Mar 16, 2018

RhoDeo 1810 Grooves

Hello, since today's artist sudden death there have been a lot of retrospectives cashing in on the man's good name in music, hence i start his grooves with 4 samplers and next week some of his solo albums


Today's Artist is an American blues, soul, and funk musician and singer-songwriter. A flamboyant showman and electric guitarist in the style of T-Bone Walker, he recorded throughout the 1950s and 1960s with some success. His creative reinvention in the 1970s with disco and funk overtones, saw him have hits with "Ain't That a Bitch", "I Need It" and "Superman Lover". His successful recording career spanned forty years..Our man was not just a guitarist: he was a master musician. He could call out charts; he could write a beautiful melody or a nasty groove at the drop of a hat; he could lay on the harmonies and he could come up with a whole sound....... N'joy

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Watson was born in Houston, Texas. His father John Sr. was a pianist, and taught his son the instrument. But young Watson was immediately attracted to the sound of the guitar, in particular the electric guitar as played by T-Bone Walker and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. His grandfather, a preacher, was also musical. "My grandfather used to sing while he'd play guitar in church, man," Watson reflected many years later. When Johnny was 11, his grandfather offered to give him a guitar if, and only if, the boy didn't play any of the "devil's music". Watson agreed. A musical prodigy, Watson played with Texas bluesmen Albert Collins and Johnny Copeland. His parents separated in 1950, when he was 15. His mother moved to Los Angeles, and took Watson with her. In his new city, Watson won several local talent shows. This led to his employment, while still a teenager, with jump blues-style bands such as Chuck Higgins's Mellotones and Amos Milburn. He worked as a vocalist, pianist, and guitarist. He quickly made a name for himself in the African-American juke joints of the West Coast, where he first recorded for Federal Records in 1952. He was billed as Young John Watson until 1954. That year, he saw the Joan Crawford film Johnny Guitar, and a new stage name was born.

Watson affected a swaggering, yet humorous personality, indulging a taste for flashy clothes and wild showmanship on stage. His "attacking" style of playing, without a plectrum, resulted in him often needing to change the strings on his guitar once or twice a show, because he "stressified on them" so much, as he put it. Watson's ferocious "Space Guitar" single of 1954 pioneered guitar feedback and reverb. Watson would later influence a subsequent generation of guitarists. His song "Gangster of Love" was first released on Keen Records in 1957. It did not appear in the charts at the time, but was later re-recorded and became a hit in 1978, becoming Watson's "most famous song".

He toured and recorded with his friend Larry Williams, as well as Little Richard, Don and Dewey, The Olympics, Johnny Otis and, in the mid-1970s with David Axelrod. In 1975 he is a guest performer on two tracks (flambe vocals on the out-choruses of "San Ber'dino" and "Andy") on the Frank Zappa album One Size Fits All. He also played with Sam Cooke, Herb Alpert and George Duke. But as the popularity of blues declined and the era of soul music dawned in the 1960s, Watson transformed himself from southern blues singer with pompadour into urban soul singer in a pimp hat. His new style was emphatic – the gold teeth, broad-brimmed hats, flashy suits, fashionable outsized sunglasses and ostentatious jewelry made him one of the most colorful figures in the West Coast funk scene. He modified his music accordingly. His albums Ain't That a Bitch and Real Mother For Ya were landmark recordings of 1970s funk.

The shooting death of his friend Larry Williams in 1980 and other personal setbacks led to Watson briefly withdrawing from the spotlight in the 1980s. "I got caught up with the wrong people doing the wrong things", he was quoted as saying by The New York Times. The release of his album Bow Wow in 1994 brought Watson more visibility and chart success than he had ever known. The album received a Grammy Award nomination.

In a 1994 interview with David Ritz for liner notes to The Funk Anthology, Watson was asked if his 1980 song "Telephone Bill" anticipated rap music. "Anticipated?" Watson replied. "I damn well invented it!... And I wasn't the only one. In 1995, he was given a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in a presentation and performance ceremony at the Hollywood Palladium. In February 1995, Watson was interviewed by Tomcat Mahoney for his Brooklyn, New York-based blues radio show The Other Half. Watson discussed at length his influences and those he had influenced, referencing Guitar Slim, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He made a special guest appearance on Bo Diddley's 1996 album A Man Amongst Men, playing vocoder on the track "I Can't Stand It" and singing on the track "Bo Diddley Is Crazy".

