Val, I'm trying to think how long we've known each other and...
How did we first meet?
It was when you did that film...
..radio programme about Mahalia Jackson. Ah, yeah, that's right.
I had a call from Sarah Cudden, who was your producer.
And did you say no straightaway? away? No... Well, I... Yes, well...
And we came to your house and, I mean,
you're at legendary status now and you won't like me saying that, Val,
but we came to your house and then we got to see all your
photographs of all the wonderful, legendary players that you've
either met or worked with or taken photos of or written about. Yeah.
And I've never forgotten that.
You know, so many articles have written and thoughts put down
and discussed about the birth of rock and roll.
There's one person that was making astonishingly energetic and,
you know, she was using distortion on her guitar and pumping
energy into her recordings way before we now think of
as the official birth of rock and roll.
You know who I'm talking about. Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Absolutely. Mmm. What do you make of her?
Well, I was very fortunate to see her several times and to know her
but she was a charming woman
and, you know, once she decided she liked you, that was it.
We're going to start with some Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who
many call the godmother of rock and roll. I like to call her that
as well.
# The sweet horsey Oh, the sweet horsey
# Oh, this is the wonderful-est time of my life. #
This is a programme that... Was it in Leeds they made it? Manchester.
Manchester, sorry. Manchester. Yeah, yeah. That's her and Cousin Joe.
# Papa Joe
# It's raining and the people are so kind to stay
# And I've waited here
# Oh, it makes me feel happy
# Oh, yes
# Just to know we can stand in the rain and sing
# And the people are so sweet to stay behind
# Ain't they sweet?
# And I've come in on a Yes?
# Let me tell you what I've come in on... #
This, now, one of the most pivotal moments in the history of
television, I'd say anyway.
# Let me hear you. #
# Didn't it rain, children?
# Rain, oh, yes
# Didn't it? Yes, didn't it? You know it did
# Didn't it? Oh, oh, yes
# How it rained
# I said it rained, children
# Rain, oh, yes
# Didn't it just? Didn't it? You know it did, didn't it?
# Oh, my Lord, how it rained. #
Do you know what amazes me with this and the question I
perpetually ask myself when I watch?
It's not the South, although they've made it look like a station
in the Deep South in America.
She's an incredibly successful musician, she's dressed up,
she's got her heels on, she's got her glad rags on.
What were they thinking about this cod American scene?
I know exactly what they were thinking.
They were thinking, well, it's another gig.
She may have played in some of the biggest churches but, you know,
sure as hell she played in some holes as well.
# ..Didn't it rain, children?
# Rain, oh, yes
# Didn't it just? Didn't it? You know it did, didn't it?
# Oh, my Lord
# How it rained. #
Look at her.
She's actually playing live electric guitar, she's playing
electric guitar in the rain.
She is tempting fate but she's a woman who got religion,
so she's got the Lord in her corner.
Yeah!
VAL LAUGHS
# ..Some at the window some at the door
# Some tried, brother Lord To take on more
# But, no, flat-out Uh-uh, my friends
# The angel's got the key And you can't get in
# I know it rained You know it rained
# Rained too long All night long
# Rained all day, rained all night
# Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain
# Rain, children, rained, oh, yes
# Didn't it? Yes, didn't it? You know it did, didn't iT?
# Oh, my Lord, how it rained! #
CHEERING
Yeah, here's John Lee Hooker. That was on Ready Steady Go!, the...
Every Friday night. Yeah.
You know, "Here comes the weekend," or whatever they used to say.
THE hip television programme that everybody watched, and they
were watching it for the latest chart entries and so on.
Vicky Wickerman and people who were in charge made sure... She made sure...
..there were lots of black artists on there, and that really was...
..especially blues artists, that was incredible.
It was absolutely unheard of to have on a teenage show,
but this was something else.
# Boom, boom, boom, boom
# I'm going to shoot you right down
# Right off of your feet
# Take you home with me
# Put you in my house
# Boom, boom, boom, boom
# I love to see you strut
# Up and down the floor
# When you talking to me
# That baby talk
# I like it like that
# Ho-ho-ho-ho
# Ohh, baby
# Yes, ma'am
# Walk your walk, baby
# Wow, baby
# Walk your walk, baby
# Yes, ma'am. #
This is just like Ready Steady Go!,
the same kind of faces and the same... I used to go there...
