Freddie Roulette born 3 May 1939

Freddie Roulette (May 3, 1939 – December 24, 2022) was an American electric blues lap steel guitarist and singer. He was best known as an exponent of the lap steel guitar. He was a member of the band Daphne Blue[ and collaborated with Earl Hooker, Charlie Musselwhite, Henry Kaiser, and Harvey Mandel. He also released several solo albums. One commentator described Roulette as an "excellent musician". 

Frederick Martin was born and raised in Evanston, Illinois. He learned to play the steel guitar in high school. In the 50s, the sweeping sound of steel guitar was usually heard only in Country and Western music, but even as a teenager Freddie was attracted across town to play on Chicago's South-side Blues scene and in 1965 began work in Earl Hooker's backing band, touring and performing with him until 1969. Hooker's band, with the pianist Pinetop Perkins, the harmonica player Carey Bell, the vocalist Andrew Odom, and Roulette, was "widely acclaimed" and "considered one of the best Earl had ever carried with him". Roulette performed on several of Hooker's singles; his 1967 album, The Genius of Earl Hooker; and the 1969 follow-up, 2 Bugs and a Roach. 

Roulette later developed a friendship with Charlie Musselwhite and (credited as Fred Roulette) recorded with him on the 1969 album Chicago Blue Stars. He toured with Musselwhite and backed him on the albums Tennessee Woman and Memphis, Tennessee, before relocating to the San Francisco, California, area where he has lived ever since. He played there in a band with Luther Tucker and recorded with Earl Hooker's cousin John Lee Hooker. 

After leaving Chicago for the San Francisco Bay area, Roulette began "teaming up with the 14-year-old guitarist Ray Bronner ('Daphne Blue Ray'), and some veterans from Chicago in the band Daphne Blue, Freddie was often joined by ‘Big Moose’ (Johnny Walker), ‘Pinetop Perkins’ and Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown at gigs and on record." "Freddie released an album, Daphne Blue: Legendary Blues Instrumentals, which contains 15 excellent tracks, which he considers to be among his finest works." 

                          Here’s “Sleepwalk” from above album

                                   

In 1973, Roulette released his debut solo album, Sweet Funky Steel, which was produced by the guitarist Harvey Mandel. Don "Sugarcane" Harris played on several tracks. Over the next 20 years, Roulette continued to perform with other musicians and occasionally led his own band, while also working full-time as an apartment manager. On the 1996 album Psychedelic Guitar Circus, he worked in a group with Mandel, Kaiser and Steve Kimock. 

The producer Larry Hoffman brought Roulette to Chicago where the artist recorded his 1997 album, Back in Chicago: Jammin' with Willie Kent and the Gents, backed by the Willie Kent Band featuring Chico Banks on guitar. It was released on Hi Horse Records. The album won an award from Living Blues magazine as 'Best Blues Album of 1997'. Following that album's success, Roulette began performing widely at blues festivals and recorded the 1998 album Spirit of Steel, featuring the Holmes Brothers and produced by Kaiser. He also contributed to Kaiser's album Yo Miles, a tribute to Miles Davis. 

Roulette played at numerous music festivals over the years, including the Long Beach Blues Festival, the San Francisco Blues Festival (1979), and the Calgary Folk Music Festival (2000). He continued to play club dates in the San Francisco area, often with Mandel. In 2012, Jammin' With Friends was recorded at three separate studios with various musicians. It was produced by Michael Borbridge, who also played drums on all the tracks. 

Roulette's solo album Man of Steel (2006) featured guitar playing by Will Bernard and David Lindley; Kaiser also played guitar and produced the album. It was recorded in Fantasy Studios, in Berkeley, California, and included strains of jazz, country, soul and reggae in the overall blues setting. In the same year, Roulette played locally in a small combo including Mike Hinton. 

