Unsung Heroes

Roky Erickson at the Stomp Concert in 2008. Image (c)Jacob Blickenstaff

PAY TRIBUTE TO YOUR MUSICAL HERO

The Ponderosa Stomp Foundation is giving you the opportunity to thank your favorite musician for their work or an even just a particular song that has been important in your life. You can help us recognize and celebrate the unsung heroes of American music and support Living History by Living the Mission of the Stomp.

From now until December 31st 2009, when you make a donation in any amount, let us know your favorite Stomp artist and any personal story or note you would like to tell them. We will be sending a note of appreciation to all of the heroes named, or to their families if they are no longer with us, letting them know who made a contribution in their honor and offering your personalized thanks for their work in shaping the sound of your life! You can show your appreciation for your favorite Stomp artist and help the Foundation continue its preservation and education based initiatives, ensuring we can serve additional musicians.

We will feature various artists here, but you can make a donation for any Stomp musician, past or present, by including their name in the “Note(s) to the Foundation” field when making an online donation.  If you would like to mail a contribution, please include a note letting us know in whose honor you would like to make it and any additional information you would like us to include in the information when it goes to the artist. You can mail donations to:

PONDEROSA STOMP HERO: THE FLAMIN’ GROOVIES

Falmin' Groovies Perform at the 2009 Stomp Concert; Photo (c) Jacob Blickenstaff, 2009.

San Francisco’s Flamin’ Groovies, a band whose sound typifies snarling, sleazy 60’s garage-rock, actually did some of their best work in the 70’s. The albums fans consider their masterpieces, 1970’s Flamingo and 1971’s Teenage Head, crib all the best hallmarks of 60’s sounds – Beatle-sweet melody, Stones swagger and raggedy apings of much-loved rock rudiments like Chuck Berry guitar riffs – roughed up and stripped down with a raw, driving power that approaches rock n’roll nirvana.

Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan, two founding members of the Flamin’ Groovies, set foot on the stage together for the first time since 1971 with their rock n’roll history-making appearance at the 2009 Ponderosa Stomp. They’ll be joined by the A-Bones, a venerable garage-rock outfit in their own right, founded by the Brooklyn-based underground music scholars and Norton Records label owners Billy Miller and Miriam Linna.

PONDEROSA STOMP HERO: HOWARD TATE

Master soul shouter Howard Tate was born on August 14, 1939 in Macon, Georgia. His professional career began in his teens, singing gospel in a group led by Garnet Mimms (later of the Enchanters.) It was through Mimms that Tate was discovered by producer Jerry Ragovoy, who began recording him as an R&B and soul singer in 1966 for the Verve label. His 1967 Verve side “Get It While You Can” became a massive hit for Janis Joplin.

As sophisticated and uptown as Tate’s sides were in the late ‘60s, he never lost the raw down-home power of his Southern roots; that rough-edged potency is still audible in his voice forty years down the line. If not for the Ponderosa Stomp, though, Tate might still just be a critic’s and crate-digger’s favorite, a footnote to soul history. His recording career was brief, and he retired in the early ‘70s. In 2001, though, the Stomp convinced him to emerge from his thirty-plus-year hiatus and take the stage once again in New Orleans. In 2006 and 2008, Tate dropped two new studio efforts and a live album, and he’s showing no signs of fading away. The 2009 Stomp marks his return to the Stomp stage after eight years.

PONDEROSA STOMP HERO: PHIL PHILLIPS

Phil Phillips performing at the 2003 Ponderosa Stomp

The instantly recognizable R&B ballad “Sea of Love” has, over the forty years since it was first cut, attained the kind of classic, legendary status that few songs ever reach. It was written in one sitting on the front porch, as an attempt to convince a lady friend that her suitor’s love was true. Since then, the achingly lovely song has appeared in countless films and TV shows. It’s literally the sound of aching romance.

Born John Phillip Baptiste in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Phil Phillips began his musical career in a gospel quartet, and was later taught guitar by Clifton Chenier’s uncle, Morris. Phillips, who worked as a bellboy, had paid his local radio station to let him record “Sea of Love” as a demo. The local buzz that built around the song brought him to the attention of record storeowner George Khoury. Khoury changed the singer’s name and put him together with members of the swamp pop band Cookie and the Cupcakes at Goldband Records owner Eddie Shuler’s studio to record the song. Unfortunately, as was common at the time, Khoury assured his own future revenue from the song by attaching his name to it as a writer. Later, Khoury would deduct huge amounts from Phillips’ royalties from “expenses.”

The song hit #2 on the Billboard pop charts in the late summer of 1959, and when Khoury began getting orders for tens of thousand of copies of “Sea of Love,” he leased it to the Mercury label for national distribution. Sadly, Phillips was unable to write another hit which packed the punch of “Sea of Love,” and Khoury, his manager, did little to advance the singer’s career, and by the ‘60s, Phil was working as a disc jockey – and janitor – at KJEF radio in Jennings, LA.