..not every Friday but, you know, every other Friday I'd go there
and take photographs during the rehearsals.
What did John Lee Hooker say about his music?
Did he talk much about it?
I went out and had a lunch with him round the corner to
some bar where we had chicken and chips.
I don't remember much about it. It was just a very simple interview.
I didn't have very sophisticated kind of questions in those days.
It was always, "Who did you play with?" and "Why did you do this?"
They weren't exactly deep!
But I found him a very likeable person,
a very straightforward sort of person.
# ..Once you walked that walk
# And talked that talk
# And whisper in my ear
# Tell me she love
# I loved that talk
# When she talked like that
# She knocked me out
# Right off of my feet
# Ho-ho-ho-ho
# Ohh, baby
# Walk your walk, baby
# Yes, ma'am
# Yes, ma'am... #
Champion Jack Dupree is going to be on next.
Now, he's a fascinating character,
a pianist and singer from New Orleans, but he was also a drummer,
a dancer, everything. A boxer. He'd done all those things. Boxer as well?
That's why he's "Champion"! Ahh.
The thing is that he was the first, really, of a line of pianists
that came in, toured and they all had a long residency at the
Hundred Club in Oxford Street.
You could go down those stairs and have a masterclass in blues piano.
# Well, we're going down to the Chicken Shack
# Have you ever been down to New Orleans?
# You know, boy, that's what I mean
# All through the weekend quiet as a mouse
# And on Saturday night you go from house to house
# Chicken Shack
# Yeah, the Chicken Shack
# At the Chicken Shack right down in New Orleans
# Well, the women drink wine Boys, it's gin
# You all get drunk and stay all night again at the Chicken Shack
# At the Chicken Shack
Right down in New Orleans
# Hit it, boy
# Well, you don't have to worry about the folks next door
# Give 'em a bottle of wine You don't hear no more
# Chicken Shack
# At the Chicken Shack right down in New Orleans
# There's a joint down there by the name of Mac
# Everybody knows it's called the Chicken Shack
# When they get drunk they get in the groove
# Hearts get to rocking then get to move
# Chicken Shack
# Come on down there, boys... #
He was an orphan, started out in the waifs' home,
the same place where Louis Armstrong learned to play trumpet. Really?
Yeah, he's about the same age.
He fought in the war and he was interned in a Japanese
prisoner-of-war camp.
# ..I'll tell you one more time Before we go
# All you got to do is get that door
# When you get drunk and you feel you're high
# You got no money then you wanna try
# Chicken Shack
# At the Chicken Shack right down in New Orleans
# Chicken Shack
# At the Chicken Shack right down in New Orleans. #
When we're watching these films, this is the 1960s. Mmm.
And this is just before the civil rights really comes to the fore.
Champion Jack Dupree, if I remember rightly, was one of the
gentlemen that came, realised that they were being treated a bit more
fairly than over in America, were able to use the same
toilets and restaurants, take the same buses, and so forth.
And didn't he settle in Yorkshire? He did.
And so that was champion, too!
He met a woman who worked in one of the nightclubs near to the
Hundred Club, and they hooked up and he went to live in Halifax.
He must have been so well-known there.
Oh, he was, everybody all over Yorkshire knew him.
He was a Yorkshire lad by then. Yeah.
I'm just looking at all these records.
But this one, bright pink, quite suave. Mmm. Jimmy Witherspoon.
Tell us what you know about him.
Well, he was from a place called Gurdon in Arkansas, and he was just
a regular singer. He had the most wonderful voice, baritone voice.
He used to play with Ronnie Scott a lot. They used to play together.
How did you get into listening to blues music in the first place?
Because we know you started taking photographs and
writing about music when you were just a teenager. Yes.
So, where did that flick of light come on and you thought, "Right,
"this is it for me?" Well, it's complicated.
Different people that I met when I was very young.
You know, people who were in our house, a boyfriend I had
when I was about 12! Is that right? Yes, well...
He played the trumpet. He played the trumpet and he told me
about some of the people.
We had a record shop that sold only jazz records, and blues of course,
but of course that's another thing.
Today, you get this differentiation between, you know,
people who listen to jazz OR blues, and they find it strange if
you listen to both, but when I was growing up that's what we...
We were all searching for the authentic.
Blues was part of jazz, and gospel music, if you liked it, as well,
you knew about it.
