Big Lucky Carter Dies

 Memphis blues veteran Levester 'Big Lucky' Carter died December 24th. He was 82. Born in Weir, Miss., Mr. Carter made his way to Memphis after serving in the Army during World War II. He earned his "Big Lucky" sobriquet during that time for his gambling skills. In the late '50s and early '60s, Mr. Carter performed behind his cousin, Ed 'Prince Gabe' Kirby, as a member of the Rhythmaires/Millionaires, a group
that recorded a handful of songs for Sun, Savoy and other labels. Mr. Carter made six sides for the Hi label in 1969 including two singles for label subsidiary M.O.C.
It wasn't until 1998, however, that Mr. Carter, then in his late 70s, made his first album, "Lucky 13," which won a year-end readers poll for best blues CD in the French magazine Soul Bag and was honored with the prestigious Big Bill Broonzy prize for best blues CD from the French Academy of Jazz. Released on the British label Blueside, that album bolstered Mr. Carter's reputation in Europe. Even though "Lucky 13" was never released in America, it received accolades here, including a critics' choice award in Living Blues magazine for Artist Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. Locally, Mr. Carter could be found playing at Wild Bill's, and he was a
mainstay at the Center for Southern Folklore and its Memphis Music & Heritage Festival.

Mose Vinson Dies

 Venerable Memphis blues pianist Mose Vinson died Nov. 30th from diabetes. He was 85. Born in Holly Springs, Miss., Vinson had a lengthy if largely unheralded
career as one of the area's genuine practitioners of pre-war barrel house
piano playing. Vinson, who began playing organ as a child, moved to Memphis in the 1930s after meeting pianist Sunnyland Slim. He became a Bluff City mainstay,
playing in clubs with the likes of B. B. King in the 1940s and finding his way in the '50s to Sun Records, where he was a studio caretaker doing plumbing and janitorial work. Vinson got his own shot with Sun in 1953, when he recorded a number of
sides for the label, all unissued in their day. Most have since been released on the Charly boxed set "Sun Records: The Blues Years, 1950-1958." A year later, however, Vinson appeared on one of Sun's greatest singles, the classic James Cotton pairing of Cotton Crop Blues and "Hold Me in Your Arms." Later in life, Vinson played outside Memphis, notably the Chicago Blues Festival, the University of Chicago Folk Festival and the 1982 Knoxville World's Fair. He was also featured in 1992 on National Public Radio's program BluesStage. For the past two decades, Vinson was heard mostly at the Center for Southern Folklore and its Memphis Music & Heritage Festival.

Hadda Brooks Dies

 Hadda Brooks, who first rose to fame on the piano in the mid-1940s as "Queen
of the Boogie" and became a popular torch singer with hits such as "That's My Desire," died on Nov. 23rd. She was 86. Brooks' first single, the hit "Swingin' The Boogie" in 1945, launched not only her career, but also Los Angeles-based Modern Records, which became the West Coast's premier post-war R&B label. As a singer in the late 1940s and '50s, Brooks scored hits such as "Trust in Me," "Don't Take Your Love From Me" and "Dream." She also sang in several films and, in the early '50s, became the first African American entertainer to host a television variety show, on Channel 13 in Los Angeles. n the ensuing years, Brooks lived and worked in Europe, Australia and Hawaii. Finding it increasingly difficult to compete with rock 'n' roll, she retired in 1971 and moved back to Los Angeles. In 1987, she came out of retirement when offered a job opening a new club in L.A.'s landmark Perino's restaurant. Rave reviews brought other jobs, including a four-week engagement at Michael's Pub in New York City, which prompted a New York Times critic to call her "a phenomenon." In 1993, the Smithsonian-based Rhythm and Blues Foundation presented her with its Pioneer Award at the Hollywood Palace. A year later, Virgin
Records, which had bought the old Modern Records catalog, issued a 25-track
compilation of Brooks' early recordings on a CD titled "That's My Desire." In 1995, she was back in the recording studio for the first time in decades, recording "Time Was When," a CD for Pointblank/Virgin Records. In 1999, the label released "I've Got News for You," a 50-year double-CD retrospective, which included eight new tracks.

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Vs. Chuck Berry

 A federal judge has thrown out a royalties lawsuit against Chuck Berry by former collaborator Johnnie Johnson, ruling that too many years had passed since the more than 30 songs in dispute were written. Johnson, a piano player, sued Berry in November 2000 in U.S. District Court here over royalties generated by songs written from 1955-66. They include some of rock 'n' roll's most famous songs, including "No Particular Place to Go," "Roll Over Beethoven" and "Sweet Little Sixteen." The lawsuit argued that Johnson and Berry were co-writers on many of the songs Berry made famous, but because Berry copyrighted them in his name
alone, Johnson got none of the royalties. After the lawsuit's dismissal Monday, Berry attorney Martin Green said his 76-year-old client, now living in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, has no hard feelings for Johnson, 77.

