2010 – Ozzy Going Forward With Battle Over Black Sabbath (HeadbangerNYC.com) A Manhattan federal judge ruled Thursday (February 25) that Ozzy Osbourne can proceed with his lawsuit against guitarist Tony Iommi over use of the Black Sabbath name.

Ozzy filed a lawsuit against Iommi in May 2009, claiming that Iommi illegally took sole ownership of the band’s name in a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Osbourne is suing Iommi for a 50 percent interest in the “Black Sabbath” trademark, along with a portion of Iommi’s profits from use of the name. The Manhattan federal court suit also charges that Osbourne’s “signature lead vocals” are largely responsible for the band’s “extraordinary success,” noting that its popularity plummeted during his absence from 1980 through 1996. [They seemed to do pretty well with Dio and continue to do so with him fronting Heaven and Hell]

2010 – Roger Daltrey wants to start a super-group with Jimmy Page.

The Who singer is keen to form a new band with the Led Zeppelin guitarist and go back to the blues roots he established before he started writing songs with bandmate Pete Townshend.

He told UK radio station BBC6 music: “I’d love to do something, I’d love to do an album with Jimmy Page. He needs a singer to drive him. I’m a great blues singer.

“I don’t sing the blues with The Who, but that’s what I used to be before Townshend started writing. I used to be a great blues singer.”

The project is more likely to happen as the future of The Who is uncertain, following comments made by 64-year-old Pete revealed he may have to stop performing because of a recurring problem with tinnitus – a painful ringing in the ears, a symptom of noise-induced hearing loss.

He said: “If my hearing is going to be a problem, we’re not delaying shows. We’re finished. I can’t really see any way around the issue.”

Meanwhile, Jimmy Page has spoken of his frustration at not being able to make a Led Zeppelin reunion happen.

The other surviving members of the group are busy, with singer Robert Plant recording a new album with vocalist Alison Krauss, and bassist John Paul Jones joining super-group Them Crooked Vultures.

Jimmy said: “You’d better ask Robert Plant what the future of Led Zeppelin is. Musicians can always play together but I don’t think you can go out with a band called Led Zeppelin if you haven’t got the original vocalist.”

Jimmy has, however, spoken of his desire to get a new musical project off the ground this year, which could pave the way for Roger’s plan.

He previously said: “Next year I have every intention of playing music live and manifesting it. I’ve got the music waiting, and that’s what I’ll be doing.”

2010 – A rare JIMI HENDRIX cover recorded over 40 years ago is set to be released as a digital release on March 1 and a seven-inch vinyl release seven days later.

‘Bleeding Heart’ is the guitarist’s take on ELMORE JAMES’ classic blues song, originally recorded in April 1969. The studio recording also features bassist Billy Cox and drummer Rocky Isaac.

Julien Temple has also made a video to accompany the track.

The single will feature previously unreleased B-side ‘Peace In Mississippi’ and will be released in conjunction with his forthcoming posthumous studio album Valleys Of Neptune.

2009 – BLACK SABBATH’s Tony Iommi Undergoing Stem Cell Treatment To Fix Injured Hand

BLACK SABBATH guitar legend Tony Iommi spoke with The Radcliffe & Maconie Show on BBC Radio 2 this week about his recent hand injury. “We’re just taking a break now,” Iommi says about the brief HEAVEN AND HELL hiatus – the band also featuring singer Ronnie James Dio, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Vinnie Appice.

“I’ve had this problem with my hand and I’m having stem cell treatment on it,” Iommi continues. “I have to wear a guard on my hand to prevent me from banging it. But it’s coming along good. The cartilage went out on the joints, so the joints were rubbing on the joints. It was bone on bone and it was getting a bit painful. I’ve had pain for about 18 months and have been taking anti-inflammatories and pain killers. But I wanted to stop doing it because it upsets your stomach. This is the latest thing, so we’ll see if it works.”

(Note: stem cell treatments are a type of cell therapy that introduce new cells into damaged tissue in order to treat a disease or injury)

Iommi also chats about the band’s vital OZZY OSBOURNE-era catalog reissues that are currently out in the UK. Iommi says that “everything will come out” as a deluxe edition at some point in time.