Phil Phillips now lives in Lake Charles. In 1984, Robert Plant’s honeydrippers scored a #3 hit with their version of “Sea of Love,” which Phillips still does not receive full royalties from. Due to his health, he no longer performs; however, in 2008, he saw the release of his very first full-length album. Sea of Love, put out by the German archival label Bear Family Records includes half a dozen previously unissued sides, a full Phillips discography and liner notes by the award-winning Fats Domino biographer Rick Coleman, a Ponderosa Stomp Music Conference participant.

PONDEROSA STOMP HERO: MR. AL “CARNIVAL TIME” JOHNSON

Photo Copyright Jacob Blickenstaff, 2008

The man behind a song so essential to the Mardi Gras season that “Carnival Time” became his middle name, Alvin “Carnival Time” Johnson grew up in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward playing piano and trumpet. At sixteen, after winning countless local talent shows, he cut his first record for the Aladdin label.

After gradating high school, Johnson – along with the help of his friends and family – put together the wild, freewheeling lyrics “Throw my baby out the window and let the joint burn down all because it’s Carnival time…”  for the song that would become an immortal Mardi Gras classic. Both Johnson and Mac Rebennack played piano on different takes of the song, and James Rivers contributed the waling tenor sax solo. It was released in 1960 on the Ron label, but due to poor timing, was overshadowed by Jessie Hill’s  “Ooh Poo Pah Doo,” released the same year. However, over the next few years, “Carnival Time” gained momentum and became a local hit. After a fight to regain ownership of the song (Ron owner Joe Ruffino died in the early ‘60s, leaving royalty issues in confusion), Johnson finally obtained full rights to the song in 1999. Few other songs are as closely associated with the Carnival season than Al’s; throughout the year, Johnson often performs wearing Mardi Gras beads.

Johnson lost his longtime home on Tennessee Street in the Lower Ninth Ward to Hurricane Katrina. Shuttling back ands forth between New Orleans and Houston for more than three years, in 2007 he penned a heartfelt paean to his former neighborhood, the classically styled R&B tune “Lower Ninth Ward Blues” that was as wrenching as his namesake song is celebratory. “Lower Ninth Ward Blues,” in the midst of the ongoing recovery, has become the city’s unofficial soundtrack to all that was lost. Last year, Johnson qualified for a home in the Habitat for Humanity Musicians’ Village project.

PONDEROSA STOMP HERO: LADY BO

Born in New York City in 1940, Peggy Jones was an early-blooming talent; by age 9, she was a tap-dancing prodigy and a master of the ukulele. After graduating from New York’s High School of the Performing Arts, she got the gig that would define her career and put her name in the history books forever – replacing Jody Williams after he was drafted into the military, she took the lead guitar spot in Bo Diddley’s band.

The newly christened Lady Bo was the first woman ever hired to play lead guitar by a major act. She played full-time with Bo’s band until 1961, helping to develop the singular Bo Diddley guitar sound and co-writing many of his best-known hits. Lady Bo went back to Bo’s band in 1969 and stayed until 1989.

After her 1961 departure, she was replaced by the Duchess, another female guitarist Bo Diddley hoped would continue the novelty appeal of an axe-slinging woman – but then and now, it was impossible to imitate the first lady of guitar, the holy terror on the strings that is Lady Bo.

PONDEROSA STOMP HERO: LIL’ BUCK SINEGAL

Lil' Buck, 2008. IMage (c)Neil Ladner, 2008.

Nobody works harder for the Ponderosa Stomp (except maybe Dr. Ike) than guitarist Lil Buck Sinegal who has performed at every Stomp event to date – both in the spotlight and backing up other great architects of rock n’roll.

Born Paul Alton Sinegal in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1944, Buck taught himself to play at age 10 on a Harmony guitar that was a gift from a blind uncle. He sat outside the corner newsstand, playing for coins he’d bring home to his grandmother. Later, Buck and friends drew local attention by playing popular songs by Little Richard and Jimmy Reed outside his grandmother’s home, which led to gigs at dances and community events.

In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, Buck traveled throughout the South with his band the Top Cats, backing top R&B artists like Percy Sledge, Robert Parker and Joe Tex. After the group disbanded in 1968, Buck was invited to join King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier’s Red Hot Louisiana band – an invitation that kicked off fourteen years as Chenier’s lead guitarist.

Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, Buck also worked as the secret weapon of Excello records’ session band, lending his sizzling guitar to more than three hundred recordings with artists like Lil Bob and the Lollipops and Rockin’ Dopsie. He also recorded his own classic, killer instrumentals like the fiery “Monkey In A Sack” and “Cat Scream.” In 1999, Buck was inducted into the Louisiana Blues Hall of Fame. Today, he is just as amazing live as ever; he was there through many years of music history and remains a consistently remarkable performer at the Stomps’ gigs.