This Little Artist

Little Milton may not have been the greatest R&B artist or the greatest blues artist or the greatest soul artist of all time, but he and Bobby Bland were easily the two best ever at incorporating all three genres into all their work for many decades. "Grits Ain't Groceries" is sheer late-'60s R&B greatness - an exciting, rollicking remake of the Titus Turner tune that turned out to be Little Willie John's début hit [#5 R&B] in 1955 (then titled "All Around the World"). Little Milton scored a #13 soul / # 73 pop hit with it. I thought its passionately powerful and smoldering Chicago blues B-side "I Can't Quit You Baby" (co-written by Milton, and with that dazzling guitar I mentioned) made it an unbeatable combination, worthy of of #1 - at least on the soul charts…

It is easier to define Dionne Warwick by what she isn't rather than what she is. Although she grew up singing in church, she is not a gospel singer. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are clear influences, but she is not a jazz singer. R&B is also part of her background, but she is not really a soul singer, either, at least not in the sense that Aretha Franklin is…

WMRI is Russian synthesist Mike Winchester. He has quite a few releases spread throughout the Internet, on sites like Jamendo, AmieStreet, Bandcamp, etc. And while much of it is quite good, I feel that his work really shines on a series of recent releases that he alludes to as the “Ambient Gem Series”.

~ Free Floating Music

It is no exaggeration to call Little Walter the Jimi Hendrix of the electric harp: he redefined what the instrument was and what it could do, pushing the instrument so far into the future that his music still sounds modern decades after it was recorded. Little Walter wasn't the first musician to amplify the harmonica but he arguably was the first to make the harp sound electric, twisting twitching, vibrant runs out of his instrument; nearly stealing the show from Muddy Waters on his earliest Chess recordings; and so impressing Leonard Chess that he made Muddy keep Walter as his harpist even after Waters broke up his band. Chess also made Walter into his studio's house harpist and started to release Little Walter solo records with the instrumental "Juke" in 1952. "Juke" became a smash hit and turned Little Walter into a star, making him a steady presence on the '50s R&B charts.