# Yes, going to Kansas City
# Kansas City, here I come. #
So, we've into the '70s presumably now, cos we're all colour as well.
I looked at this, Crown Records - full colour, high fidelity.
That was a bit before that.
# I was standing on the corner of 12th Street and Vine
# Oh, yes
# Yes, standing on the corner of 12th Street and Vine
# With my Kansas City woman
# And a bottle of Kansas City wine
# Well, I might take a plane
# Might take a train
# If I have to walk I'm going there just the same
# I'm going to Kansas City
# Kansas City, here I come
# Got a crazy way of loving
# I wanna get me some. #
And so when Witherspoon came here, I was a great fan of his.
Somebody, I forget who it was,
I was meant to do some photographs for him.
So I did a record cover for him for Prestige Records
and photographed him in front of all the cherry blossom in Notting Hill.
# ..Well, I might take a plane
# Might take a train
# If I have to walk I'm going there just the same
# Kansas City
# Kansas City, here I come
# Got a crazy way of loving
# I wanna get me some
# Crazy way of loving and I wanna get me some
# Swinging way of loving and I wanna get me some
# Crazy way of loving
# I wanna get me some
# They got a crazy way of living and I wanna get me some
# Got my mojo working but it just don't work on you
# Got my mojo working Just don't work on you
# My mojo working Just don't work on you
# Got my mojo working but it... #
As Muddy Waters would say it...
# ..It just don't work on you. #
Thank you!
In terms of the repertoire that is available
for you to discover and find, you know,
from when I was really quite young, what I loved about,
let's say, folk music... What's the Louis Armstrong quote?
Oh, "Mr Armstrong is jazz folk music?"
And he said he never heard a horse sing a song.
He said, "It's all folk music, I never heard a horse sing."
But, you know, in terms of folk music, what I loved about it,
and I class some of the blues music as traditional music in that sense,
because it's telling you about life.
And that's what attracted me to the songs and, say,
somebody like Bessie Smith.
This would have been during Prohibition, wouldn't it?
So it's in a...it's set in a... Speakeasy.
..speakeasy, exactly. That's the word I was looking for.
BACKING CHOIR SINGS
# ..Cos my baby
# He done left this town. #
I mean, we are blessed that we have this clip, you know?
This is the only one of her, I think. Yes, it is.
But she was a fearless person, Bessie Smith,
and she wouldn't take any, you know, rubbish from anybody.
And the idea of all those people singing like a Hollywood choir
is was pretty awful, but it's just wonderful to see her.
BACKING CHOIR SINGS
# I'll pack my grip and make my getaway
# Pack my grip and make my getaway
# St Louis woman... #
BACKING CHOIR SINGS
# Pulls that man around by her apron strings. #
Because she was orphaned, as well, wasn't she, when she was very young,
and had to go out and perform on the streets? Yes.
And as a dancer, not just a singer. Mmm.
For a time, she was the highest earning artist among... Was she?
..African-American singers, or artists, yeah.
She was very popular, there's no doubt about it.
# Or else he wouldn't have gone so far from me. #
BACKING CHOIR SINGS
# Don't cry
# Doggone... #
BACKING CHOIR SINGS
# Doggone...#
BACKING CHOIR SINGS
You know, in 2018, you can say, "Let's talk about the blues genre,"
and people immediately imagine men and guitars and guitar solos
and stuff like that, but actually,
rewind the clock right to the beginning,
and the vast majority of artists in this genre were female.
Yes. Well, I don't know what percentage of artists were female,
but the first blues recording is by Mamie Smith who, of course,
recorded with a jazz group, her own group,
and they were playing jazz, if you like.
You see, they go back to the tent shows and things,
people like Ma Rainey,
they were going round in carnivals and tent shows, travelling shows.
Tell me more about those shows.
Well, they were for poor people in the countryside.
The show would come to town, just like the circus comes to town here.
And there'd be all sorts of people selling patent medicine,
anything to rip people off.
Card games going on in the corner, throwing dice and booze.
Well, I don't know if it was legally booze, but there'd be
some kind of moonshine going on.
And on the stage a show, and people would be putting their best foot forward,
dressed up, everybody, and that's the audience as well,
who maybe didn't have but one piece of clothing to their name.
These are poor people, very poor people.
Oh, this is one. Grande dame.
