Music Quiz Number 2

Classic songs, teen crazes, Blues stars and natural disasters. They’re all in our latest Quiz, where even the wrong answers are all right!

Click on the Great – You Got It.. sign to reveal the answer. Even the wrong answers might give you an interesting story!

Who sang ‘Willie and the Hand Jive’?

1. Ray Charles.
   No. Ray wasn’t big on novelty tunes back then, preferring Blues ballads and jazz-based rockers like ‘What’d I Say’.
2. Johnny Otis.
   Correct. The hand-jive started in London’s Soho basement coffee houses where there was no room to dance to the juke-box! Johnny was quick to pick up on it and his song became a hit record in 1958 and a brief teenage craze all over the world.
3. Chuck Berry.
   But Chuck was a big fan of risqué lyrics and had a world-wide pop hit in 1972 with Dave Bartholomew’s song ‘My Ding-a-ling’.
4. Hank Ballard.
   No. Hank was one of Johnny Otis’ young singers whose records like ‘Work with Me Annie’ got banned fron the radio for being too suggestive. It seems any ‘Milkshake’-like references were not spotted by the censors when ‘Hand-Jive’ was in the charts!
5. Etta James.
   No. But I would pay a lot of money to hear her version!

Where was Storyville?

1. Hollywood.
   No. Plenty of good stories came out of Hollywood, but it wasn’t Storyville.
2. New York.
   No. The Big Apple was the gateway to America for millions of immigrants who brought their stories from all over the world, but it wasn’t Storyville.
3. Memphis.
   No. Memphis played an important rôle in the history of The Blues. Close to the Delta and on the communications ‘superhighway’ of the Mississippi, it was a centre for spreading early ‘country Blues’; for the ‘Jug Band’ craze; it was where Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios turned up-tempo Blues into Rock’n’Roll, and in the 60s, as the home of Stax, it was ‘Soulsville USA’.
4. New Orleans.
   Correct. Storyville used to be the ‘red light district’ in the 4th Ward of New Orleans, where the ‘cat houses’, bars and gambling dens would usually have a piano or a small band. It was shut down by the US Military in 1917, because soldiers leaving for WWI were getting into so much trouble, so musicians left town and took their music upriver to Memphis, St. Louis and on to Chicago and up the eastern seaboard to New York.
5. Shreveport.
   No. The ‘red light district’ in Shreveport was based around Fannin Street, where Lead Belly played in the early years of the 20th Century, and where he first heard ‘Goodnight Irene.

Which early legendary singer was the first Blues artist to record with an electronic microphone?

1. Blind Lemon Jefferson.
   No. When Lemon started recording for Paramount in 1926, electric microphones had been around for a little while.
2. Lead Belly.
   No. When electric recording started Lead Belly was serving 30 years for murder, but later he played a song that charmed the State Governor into granting him parole!
3. Charley Patton.
   No. Charley’s recording debut came in 1929 with his ‘Pony Blues’, and electric recording was very common by then.
4. Ma Rainey.
   No. Ma Rainey may have been the first Blues singer, as her act was billed ‘Ma & Pa Rainey- Assassinators of the Blues’ before WWI, but she came to recording relatively late.
5. Bessie Smith.
   Correct. Bessie recorded her ‘Cake Walkin’ Baby’ in May 1925 using the new Bell Labs condenser microphone.

What was Memphis Slim’s instrument?

1. None, he was a singer.
   No. He was indeed a great singer, but he always accompanied himself.
2. Harmonica
   No. Slim’s instrument was not so portable!
3. Guitar.
   No but he showed good taste in hiring guitarists. When Slim signed up Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy in 1952, he said “He was such a damn genius, man, I had to use him!”
4. Piano.
   Correct. John Chatmon (his real name) learned piano at home, where his father Peter was a Deacon of the Church with a taste for ‘The Devil’s Music’, and he never looked back.
5. Sax.
   No. But Slim had a taste for hard-driving, sax-driven dance music in the 40’s when he led his band The Houserockers.

When did the Mississippi flood, leaving ‘High Water Everywhere’?

1. 1844.
   Not that one. There was a massive flood on the Missouri and Upper Mississippi that year, changing the physical shape of Independance MO, but it was way before Charley Patton’s time.
2. 1927.
   Correct. The river broke its banks in over 140 places and flooded an area of 27,000 sq. miles, up to a depth of 30ft. 243 people were lost in the catastrophe described in Charley Patton’s song.
3. 1993.
   True. There was severe flooding over 30,000 sq. miles of the Mississippi/Missouri basin during the summer of 1993, but not too many Blues classics got written about it.
4. 2005.
   Hurricane Katrina. ‘Nuff said.
5. 2011.
   True. The spillways were opened for the first time in 37 years to flood 4,600 sq. miles of land, in order to save the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Hundreds of people were killed in the associated storm systems.

