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| PD Productions. Media, Broadcasting and Radio productions for stations worldwide |
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Back to where it all began ... Thank you for taking the time to visit us. My name is David Howard, PD Productions is based in the South West of the UK, but that isn't where our journey into the blues began .... It all started in a small town bar in Louisiana; it was like travelling back in time, dusty, rickety tables, chairs, and a bare wooden floor. Sat on a little platform was a lady and a guy with a guitar, and then the lady began to sing the blues. I could have closed my eyes, although I didn’t realise it at the time, I could have been listening to Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith. Quietly listening, and with encouragement from others we joined with the ‘Tell us your story’...
We knew and felt the songs were telling us of a deep sadness, borne of a deprivation beyond our comprehension. I was listening to the 'Blues' long before that, but never really understood, until then, what was meant by 'Feeling the Blues' ... Each time I produce ‘Backtracking’ I try to show my love and respect for the people and the lives these songs are about, this deprivation, sadness and misery. We are honouring them by keeping their presence and their simple music alive and well.
Each time, we are taking a journey back in time to the abomination of slavery, the depth of the spirituals and of course the expressive blues from all those years ago. Our research and journey since that day has been a discovery of the ‘Blues’ that never ends, of a culture and history that has faded in the mists of time, but remains for us to find. We're honoured and privileged to share with you this great music and its history, back a hundred years and beyond, a genre so rich, so vast so diverse and so real.
Now based in Somerset (UK) What started all those years ago with a handful of blues tracks, a few faded photographs and books has grown exponentially with the help of our good friends, Alan, Terry and Graham, the ‘Doc’ even my dear late cousin Len (Houston) the never ending patience of Pam and so many people from around the world, far too many to mention, Backtracking has become a library of music and resources so vast it’s often difficult to keep track of it all, as it continues to grow.
Thank you for listening to ‘Backtracking’ from here in the UK. At PD Productions, we extend our best wishes to you all.
David – PD Productions (UK) |
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Every Friday we have the Blues ... At PD Productions, our research and journey of discovery never ends, simply because the culture of the blues never ends. We're honoured and privileged to share the music within the genre of the Blues back in time a hundred years and beyond, a genre so vast and so diverse.
So many people from around the world have contributed to our research, and indeed, our library of music, far too many to mention by name. Released every Friday, we invite you to join Backtracking, the blue time machine as we go back to the Roots of the Blues, back, to where it all began. |
| Featured on Backtracking .. |
- The lady sings the blues.
- Blues on the Bayou.
- Gospel blues train.
- Featured artist of the week.
- Spirituals – The blues connection.
- Prison work songs.
- Myths and Legends of the blues.
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This week on the review /download page
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Appalachian Blues - Walking Cane. |
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Down Home Blues - Blind Willie McTell - Talk to you mama. |
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Mississippi Moaners - Isaiah Nettles - Mississippi Moan. |
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Strange characters - Spark plug Smith - Stopped clock blues. |
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The lady sings the blues - Algia Mae Hinton - Cook cornbread for your husband. |
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Current production ....
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| Etta Reid known to us as Etta Baker was born in 1913 in a family of African American, American Indian, and Irish ancestry. As a child, she awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking and the sound of her father's guitar. She said that she began to pick the guitar when she was so small that she had to lay the instrument on the bed, stand on the floor, and fret from the top. Her grandfather was a banjo player; her father played banjo and fiddle as well as guitar; her mother, harmonica and Jew's harp. Her sister Cora was also a superb instrumentalist, and many of her cousins played and sang.
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Featured artist of the week ....Gitfiddle Jim (James Arnold)
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James ‘Kokomo’ Arnold was a Blues musician, his intense style of playing and rapid-fire vocal delivery set him apart from his contemporaries. He got his nickname in 1934 after releasing "Old Original Kokomo Blues" about the city of Kokomo, Indiana.
Most sources give the date his birth as 1901, but other research sources give the date as 1896, on the basis of information in the 1900 census. He learned the basics of playing from his cousin.
James began playing in the early 1920s as a sideline, when he was working as a farmhand and as a steelworker. In 1929 he moved to Chicago and ran a bootlegging business, an activity he continued until the end of Prohibition. In 1930 he made his first recordings, Rainy Night Blues and Paddlin' Madeline Blues, using the name Gitfiddle Jim. Shortly after he moved back to Chicago, where after Prohibition ended in 1933 he was forced to make a living as a musician. From his subsequent first recording for Decca, in 1934, until his last, in 1938, Gitfiddle Jim recorded at least 80 sides, seven of which have been lost.
Other notable songs include his 1934 recording of the sexually explicit, a track seldom played on radio because of its content Sissy Man Blues,
 In 1938 James left the music industry and began to work in a Chicago factory. He was re-located by blues researchers in 1962, but showed no interest in returning to music to take advantage of the resurgence of interest in the blues among young white audiences.
James died of a heart attack in Chicago on November 8, 1968, aged either 67 or 72, and was buried in Burr Oak Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois. |
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