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17/05/2004 Blues Legends
Paul Jones - lead singer with pop band Manfred Mann in the mid-'60s - is probably the most respected English authority on the blues. His Thursday night Radio 2 blues magazine programme has been running for many years - I know one crackpot who has a recorded every single show. Jones's encyclopaedic insider knowledge and his infectious enthusiasm overcome the disadvantage (in the down-and-dirty world of the blues) of an inappropriately posh English choirboy voice. He's an outstanding broadcaster. For the first show in his new Blues Legends series, Jones profiled T-Bone Walker. An odd choice at first glance - Walker is little known. He only had one hit tune, They Call It Stormy Monday (erroneously known, Jones pointed out, as Stormy Monday Blues), but it is one of the best-loved blues standards. Walker is important because he was influential - he demonstrated the potential of the electric guitar in the genre, and was copied by, er, almost everyone who followed. T-Bone Walker's voice is expressive, but not that distinctive; listening to his most successful tunes back-to-back on a compilation CD reveals his writing as rambling, with unremarkable lyrics and arrangements. But you don't listen to T-Bone Walker for these things; you listen if you enjoy virtuoso blues guitar. The new series is aimed at Jones's loyal audience of blues aficionados - the general audience would have been better served by coverage of more important, Premier League bluesmen (Muddy, Mr Wolf et al), but that's another series entirely. And a non-specialist audience probably no longer exists for blues programming. Blue Legends continues for the next five Wednesdays at 10pm on BBC Radio 2. To come: Dinah Washington, Little Walter, Lightnin' Hopkins, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Big Bill Broonzy. An eclectic collection, and Jones is certain to have something very interesting to say about them all. Highly recommended. Gerry Smith
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