Watson died of a heart attack on May 17, 1996, collapsing on stage while on tour in Yokohama, Japan.[9] His remains were brought home for interment at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California and buried in the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Enduring Honor, Holy Terrace entrance.

Watson, a recognized master of the Fender Stratocaster guitar, has been compared to Jimi Hendrix and allegedly became irritated when asked about this comparison, supposedly stating: "I used to play the guitar standing on my hands. I had a 150-foot cord and I could get on top of the auditorium – those things Jimi Hendrix was doing, I started that shit." Frank Zappa stated that "Watson's 1956 song 'Three Hours Past Midnight' inspired me to become a guitarist". Watson contributed to Zappa's albums One Size Fits All (1975), Them or Us (1984), Thing-Fish (1984) and Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention (1985). Zappa also named "Three Hours Past Midnight" his favorite record in a 1979 interview.Steve Miller not only did a cover of "Gangster of Love" on his 1968 album Sailor (substituting "Is your name "Stevie 'Guitar' Miller?" for the same line with Watson's name), he made a reference to it in his 1969 song "Space Cowboy" ("And you know that I'm a gangster of love") as well as in his 1973 hit song "The Joker" ("Some call me the gangster of love"). Miller had also borrowed the sobriquet for his own "The Gangster Is Back", on his 1971 album Rock Love.

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Although Johnny "Guitar" Watson had already recorded some sides for Federal (including the astonishing instrumental "Space Guitar"), the majority of those tunes featured the piano-playing Young John Watson. It was when he began recording for the Bihari Brothers' RPM subsidiary of Modern Records that he "became" Johnny "Guitar" Watson and his amazing legacy really began. The songs are solid West Coast blues, but they're brought to the next level by Watson's impassioned vocals and his incredible biting, staccato guitar solos. Watson's tenure at RPM was short-lived (as were most of his label relationships) and all these tracks were recorded in 1955, but they were wildly influential on a number of great guitarists and still hold their power 50 years down the road. This material has been released umpteen times over the years, but the remastering of this compilation has more clarity and warmth than the others. Johnny "Guitar" Watson recorded some great material for a variety of labels, but the real meat of his blues legacy is on these RPM sides. Fans of tough '50s blues and great blues guitar owe it to themselves to check this stuff out.



Johnny Guitar Watson - The Best Of The Modern Years   (flac 206mb)

01 Hot Little Mama 2:41
02 I Love to Love You 2:39
03 Don't Touch Me 3:17
04 Too Tired 2:41
05 Those Lonely, Lonely Nights 2:53
06 Someone Cares for Me 2:58
07 Oh Baby 2:40
08 Give a Little 3:02
09 Three Hours Past Midnight 3:25
10 Ruben 2:22
11 Love Me, Baby 2:52
12 She Moves Me 2:53
13 Love Bandit (aka Gangster of Love) 2:09
14 Lonely Girl 2:33
15 Ain't Gonna Hush 2:34
16 Hot Little Mama No. 2 3:22
17 I Love to Love You 2:47
18 Three Hours Past Midnight 3:30

.Johnny Guitar Watson - The Best Of The Modern Years  (ogg  99mb)

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Throughout the album in extremely odd places the music will segue into comments from blues Godfather Johnny Otis, plus an occassional instrumental break featuring Johnny Watson and Shuggie Otis on acoustic guitars. Recorded Los Angeles, early 1955 (1,2,3,5) til 1961 (15,16)



Johnny Guitar Watson - The Gangster Is Back (1955-1961)    (flac 213mb)

01 Too Tired
02 Don't Touch Me
03 Hot Little Mama
04 Blues Side
05 I Love To Love You
06 Oh Baby
07 Someone Cares For Me
08 She Moves Me
09 Love Me Baby
10 Gangster Of Love
11 One Room Country Shack
12 Acoustic Instrumental
13 One More Kiss
14 Johnny Guitar
15 Looking Back
16 The Eagle Is Back

Johnny Guitar Watson - The Gangster Is Back (1955-1961)  (ogg  87mb )