Regarding the 30th Anniversary of the Heaven & Hell album in 2010, Iommi promises more shows next year.

Les Paul

2009 – Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94

Aug 13, 12:56 PM (ET)

By LUKE SHERIDAN

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) – Les Paul, who invented the solid-body electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock ‘n’ roll greats, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.

According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.

As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording.

The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-’50s.

“Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music,” Paul once said. “To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn’t think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system.”

A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.

“I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.

In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.

Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.

Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.

In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the mid-’70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of 1976 for their “Chester and Lester” album.

With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records for hits including “Vaya Con Dios” and “How High the Moon,” which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul had helped develop.

“I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished,” he recalled. “This is quite an asset.” The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.

Released in 2005, “Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played” was his first album of new material since those 1970s recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora.

“They’re not only my friends, but they’re great players,” Paul told The Associated Press. “I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.”

Two cuts from the album won Grammys, “Caravan” for best pop instrumental performance and “69 Freedom Special” for best rock instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical Grammy in 2001.)

Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD radio in Chicago.

In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and soon moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and bassist Ernie Newton.

Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were amplified and the volume level was still too low.

By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929.

His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. Drawing on his earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines, Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo.

Tape echo gave the recording a more “live” feel and enabled the user to simulate different playing environments.

Paul’s next “crazy idea” was to stack together eight mono tape machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served as the forerunner to today’s multitrack recorders.

In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder, later known as “Sel-Sync,” in which a recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous ones.

He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced.

In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with him.

“It’s where we were the happiest, in a ‘joint,’” he said in a 2000 interview with the AP. “It was not being on top. The fun was getting there, not staying there – that’s hard work.”

Happy 4th of July from THIS DAY IN ROCK!

Stu Sweatman and John Myers!

http://www.stusweatman.com

http://www.myspace.com/stusweatman

2009 – Aerosmith, the Guitar hero Tour will be missing Brad Whitford…

Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford will be missing the opening string of dates of the band’s Guitar Hero tour while he recovers from recent surgery.

The nature of Whitford’s medical condition and surgery have not been specified. However, in true show-must-go-on tradition, Aerosmith will hit the road with guitarist Bobby Schneck, who has performed with Green Day, Weezer and Slash as a temporary replacement.

Undoubtedly, Schneck has been listening to nothing but Toys In The Attic and Rocks on his iPod, as in a recent interview MusicRadar, guitarist Joe Perry indicated that the band would be playing both albums in their entirety.

A series of health-related issues for Aerosmith

The news of Whitford’s absence from the summer tour with ZZ Top is but the latest in a series of health-related problems to plague Aerosmith: Progress on the group’s new record was put on ice after Joe Perry required knee surgery last year. In addition, singer Steven Tyler has undergone both throat and foot surgery, then came down with pneumonia.

Additional setbacks notwithstanding, the tour will begin this Wednesday, 10 June, at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheater in St. Louis, Missouri.

1911 – Robert Johnson is born this day in rock history. You remember the movie Crossroads… that was his song!

Robert Johnson, born Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) is among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend. Considered by some to be the “Grandfather of Rock ‘n’ Roll”, his vocal phrasing, original songs, and guitar style have influenced a broad range of musicians, including John Fogerty, Bob Dylan, Johnny Winter, Jimi Hendrix, The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, Paul Butterfield, The Band, Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, who called Johnson “the most important blues musician who ever lived”. He was also ranked fifth in Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He is an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Life and career
Johnson’s life is not well documented, and the variety of legends that have surrounded him for decades have made scholarship difficult. Serious research was not undertaken until the late 1960s and early 1970s, most notably by researchers Mack McCormick and Stephen LaVere. Most of the information on his life has come from the decades-old recollections of surviving family and associates. The two known images of Johnson were located in 1973, in the possession of the musician’s half-sister Carrie Thompson, and were not widely published until the late 1980s.

