Hello there!
TB Turpentine here.
No worries. No mathematics classes on MOANIN and GROANIN Radio. It´s just a way to introduce some artists we´ll play on this week´s Struttin My Stuff show ( Saturday March 12 around 10 pm CET).
It´s a Dutch affair. The two Billy Jones we mentioned in the title of this post have both connections with Holland. And the guy behind miX&dorp not only is Dutch, he also runs the label Billy Jones number 2 is recording for. Apart from that, he used Billy´s music to make his own record.
But to keep things fairly simple, let´s start with Billy Jones number 1. This Billy is from Texas, but settled down in Amsterdam, after serving in the US-forces in Germany. In Holland he got a job as a singer for the best known soulband in Holland during the 60´s and 70´s, the Dutch/Surinam Oscar Harris & The Twinkle Stars.
Billy Jones spent the rest of his life in Holland, were he died in 1982 while playing basketball with some friends. In the meantime he had recorded quiet a few records, both with Oscar Harris and as a solo artist. Only one of his solo efforts was sort of a hit though: His very first single, All My Brothers Are Clean - which we will play on the show this Saturday - got to number 33 in the Dutch top 40.
Billy Jones 2 (Arkansas, USA) isn´t a big hitmaker either, but this Billy is alive and kicking. More than that, the man can sing, plays a mean guitar and knows how to write a song. If that´s not enough, Billy Jones has a vision. Read this interview with him on the All About Jazz site and you know what I mean.
Billy Jones makes a serious effort to make the blues - bluez he calls his music- as relevant for young urban people in the US as was Muddy Waters´s music in the Chicago of the fifties. Lucky enough for the rest of us he comes up with Soul Music with an universal appeal - just as Muddy´s best music had.
The blues has been declared death a couple of times the last 40 years of so. People like Billy Jones proof that the blues is alive and will stay alive the next 40 years and probably much longer than that.
Jones´ label boss Jan Mittendorp in the meantime, is taking things even one step further. Posing as miX&dorp he reworks existing tracks of his own label´s artists (apart from Billy Jones also Boo Boo Davis, among others).
In his own words: ´miX&dorp blasts new life into the style by blending modern beats and blasts from the future into existing tracks for a fresh sound that makes the rhythmic heart of the blues beat stronger than ever.´
Nothing to add to that, apart from: recycling never sounded so good!
See you this Saturday March 12 around 10 pm CET for these and many more gritty and wailing sounds. Not only from Holland of course, but from all over the place.
As long as it makes me dance, laugh, cry, jump or shout!
Tune in!
TB Turpentine
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