Eileen Jackson Southern Dies

 Eileen Jackson Southern died on October 13, 2002, at the age of 82. She was a pioneer in the study of black music: her book "The Music of Black Americans", now in its third edition is encyclopedic in its coverage of black music in the United States, from colonial times to the present. In addition to her pioneering book, she and her husband Joseph also founded and published "The Black Perspective in Music", the first scholarly journal devoted to the subject. Her numerous writings have provided a core upon which other scholars can build, resulting in the acceptance of black music research as a specialty within musicology.

Raeburn Flerlage Dies

 Raeburn Flerlage, who took many of the most famous pictures of artists including
Memphis Slim, Big Joe Williams, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, and
hundreds more, died September 29th. He had become involved with music in the late '30s, when he began writing a music column that covered classical music, folk, jazz, and blues, and after the war he worked as a field secretary for People's Songs. Through that organization he met Folkways' Moses Asch, who brought him into record distribution, and then later took him from a burgeoning photographic career in fashion over to blues and folk. Over the course of the '60s Ray's work appeared on many numerous record covers for many labels, as well as in the pages of magazines including Ebony, Sing Out, and Downbeat. He worked closely with Pete Welding on many assignments, helping to interview artists. Although many of the portraits he took are iconic, his favorite work was in the black clubs, and particularly audience shots. His work enjoyed renewed attention in the last decade culminating with the blues photography book "Chicago Blues As Seen from the Inside: the Photographs of Raeburn Flerlage," published by ECW Press in 2000.

Alan Lomax Dies

 Folklorist Alan Lomax died July 19, 2002. He was 87. The son of noted folklorist John Lomax, Alan continued his father's work, recording and collecting blues and folk songs for the Library of Congress and helping to preserve America's rich musical heritage. When he was in his teens, Alan accompanied his father on field trips in the South. He eventually became an assistant archivist at the Library of Congress, but Alan's best work was done in the field. In 1938 he produced a series of recordings with jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton that remains one of the genre's most valuable recorded documents. A book, "Mister Jelly Roll", resulted from the project. Three years later, while searching for blues singer Robert Johnson (unbeknownst to Lomax, Johnson had died in 1938), Lomax and fellow folklorist John Work discovered and recorded bluesman Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress. Lomax went back and recorded Waters in 1942. These were Water's very first recordings. Lomax's interest in recording and documenting folk music spread beyond the United States. He did fieldwork in the Caribbean, the British Isles, and Europe and produced volumes of foreign folk music for such labels as Decca, Columbia, and Caedmon in the 1950s and 1960s. With the advent of the folk and blues revivals in the U.S. in the early '60s, Lomax got involved in producing concerts and working with folk festival organizers, along with penning The Penguin Book of American Folksongs in 1961 and Folk Song Style and Culture in 1968. Lomax also worked in radio and wrote extensively on fieldwork and folk music for journals and folk magazines, staying actively involved in the preservation of American folk music through the 1980s. In the late 1980s, Lomax produced a critically hailed documentary series called "American Patchwork", which dealt with various forms of American music. One film in the series, "The Land Where the Blues Began", dealt with how field hollers and work songs led to the origins of the blues in the Mississippi Delta. In 1993 Lomax published a blues memoir by the same name which won a National Book Award. Throughout the 90s and into the twenty-first century, Rounder records steadily worked toward reissuing a 100-CD series showcasing Lomax' most legendary field recordings.

Rosco Gordon Dies

  Rhythm 'n' Blues pioneer Rosco Gordon was found dead of natural causes at his Queens, New York, residence on July 11, 2002. A native of Memphis, born April 10, 1928, Gordon skyrocketed to fame in the early fifties with a string of hits for the Chess, RPM and Duke labels, including originals like "Booted" and "No More Doggin'." At the radio powerhouse WDIA, where Rosco played piano and sang on his popular weekly show, he made additional recordings with friends Johnny Ace, Bobby "Blue" Bland and Earl Forest, and when Sam Phillips created the Sun Records label in the mid-fifties, Rosco returned to work with his favorite producer and continued to release brisk selling singles for the growing radio market throughout that decade. In 1960 Rosco penned "Just a Little Bit," a song which has become one of a handful of standards from the R&B era. In the 80's Gordon renewed his live performance career in the New York area, while writing and recording new material at home. He released "Memphis, Tennessee," in November, 2000, on the Stony Plain label. As a result of the attention garnered by the album, Rosco was nominated for a Handy Award as "Comeback Artist of the Year."