Five significant dates from his career are documented: Monday, Thursday and Friday, November 23, 26, and 27, 1936 at a recording session in San Antonio, Texas. Seven months later, on Saturday and Sunday, June 19–20, 1937, he was in Dallas, Texas at another session. His death certificate was discovered in 1968, and lists the date and location of his death. Two marriage licenses for Johnson have also been located in county records offices. Other facts about him are less well established. Director Martin Scorsese says in his foreword to Alan Greenberg’s filmscript Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson, “The thing about Robert Johnson was that he only existed on his records. He was pure legend.”
Scarcely anything was known of Johnson’s origins until Mack McCormick traced and interviewed members of his family. The research has still not been published, so the biography is based entirely on trust. Such is McCormick’s reputation among his peers that no blues scholar seriously doubts his findings. Eventually, McCormick pemitted Peter Guralnick to publish a summary in Living Blues (1982), later reprinted in book form as Searching for Robert Johnson.

Robert Johnson was born in Hazlehurst, Mississippi sometime around May 8, 1911, the 11th child of Julia Major Dodds, who had previously borne ten children to husband Charles Dodds. Born out of wedlock, Johnson did not take the Dodds name.

Twenty two-year-old Charles Dodds had married Julia Major in Hazlehurst, Mississippi—about 35 miles (56 km) south of Jackson—in 1889. Charles Dodds owned land and made wicker furniture; his family was well off until he was forced out of Hazlehurst around 1909 by a lynch mob following an argument with some of the more prosperous townsfolk. (There was a family legend that Dodds escaped from Hazlehurst dressed in women’s clothing.) Over the next two years, Julia Dodds sent their children one at a time to live with their father in Memphis, where Charles Dodds had adopted the name of Charles Spencer. Julia stayed behind in Hazlehurst with two daughters, until she was evicted for nonpayment of taxes.

By that time she had given birth to a son, Robert, who was fathered by a field worker named Noah Johnson. Unwelcome in Charles Dodds’ home, Julia Dodds became an itinerant field worker, picking cotton and living in camps as she moved among plantations. While she worked in the fields, her eight-year-old daughter took care of Johnson. Over the next ten years, Julia Dodds would make repeated attempts to reunite the family, but Charles Dodds never stopped resenting her infidelity. Although Charles Dodds would eventually accept Johnson, he never would forgive his wife for giving birth to him.

Around 1914, Robert Johnson moved in with Charles Dodds’ family, which by that time included all of Dodds’ children by Julia Dodds, as well as Dodds’ mistress from Hazlehurst and their two children. Johnson would then spend the next several years in Memphis, and it was reportedly about this time that he began playing the guitar under his older half-brother’s tutelage.

Johnson did not rejoin his mother until she had remarried several years later. By the end of the decade, he was back in the Mississippi Delta living with his mother and her new husband, Dusty Willis. Johnson and his stepfather, who had little tolerance for music, did not get along, and Johnson had to slip out of the house to join his musician friends.

In the course of these these years, he was known by various names: Robert Dodds and Robert Spencer (his first stepfather’s real name and pseudonym), and Little Robert Dusty (after his second stepfather’s nickname). Finally he chose to use his birth name Robert Johnson after his natural father. He may also have wished to be associated with the great guitarist Lonnie Johnson. These changes of name largely explain the inability of researchers before McCormack to obtain information.

There are conflicting accounts of whether Johnson attended school or not. Later accounts portray him as illiterate or possessing beautiful handwriting. The question was settled with the discovery by Gayle Dean Wardlow of marriage certificates bearing the clear and attractive signature of Robert L Johnson.

In any case, everyone agrees that music was Johnson’s first interest, and that he had his start playing the Jew’s harp and harmonica in addition to guitar.

Son House recalled Johnson as a boy had followed him around and tried very unsuccessfully to copy him. He then left the Robbinsville area, but later reappeared with a miraculous guitar technique. His boast is entirely credible. Johnson later recorded versions of Preaching the Blues and Walking Blues in House’s vocal and guitar style. However, Son’s chronology is questioned by Guralnick. When House moved to Robbinsville in 1930, Johnson was a young adult, already married and widowed. The following year, he was living near Hazelhurst, where he married for the second time. From this base Johnson began travelling up and down the Delta as an itinerant musician.

