Texas Johnny Brown at Houston’s Shakespeare Pub — Photo-Artistry by kenne (Click on Texas Johnny Brown to see archived blog posting on TJB)
Texas Johnny Brown is a major talent who simmered on the blues scene longer than all the beef stew cooked in the ’40s, the decade when he first began playing and recording. Like pianist Johnny Johnson of St. Louis, Brown is an artist who did not get a chance to record a full album as a leader until he had been in the music business more than half-a-century. Also like Johnson, the results of coming in so late in the game have been a pair of highly acclaimed, prize-winning albums including the righteous Blues Defender. Brown can take plenty of the credit, since he has taken over almost complete control of his ow arranging, production, and mixing, as well as the string bending and blues moaning. He began his career as a sideman for the Duke and Peacock outfits in the ’50s about which discographers make comments such as “… the record keeping at that time was less than desirable.” As a result, some of Brown’s playing on releases by artists such as Lightnin’ Hopkins and Joe Hinton remains uncredited. The guitarist, singer, and songwriter began his professional career as an original member of the great Amos Milburn band known as the Aladdin Chickenshackers. Brown’s picking is killer on early Aladdin recordings by both Milburn, and on Ruth Brown’s first Atlantic sides. Atlantic allowed Brown to make a few recordings of his own in 1949, buoyed by the enthusiasm the label had for Milburn, who played behind his sideman on these sessions along with the rest of the Aladdin Chickenshackers. T-Bone Walker is the dominating force in Brown’s stylistic palette, an influence that was considered something of a driving permit for any guitarist venturing out of Houston during this period. Before finally getting the biggie recording opportunities in the late ’90s, Brown did an ARC session in Houston in the early ’50s that was never released. He also performed regularly with Junior Parker during that decade, remaining based out of Houston. As a songwriter, Brown’s most famous work is “Two Steps from the Blues,” a big hit for Bobby “Blue” Bland, with whom he also toured as a lead guitarist in the ’50s and ’60s. By the ’80s, he was considered only sporadically active on the blues scene, but this turned out to be only a temporary brown-out, so to speak.
Mastro’s Ocean Club Gourmet Restaurant In The Shops at Crystals at Aria Resort and Casino — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Many are making love. Up above, the angels in the unshaken ether and crystal of human longing are braiding one another’s hair, which is strawberry blond and the texture of cold rivers. They glance down from time to time at the awkward ecstasy— it must look to them like featherless birds splashing in the spring puddle of a bed— and then one woman, she is about to come, peels back the man’s shut eyelids and says, look at me, and he does.
Jack “Old Jules” Purcell — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In June of 2006 Old Jules wrote on his blog So Far From Heaven “The More It Stays The Same.”
I hadn’t watched Easy Rider (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, circa 1968) in three decades.
When I saw it again this past weekend I appreciated it again for the first time:
Nicholson: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.
Hopper: Huh. Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened, man. Hey, we can’t even get into like, uh, second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel. You dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or something, man. They’re scared, man.
Nicholson: Oh, they’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ’em.
Hopper: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut.
Nicholson: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Hopper: What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about.
Nicholson: Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it – that’s two different things.
I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.
‘Course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are.
Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.
Hopper: Mmmm, well, that don’t make ’em runnin’ scared.
Nicholson: No, it makes ’em dangerous.
Three young men searching for America who found it wasn’t what they bargained for.
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the first of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home (Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
Standing above me in Smith's roomAwkwardly looking down through a clipped hesitancyOur lives came together.TURNERWith all the ambiguity that last name usage impliesWas what she called me.Mannerisms of ingenuousness and a tendency toward the atypicalBespoke your ambiance
(Ineffably I wanted Her)That voice -FalsettoLaced in bursts of Peter's guffawsSeemed contrived with a dreamed-of authenticity.
(Your mouth, my love,the
thistle in the kiss?)
From within mutually cancellingVignettes of naturalness and gender-cliche'She kissed through closed lips ofPristine openness.Innocently I loved.Through summer notes of vulnerabilityTogether we embraced an entangled growth of uncertainty
(Our fictions were tempered in
a painful and inward time)Desperate needs equivocated against ordained directions andDead-end holdings of night-bakery-work.Even then yours wasn't other-directed butA need to keep the Self-absorption of your Ann Arbor soul on a
Pedastal of conforming difference.Eliptically we lived in the intersticesBetween an illusion of Fulfillment and letters etched with"Know what?"
Returning from a morning walk my eye caught a Cooper’s Hawk flying into a nearby Mesquite tree. After closer observation, I could see the hawk had captured a mourning dove. Since the tree was near my house, I quickly grabbed my camera and began shooting.
Predator and prey Each seeking to win the chase A daily event.
My daughter Kate and grandson Kenne Jaxon — Image by kenne
Each week I get an image, like a postcard from Dewitt Jones. His images are inspiring, and his voice is my voice. So, I share his TEDx with you — enjoy. — kenne
This morning’s jog in the neighborhood was different, actually dangerous because of all the cars drove by the estate sale vultures wanting to be first in line.
Disclaimer: I don’t go to flea-markets, antique shops, garage sales or estate sales, if I can help it, so I jogged on by as people stood in line before the opening time.
Circling on around, I caught up with Joy who, out of curiosity had stopped by the sale now depressed by the image of someone’s life now with a price-tag.
She got my attention when she said the sale included a lot of cameras and equipment, so against my better judgment, I went in.
There laid out on display as if it were a camera funeral home, the photography life of someone whose emotional being was now a part of me.
At the moment, I decided to not let my photography life be on display for those seeking a bargain on something that would never again have the value it has for me.
The beach along the northern edge of the Sea of Cortez (February 12, 2018) — Panorama by kenne
The sun has dissolved behind the clouds as the wind stirs up the sand
and chills the spirit. We have just arrived yet it seems like time to go. There will be time tomorrow to watch morning come,
listening to the
song of sunrise.
“Yellow Flower in Circles and Squares” — Image by kenne
Sometimes to appreciate beauty it must be taken out of context to capture a new perspective based on my love of nature, sex
and life in a new consciousness
for the flower is neither
a subject nor an object
apart from being a flower.
Jack “Old Jules” Purcell — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Photo-Artistry by kenne
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Joy and Kenne — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Cooper’s Hawk and Prey — Image by kenne
Mountain Marigold on Mt. Lemmon — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Father and Sons In Sabino Creek — Photo-Artistry by kenne
My daughter Kate and grandson Kenne Jaxon — Image by kenne
Estate Sale In Tanuri Ridge — Image by kenne
The beach along the northern edge of the Sea of Cortez (February 12, 2018) — Panorama by kenne
Image by kenne
“Yellow Flower in Circles and Squares” — Image by kenne