As of 2015, Roulette was still playing with the Daphne Blue Band.  In February 2019, the Chicago Reader published an article on Roulette and his band members, along with sound clips, titled: "The Secret History of Chicago Music: Pivotal Musicians That Somehow Haven't Gotten Their Just Dues." Roulette died at his home in Vallejo, California on December 24th 2022 at the age of 83..

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

 

Randy Cain born 2 May 1945

Randy Cain (May 2, 1945 – April 9, 2009) was a Philadelphia soul singer with The Delfonics (early 1960s to 1971). He also helped set up the group Blue Magic. 

Herbert Randal Cain III was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Growing up, he befriended two brothers, Wilbert and William Hart. During their attendance at Overbrook High School, Cain joined the Harts' existing vocal group, the Orphonics when a couple of its members dropped out. They loved recreating the doo-wop sound of Little Anthony and the Imperials and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers in the Harts' basement and became good enough to play colleges and high schools and enter local talent shows. 

In 1966, they acquired as manager and promoter Stan Watson, who suggested a name-change to the Delfonics. He introduced them to Bell, working as pianist and arranger at Cameo Parkway, the Philadelphia label famous for Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp and The Tymes. William Hart and Bell wrote "He Don't Really Love You", with the studio musician turned producer playing most of the instruments on the track. 

The following year, they released "You've Been Untrue", another Bell-Hart composition, but the partnership really delivered in 1968 with the smooth ballad "La-La (Means I Love You)" which reached No 4 in the US. The same year the Delfonics played Vegas with Sammy Davis Jnr and were supported by the Jacksons in Chicago (Cain loved telling the story of a 10-year-old Michael Jackson bringing them tea and honey in the dressing room and telling everyone they were his favourite group). 

With Bell's gift for melody and orchestration, the Delfonics ushered in the era of slick, sophisticated, symphonic Philly Soul, and helped define the genre with three excellent albums – including 1969's Sound of Sexy Soul – and a run of singles which crossed over from the R&B to the pop charts including "Break Your Promise", "I'm Sorry", "Funny Feeling", "Somebody Loves You", "When You Get Right Down To It" and "Over and Over". 

                                   

As the second tenor, Randy Cain played an important part in creating the Delfonics' distinctive blend of three-part harmonies with Wilbert Hart – lead and baritone – and his older brother, William, whose swoop from aching tenor to falsetto made listeners swoon and became the group's trademark. William "Poogie" Hart co-wrote most of the group's hits with Bell and remains its de facto leader to this day. 

Cain was a mainstay from 1965 to 1971, the year the Delfonics won a Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group for "Didn't I", and he also helped the band to score three Top 40 hits in the UK  and appeared on Top of the Pops, but Cain either became ill or fell out with the Harts, depending on whose account you believe. He was replaced by Major Harris of the Jarmels. Thom Bell had also moved on as well, working with groups such as The Stylistics and The Spinners. 

Chubby Checker & Randy Cain

In 1973, Cain, then working for WMOT Productions (the initials stood for We Men of Talent), suggested that the singer and songwriter Ted Mills get together with a quartet called Shades of Love. As Blue Magic, they scored a No 1 R&B hit with "Side-show" and also placed "Three Ring Circus" in the US Top 40 in 1974. 

The Delfonics’s fifth album, Alive & Kicking (1975), produced by Stan Watson, generated lackluster sales and the critical consensus was that the group had creatively fallen behind other TSOP groups such as The Stylistics. Shortly after its release, Major Harris left the band and the remaining original Delfonics disbanded. 

Cain rejoined the Delfonics for a while in the '80s, and again recently, though in the intervening years both he and Wilbert Hart had filed and won civil suits against William Hart, the sole owner of the name, and Arista Records/Sony BMG, the owners of the Delfonics' catalogue, for back royalties. 

Cain died at his home in Maple Shade Township, New Jersey in April 2009, aged 63.

