Blues at Centrum

Wanda Jackson Leads 'Roots of Rock' Workshop

Rock & Roll was the first form of truly American music that broke down racial barriers, crossed cultures and caused America’s youth to rise up out of their segregated seating sections at concerts and dance in aisles together - at a time when integration was illegal.

Our good friend Daryl Davis, in addition to being on Blues faculty this year, also happens to be the musical director for Chuck Berry, and is passionate about using music to bring people together.

To get to the chase: Daryl has put together an awesome gathering at Centrum right after the Blues festival, August 3-6, 2008. It's called Roots of Rock, and it's going to be a rumblin' celebration of old-school Rock & Roll and Rockabilly.

We're honored to have the great Wanda Jackson as our special guest for the gathering. A native of Oklahoma, Wanda's talents were discovered by another great entertainer from the southwest, Hank Thompson. In her early years, Wanda worked with another young entertainer that was just getting started by the name of Elvis Presley. Elvis encouraged Wanda to try her hand at Rock & Roll. She did in 1956, and became America's first female rock & roll singer.

[Video of Wanda Jackson]

One of her many nicknames is "The Sweet Lady with the Nasty Voice." After playing the video above, you can see why.

Visit our Roots of Rock page to learn more and to register (participants will be able to play in a band with Wanda!).

Jump Blues and Swing

For those of you blues hounds who are into jump blues and swing, we salute you.

But more than that, we want to you jam.

To help with that, we're offering a special weekend in May just for you. We've invited Mike Dowling, Paul Anastasio, Jennifer Scott, and Rene Worst to conduct a Swing Intensive, May 8-11, 2008.

The world of swing is a big one, but with this intensive long weekend the focus will be on "vintage swing", classics from the 30's and 40's that will include jump blues, and western swing, instrumentals as well as vocals. Morning sessions will be devoted to technique, while afternoons will include a faculty-led band lab that will demonstrate how to "put it all together."

Please visit the Swing Intensive page on our Fiddle Tunes site to learn more and to register--space is very limited in this special weekend. Hope to see you there!

For those of you blues hounds who are into jump blues and swing, we salute you.

But more than that, we want to you jam.

To help with that, we're offering a special weekend in May just for you. We've invited Mike Dowling, Paul Anastasio, Jennifer Scott, and Rene Worst to conduct a Swing Intensive, May 8-11, 2008.

The world of swing is a big one, but with this intensive long weekend the focus will be on "vintage swing", classics from the 30's and 40's that will include jump blues, and western swing, instrumentals as well as vocals. Morning sessions will be devoted to technique, while afternoons will include a faculty-led band lab that will demonstrate how to "put it all together."

Please visit the Swing Intensive page on our Fiddle Tunes site to learn more and to register--space is very limited in this special weekend. Hope to see you there!

The Music of Louisiana Red

The current blues scene in the U.S. and Europe is characterized by a wide variety of styles and musicians. However, as the years go passing by there are fewer and fewer artists left that were active during the formative years of blues music, those who participated in the development of the music.

Thus, it is all the more important and cause for celebration that there are still artists such as Louisiana Red.

Louisiana Red not only plays the blues, he lives it through his guitar and his singing. When Red performs, the songs are often only a launching pad for expressing his immediate feelings in the almost lost tradition of spontaneous composition that goes back to the original Delta Blues artists an even further to the west-African griot bards.

In a career spanning over half a century, Louisiana Red has played with just about every major bluesman you can name, some of the most memorable encounters being his jams with B.B.King and Muddy Waters. But it doesn’t matter who he plays with or where he appears - Louisiana Red brings the same intensitiy and enthusiasm to every stage he appears on, whether in front of 10,000 people at a festival or 100 people in an intimate club.

2008 Blues Information

As September draws to a close, we want to make sure you know a few things about items close to the Blues universe at Centrum in 2008:

1. Dates for the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival are July 27-August 3, 2008.
2. We'll begin taking workshop registrations for the Festival in about a month (October/November).
3. We'll be doing a serious Bottleneck Slide Intensive with Orville Johnson, Steve James, and Mike Dowling, January 31-February 3, 2008. You can register for that today.
4. We'll also be doing Dobro and Lap Slide Intensives in the summer and fall of 2008. Stay tuned.

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