Oprah Winfrey’s Aunt Katherine is a huge fan of Blues Traveling, and carries it around with her in her car, I learned recently. Katherine Carr Esters of Kosciusko, Miss., actually is Oprah’s cousin, although Oprah addresses her older relative as “Aunt Katherine.” Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at [...]
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Mother’s Best Music Festival
Mother’s Best Music Festival — it’s named after another brand of flour that once sponsored a radio show in Helena, Ark. (King Biscuit Flour was the sponsor of King Biscuit Time, which lent its name to the town’s much bigger and longer-running festival, the King Biscuit Blues Festival, until an unfortunate legal challenge took that [...]
No more cotton in the Delta
That sounds like a blues song but it’s just an observation, of a big surprise on my recent trip down there. Most of the fields that used to have cotton, just a few years ago, now grow corn or soybeans. Rice seems to be more common too. But cotton is way down. An old cotton [...]
Down at the BB King Museum
The BB King Museum — a great new stop on the blues tour! I got to play and speak there recently, the weekend before the annual BB King Homecoming, when BB comes back to his hometow – Indianola, Miss. — to play outdoors and in a club. And I stopped back down in Indianola during [...]
Review of Blues Traveling, third edition
This is from the funny-named but highly respected country-blues website weeniecampbell.com, written by the great guitarist and teacher John Miller: “Blues Traveling–The Holy Sites of Delta Blues”–Steve Cheseborough, University Press of Mississippi Author Steve Cheseborough must be very happy at the reception his Delta Blues guidebook, “Blues Traveling”, has received, for it is now in [...]
Beethoven’s Ninth on the harp
This past Friday night, I had finished my gig at a restaurant and was sitting at the bar having something to eat and drink. A goateed man, probably in his early 60s, was also sitting there and drinking good Scotch. He asked about the music and I told him sorry, but he had just missed [...]
EaT your greens
You can go to EaT: an Oyster Bar (N Williams at Failing Street, Portland) to hear me on Saturday nights. And of course for the oysters, absinthe, shrimp etouffee etc. But here’s another excellent reason to visit that fine restaurant: greens. I love many things on the menu, but I want to make special note [...]
Blues Revue’s review of Fetch It!
From Blues Revue magazine, June/July 2009: Fetch It! is another intriguing, self-released collection of prewar-style blues from Steve Cheseborough. Cheseborough’s harmonica overdubs are effective, but at the heart of his sound are his percussive, rhythmic guitar and highly individual singing. The combination brings new light to Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “One Dime” and Tampa Red’s “Love [...]
Say Amen, Somebody!
I enthusiastically recommend Say Amen, Somebody. It is a movie about gospel music but a major part of it is blues singer Georgia Tom, who rechristened himself Thomas A. Dorsey when he became the Father of Gospel Music. The reasons you, a blues fan, ought to run right out and get it from your library [...]
Review of Fetch It!
From the fun and and authoritative country-blues website weeniecampbell.com comes this review of my new CD: Fetch It! – Steve Cheseborough Written by Andrew Mullins Fetch It! – Steve Cheseborough Independent Portland-based musician and author Steve Cheseborough has put together a strong set of country blues for his latest CD, Fetch It!, which was released [...]