(Edited from The Independent & Wikipedia)

 

Floyd "Candy" Johnson born 1 May 1922

Floyd "Candy" Johnson (May 1, 1922 – June 28, 1981) was an American jazz tenor and alto saxophonist. 

Johnson, who was born in Madison, Illinois, started being a drummer at age 13, but quickly switched to first alto then tenor saxophone. He continued to play drums well enough to play as a session drummer professionally. His career began in St. Louis, where he was a member of a group led by Chuck Finney. He attended Wilberforce University, where he started using the student music group until the draft intervened. After his service, he played in bands led by Ernie Fields (1942) and Tiny Bradshaw (1943).  Johnson’s cousin was saxophonist Jimmy Forrest, who eventually gained popularity in the honking, funky sax genre. 

From 1943 to 1947, Johnson played with Andy Kirk, where he recorded for Decca records and was frequently featured being a soloist on ballads, showing a clean shade, an unhurried feeling of timing, as well as the unmistakable existence of Coleman Hawkins in his solos although Johnson cites Ben Webster as his biggest influence. Johnson preferred candy to alcohol, so a band member started calling him "Candy". In Detroit he started a band called the Peppermint Sticks. One musician recalled that the band dressed in candy-striped suits, and sometimes Johnson tossed peppermint sticks to the crowd. 

                                  

From 1951 – 1953 he was a member of the Count Basie Orchestra, recording with Basie for Clef Records, then began working in more of a rhythm and blues vein with Bill Doggett (1958 – 1964). The band had hits with "Blip Blop", "Honky Tonk", and "Night Train". Almost every single vintage jazz performer had trouble coping with the changes in the music scene that came along in the '60s, yet none faced the additional problems Johnson did. In 1962, along came a smash go-go dancer named Candy Johnson who began making records, even having her tunes covered by the likes of Tom Jones. Floyd "Candy" Johnson reappeared as a name on album credits, as did just plain Floyd Johnson. He was not too terribly disillusioned that the public would rather have a Candy Johnson that was a go-go dancer than one who blew the saxophone. 

The rise in power of the go-go queen and the British rock invasion coincided with the saxophonist's hiatus from full-time performing, things picking up again pretty much with the arrival of the '70s. He showed up in France on tour with Milt Buckner in 1971, sounding as forceful as ever in the pumping organ jazz context. The relationship worked and continued for several years, the French jazz audiences again enjoying an extended tour by the group in 1973. This tour resulted in some terrific recordings involving not only Buckner, but also the fiery sax playing of Arnett Cobb. 

In 1974, he briefly played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, substituting for an ailing Paul Gonsalves. During a visit to New York City, he recorded with Helen Humes and Roy Eldridge.  A Year later, Johnson played in and helped organize the New McKinney's Cotton Pickers, a fascinating band project that used the original Don Redman arrangements. Music in its time had rivaled the popular bands of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. Some of the original bandmembers were also involved and Johnson stole the show by inserting more modernistic material into his solos. They performed at the Bix Beiderbecke Festival in Iowa. 

Johnson completed a Master's Degree in Popular Culture Studies at Bowling Green State University in 1975. From 1976  he played regularly in Detroit and in July 1979 he worked with the Mercer Ellington Orchestra. When Johnson retired, he moved to Toledo. Ohio and taught jazz at local schools. He died June 28, 1981, in Framingham, Massachusetts. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Swing fm)

Mimi Farina born 30 April 1945

Mimi Farina (April 30, 1945 – July 18, 2001) was an American singer-songwriter and activist, the youngest of three daughters to a white mother and Mexican-American physicist Albert Baez. She was the younger sister of the singer and activist Joan Baez. 

