The band was created in 1997 by Aleksey Baryshev, a well-known Russian guitar player. At first it was a classical “guitar hero” blues band with an undiluted blues-rock repertoire. However, little by little its creative vision gravitated towards blues formats of Californian persuasion with discernible influences by T-Bone Walker and Tiny Grimes.
At that time, the Blackmailers took part in all major Russian blues festivals and toured the country extensively, but the real breakthrough in the band’s life happened in 2004. Under the impression of the Gypsy Cycle of the famous movie director Emir Kusturica, the Blackmailers attempted to mix the blues with southern Slavic folk music. It was then that they discovered for themselves Balkan wedding-and-funeral bands, such as Fanfare Ciocărlia, Kočani Orkestar, and Mahala Rai Banda, which later reshaped the Blackmailers’ music and concert performances.
In 2005 they released their debut album, Zlatno Zrno Blues. The title was an allusion to the flour mill from Kusturica’s Black Cat, White Cat. The record made it to the 2005 Russian Blues Bestsellers Top Ten compiled by the BluesNews network magazine. The band was noticed by the mass media. They played together with the world’s top bluesmen, such as Junior Watson, Gary Primich, Vidar Busk, Rick Holmstrom, Mitch Kashmar, and Alex Schultz.
The band’s second album, Paradise Fanfare Blues, was released in 2007. Its major influences included Nina Simone, T-Bone Walker, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Johnny Cash on the one hand, and Balkan wedding-and-funeral bands on the other hand. The musicians say that their style is evolving slowly and naturally, and that their new album, another attempt at fusing the blues tradition with the Balkanethnic music, has turned out to be even more organic and powerful.[citation needed]
Goran Bregović is a Bosnian recording artist of Croatian and Serbian descent. He is one of the most internationally known modern musicians and composers of the Slavic-speaking countries in the Balkans, and is one of the few former Yugoslav musicians who has performed at major international venues such as Carnegie Hall, Royal Albert Hall and L'Olympia.
Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who was a pioneer and innovator of the jump blues and electric blues sound. In 2018 Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 67 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In March 1975, Walker died due to health issues in his Los Angeles home.
Electric blues refers to any type of blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.
Steven Haworth Miller is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, known as leader of the Steve Miller Band. He began his career in blues and blues rock and evolved to a more pop-oriented sound during the mid-1970s through the early 1980s, releasing popular singles and albums. Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
Paul Jerrod Pena was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist of Cape Verdean descent.
Freddie King was an American blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is considered one of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar". Mostly known for his soulful and powerful voice and distinctive guitar playing, King had a major influence on electric blues music and on many later blues guitarists.
Earl Zebedee Hooker was a Chicago blues guitarist known for his slide guitar playing. Considered a "musician's musician", he performed with blues artists such as Sonny Boy Williamson II, Junior Wells, and John Lee Hooker and fronted his own bands. An early player of the electric guitar, Hooker was influenced by the modern urban styles of T-Bone Walker and Robert Nighthawk. He recorded several singles and albums as a bandleader and with other well-known artists. His "Blue Guitar", a slide guitar instrumental single, was popular in the Chicago area and was later overdubbed with vocals by Muddy Waters as "You Shook Me".
Joe Louis Walker, also known as JLW is an American musician, best known as an electric blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer. His knowledge of blues history is revealed by his use of older material and playing styles.
Clide Vernon "Sonny" Landreth is an American blues musician from southwest Louisiana who is especially known as a slide guitar player. He was born in Canton, Mississippi, and settled in Lafayette, Louisiana. He lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.
Fanfare Ciocărlia is a twelve-piece Romanian Romani Balkan brass band from the northeastern Romanian village of Zece Prăjini, Iași. The band is made up of Roma musicians, and they are recognised as one of Europe's most popular contemporary Romani bands. Fanfare Ciocărlia are best known for its fast, high-energy music with complex rhythms and high-speed staccato clarinet, saxophone and trumpet solos.
Nenad Janković, known as Dr Nele Karajlić, is a Bosnian Serb comedian, musician, composer, actor and television director living and working in Belgrade, Serbia. One of the founders of the New Primitivism cultural movement in his homeown of Sarajevo, he was also the lead singer and co-author for one of former Yugoslavia's best known bands, Zabranjeno Pušenje. He co-created and participated in TV shows Top lista nadrealista and Složna braća. During the Bosnian War Nele moved to Belgrade where he formed one of two descendant factions of Zabranjeno Pušenje. That splinter of the band was joined by filmmaker Emir Kusturica, and renamed it The No Smoking Orchestra.
"Call It Stormy Monday " is a song written and recorded by American blues electric guitar pioneer T-Bone Walker. It is a slow twelve-bar blues performed in the West Coast blues-style that features Walker's smooth, plaintive vocal and distinctive guitar work. As well as becoming a record chart hit in 1948, it inspired B.B. King and others to take up the electric guitar. "Stormy Monday" became Walker's best-known and most-recorded song.
Matt Schofield is an English blues guitarist and singer. His band, the Matt Schofield Trio, play their own material, a blend of blues, funk and jazz, as well as covers of blues classics such as Albert Collins' "Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home".
"Honky Tonk Blues" was a hit country and western song written and performed by Hank Williams. The original 1952 recording was a major hit, and it later became a hit for later-day superstar Charley Pride.
Balkan brass, popularly known by the Serbian name Truba, is a distinctive style of music originating in the Balkan region as a fusion between military music and folk music. In recent years, it has become popular in a techno-synth fusion throughout Europe, and in pop music in the Anglo-American sphere and throughout the world. Songs like Worth It by Fifth Harmony have brought the style to a new audience. In traditional form, it is popular throughout the Balkans, especially in Serbia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania, although the turbo-folk variety attracts larger audiences. The energetic and fast beats encourage dance and are egalitarian, often resulting in participation by the entire audience; this unpretentious relationship with audiences, highly charged energy and loud and joyful performances by highly skilled musicians has contributed to its successes. Fans of bands inspired by Balkan bands, such as Gogol Bordelo, often state that it is a type of music better experienced than listened to.
Alun Davies is a Welsh guitarist, studio musician, recording artist, and composer who rose to fame primarily with his supporting guitar work and backing vocals as accompanist for English musician Cat Stevens, from early 1970 to 1977.
La Mano Ajena is a Chilean band founded in 2002 that mixes rhythms from Eastern Europe, Latin America, France and Russia, blending all these sounds in a pastiche that also unites the tendencies of each member of the band: rock, punk, Latin American folklore and theater music. This musical project is unique in Chile, and its hybrid sound has been called "klezmer a la chilena" by press.
Pete Mayes was an American Texas blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. He was variously known as Texas Pete Mayes and T-Bone Man.
The No Smoking Orchestra, frequently credited as Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra, is a Serbian garage rock band formed in Belgrade in 1993.
Louis Collins, known professionally as Mr. Bo, was an American electric blues guitarist, singer and songwriter. Primarily working as a live performer in Detroit for four decades, his co-written song, "If Trouble Was Money", was later recorded by both Charlie Musselwhite and Albert Collins.
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