RIP Koko Taylor

[1gobluedem]

Died today at age 80. Damn, another one gone: http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/music/1605461,koko-taylor-chicago-queen-blues-dead-060309.article

Edited to fix link.

[malta blue]

1. I was just going to post about it

:cry::cry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUmkbhxfFVQ

[InternalDialogue]

2. Damn.

I saw her one time, at a blues festival years ago. She had the serious juju, as it were. One of the greats.

RIP

[latebloomer]

3. Definitely one of the irreplaceables

[Burma Jones]

4. I played with her once....

I'm grateful she lived as long as she did....

[abq e streeter]

17. Whole gig, or sat in?; not that it matters..just curious. Either way, you got to play

with Koko Taylor, and even if it was for one song, that's one more than I ever played with her, and I assume you're very proud of having done that, and you should be.

[Burma Jones]

18. Sat In, she played at my college

She heard me play trumpet, asked if I wanted to play along during the sound check, I did, and she said I could come out and be her "horn section" for a few tunes. I already had played along with recordings of Wang Dang Doodle and jammed on occasion with a local Blues Band....

[abq e streeter]

19. How cool ! (and how very cool of her too) gotta be a real special memory, especially today.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

5. Damn........

All the old greats are leaving the stage.

My old friend, James Cotton, is still battling throat cancer, but he's doing well. Still, I worry about him..............

[1gobluedem]

7. I ate dinner with James Cotton once

I used to run the backstage and corporate hospitality area at the late, lamented Frog Island Music Festival in Ypsilanti, MI. He was so nice.

I'm sorry to hear about the throat cancer, I didn't know. Big vibes to James; he's one of the greats.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

9. He's a doll,

and didn't you love those freckles?

James and his band were playing in a club in Boston during the winter of 1968-69. Some of us - at school in southern Maine - hitchhiked down 95 to hear them, and the set was over, we went backstage. You could do that in those days.

We got to talking with the guys, James included, and it turned out they had the week of between gigs, so, since we were kids in the first co-ed dorm in the US, at a rich little experimental division of an old, established liberal arts college, we asked them if they'd like to come and live with us for the week.

They took us up on it.

A week of those guys all over a lily-white New England campus. Seeing them in line in the Dining Commons. Sharing our dope with them in our rooms. Us making runs to New Hampshire for cheap booze - Johnny Walker Red, lots and lots of it.

And, every night, after midnight, James and the band jammed in the center section of our beautiful dorm - it was more like a theater - and they'd play until dawn.

A whole week of that.

Years later, I saw that James was performing at the Roxy in DC. We went to see him, and when I asked the guy if I could go backstage to see James, he asked me how I knew him. I said, "We went to college together."

James is illiterate. Signed our guest book with an "X".

When I walked in, James was sitting there, looking older and tired. I said, "James," and he looked up, lit up, and said my name.

Thirty years later, he remembered my name.

And he was pissed that he hadn't been invited to any of our reunions.

Then, he proceeded to roll a joint, and we got fucked up.

His show that night was as great as he ever was.

I love him.........................

[abq e streeter]

11. That's an amazing story...James Cotton hanging out and jamming in the dorm... Wow!

I met him once, through a mutual friend ( who passed away in 2001) named Sam Franklin; Sam played sax, mainly with Albert Collins ( and was a dear friend; I still really miss him)... James did like his reefers; I know that because at Sam's request, I rolled a few for James to take on the road after a gig here in Albuquerque. Sam said they had run out, and knew that I had some of the good stuff. ( note to agent Mike--I no longer do that, and I believe the statute of limitations has run its course anyway). And it was about 10 years ago. Who knows, maybe the joint James rolled was from the same stuff I sent him on the road with. ( I know , extremely doubtful, but we've already established your having met an old friend of mine, now it turns out I've met an old friend of yours.) And of course, I'm saddened to hear about Koko Taylor; saw her many times. Glad to hear James is still hanging in there.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

15. Let me tell you -

there are some very sweet white Anglo-Saxon Protestant women out there who were in the "straight" part of our liberal arts school when the band came home with us, and, as they now approach Medicare status, happily married, with kids, and grandkids, when they close their eyes, they see



and



and



Those guys were divine, I tell you, in everything they did ..........................

[1gobluedem]

14. That story is fantastic

What a terrific memory. What college?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. It was a small place,

in Springvale, Maine, called Nasson College.

It was an old traditional liberal arts school that had a president, Roger Gay, who, in 1965, decided it was time to start dabbling in experimental higher education, and established a new division, housed separately from the main campus - in a dorm designed by an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright - and where we all lived and learned together (we had our own faculty).

Alas, the board of trustees really didn't like us - we participated in intramural sports, but we were always high, and always ended up embracing our opponents and forfeiting every game - we named our volleyball team "Fred," which, oddly enough, was also the official name we chose for our dorm, eschewed, of course, by the faculty - so, by the third year, when I had just come back from a year in South America and gotten engaged to a faculty member at Antioch, I transferred out and the board closed down the experimental division.

After all these years, my best friends are still the people I met there. It was an amazing time.

The day "Sgt. Pepper" came out, June, 1967, forty-two of us (there were only sixty-seven in our class) dropped acid and listened to it together....................................

[Richardo]

6. Aw man.

:cry:

RIP Koko. O8)

[ornotna]

8. RIP Koko

The Queen of the Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxCa16-nxtM

[Madrone]

10. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo

x(

[GOPisEvil]

12. Wang Dang Doodle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxCa16-nxtM

RIP Koko. :(

[abq e streeter]

13. Sad, but a life well lived , to say the least.

saw Koko many times, mainly in Chicago bars in the 70's, but have seen her in Albuquerque and Santa Fe too. And loved her "Blues Machine". As aptly named band as you'll ever see. I remember one night at Biddy Mulligan's in Chicago, dancing the night away to, I don't even remember, maybe Joe Young, or Fast Fingers Dawkins...anyway it was real dark in there and when the lights went up at the end of the night, it turns out the couple next to me and my girlfriend on the dance floor , had been Koko Taylor ( and her husband I assume) the whole time. Just boogieing the night away along with the rest of us blues fans there. I am very aware of how privileged I am to have seen her sing so many times; she was just an absolute powerhouse.