Development of the British Blues and Rhythm --- show 23 --- 1-28-2015

Development of the British Blues and Rhythm

   --- show 23 ---     1-28-2015  
Fleetwood Mac BBC                    1968-1970
Jo Ann Kelly                                   1968 on

Am I getting bored with Fleetwood Mac?  Are four shows to many?  Or am I just blown away by the stunningly powerful vocals of this lady they share today’s show with?  I was aware of Jo Ann Kelly very early on from her version of Big Bill Broonzy’s I Feel Good when it appeared on one of the Immediate compilation LPs, Blues Anytime, which came on the market back around 1968 and, while I very much liked her rendition, it was not enough to make me delve much deeper into her apparently acoustic Blues leanings.  This impression was strengthened when she was one of the main contributors to another pair of compilation discs for Liberty Records, Me and the Devil and I Asked for Water She Gave Me Gasoline, because I again thought the whole albums were more country Blues oriented than I enjoyed; funny how my opinion has changed as almost all of these tracks made it into today’s show.  Shame on me!  I had the same opinion of her younger brother Dave but do not feel the same remorse because I had very little of his music in my collection (only two songs plus one with Jo Ann, Buy You a Diamond Ring, all on the Me and the Devil LP mentioned above) and he remained an acoustic guitarist until 1969, well into the urban-oriented Blues boom.  It should be noted, however, that he was voted the Best Acoustic Artist in the BBC polls for the years 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1998 as well as making himself into an excellent electric guitarist.

Jo Ann was one of a group of Blues players who became acquainted as they hung around at Carey’s Swing Shop, the only store at the time to import American R&B records in their South London neighborhood.  Obviously Dave was among them as were T.S. “Tony” McPhee and Steve Rye and they will appear together in some combination in a handful of groups I am anxiously awaiting presenting to you in the next few months.  Another common accompanist for Jo Ann was Bob Hall, again part of the record store crowd.  When he went with Miss Kelly to a club that did not have a piano, he would accompany her on mandolin.  In late 1967, Dave accepted Hall’s invitation to join the John Dummer Blues Band.  Guitarist McPhee joined Dave as they recorded on the first Dummer album and Rye was the harp player in the band until just before its recording session.  One obvious advantage of having Dave in the band was that Jo Ann often added additional vocals both on stage and in the studio.  Dave stayed with Dummer until late 1969 and that year he also put out his first LP in his own name, Keeping it in the Family, accompanied by Hall and guitarist / vocalist Adrian Pietryga, also from the Dummer band, former Mayall bassist Keith Tillman and, of course, Jo Ann.  Both the Kellys also performed on the 1969 album Tramp along with Brunning and Hall and a couple of members of Fleetwood Mac, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist Danny Kirwan.  All in all, sounds like a busy year.

McPhee left the Dummer band to reform his Groundhogs and Rye was there with him, but left after their first album.  Dave and Jo Ann joined Hall in time for the third Brunning Sunflower Band album (1970), Sunflower being Hall’s nickname, and Rye played harmonica there as well.  Dave’s next solo release was in 1971, Black Blue Kelly, featuring the same cast as above among its numerous guest performers but most notably Peter Green.  Neither Tramp nor Dave’s two solo LPs are readily available but you will be hearing the other albums mentioned fairly soon.

But really, even though much of her career was in support of her brother, our focus should be on Jo Ann herself.  The Kellys were born in Streatham in the South London area, Jo Ann on January 5^th 1944 and Dave in 1947.  “I started playing guitar when I was about 13.  I played just about anything, from Skiffle, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers to Lonnie Donegan.”  She became enamored of the Blues when she was 19 after hearing it at the Swing Shop and met Bob Hall there in 1962.  They formed a Blues duo and gained regular gigs playing the intermissions at the Star club in Croydon, Surrey.  One of the headliners were the Yardbirds, who started a residency in November 1963, and Jo Ann often joined them as a guest vocalist.  Remembering the first meeting, “I went down to the rehearsal and Eric Clapton was there.  I had a background of Everly Brothers and the song we did was Baby What You Want Me To Do, which is a Jimmy Reed tune.  At the rehearsal I did an Everly Brothers swing while Clapton’s guitar work just knocked me out”.

In 1964 Jo Ann put together four songs from a session at McPhee’s home on a limited edition EP and three of those open up our first set.  (We learned about a year ago in our Alexis Korner discussions that there was some kind of tax benefit to limiting a release to less than 100 copies so again the number here was 99.)  In 1965 she added the use of a 12-string guitar for some of her material and in November she made her first true studio recordings.  “Mike Vernon approached me to do a couple of tracks for his Purdah label, which have since come out on the Immediate Anthology of the British Blues albums.  The peeving thing about that is that I haven’t had any royalties despite them selling 99,000 in the States – they must owe me about 500 pounds.  Anyway, I did two tracks for Vernon and he put me off recording for a long time.  The atmosphere was all wrong and he was very unhelpful … I wasn’t used to studios at all and I hated the whole thing.”  McPhee and Rye accompanied Jo Ann on both songs while Hall added piano along with two Groudhogs Pete Cruikshank on bass and Vaughn Rees on drums on I Feel So Good; McPhee, Rye and the two Kellys were the makeup of Ain’t Seen No Whiskey.