Oh, here she is, Victoria. Now, she was one of them, Victoria Spivey.
# But your friends will treat you so low down
# TB's all right to have
# But your friends will treat you so low down
# Don't you ask 'em for no favours
# They even stopped coming around
# Oh...
# TB's killing me
# Mmm
# TB's killing me. #
So she's formidable, a brilliant lady.
When she pulls those faces, she's going back to that
minstrel and vaudeville tradition.
Yeah, because that's the thing, she comes from a certain era
where people wouldn't be able to see that close, or...?
Mmm, that's right.
Well, that sort of thing was necessary to...
You had to accentuate it, I suppose, to come across, you know?
I think of it as a stage alter ego. Yes. Yes.
But you have to just see things in context, really. Yeah.
# I could not have walked down the street
# For men looking at me
# From my head to my feet
# But, oh, now... #
In the '60s, she did something very adventurous.
She started a record label, her own record label,
and she started recording a lot of the older artists.
And she lived with a guy called Lenny Kunstadt in Brooklyn,
and he was about 30 years younger than her.
And they used to just sort of, you know, research together.
So the fact that she had this record label was a fantastic thing.
So she was kind of like an ethnomusicologist, really, then?
In a way, I suppose.
# You can just bury my poor body
# Lord, in the deep blue sea
# And don't you...worry about me. #
I think she recorded when she was very young.
Of course, she's on one of Bob Dylan's first records.
Last time I saw her,
I went over to interview her.
She said, "Sit over there, girl!"
So, I said, "Oh, yeah?"
She said, "Yeah, Bob Dylan was here last night.
"That's where his ass was."
I'm saying, "Right, OK."
Absolutely brilliant.
So, did you take a photo of her?
I did, yes. Several.
Next up, we've got somebody who is such an intense performer.
Son House. Yes. You photographed him, as well.
He was electrifying.
This was actually during the course of Jazz Expo.
1967. 1967, yeah.
And then here we are. You can watch him play.
He just absolutely hits the heck out of his guitar.
It's one of those National resonating guitars.
That's right.
Famously made out of metal.
# He got a letter this morning
# How do you reckon it read?
# It said, hurry, hurry
# Uh, yeah Cos the girl you love is dead
# You know...
# He grabbed his suitcase
# And he took off down the road
# Uh-huh
# Well, I grabbed up my suitcase
# I say, and took off down the road
# But when he got there
# Uh, she layin' on a coolin' board... #
Those strings would be super-tight, as well.
Yeah. Yeah. He's ramming it.
Oh, well, he was a powerful man.
When he started playing and singing, of course,
he was absolutely all-powerful.
He was Muddy Waters's model, he claimed that Son House
was the person he saw and he learned from him by watching him.
# That little girl He got to thinking about her
# And he wants to know
# You know I walked up close
# Oh, and looked down on her face
# Yes, I walked up close
# I looked down in her face
# You know it's a good old girl
# And, whoa, got to lay her to Judgment Day... #
Well, I think, you know, the blues is about...
..and everybody thinks about it as being music of bad times, as well.
But it's really not. It's a music of celebration, of survival.
The way that the African people survived in America,
despite all the hardships and, if you think about it, really,
it's a common thing to think of the blues as a sad state of mind.
It's Saturday-night music before you have to go to church on Sunday.
Essentially, it's about survival, right? Yes, yes.
And Muddy, of course, was the person.
Howlin' Wolf was the most exciting person, in some ways.
The most powerful sounding.
But Muddy was beyond that because he was so sophisticated, too,
in his way. A sophisticated countryman, if you like.
And I was lucky to see him in 1958, when he came here
and he played at what was then St Pancras Town Hall,
opposite King's Cross station.
# When I'd end up
# Deep blue sea
# I'd have all good-lookin' women
# Fishin', fishin' after me
# Fishin' after me
# Oh, darlin'
# Sure enough, I would
# Oh, darlin'
# I went to my baby's house
# And I sat out on her step
# She said, come on in now, Muddy
# You know my husband just done left
# My husband just done left
# Sure enough, he done... #
Where's that record? Which one? The Best Of Muddy Waters.
Oh, yes. Let's have a look at the songs he's written.
Well, no, let's look at the record. Because that...
This is the record...
I love "best ofs". Never knock a "best of".