Born Margarita Mimi Baez, in Palo Alto, California, to a British mother and Mexican physicist father, she was the third of three daughters. Being raised as a Quaker, she later claimed, encouraged her social conscience and a steadfast belief in non-violence. Her striking dark looks and feisty personality made her a natural performer, and, as a child, she showed rare talents as a dancer. But she also became an accomplished violinist and guitar player, and was a familiar figure at the burgeoning late-1950s and early-1960s folk movement in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

By the time she was 16, she had embarked on a solo singing career, writing her own songs and travelling across Europe playing her music. In Paris, she met - and fell in love with - the man whose tragic fate left an indelible mark on her life, novelist, musician, and composer Richard Fariña (1937–1966). She married him at age 18 in Paris. The two collaborated on a number of influential folk albums, most notably, Celebrations for a Grey Day (1965) and Reflections in a Crystal Wind (1966), both on Vanguard Records. After Richard Fariña's death in a motorcycle accident on April 30, 1966 (on Mimi's twenty-first birthday), she moved to San Francisco, where she flourished as a singer, songwriter, model, actress, and activist. She performed at various festivals and clubs throughout the Bay Area, including the Big Sur Folk Festivals, the Matrix, and the hungry i. 

Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mimi Farina, Joan Bridge 

Fariña briefly sang for the rock group the Only Alternative and His Other Possibilities. In 1967, she joined a satiric comedy troupe called The Committee. That same year, she and her sister Joan Baez were arrested at a peaceful demonstration and were housed temporarily in Santa Rita Jail, personalizing the experience of captivity for her. In 1968, Fariña married Milan Melvin and continued to perform, sometimes recording and touring with either her sister Joan or the folksinger Tom Jans, with whom she recorded an album in 1971, entitled Take Heart. Fariña and Milan divorced in 1971. 

                             Here’s “Mary Call” from above LP 

                                    

Among the songs she wrote is "In the Quiet Morning (for Janis Joplin)", which her sister recorded and released in 1972 on the album Come from the Shadows. The song is also included on a number of compilations, including Joan Baez's Greatest Hits. By 1973, Fariña was asked to accompany her sister Joan and B.B. King when they performed for the prisoners in Sing Sing Prison. This experience, along with her arrest in 1967, led her to a desire to do more for those who are held in institutions. 

In 1974, Fariña founded Bread and Roses, a non-profit organization that brings free live music and entertainment to children, adults, and seniors who are isolated in institutional settings: children's day care and special needs schools, hospitals, adult and juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, adult recovery centers, senior day and convalescent homes. Bread and Roses serves isolated audiences in eight counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, and consults with other like-minded programs nationally. In 2019, Bread and Roses brought performers to play more than 600 concerts in over 120 institutions. 

Though she continued to sing in her later years, releasing an album in 1985 and performing sporadically, Fariña devoted most of her time to running Bread and Roses. In the late 1980s, she teamed with Pete Sears to play a variety of benefit and protest concerts. Many concerts were concerned with human rights issues in Central America, especially the U.S.-backed civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. They once set up to play on the abandoned railroad tracks outside the Concord Naval Weapons Center in California. Surrounded by military police, Fariña and Sears played a show for people protesting U.S. weapons being shipped to government troops in El Salvador. 

In 1985, she recorded her own album Mimi Fariña Solo. Bread and Roses also has a CD—produced by Banana, aka Lowell Levinger, with Michael Kleff—of a series of concerts that she gave with Banana in Germany in the 1980s. Fariña used her connections with the folk-singing community to elicit help in supporting Bread and Roses, including Pete Seeger, Paul Winter, Odetta, Hoyt Axton, Judy Collins, Taj Mahal, Lily Tomlin, Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, and others. There are now more than 15 other community organizations modeled after Bread & Roses across the country. 

Fariña died after a two year battle with neuroendocrine cancer at her home in Mill Valley, California on July 18, 2001, at age 56. A memorial service was held on August 7 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. 1,200 people attended.

(Edited from Wikipeda & The Guardian) 

Tammi Terrell born 29 April 1945

Tammi Terrell (April 29, 1945 – March 16, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter, widely known as a star singer for Motown Records during the 1960s, notably for a series of duets with singer Marvin Gaye. 