Legend
According to a legend known to modern Blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery’s plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar from Johnson, tuned the guitar so that he could play anything that he wanted, and handed it back to him in return for his soul. Within less than a year’s time, in exchange for his everlasting soul, Robert Johnson became the king of the Delta blues singers, able to play, sing, and create the greatest blues anyone had ever heard.

This legend was developed over time, and has been chronicled by Gayle Dean Wardlow, Edward Komara  and Elijah Wald. Folk tales of bargains with the Devil have long existed in African American and White traditions, and were adapted into literature by Washington Irving in “The Devil and Tom Walker” in 1824, and by and Stephen Vincent Benet in “The Devil and Daniel Webster” in 1936. In the 1930s the folklorist Harry Middleton Hart recorded many tales of banjo players, violinists, card sharps and dice sharks selling their souls at the crossroads, along with guitarists and one accordionist. The folklorist Alan Lomax considered that every African American secular musician was “in the opinion of of both himself and his peers, a child of the devil, a consequence of the black view of the European dance embrace as sinful in the extreme”.

Johnson seems to have claimed occasionally that he had sold his soul to the Devil, but it is not clear that he meant it seriously. Son House once told the story to Pete Welding as an explanation of Johnson’s astonishingly rapid mastery of the guitar. Welding reported it as a serious belief in a widely read article in Down Beat in 1966. However, other interviewers failed to elicit any confirmation from House. Moreover, there were fully two years between House’s observation of Robert as first a novice and then a master. In 1982, Guralnick unintentionally added the crossroads details to the legend. He quoted the account given by Ledell Johnson to David Evans of how his brother Tommy Johnson (no relation to Robert) sold his soul to a large black man at a crossroads. Although Guralnick made it clear that the details belonged to the Tommy Johnson story, casual readers failed to notice, and the crossroads association passed into oral tradition, and then into popular written accounts. The myth was established in mass consciousness in 1986 by the film “Crossroads’. There are now tourist attractions claiming to be “The Crossroads” at Clarksdale and in Memphis.

Itinerant career
When Johnson arrived in a new town, he would play for tips on street corners or in front of the local barbershop or a restaurant. He played what his audience asked for — not necessarily his own compositions, and not necessarily blues. With an ability to pick up tunes at first hearing, Johnson had no trouble giving his audiences what they wanted, and certain of his contemporaries, most notably Johnny Shines, later remarked on Johnson’s interest in jazz and country. (Many giants of the blues, including Muddy Waters, were not averse to playing the hit songs of the day.) Johnson also had an uncanny ability to establish a rapport with his audience — in every town in which he stopped, Johnson would establish ties to the local community that would serve him well when he passed through again a month or a year later.

Fellow musician Johnny Shines was 17 when he met Johnson in 1933. He estimated that Johnson was maybe a year older than himself. In Samuel Charters’ Robert Johnson, the author quotes Shines as saying:

“Robert was a very friendly person, even though he was sulky at times, you know. And I hung around Robert for quite a while. One evening he disappeared. He was kind of peculiar fellow. Robert’d be standing up playing some place, playing like nobody’s business. At about that time it was a hustle with him as well as a pleasure. And money’d be coming from all directions. But Robert’d just pick up and walk off and leave you standing there playing. And you wouldn’t see Robert no more maybe in two or three weeks…. So Robert and I, we began journeying off. I was just, matter of fact, tagging along.”

During this time Johnson established what would be a relatively long-term relationship with Estella Coleman, a woman who was about fifteen years his elder and the mother of musician Robert Lockwood, Jr.. Johnson, however, reportedly also cultivated a woman to look after him in each town he played in. Johnson supposedly asked homely young women living in the country with their families whether he could go home with them, and in most cases the answer was yes—until a boyfriend arrived or Johnson was ready to move on.