Who wrote BB King’s first hit, ‘Three O’Clock Blues’?

1. Willie Dixon.
   Willie wrote dozens of classic Chicago Blues songs, but not this one.
2. Big Bill Broonzy.
   Big Bill was at the heart of the Blues scene in Chicago in the 30s and wrote some classic songs like ‘Key to the Highway’ but not this one.
3. Lowell Fulson.
   Correct. Lowell wrote this song when he was discharged from WWII service in the Navy in Oakland, and had a regional West-coast hit with his version, but BB’s record stayed at the top of the R&B charts for 15 weeks, making him a star.
4. Lead Belly.
   No. The Texas songster had a huge repertoire, including songs like ‘Midnight Special’, but not ‘Three O’Clock Blues’.
5. John Lee Hooker.
   No. John thought ‘Night Time is the Right Time’, but he wasn’t looking at the clock!

What was ‘Howlin’ Wolf’s’ real name?

1. Chester Burnett.
   Correct. Chester took on the ‘Howlin’ Wolf’ name after he began copying his mentor Charley Patton’s deep Blues growl, and he could adopt the demeanor of a dangerous, wounded animal on stage.
2. Wolfe Tone.
   No. Theobald Wolfe Tone was an 18th Century Irish revolutionary who is regarded as the Father of Irish Republicanism.
3. Aleck Miller.
   No. This is the most likely birth-name of ‘Rice Miller’ aka ‘Sonny Boy Williamson II’. The wayward harp genius was married for a while to Howlin’ Wolf’s sister, and he gave his young friend lessons in blowin’ the Blues that he used all his life.
4. James Wolfe.
   No. James Wolfe was a British General who took Quebec by seige and was killed in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.
5. Charles Wolfe.
   No. Charles was an Irish priest and poet whose father was also Wolfe Tone’s Godfather, and it was believed he was his natural father too, making them half-brothers. (Stale, 200-year-old gossip: nothing to do with The Blues!)

Which traditional New Orleans song did The Animals take to the top of the pop charts in 1964?

1. City of New Orleans.
   No. This train-song was a massive hit many times over for Country stars like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard.
2. House of the Risin’ Sun.
   Correct. The Animals version of ‘Rising Sun Blues’ went to the top of the pop charts in Britain, the USA and several other countries, helping to put Blues music on the world map.
3. Johnny B Goode.
   No. Although the song is located “down in Lou’siana, close to New Orleans”, that wasn’t it!
4. Iko Iko.
   No. But this traditional Mardi Gras song about two warring groups of ‘Indians’ was a big hit in 1965 for The Dixie Cups.
5. Basin Street Blues.
   No. This is a song about the main street through the middle of Storyville, the ‘red-light-district of New Orleans that was closed down by the Military in 1917, and the tune is often played by traditional ‘Dixieland’ jazz bands.

Whose signature tune was ‘Dust my Broom’?

1. Homesick James.
   No. ‘Homesick’ (James Williamson) was the cousin of the man we are looking for.
2. Johnny Shines.
   No. Johnny used the song as the title track on his 1980 album, and as a kid he used to hang around with Robert Johnson, who wrote the song, but it was never his signature tune.
3. Robert Johnson.
   No. Robert wrote the song ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’ and recorded it for ARC Records. He had been playing it for many years on the road, and taught it to the young man whose signature tune it would become.
4. Howlin’ Wolf.
   No. Wolf regularly used the song in his set, and his various recordings of it have been released on almost 40 albums and compilations (!) but he is much better known for ‘Smokestack Lightnin’ and ‘Killin’ Floor’.
5. Elmore James.
   Correct. Elmore learned the song first hand from its author, Robert Johnson when they were young men playing Delta juke-joints. Robert showed Elmore how to play with a slide on his pinkie finger, so he helped to originate the sound that radio-repair-man Elmore made later, when he hot-wired his amps.

Where was Ike Turner born?

1. Memphis.
   No. But Ike got started there as a musician with his band The Kings of Rhythm, and as a songwriter/talent scout for Modern Records, and also for Sam Phillips’ Sun label.
2. St. Louis.
   No. But when he relocated his band there in the late 50s, he hired (then married) a young local singer called Annie Mae Bullock and soon The Ike and Tina show hit the road.
3. Clarksdale.
   Correct. Ike was born there in 1931, the son of a Baptist minister. By the time he was 8, Ike was hanging around the local radio station, hustling for a DJ gig, and music was his life from then on.
4. Chicago.
   No. Although Ike took his band there in 1958 to record for the Cobra label, and later for Chess, he was much more attracted to the West-coast, setting up a studio in Inglewood, Los Angeles.
5. Los Angeles.
   No. LA was Ike’s centre of operations from the early 70s, with his huge mansion next to his Bolic Studios complex, but he was born closer to the Mississippi.