She was born Thomasina Winifred Montgomery in Philadelphia to Jennie, née Graham, and Thomas Montgomery. Jennie was an actress and Thomas was a barbershop owner and local politician. Terrell was the older of two siblings. According to her sister Ludie, she said her parents thought Terrell would be a boy and, therefore, she would be named after her father. When Terrell was born, the parents settled on the name Thomasina, nicknaming her "Tommie". At the age of 11 she won a talent contest.  Terrell later changed it to "Tammy" after seeing the film Tammy and the Bachelor and hearing its theme song, "Tammy", at the age of 12. 

Terrell attended Germantown High School in Philadelphia and by the age of 13 she was regularly opening club dates for acts including Gary "U.S." Bonds and Patti LaBelle & the Bluebelles. In 1960, Terrell signed under the Wand subsidiary of Scepter Records after being discovered by Luther Dixon. She recording the ballad "If You See Bill" under the name Tammy Montgomery, and did demos for the Shirelles. After another single, Terrell left the label. 

Having been introduced to James Brown, she signed a contract with him and began singing backup for his Revue concert tours. In 1961, Terrell created the group the Sherrys. In late 1962, she was kicked out due to multiple disputes. Eventually, they went their separate ways, with the Sherrys moving on without Terrell. 

In 1963, she recorded the song "I Cried". Released on Brown's Try Me Records, it became her first charting single, reaching No. 99 on the Billboard Hot 100. Terrell later signed with Checker Records and released the Bert Berns-produced "If I Would Marry You", a duet with Jimmy Radcliffe, which Terrell co-composed. Following this relative failure, Terrell announced a semi-retirement from the music business. 

                                    

Terrell enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in pre-med, staying at the school for two years. In the middle of this, Terrell was asked by Jerry Butler to sing with him in a series of shows in nightclubs. After Butler arranged to assure Terrell that she could continue her schooling, she began touring with Butler. In April 1965, during a performance at the Twenty Grand Club in Detroit, she was spotted by Motown CEO Berry Gordy, who promised to sign her to Motown. 

Terrell with Sam Cooke & Betty Harris

Terrell agreed and signed with Motown on April 29, 1965, her 20th birthday. "I Can't Believe You Love Me" became Terrell's first R&B top 40 single, followed almost immediately by "Come On and See Me". In 1966, Terrell recorded two future classics, Stevie Wonder's "All I Do (Is Think About You)" and The Isley Brothers' "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)". After the release of her first single on Motown, Terrell joined the Motortown Revue opening for the Temptations. 

Terrell was then paired with Marvin Gaye, who previously recorded duets with Mary Wells and Kim Weston. His chemistry with Terrell was immediate and in 1967, they entered the pop Top 20 with the magnificent "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," the first in a series of lush, sensual hits authored by the husband-and-wife team of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson. "Your Precious Love" cracked the Top Five a few months later and in 1968, the twosome topped the R&B charts with both "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" and "You're All I Need to Get By." The success of these later hits was nevertheless tempered by Terrell's off-stage travails -- after an extended period of severe migraine headaches, in 1967 she collapsed in Gaye's arms while in concert at Virginia's Hampton-Sydney College, and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. 

Although the tumor forced Terrell to retire from performing live, she continued to record with Gaye even as her health deteriorated; however, as time went on, Valerie Simpson herself assumed uncredited vocal duties on a number of hits, including 1969's "Good Lovin' Ain't Easy to Come By" and "What You Gave Me." (For several other tracks, Gaye's vocals were added to pre-existing Terrell solo recordings.) 

In all, Terrell endured eight operations, ultimately resulting in loss of memory and partial paralysis; she finally died in Philadelphia on March 16, 1970. Gaye was so devastated by her decline and eventual passing that he retired from the road for three years; her loss also contributed greatly to the spiritual turmoil which informed his 1971 masterpiece What's Going On. At the time of her death, Tammi Terrell was just 24 years old. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

 

Phil Guy born 28 April 1940

Phil Guy (April 28, 1940 – August 20, 2008) was an American blues guitarist. He was the younger brother of blues guitarist Buddy Guy. Phil and Buddy Guy were frequent collaborators and contribute both guitar and vocal performances on many of each other's albums. 