Recording sessions
Around 1936, Johnson sought out H. C. Speir in Jackson, Mississippi, who ran a general store and doubled as a talent scout. Speir, who helped the careers of many blues players, put Johnson in touch with Ernie Oertle, who offered to record the young musician in San Antonio, Texas. At the recording session, held on November 23, 1936 in rooms at the landmark Gunter Hotel which Brunswick Records had set up as a temporary studio, Johnson reportedly performed facing the wall. This has been cited as evidence he was a shy man and reserved performer, a conclusion played up in the inaccurate liner notes of the 1961 album King of the Delta Blues Singers. Johnson probably was nervous and intimidated at his first time in a makeshift recording studio (a new and alien environment for the musician), but in truth he was probably focusing on the demands of his emotive performances. In addition, playing into the corner of a wall was a sound-enhancing technique that simulated the acoustical booths of better-equipped studios. In the ensuing three-day session, Johnson played 16 selections, and recorded alternate takes for most of these. When the recording session was over, Johnson presumably returned home with cash in his pocket; probably more money than he’d ever had at one time in his life.

Among the songs Johnson recorded in San Antonio were “Come On In My Kitchen”, “Kind Hearted Woman Blues”, “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom”, and “Cross Road Blues”. “Come on in My Kitchen” included the lines: “The woman I love took from my best friend/Some joker got lucky, stole her back again,/You better come on in my kitchen, it’s going to be rainin’ outdoors.” In “Crossroad Blues”, another of his songs, he sang: “I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees./I asked the Lord above, have mercy, save poor Bob if you please./Uumb, standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Standing at the crossroads I tried to flag a ride./Ain’t nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by.”

When his records began appearing, Johnson made the rounds to his relatives and the various children he had fathered to bring them the records himself. The first songs to appear were “Terraplane Blues” and “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”, probably the only recordings of his that he would live to hear. “Terraplane Blues” became a moderate regional hit, selling 5,000 copies.

In 1937, Johnson traveled to Dallas, Texas, for another recording session in a makeshift studio at the Brunswick Record Building, 508 Park Avenue. Eleven records from this session would be released within the following year. Among them were the three songs that would largely contribute to Johnson’s posthumous fame: “Stones in My Passway”, “Me and the Devil”, and “Hellhound On My Trail”. “Stones In My Passway” and “Me And The Devil” are both about betrayal, a recurrent theme in country blues. The terrifying “Hell Hound On My Trail”—utilising another common theme of fear of the Devil—is often considered to be the crowning achievement of blues-style music. Other themes in Johnson’s music include impotence (“Dead Shrimp Blues” and “Phonograph Blues”) and infidelity (“Terraplane Blues”, “If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day” and “Love in Vain”).

Six of Johnson’s blues songs mention the devil or some form of the supernatural. In “Me And The Devil” he began, “Early this morning when you knocked upon my door,/Early this morning, umb, when you knocked upon my door,/And I said, ‘ Hello, Satan, I believe it’s time to go,’” before leading into “You may bury my body down by the highway side,/ You may bury my body, uumh, down by the highway side,/So my old evil spirit can get on a Greyhound bus and ride.”

It has been suggested that the Devil in these songs does not solely refer to the Christian model of Satan, but equally to the African trickster god, Legba.

Death

One of Robert Johnson’s three tombstonesIn the last year of his life, Johnson is believed to have traveled to St. Louis and possibly Illinois, and then to some states in the East. He spent some time in Memphis and traveled through the Mississippi Delta and Arkansas. By the time he died, at least six of his records had been released in the South as race records.

His death occurred on August 16, 1938, at the age of twenty-seven at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. He had been playing for a few weeks at a country dance in a town about 15 miles (24 km) from Greenwood.