This is a record that Keith Richards was carrying when Mick Jagger
saw him on the station platform. Never!
And then the Rolling Stones did go on a sort of pilgrimage
to Chess Records, didn't they?
And Muddy Waters, so the story goes, was there painting. That's right.
He was painting the building. And they couldn't believe it.
Because that was their hero.
# Gonna be a rollin' stone
# You gonna be a rollin' stone
# Oh, darlin'
# Sure enough, he gone
# Oh, yeah
# Yes, I feel...
# Well, my time ain't long... #
When you come across someone like Muddy... I know
in some of his behaviour he wasn't a gentleman. He was a great womaniser.
That is no secret.
But the way he carried himself and made his way to Chicago,
the way this man talked and moved was something else.
I used to have lots of drinking sessions
with Otis Spann when they came here
and he'd always be eyeing me up in the corner.
But he wasn't going to leap on you and say,
"Hey, baby, come here. Let's have a thing," you know?
Yeah. He just used his mojo hands!
Exactly! Exactly.
Spell you his way without saying anything.
Yeah, but I'd got an anti-spell thing in me,
because I'm not a believer.
Does that sort of give you a little, like, glass...
It puts me ahead of the game.
# ..Sure enough, I'm gone. #
So, next up, we've got Howlin' Wolf.
I would love to see this gentleman play live.
Yes. And you photographed him.
Yes, I did, but I think, probably, one of the reasons I can't remember
all this so well is because I had a bit of a disaster with the film.
I shot a lot of photographs. What happened?
I don't know. The film got fogged, for some reason, in the processing.
I was... I wasn't paying attention, or something.
So I lost nearly all the photographs.
So the fact that we've got one or two... Like, this is one.
The fact that I've got one or two of him is a tremendous achievement.
And you can see, yeah, he's covered with sweat.
Yes, absolutely. He's got glasses on there. Yeah, yeah.
The number that's going out now, friend, is Smokestack Lightnin'.
CHEERING
But Howlin' Wolf's speaking voice is just as distinctive
and charismatic as his singing voice.
You almost want to speak like that. Rarr-rarr-rarr!
# Oh, the train I ride on
# Oh, the air can shine like gold
# Oh, the train I ride on
# Oh, the air can shine like gold
# Whoo-hoo
# Just like gold
# Oh, the train I ride on... #
You know, from the minute you hear recordings
by Howlin' Wolf, you're in the middle of the scene,
the atmosphere he is able to create instantly. Again, you know,
what I love about this genre of music is just that groove.
I love it.
And anything could happen. See, you're caught, hooked in,
and anything can happen. Yeah.
# ..Just like gold, whoo-hoo!
# Oh, stop your train, darlin'
# And let a poor boy ride
# Uh-huh Don't you hear me callin'?
# Whoo-hoo-hoo
# Whoo-hoo
# A-ha, who been you?
# Baby stands there
# I been gone
# Don't ya hear me talkin' to ya, woman?
# Wey-hey!
# She's soundin' good...
# Oh, she tell me... #
What does she tell me?
She got sassy!
# A-ha, little bitty boy
# Well, I tell you...
# Don't ya hear me callin'?
# Whoo-hoo, yeah
# Whoo-hoo, yeah... #
Everybody thinks of him as the man, don't they?
When they think of the most exciting performer, and so on.
When people think about the blues,
it's either Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, quite often, anyway.
Cos they sort of cut right through, didn't they?
To the mainstream. They did. They were lucky.
I mean, not lucky, by rights, that's what they should have done
and they've influenced all music ever since,
a certain kind anyway, but they are only two of a kind.
There must have been many others who never got near a recording studio.
True. Because they were in isolated places,
or not there at the right time.
That's the other thing,
they were born within the time that recording was possible,
television film was being made, and they got out on tour, as well.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
# ..Way-oo
# Way-oo. #
Since I was quite a young child, actually,
I've been quite fascinated, not in what the differences are,
between different regional sounds, or different country sounds,
but, you know, joining the dots.
You start listening to music from the South,
that we've been listening to, and then
you will wonder where the beginnings of that kind of music are.
Much has been said of it coming from, you know,
countries in West Africa,
Mali and Senegal particularly, being very musical cultures.
And there's one artist that is at the top of the sort of
discussion when you think about the African roots of the blues
and I guess it's Ali Farka Toure. Yeah.
