Blind Willie McTell was a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues. Unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voices of Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. McTell performed in various musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music and hokum.
Ralph McTell is an English singer-songwriter and guitar player who has been an influential figure on the UK folk music scene since the 1960s. McTell is best known for his song "Streets of London" (1969), which has been covered by over two hundred artists around the world.
Michael Ronson was an English musician, songwriter, arranger, and producer. He achieved critical and commercial success working with David Bowie as the guitarist of the Spiders from Mars. He was a session musician who recorded five studio albums with Bowie followed by four with Ian Hunter, and also worked as a sideman in touring bands with Van Morrison and Bob Dylan. A classically trained musician, Ronson was known for his melodic approach to guitar playing.
Anthony Edward Visconti is an American record producer, musician and singer. Since the late 1960s, he has worked with an array of performers. His first hit single was T. Rex's "Ride a White Swan" in 1970, the first of many hits in collaboration with Marc Bolan. Visconti's lengthiest involvement was with David Bowie: intermittently from the production and arrangement of Bowie's 1968 single "In the Heat of the Morning" / "London Bye Ta-Ta" to his final album Blackstar in 2016, Visconti produced and occasionally performed on many of Bowie's albums. Visconti's work on Blackstar was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical and his production of Angelique Kidjo's Djin Djin received the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.
"Hesitation Blues" is a popular song adapted from a traditional tune. One version was published by Billy Smythe, Scott Middleton, and Art Gillham. Another was published by W.C. Handy as "Hesitating Blues". Because the tune is traditional, many artists have taken credit as writer, frequently adapting the lyrics of one of the two published versions. Adaptations of the lyrics vary widely, though typically the refrain is recognizably consistent. The song is a jug band standard and is also played as blues and sometimes as Western swing. It is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 11765. Composer William Grant Still arranged a version of the song in 1916 while working with Handy.
"Black Country Rock" is a song by the English musician David Bowie, released on his 1970 album The Man Who Sold the World. The song was recorded in May 1970, with sessions taking place at Trident and Advision Studios in London. The lineup featured Bowie on lead vocals, guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist/producer Tony Visconti, drummer Mick Woodmansey and Ralph Mace on Moog synthesiser. The track was mostly composed by Ronson and Visconti, who developed it using a basic song sketch from Bowie. Labelled under the working title "Black Country Rock", Bowie used the title to write the lyrics towards the end of the sessions, resulting in a repeated two-line verse and chorus. A blues rock and hard rock number, Bowie imitates T. Rex's Marc Bolan in his vocal performance.
Live! in Europe is the third album by Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher, released in 1972. It is a series of live recordings made during his European tour that year. Unusual for a live album, it contains only two songs previously recorded and released by Gallagher. The other songs are either new Gallagher songs or Gallagher's interpretation of traditional blues songs.
Charlie Parr is an American country blues musician. Born in Austin, Minnesota, he spent part of his childhood in Hollandale before starting his music career in Duluth. His influences include Charlie Patton, Bukka White, Reverend Gary Davis, Dave Van Ronk, Mississippi John Hurt, and his self-professed "hero" "Spider" John Koerner. He plays a Mule resonator, National resonator guitar, a fretless open-back banjo, and a twelve-string guitar, often in the Piedmont blues style. He is divorced from Emily Parr, who occasionally adds vocals to his music. He has two children.
Great White Wonder, or GWW, is the first notable rock bootleg album, released in July 1969, and containing unofficially released recordings by Bob Dylan. It is also the first release of the famous bootleg record label Trademark of Quality. Seven of the twenty-four tracks presented here were recorded with The Band in the summer of 1967 in West Saugerties, New York, during the informal sessions that were later released in a more complete form in Dylan's 1975 album The Basement Tapes. Much of the other material consists of a recording made in December 1961 in a Minnesota hotel room, studio outtakes from several of Dylan's albums, and a live performance on The Johnny Cash Show. It was the first time that these previously unreleased recordings came to the market; many more would be released in similar formats over the coming years, though most were single albums, not double albums like this record.
Spiral Staircase – Classic Songs is a double CD compilation of tracks from Ralph McTell's early Transatlantic LPs Eight Frames a Second, Spiral Staircase, My Side of Your Window and Revisited. It was released in 1997.
Not till Tomorrow is the 1972 album by British Folk musician Ralph McTell. Produced by Tony Visconti, it was McTell's fifth album to be released – and first album to chart – in the UK; and his third album to be released in the U.S. Ralph had been phoned and asked if he had decided on a title for the album and, wishing to give himself another day to come up with a title, responded "Not till tomorrow" which was misunderstood to be the name he had given to the album. By the time the mistake was found it was too late.
You Well-Meaning Brought Me Here is the 1971 album by British folk musician Ralph McTell. The album was produced by Gus Dudgeon, who also produced Elton John's early albums. McTell was now managed by Jo Lustig but still living with his young family in a council flat in Croydon.
Easy is the 1974 album by British Folk musician Ralph McTell. Guest musicians include folk pioneers Wizz Jones, Bert Jansch and Danny Thompson from Pentangle; Gerry Conway from Fotheringay; and Dave Mattacks from Fairport Convention. McTell started writing for the album at a friend's cottage in a tiny hamlet near the village of St Ewe, Cornwall. He fell in love with Cornwall and purchased a derelict cottage which he made habitable and still possessed 30 years later.
Van Ronk Sings is an album by American folksinger Dave Van Ronk, released in July 1961.
Sixteen Tons of Bluegrass is an album by Pete Stanley and Wizz Jones produced by Chas McDevitt, and originally released in the UK1966 on Columbia Records. Wizz & Pete were probably the first British musicians to successfully interpret America's favourite traditional music for UK audiences. The album was also released on the Joker label in Italy as Way Out West, with a different cover design. Wizz Jones is quoted, describing the cover, "I've only seen this once, as I recall the alternative sleeve design is hilarious. A mini-skirted girl is perched on a gate being serenaded by a smart young man in blue jeans!"
Moonshine is the eighth album by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch, released in 1973.
Spiral Staircase is British folk musician Ralph McTell's second album. Produced by Gus Dudgeon and released in the UK in 1969, its opening track, "Streets of London", has become McTell's signature tune. "Rizraklaru" is an anagram of "Rural Karzi". The sleeve design was by Peter Thaine, a friend of McTell from Croydon Art College.
My Side of Your Window is the third album released in the UK by British folk musician Ralph McTell, and the first produced by the artist himself. He had left college and had moved into his first house in Putney. "Girl on a Bicycle" was covered by Herman van Veen and was a hit in the Netherlands and West Germany. The song "Michael in the Garden" is one of the earliest to reference autism.
Streets... is an album by British folk musician Ralph McTell. It was McTell's most successful album, entering the UK album chart on 15 February 1975 and remaining there for twelve weeks. It opens with McTell's hit single, "Streets of London".
The Glenn Miller Story is a 1954 soundtrack album released on Decca Records with songs from The Glenn Miller Story, the film biography of Glenn Miller, starring James Stewart and June Allyson. The collection had eight songs from the film recorded under the direction of Joseph Gershenson.