There are a number of accounts and theories regarding the events preceding Johnson’s death. One of these is that one evening Johnson began flirting with a woman at a dance. One version of this rumor says she was the wife of the juke joint owner who unknowingly provided Johnson with a bottle of poisoned whiskey from her husband, while another suggests she was a married woman he had been secretly seeing. Researcher Mack McCormick claims to have interviewed Johnson’s alleged poisoner in the 1970s, and obtained a tacit admission of guilt from the man. When Johnson was offered an open bottle of whiskey, his friend and fellow blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson knocked the bottle out of his hand, informing him that he should never drink from an offered bottle that has already been opened. Johnson allegedly said, “don’t ever knock a bottle out of my hand”. Soon after, he was offered another open bottle of whiskey and accepted it, and it was that bottle that was laced with strychnine. Johnson is reported to have started to feel ill into the evening after drinking from the bottle and had to be helped back to his room in the early morning hours. Over the next three days, his condition steadily worsened and witnesses reported that he died in a convulsive state of severe pain – symptoms which are consistent with strychnine poisoning. Strychnine was readily available at the time as it was a common pesticide, and although it is a very bitter-tasting substance it is extremely toxic, and a small quantity dissolved in a harsh-tasting solution such as whiskey could possibly have gone unnoticed, but (over a period of days due to the reduced dosage) still produced the symptoms and eventual death that Johnson experienced.

The precise location of his grave remains a source of ongoing controversy, and three different markers have been erected at supposed burial sites outside of Greenwood. Research in the 1980s and 1990s strongly suggests Johnson was buried in the graveyard of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist church near Morgan City, Mississippi, not far from Greenwood, in an unmarked grave. A cenotaph memorial was placed at this location in 1990 paid for by Columbia Records and numerous smaller contributions made through the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund. More recent research by Stephen LaVere (including statements from Rosie Eskridge, the wife of the supposed gravedigger) indicates that the actual grave site is under a big pecan tree in the cemetery of the Little Zion Church north of Greenwood along Money Road. Sony Music has placed a marker at this site.

In 1938, Columbia Records producer John Hammond, who owned some of Johnson’s records, sought him out to book him for the first “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. On learning of Johnson’s death, Hammond replaced him with Big Bill Broonzy, but still played two of Johnson’s records from the stage. Robert Johnson has a son, Claude Johnson, and grandchildren who currently reside in a town near Hazlehurst, Mississippi.

Discography

Eleven Johnson 78s were released on the Vocalion label during his lifetime, with a twelfth issued posthumously. All songs copyrighted to Robert Johnson, and his estate.

2009 – Phil Spector Found Guilty of Killing Actress. Mr. Spector post engineered Let it be… the album.

LOS ANGELES — Phil Spector, the rock music impresario behind hits like “Da Doo Ron Ron,” and “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,” was convicted Monday of murdering a struggling actress at his mansion in 2003 after a night of drinking.
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Pool photo by Al Seib

Phil Spector, right, listened to his lawyer Doran Weinberg before the verdict was read in Los Angeles on Monday.
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Murder Indictment (Ca v. Spector) (findlaw.com)
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Pool photo by Lawrence K. Ho

Music producer Phil Spector, center, surrounded by his defense team during closing arguments at the retrial murder case in Los Angeles in March.

Mr. Spector, 68, faces at least 18 years in prison. The jury, ending a five-month trial, reached its decision after 27 hours of deliberating whether he shot the woman in a fit of anger or, as his lawyers argued, merely witnessed her suicide.

In addition to second-degree murder, the jury found Mr. Spector guilty of illegally discharging a firearm.

This was the second murder trial in the case; the first ended in a hung jury in 2007. Mr. Spector has been out on bail for most of the last six years, but was immediately taken into custody after the verdict on Monday.

Mr. Spector came into court looking frail and sullen. He wore a long blue overcoat, a bright red tie, and a shaggy shoulder-length hairstyle. Gone were his psychedelic glasses and the swagger that carried him through decades at the top of the pop music scene.

Mr. Spector whispered only a few words to his lawyers. As a court clerk read the verdict, he leaned forward intently. His face betrayed little emotion throughout the proceeding.

The family of the actress, Lana Clarkson, who was 40, reacted with relief and embraces. They declined to speak to reporters gathered at the Los Angeles Superior Court downtown.