This is a problematic area for me.
It is there to some extent but I feel -
and I might be wrong here - that it's greatly exaggerated.
Ali Farka Toure listened to John Lee Hooker's records. He did, yeah.
Therefore, he's a wonderful musician and I love him,
but when you hear him, you're not hearing Malian music.
You're hearing what he's heard on record, as well.
That's influenced him. And yet... Just as everyone's influenced.
..the linear nature of a lot of music from Mali is recognisable.
Mm. But definitely the guitar sounds...
You probably know more than me, but... No, don't say that.
No, I think that the music is beautiful.
HE SINGS IN SONGHAI
You know, Val, I do play a lot of Saharan blues music on the show.
But it's too far away now. Yeah, but all I'm interested in is this...
..the feel of it, the groove feel of it... Yeah.
..is what they have in common, to my ears, anyway,
and that's what I hear differently
to, say, the more sort of country music from Appalachia... Yeah.
..or other sort of country players from the early 1900s.
THEY SING IN SONGHAI
So, I'm going to ask you about another photograph now,
one of yours, Val. Yes, that's T-Bone Walker.
Right in the middle of a guitar solo, by the looks of it!
Well, again, that's at Hammersmith Odeon on stage.
Yeah. At the '68 Jazz Expo, yeah.
Yeah - and, again, another figure
that I hear mentioned in interviews as a huge influence.
Yes, absolutely.
I think he's not well enough known,
and I think that's because he was playing the blues,
and he was too sophisticated for a lot of blues audiences,
and to down home for the jazz audiences.
# Hey, baby
# Come on home to me
# Hey, baby
# Come on home to me
# Well, you know your daddy mistreat you
# All the time, used to be
# Hey, baby
# I'm in love with you
# Well, momma
# I'm in love with you
# Well, you know I love you Pretty momma
# Nothing else will do... #
He made a good living out of music, he was very famous,
had big bands and so on,
but he certainly wasn't revered as he should have been,
as one of the great innovators of the music.
APPLAUSE
You know, watching all this footage,
it's obviously just from when it was possible -
and I'm just thinking of all the visuals that we could have enjoyed
of people like Mozart or Bach -
any great musician that we just simply can't see in action,
you know? Mozart would have been in there quickly, you know?
He'd be writing a song, peddling it down Tin Pan Alley.
Foot on the piano, Jerry Lee style.
Um - and it brings us onto another momentous moment
in television history. Mm. I'm talking now about a time when...
You imagine it, right?
So, you've got the producer, you've got the directors,
you've got the cameras,
these massive machines at the time, you got it all mapped out -
that person is the presenter, that person is the musician,
that band is going to play that song at that time with the presenter.
Yeah. I'm talking about Lulu, I'm talking about Jimi Hendrix...
It didn't happen that way. He didn't want to do
what the producers and directors wanted him to do.
It's brilliant, because you want people to be like this. Yeah, yeah.
You want a bit of anarchy and a bit of rebellion and a bit of autonomy,
and this is what we get.
MUSIC: Hey Joe by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
We'd like to stop playing this rubbish
and dedicate a song to Cream -
regardless of what kind of group they might be in,
we'd like to dedicate it to Eric Clapton,
Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce.
You can imagine, off stage now,
they're going, "What are they doing?! Get them off!"
but it's live TV, they can't do anything - there's no choice.
That's right. Bar coming on and stopping the music.
We're being put off the air.
Funnily enough, when he came to England
and I interviewed him a couple of times,
and I think I was the first person to - nobody else had done it -
ask him about blues, and I'm always seeing it quoted,
it says, you know, "And Jimi talked about blues musicians -
"Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and whoever."
Well, that was because I asked him about them. Cos no-one else had?
No, because they didn't associate... To them, he was a pop musician,
he had nothing to do with blues, as far as they were concerned,
because they didn't use their ears.
I found him to be a very sweet guy,
a very exciting performer and a very sweet person.
I've heard that from other sources. No, he was very gentle.
A gentle soul.
That's at the Royal Albert Hall in 1967, it's a rehearsal.
Yeah, and I'll tell you, Cerys,
shall I tell you what my claim to fame is?
Tell me everything you know, Val! One of my claims to fame. Yeah!
I rescued him from a group of young girls, signing autographs,
so I just drew up and said, "Come on, let's go,"
and I gave him a lift in my car.
