CyberSoulMan: Remembering Mr. Soul
Sunday, 13, December 2009

We’re havin’ a party
everybody’s swangin’
dancin’ to the music
played by the DJ, on the radio.
Cokes are in the icebox
Popcorn’s on the table
and I’m havin’ such a good time
dancin’ with my baby ...

I remember hearing it announced on radio station KSOL AM 1450 Dec. 12, 1964, that Soul icon Sam Cooke had been shot to death the night before in Watts, Calif. I was on my way to school that morning and the surreal news that “Mr. Soul” was gone weighed heavily on my 14-year-old sense of teen angst.......


CyberSoulMan: Funky forestage – and backstage – encounters
Sunday, 06, December 2009

Some of you know that my pre-formative years were spent growing up in a mildly astonishing suburban enclave known as Kelly Hill, nestled then in an unincorporated portion of Hayward in southern Alameda County.

There were a couple of venues in the vicinity of my neighborhood that were actually teenager friendly. One was the I.D.E.S. Hall in downtown Hayward. Amazingly, promoters were able to book some fairly big names for our teenaged concert going pleasure. The house band at the I.D.E.S. Hall was a very funky assemblage of cats who called themselves the Spyders......


CyberSoulMan: Giving thanks
Tuesday, 24, November 2009

“Give thanks and praises to the Most High.”

– Robert Nesta Marley

“kick back and let the light shine
remember all yours could’a been all mine
that’s why y’all ought to be thankful
you ought to be thoughtful …”

– Sylvester Stewart

In the biography of Bob Marley, “Catch A Fire,” penned by rock journalist Timothy White, it is written that on their first American tour in 1973, Reggae icon Bob Marley & The Wailers opened for Sly & The Family Stone.....


CyberSoulMan: The evolutions of 'The King' and 'Mr. Excitement'
Monday, 16, November 2009

If I could just find me a white boy that can sang cullurd.” – Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records.

If I could find a white man who had the negro sound and the negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” – Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records.

Please join me for an excursion back through time to America, circa 1950, give or take a few.

You’ve of course noticed the two quotes that preface this piece, both attributed to Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records.  I present them here for your perusal because the quote seems to have evolved over the years.....


CyberSoulMan: West Fest (What a trip)
Monday, 02, November 2009

Some of you may have noticed that I produce a radio show entitled “In The Free Zone” on Lake County Community Radio’s KPFZ 88.1 FM. The emphasis is on music with heavy doses of Gospel, R&B, funk, jazz, blues and occasional sprinklings of rock & roll as well as reggae......


CyberSoulMan: Blues Travel Log – On the road with the Sugar, part 4
Monday, 26, October 2009

… I’m not tall like a model
I’m just so high
but if you know how to use what you got
it doesn’t matter ‘bout your size …

– Sugar Pie DeSanto

As I reported last week, I road managed the Sugar Pie DeSanto show into Minneapolis, Minn., for four shows, this past Oct. 12 and 13.

On Monday, Oct. 12, I was scheduled to call Ms. DeSanto’s room for an 8 a.m. wake up, but my phone was ringing at 7:55 a.m. It was the Sugar. She hit’s the ground running upon awakening, kinda like the way she takes the stage in performance, by storm.....


CyberSoulMan: Blues Travel Log – On the road with the Sugar, part 3
Monday, 19, October 2009

one day baby
ll be in the blues hall of fame …

Sugar Pie Desanto

The Queen of the West Coast Blues, Sugar Pie DeSanto, turned 74 years young this past Friday. Earlier in the week, on Oct. 12 and 13, she gigged at the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Your CyberSoulMan was road manager for Madame DeSanto’s four-show excursion.....


CyberSoulMan: Journey to Alice Coltrane (and other jazz musings)
Monday, 5, October 2009

if i don’t see you no more in this world
i’ll see you in the next one don’t be late
– a dearly departed guitar master

It’s the beginning of football season. I think I’ll go deep. Back through time to the days of yore. I was a yet a rock and roll baby, weaned on the flavor of rhythm and blues.....


CyberSoulMan: Where have all the quarters gone?
Monday, 28, September 2009

ain’t no words to this song
you just dance and hum along …
- Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong

Good God! We are just about down to the last quarter of the year 2009.....


CyberSoulMan: The 33rd annual Russian River Jazz and Blues Festival
Sunday, 20, September 2009

For the first time in 33 years, the Russian River Blues Festival and the Russian River Jazz Festival merged into one event. Prior to this year, the RR Blues Festival was presented for two days in June while the RR Jazz Fest was historically held in September, both in the resort town of Guerneville.....


CyberSoulMan: Festivals by the lake
Monday, 7, September 2009

I am excited and impressed by the flurry around and interest in the Lake County Oldtime Bluegrass Festival next week at Anderson Marsh in Clearlake.

