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Bob Bell
Jan 75 min read
HUX BROWN -12/4/1944 - 6/18/2020
Photo: Britt Hallquist Sometimes you hear a sound that changes things for you forever. You had no idea it was coming, and when you heard...
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Bob Bell
Jan 77 min read
Rocking’ with Roy Brown - March and April 1981
After the show at The Bottom Line, NYC, April 5, 1981 L-R Jimmy Wimpfheimer, Doug James, Al Copley, Ronnie Earl, Danny Motta, John Rossi,...
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Bob Bell
Jan 62 min read
The Island Book of Records, 1969-1970 Edited by Neil Storey. Manchester University Press.
The first volume of ‘The Island Book of Records - 1959-1968’ filled 390 pages and covered the first ten years of Island Records. Volume 2...
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Bob Bell
Dec 13, 20243 min read
50th Anniversary ‘Walking To New Orleans’ Jasmine CD3300 - John Broven
I find it hard to believe that it was 50 years ago that John Broven, the indefatigable English blues scholar, first published his...
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Bob Bell
Nov 24, 20246 min read
THE UNSEEN R & B SCENE: RARE PHOTOS OF THE 60s BLUES BOOM IN THE UK
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM American Rhythm & Blues In England 1962 – 1966 The Unseen Photographs of Brian Smith ISBN: 978-0-9561439-4-5 . Arts,...
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Bob Bell
Oct 28, 202427 min read
EPIC JOURNEYS, EXPENSIVE BREAKDOWNS, - THE UNTOLD SAGA OF THE BOOKMOBILE, AKA 'DAS BOOK'.
Ron Levy at the window - Porky in the passenger seat. Roomful had owned an interesting assortment of vehicles before I met them,...
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Bob Bell
Oct 28, 20249 min read
THE BOOKMOBILE BLUES
For many years Roomful of Blues traveled the country in a converted bookmobile, made by Gerstenslager of Worcester, Ohio. The vehicle...
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Bob Bell
Oct 28, 20244 min read
WES DOVER - THEE REGGAEOLOGIST
Wes Dover - Thee Reggaeologist My wife Britt spent the weekend cleaning out the desk in her office. The last year of her working life was...
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Bob Bell
Oct 26, 20244 min read
ISLAND BOOK OF RECORDS, VOL. 1 1959-1968
Chris Blackwell started Island Records in Jamaica in 1959, recording local talent. His first three releases all made the Jamaican charts....
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Bob Bell
Oct 26, 20248 min read
LITTLE RICHARD - AN OBITUARY
So Richard is gone. Although his breakthrough hits were in 1955 in the USA, strangely his record label Specialty didn’t have a UK outlet...
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Bob Bell
Oct 26, 20248 min read
THE VISIONARY AND PASSIONATE GUY STEVENS
Guy with Mott the Hoople Guy Stevens. I have so many memories of Guy. As a musically aware teenager in the UK as the first Rock ’n Roll...
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Bob Bell
Oct 26, 20245 min read
THE TROJAN STORY
My dad was a clockmaker, and the motto that was always engraved on the faces of his clocks was the latin phrase ‘Tempus fugit'. Time...
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Bob Bell
Oct 25, 20242 min read
SKIFFLE MADNESS - THE TRUE BEGINNINGS OF BRITISH ROCK?
My musical awakenings in the UK were rather varied. Like many who spent much of their later life in the blues field,...
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Bob Bell
Oct 24, 20242 min read
HONKY TONK - ONE OF THE ROCK AND ROLL ERA'S BIGGEST INSTRUMENTAL HITS.
(Published in USA Today in July, 2016) Sixty years ago this month Syd Nathan's King Records released a two-sided instrumental record by B...
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Bob Bell
Oct 24, 20241 min read
The First Rock'n'Roll Movie -Sixty Years Ago This March
(First published in USA Today in March 2016) The movie 'Rock Around The Clock ‘ was released sixty years ago this March....
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