Mr. Spector, who was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, was famous for his Wall of Sound, lush orchestrations heard on an array of hits in the 1960s and 1970s with groups like the Ronettes. He worked with the Beatles, Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones and others but had receded from the public stage and in recent years was known as much for his eccentric behavior — he has been often photographed wearing a large fright wig — as for his talent as a producer.

And according to at least five women who testified in court, Mr. Spector also had a frightening penchant for firearms and drunken discourses — often mixing them.

On Feb. 3, 2003, Ms. Clarkson’s body was found in the foyer of Mr. Spector’s eccentric, castle-style mansion in Alhambra, a Los Angeles suburb. She had been shot in the mouth. Prosecutors said Mr. Spector had tried to clean up the murder scene. Defense lawyers argued that Ms. Clarkson’s Hollywood ambitions had been frustrated, that she had been suicidal and that she had turned the gun on herself.

The previous trial ended in September 2007, when a jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of conviction.

The verdict was a victory for Los Angeles prosecutors who have endured high-profile defeats in celebrity murder trials, including the acquittals of O. J. Simpson and the actor Robert Blake.

Alan Jackson, a deputy district attorney who rose to national prominence as the Spector case played out on Court TV, now truTV, was the prosecutor in both trials.

Just as in the Simpson case, the Clarkson family is pursuing a wrongful-death civil suit against Mr. Spector, which has been pending while the criminal case proceeded.

Ms. Clarkson starred in a 1985 cult hit, “Barbarian Queen,” and had a bit part in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” in 1982.

She was working as a hostess at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip when Mr. Spector visited, struck up a conversation and took her out drinking.

They finished the night at his mansion, known as the Castle, but, when she spurned his advances and tried to leave, he shoved a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, prosecutors said.

The prosecutors argued that this fit a pattern of Mr. Spector’s drinking and threatening women with guns over decades.

“I want to acknowledge the many women who testified and presented a picture of Phil Spector,” said Steve Cooley, the Los Angeles County district attorney, after the verdict.

Mr. Spector, prosecutors said, essentially confessed when he emerged from the home, gun in hand, and told his limousine driver, “I think I killed somebody.”

The defense disputed the accusations on several fronts, including the account of the limousine driver, Adriano De Souza.

They noted that Mr. De Souza was a Brazilian immigrant not fully proficient in English and said he might have misquoted Mr. Spector, who they suggested might have actually been telling him to “call somebody.” A gurgling fountain nearby and the driver’s fatigue and hunger from working all night may have added to confusion, they told jurors.

Mr. Cooley said Monday that he had no idea how much money the county had spent to convict Mr. Spector.

“We just get the job done,” Mr. Cooley said. “We don’t really keep track of that.”

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By SOLOMON MOORE and RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: April 13, 2009

2009 – Slash Addresses Velvet Revolver Singer Rumors
SleazeRoxx reports: Velvet Revolver guitarist and former Guns N’ Roses member Slash has posted the following update regarding his upcoming solo album and how things are going with the Velvet Revolver vocalist search:

“Hey gang, what’s happening? Things are going fantastic in the studio, Josh Freese and Chris Chaney are one hell of a rhythm machine and the guitar sound is FAT! Fucking awesome tone! All is going perfect so far. We start recording vocals today and I’m really excited about working with this particular individual, its going to be quite an event.

In reading your mail I find that I’ve been receiving a lot of questions about Velvet Revolver. Mostly about if we have found a new singer and if we’re going to tour again. In response to the former, no we haven’t found a singer yet. There was a lot of talk about our announcing a new singer in March but it obviously didn’t happen. We had somebody that we thought was a really good candidate, but it just wasn’t meant to be. So, we’re still looking. In response to the latter question, of course Velvet Revolver is going to tour again, we just have to find the right person to front the band. We have a bunch of new material and we’re all anxious to get going, but the key ingredient for a rock & roll band such as VR is an amazing frontman, and we haven’t found the right man for the job, yet.

2009 – To celebrate the release of U2’s twelfth studio album and their appearance every night for a week on The Late Show with David Letterman, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg temporarily renamed part of 53rd street in Midtown Manhattan U2 Way.