In addition to having a full docket of her own gigs, Jo Ann could be found sitting in with McPhee’s Groundhogs or the Dummer band.  She accepted the offer to join Dummer in the studio for their first LP, Cabal, where she contributed vocals on two songs.  “Jo Ann Kelly is really great, she knocks me out.”  As Jo Ann put it, “I do like singing with a band though, but I wouldn’t have a group of my own.  There are so many hang-ups with a band.  I have a lot of musician friends … and I can always jam with them when I want”.

Despite her growing acclaim, Jo Ann was not looking for a recording contract.  “I’m just not interested. … For making money I suppose records are great.  But I can earn a comfortable living from folk clubs and I would rather do that and get better as a singer than have myself on record.  After all, most of the Blues greats didn’t record until they were over 30.”

At the end of September 1969 she played on the same bill as Canned Heat (as well as jamming with their harp man Alan Wilson earlier in the month) and lead singer Bob Hite invited her to join the band.  She later regretted turning down the opportunity.  “I now think it would have been great to do a year with Canned Heat because then I would have had the experience and made my name.  I was just so much into acoustic Blues – a bit of a purist, I’m afraid.”

She did strike up a deal with Nick Perls, founder of the old-timey Blues label Yazoo, and Perls set her up with a five year deal with CBS.  Picking a music convention to launch the contract, the Los Angeles Free Press described her as “a blues singer from England who looks Mary Hopkinish and sounds like a cross between Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton”.  

CBS wanted to team her up with their rising star, Johnny Winter.  She spent four days at Winter’s retreat in the hills of New York State jamming with Johnny and his brother Edgar with the idea of combining them on a tour where they would each do an acoustic set, then a duet and winding up with Jo Ann joining in with Johnny’s electric band.  Everything fell through when CBS was only willing to pay expenses of $80 a week.  “I said, ‘Man, that won’t even take care of my plane fare, let alone my hotel’.  So the tour didn’t come off, largely because they weren’t prepared to sink any money into it, and they expected the management to.  They were lazy about the whole thing, really, and I was too ignorant to push for anything.”  CBS was done with Jo Ann after her self-titled debut album, recorded live in clubs, failed to sell up to their standards.

She did get an American tour of sorts (only three gigs) in 1970 with the New York Times opining, “When you think of girl folk singers, you tend to find sweet voices with perhaps a touch of Jazz.  With this girl you find an old stovepipe with a touch of rust.  A fine Blues singer”.

Over the next few years Jo Ann maintained her active performance schedule as well as recording sessions for Brunning Hall’s albums released in 1970 and 1971.  She also joined folk singer John Fahey on a highly respected LP in 1972 and actually formed her own band that year. Spare Rib, but that project folded after about a year because of the high cost of keeping a band on the road.

In 1973 she got another American tour, this time with Taj Mahal and Larry Coryell, and the next year participated in a second Tramp album, Put a Record On.  She met guitarist Pete Emery, who had been in Dummer’s Oobleedooblee Band, and the two of them put out a 1976 album, Do It for Red Rag, but surely their greatest accomplishment was their daughter Ellie.

Remaining popular through the 80s, she recorded for her brother’s combo, The Blues Band, as well as Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, and Stefan Grossman.  There was another Jo Ann Kelly album in 1984, Just Restless, on the Appaloosa label out of Italy.

Jo Ann went in for surgery on a brain tumor in September of 1988, leaving with a prognosis of two years life expectancy, too true of a prediction as she passed away on October 21^st 1990 at the age of 46.

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You Never Know
Honey Hush
Buddy’s Song
Can’t Believe You Want to Leave
Tallahassee Lassie
When Will I Be Loved
Hang Onto a Dream
Linda
   Fleetwood Mac

Long Black Hair

New Milk Cow Blues
I Look Down the Road and I Wonder
Same Thing on my Mind
I Feel So Good
Buy You a Diamond Ring
When You Got a Good Friend
   Jo Ann Kelly

Jeremy’s Contribution to Doo Wop

Every Day I Have the Blues
Watch Out for Yourself, Mr. Jones
Man of Action
Someone’s Gonna Get Their Head
     Kicked In Tonight
        (credited as Earl Vince & the Valiants)
   Fleetwood Mac

Oh Death

Rollin’ and Tumblin’
Make Me a Pallet on the Floor
Rock Me
Black Rat Swing
Walking Blues
Just Like I Treat You
Keep Your Hands Out of My Pockets
*Levee Camp Holler
*Early Morning Come (add if time permits)
   Jo Ann Kelly

A Fool No More
I Can’t Hold Out
Preachin’ Blues
Man of the World
Farewell (demo version)
Before the Beginning
   Fleetwood Mac

Sugar Babe

The Girl I Love, She Got Long Curly Hair
     (Going to Brownsville)
Special Rider Blues
Someday Baby Blues
Moon Going Down
Sweet Nuthins
Big Boss Man
   Jo Ann Kelly

 

Rattlesnake Shake
   Fleetwood Mac