Philip Guy was born at Lettsworth, near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the youngest of five children of sharecroppers. As a boy he picked cotton and pecan nuts and helped raise pigs and chickens around the family's shack, which was fitted with electricity only when he was nine. When Buddy moved to Baton Rouge to attend high school, he left his battered Harmony f-hole guitar hanging from a nail, ordering his younger brother never to touch it – an injunction which Phil was unable to respect. 

A natural left-hander, he initially played the instrument upside down, but later taught himself to play right-handed. Thanks to the arrival of electricity, his parents had been able to install an old phonograph, and he began mimicking the music of bluesmen such as Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf. On Buddy's occasional trips home he would help Phil develop his skills, and it wasn't long before Phil was able to take Buddy's place in Raful Neal's blues band. He stayed with Neal for almost a decade before striking out on his own, settling in Chicago. Four years younger than Buddy, Phil Guy created his own style, mingling the Cajun music of his native Louisiana with Mississippi Delta blues, jazz and soul to produce his own brand of blues; this was understated and unflashy, in contrast to the elder brother's flamboyant style. 

He joined Buddy's band just before they embarked on a tour of Africa in 1970 and stayed with them for five years until Buddy, angered and frustrated at his inability to secure a record contract, retired from touring (albeit, as it turned out, temporarily). Phil managed to do what Buddy couldn't--get a record contract--and that year he recorded "The High Energy Blues" for JSP Records, and soon afterward began his own band, Phil Guy and the Chicago Machine. 

To underline his own identity, Phil, who looked like a chubbier version of the late comedian Richard Pryor, became known for a wild Afro hairstyle as well as for the beloved Fender Telecaster he called "Ludella". He realised early on that he would remain firmly in his brother's shadow. "There's two Guys and one's on top," he said. "If the labels can't get the Big Man, they don't want to mess with me." Nevertheless, Phil became well known in Europe. In the United States he was particularly popular in his adopted hometown of Chicago, where he performed for 40 years, often at his brother's renowned club Buddy Guy's Legends. 

                            Here’s “Tina Nu” from above album.

                                   

Guy recorded a number of albums under his own name in the 1980s and 1990s, branching out into soul and funk. Most of his albums were recorded by JSP Records, based in London. Among them was Say What You Mean (2000), which features what is perhaps his best-known song, (I'm the) Last of the Blues Singers, mourning the loss of such greats as Junior Wells and Howlin' Wolf. According to John Stedman, founder of JSP Records, Phil Guy was "one of the most impressive 'live' acts I've worked with in 30 years of legendary Americans". 

Phil Guy and the Chicago Machine toured extensively around the world, returning to Chicago for gigs in between. His favourite British venues were the 100 Club on London's Oxford Street, the Leadmill in Sheffield, and Band on the Wall in Manchester.  During August 2007, Guy and his band sold out venues in Ireland and Northern Ireland, including the Bleu Note in Dublin and the Big River Jazz and Blues Festival in Belfast. He had first played Belfast during "the Troubles" and said he found it "helluva safe compared with some of the neighbourhoods back home". 

On what turned out to be Phil Guy's final album, He's My Blues Brother (2006), Buddy joined him on vocals and guitar on the title track. Although Buddy won five Grammys and had influenced artists such as Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, it was his younger brother Phil who was named Blues Entertainer of the Year in 2007 at the 27th annual Chicago Music Awards. 

In January of 2008 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and his health quickly deteriorated. He died on August 20 of the disease at Saint James Hospital in Chicago Heights, Illinois He was 68 years old. 

(Edited from Wikipedia and The Telegraph)