So that's one of my claims to fame.
What happened to him was a very sad thing.
One of those unnecessary deaths, you know?
The next one is a bit of a wildcard.
Peggy Lee. Yes, I know!
Well, people will wonder why I've chosen Peggy Lee
as a representative of the blues.
There's two reasons, really.
The main one is, the song that she's singing is Why Don't You Do Right?
and it was originally a drugs song -
it's about smoking weed in Harlem, or something.
# You had plenty money, 1922
# You let other women make a fool of you
# Why don't you do right like some other men do?
# Get out of here and get me some money too
# You're sittin' down Wonderin' what it's all about
# You ain't got no money They will put you out
# Why don't you do right like some other men do?
# Get out of here and get me some money too... #
Peggy Lee was singing with Benny Goodman's band,
and she got hold of this record and she loved it,
and she played it all the time, and Benny said, "Why don't we play it?"
So, they never thought about... You know,
the idea of a white woman in those days singing the blues
was absolutely unheard of,
and she did it, and it became a mega, mega hit.
Obviously, it shone a lot of recognition on to Peggy Lee...
Yeah. ..but also on to Billie Holliday, because, of course,
as you'll hear, Billie Holliday is her model.
# ..If you had prepared twenty years ago
# You wouldn't be wanderin' now from door to door
# Why don't you do right like some other men do?
# Get out of here and get me some money too
# I fell for your jivin' and I took you in
# Now all you got to offer me's a drink of gin
# Why don't you do right like some other men do?
# Get out of here and get me some money too
# Why don't you do right like some other men do?
# Like some other men do? #
Do you know, Val, what I love about working in music
is being able to interview people
that have been around for a while, and...
..I interview many guitarists,
and the two names that come up again and again and again
as early influences were Hank Marvin and Big Bill Broonzy.
That's right, yeah. Yeah, they would be.
Absolutely - and Broonzy was such an influence,
he was beloved here, he came here several times.
I saw him the last time he came here -
I don't remember very much about it,
because it was in 1957 and I was about two years old, so, you know...
..and...
..but I do remember waiting outside the stage door
to get his autograph,
and when he came down in the lift, this is at the Festival Hall,
he was this man in this huge sort of flapping coat,
and, you know, large trousers and a big muffler round his neck,
because it was cold, a cold time of year,
and he signed my programme and a book of mine,
and I've always treasured that meeting,
although it was only for a second.
I don't think there's any other meeting I've had with somebody
in that "can I have your autograph?" way that is so important to me -
and here he is, look. I know. Famous film, shot in Belgium.
The amount of smoke in this -
and then it makes you want to have a glass of something to drink...
It does! ..when you're watching it! It sure does!
# Late one Saturday evenin'
# After the sun went down
# It was late one Saturday evenin'
# Lord, after the sun went down
# Yes, I went lookin' for my baby
# But she was nowhere around
# Wind started howlin'
# And the rain begin to fall
# The wind started howlin'
# Lord, and the rain begin to fall
# Yes, if my baby had a-known how much I loved her
# She wouldn't have never left at all... #
See, this was 1956. This was the year before I saw him.
On mainstream television... Mm. ..when there was only two channels.
Yeah. So, this is a massive audience. Yeah, that's right.
He's a great influence on the music of this nation, I would say.
# ..Her picture still on my dresser
# And her gown still on my bed
# Yes, I'm just sittin' here Wonderin', is my baby livin'?
# Lord, or is my little baby dead?
# Every Saturday evenin'
# I get as blue as blue can be
# Every Saturday evenin'
# I get as blue as blue can be
# Yes, we three was so happy
# My wife, my guitar and me. #
So, in terms of all the live performers
you've been privy to seeing, and among them were absolute legends,
what one absolutely comes to mind
and you'll never forget? That is so impossible to answer.
That is so impossible to answer, Cerys, I can't...
You know, people like... Three. Three, then. All right.
Um... James Brown.
Um... Duke Ellington.
Muddy Waters. Will that do?
There are many more. Yeah, that'll be a good start.
We'll have to continue this. To be continued.
# ..I'm gonna get up in the morning
# I believe I'll dust my blues
# I'm gonna get up in the morning
# I believe I'll dust my blues
# I gotta leave my baby
# I ain't got no time to lose. #