Brixham Blues

03/06/2026

03/06/2026

Sounds of Jazz and the Caribbean in 1930s Paris: The Elegance of Claude Martial 🎸✨

Under the watchful eye of Brassaï's lens, the Montmartre night comes alive in the gleam of steel. Plucking his rare National resonator guitar, Claude Martial commanded the rhythm at La Cabane Cubaine, blending urban jazz with Caribbean warmth.

In a Paris teeming with art and avant-garde, each metallic note was a manifesto of style, talent, and pure history of Black music worldwide.

03/06/2026

“When I was around fifteen, too, I fell in love with the blues: Lightnin’ Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly and Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Blind Willie McTell. I lived it, breathed it, absorbed it by osmosis, fantasized it—don’t ask me why.”
📩📚( Peter Guralnick)

01/06/2026

Henry Townsend - Hailed as the patriarch of the St. Louis blues scene, he holds the rare distinction of being the only known blues artist to record music in nine consecutive decades, spanning from the 1920s to the 2000s.

“In May 1937, Henry Townsend, Sonny Boy Williamson, Robert Nighthawk, Big Joe Williams, and Walter Davis all piled into Townsend's 1930 Model A Ford and left St. Louis for the Leland Hotel in Aurora, Illinois. ("We stacked them in the car like sardines," Townsend recalled.) The marathon recording session they went on -24 songs in all-featured various combinations of guitar, piano, harmonica, and vocals. They returned to the studio that November, cutting another two dozen tracks. This group of five St. Louisans would help hone a highly influential sound that became known as "the Bluebird beat," named after their record label. These records would make their way into thousands of jukeboxes from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago, where they were heard and copied by the next generation of musicians.” (Mo History Org)

- Born in Shelby, Mississippi, Townsend ran away from an abusive father at age nine and hoboed his way to St. Louis. He eventually learned guitar from local musicians.

- He made his first recordings for Columbia Records in 1929. Over the decades, he played alongside blues giants like Robert Johnson, Roosevelt Sykes, and Sonny Boy Williamson.

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01/06/2026

Hear more Saturday afternoon blues like this from the brilliant Boal Weevils at the Bicton Inn Exmouth, June 6 starting 5pm. Foot-tappin' good-time blues gospel and hokum from the maestros of slide guitar.