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Like many a journeyman bluesman, Johnny "Guitar" Watson led something of an itinerant recording life during much of his career, wandering from label to label in the 1950s and 1960s with just a little chart success. Untouchable! does a great service to collectors by assembling 27 tracks from 1959-1966, many of which, surprisingly, had not only never previously come out on CD, but had never been reissued in any form. While in general these are blues/R&B crossover sides, there's more variety than one might think, and though the hopping between styles makes it a little uneven, it makes for a better listen in one gulp than you might expect. There's some relatively straight blues, particularly in the earlier sides; there are rather more blends of blues/R&B with pop than many blues fans might realize exist, sometimes on covers of pop standards, and sometimes employing strings; and there are cuts, particularly in the mid-'60s selections, that verge on out-and-out soul. It's true that the three songs most likely to be familiar to general blues and rock fans are among the very best material here, those being "Looking Back," which was covered by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers (with Peter Green on guitar); "Cuttin' In," a 1962 Top Ten R&B hit and one of Watson's most effective fusions of blues (with biting guitar) and orchestration; and "Gangster of Love," one of Watson's signature tunes (though this 1963 King single, fine as it is, is not his original version). But everything here is at least OK, and much of it is above average to excellent, even on some tracks where the influences of others like Clarence "Frogman" Henry, the Olympics, the Temptations, and Ray Charles are obvious. There might be a little less guitar pyrotechnics than some straight-ahead blues fans would like, and it's unfortunate that a few interesting cuts referred to in the liner notes from this period were not available for licensing. But overall it's a solid overview of a time when Watson was among the more interesting (and certainly overlooked) artists building bridges between the blues, R&B, and soul. All in all, “Untouchable!” paints a fascinating picture of a man who had the will, and found the way, to bridge two eras of black music, prior to his greatest success.



 Johnny Guitar Watson - Untouchable! The Classic 1959-1966 Recordings    (flac  230mb)

01 The Bear (aka the Preacher and the Bear) 2:54
02 One More Kiss 2:18
03 Untouchable 2:35
04 The Eagle Is Back 2:34
05 Looking Back 1:56
06 Johnny Guitar 2:25
07 Posin' 2:40
08 Embraceable You 2:41
09 Broke and Lonely 2:58
10 I Just Wants Me Some Love 2:46
11 Cold, Cold Heart 2:29
12 The Nearness of You 3:00
13 Sweet Lovin' Mama 3:02
14 Cuttin' In 3:15
15 What You Do to Me 2:30
16 That's the Chance You've Got to Take 3:12
17 Gangster of Love 2:53
18 You Better Love Me 2:33
19 In the Evenin' 2:59
20 I Say I Love You 3:01
21 Those Lonely, Lonely Nights 2:48
22 Baby Don't Leave 2:34
23 Ain't Gonna Move 2:19
24 Wait a Minute, Baby 2:06
25 Oh So Fine 2:10
26 Big Bad Wolf 2:36
27 You Can Stay (But the Noise Must Go) 2:43

Johnny Guitar Watson - Untouchable! The Classic 1959-1966 Recordings  (ogg  115mb)

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The Proper Introduction to Johnny "Guitar" Watson and His Space Guitar" is indeed an introduction to Watson's early years, long before he became a funk master. The 18 cuts on this set are mainly from the 1950s, when Watson was a blues and R&B kingpin burning up the soul circuit and the jukeboxes in the South and up into Chicago. He came out of the Joe Turner tradition on the one hand, and the great T-Bone Walker Texas blues heritage on the other. This set is close in proximity to the Varese Sarabande collection that was issued with a similar name in 2004, but the Proper set has better notes and some better selections, such as "Motor Head Baby." The music, from "Highway 60" through to "Half Pint-A-Whiskey" and the title cut, and all the way down to his badass strolling rocker "Those Lonely Nights," offer a glimpse of the direction he would go in, but he's still far from the Gangster of Love image he would project during the funk years.



 Johnny "Guitar" Watson - A Proper Introduction To Johnny Guitar Watson - Space Guitar   (flac 244mb)

01 No I Can't 2:28
02 Motor Head Baby 2:39
03 Highway 60 2:27
04 Sad Fool 3:06
05 I Got Eyes 2:28
06 Space Guitar 2:42
07 Walkin' To My Baby 2:36
08 Thinking 2:34
09 Space Guitar 2:42
10 Half Pint-A-Whiskey 2:54
11 Gettin' Drunk 2:46
12 You Can't Take It With You 2:40
13 Hot Little Mama 2:41
14 I Love To Love You 2:39
15 Too Tired 2:41
16 Don't Touch Me 3:17
17 Those Lonely, Lonely Nights 2:53
18 Someone Cares For Me 2:56

. Johnny "Guitar" Watson - A Proper Introduction To Johnny Guitar Watson - Space Guitar  (ogg  097mb)

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