his living from playing blues as it is a tribute to a percussionist who can create as much sound with a rigged snare and brushes as many drummers do with full paraphernalia.

Finally, there are the three men who shared the bass playing. SONNY HARDEN is a friend of Charles’ from the Bronx. His primary musical interest lies in helping to promote his son’s soul band. But he still finds time to fill in for Charles when the situation warrants. DAVID LEE REITMAN is a rock musician and former DJ, who has also written a number of articles on blues and rock for various music publications. Known as “Scarsdale Slim” to his friends and enemies alike, David just happened to be in the studio one night when we needed a bass player. HONEST TOM POMPOSELLO was on hand to produce the album and coordinate the whole project. Tom was drafted into service when a snafu arose at the final session and we were left bassless, but he is not inexperienced in these matters having played and recorded with the late Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Perhaps Charles voiced the best summation for this whole endeavor: “All I know is that I want the world to hear me now, ‘cause I’m deeper in the blues now than I’ve ever been before.”

¿Comprende?
– Richard H. Pennington, Jr.
.....
More here: oblivionrecords.co/tagged/OD4

credits

released June 1, 2022

Produced by Honest Tom Pomposello with Fred Seibert
Recorded at WKCR.FM. Columbia University. NYC
Engineering: Fred Seibert
Editing. Fred Seibert and Tom Pomposello
Cover Design. Frank Olinsky
Graphics. The Oblivionettes
Photography: Christine Pomposello, Tom Pomposello, Roy Langbord, John Dunn and Fred Seibert
Photo processing. Dave Cicale

The producers would like to acknowledge the special assistance of Rob Witter, Mike Bifulco and Ms. Josephine Walker who “made our burden so much lighter and our future so much brighter.”

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Oblivion Records Los Angeles, California

Oblivion Records is an independent American blues and jazz recording company, revived during the pandemic after 50 years to drop the digital release of an historic performance of jazz innovator Cecil Taylor in New York City in 1973.

Dick Pennington, Tom Pomposello and Fred Seibert started Oblivion in the back room of Tom's hippie record store on Long Island.

www.OblivionRecords.co
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