Don’t misinterpret my intent. I don’t know a whole lot about bluegrass. I do know that bluegrass combines elements from more than one culture which, in my mind, is a good thing.....


CyberSoulMan: The third Annual Blue Wing Blues Festival, part two
Sunday, 16 August 2009

During the annual Blue Wing Blues Festival earlier this month, the Mighty Mike Schermer Band put on a great performance filled with a number of songs, then returned to the stage after a brief intermission for a second set. After a short instrumental jam, Lara Price returned to the stage with a rollicking version of the Randy Newman penned, “You Can Leave Your Hat On.” ......


CyberSoulMan: The third Annual Blue Wing Blues Festival, part one
Monday, 10 August 2009

UPPER LAKE – About midway through the set of the Bottle Rock Blues & Rhythm Band’s set, vocalist Neon Napalm asked the crowd to join her in a moment of meditative Zen; a quick moment of silent appreciation, not only for the artistic vision of Bernie and Lynne Butcher, but also for the good fortune of just being able to be blessed by the music, food and camaraderie we all experienced at the third annual Blue Wing Blues Festival......


CyberSoulMan: Smokey Robinson charms Konocti
Monday, 03 August 2009

At 8:45 p.m. the stage lights shifted and suddenly the thunderous roto-tommed intro to “Going To A Go Go” filled the air. A very svelte Smokey Robinson kinda cha-cha-cha’d on stage singing. He is, as we used to say when he first became my favorite artist, “tabbed down.” The suit, though stage attire, was a resplendent champagne in color and I coveted it immediately.....


CyberSoulMan: Lake County Motown Musings, unprecedented star alignment
Monday, 27 July 2009

It is an unprecedented alignment of the stars. Not wholly unlike the recent total solar eclipse or the appearance of Halley’s Comet.

The CyberSoulChildren who are alive and conscious on July 31, 2009, can be cognizant of the fact that not one, but two major Motown acts are appearing at the same time in and around Lake County, within 60 miles of each other. The Four Tops are appearing at Cache Creek Casino Resort. Smokey Robinson is appearing at Konocti Harbor Resort & Spa.....


CyberSoulMan: Blues travel log - On the road with the Sugar, part 2
Sunday, 19 July 2009

I finally got the Queen of the West Coast Blues, Sugar Pie DeSanto, checked into her room at The Lodge in Bettendorf, Iowa at about 10 a.m. July 3. We were a bit jet lagged and slightly sleep deprived, but not worried about it.

Sugar’s manager, Jim Moore, scheduled a radio interview for the noon hour, so I scrambled to my room, jumped on the bed and power napped until about just past 11 a.m. I then rose in search of some un-flight food.....


CyberSoulMan: Blues travel log - On the road with the Sugar
Sunday, 12 July 2009

I’m sitting next to the legendary Sugar Pie DeSanto on a (gulp) US Air flight still on the tarmac at the Oakland Airport.

Obscured in the pages of blues history is the fact that she was the only female artist on the 1964 American Folk Blues tour that featured Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Willie Dixon, among others....


CyberSoulMan: A report from the 24th annual Monterey Bay Blues Festival
Sunday, 5 July 2009

MONTEREY – Picture 44 acts on three stages over a three day weekend – a potpourri of top-notch musicians from the world famous Neville Brother’s of New Orleans to lesser known local newcomers like the Dani Paige Band – against a backdrop of Monterey Bay, with delicious international flavored cuisine at every turn...


CyberSoulMan: Remembering the King of Pop
Friday, 26 June 2009

I was broadcasting on Internet radio when I received a text message that Michael Jackson had died. I thought it was a gag. Then I lost my Internet connection and my phones started ringing. It was true. On the heels of Farrah Fawcett this morning. Wow. My business day was effectively terminated at that point......


CyberSoulMan: Ruby Baby
Sunday, 20 June 2009

Well, I've got a girl and Ruby is her name (Ruby, Ruby, Ruby baby)
She don't love me but I love her just the same (Ruby, Ruby, Ruby baby)
From “Ruby Baby”
Words & Music Jerry Leiber/Mike Stoller, Circa 1956

Saturday night on 88.1 FM the DJ (that would be me, your CyberSoulMan) played the above referenced song. It was first recorded by legendary vocal group, The Drifters, in 1956. I missed that version until much later in life. I don’t think I started rockin’ until 1957. Therein lay my first memories of Bandstand.....


CyberSoulMan: Percy Mayfield, One Night Only
Sunday, 14 June 2009

I lay awake nights and ponder world troubles
And my answer is always the same
That unless men put an end to this damnable sin
Hate will put the world in a flame, what a shame…
Poet Laureate of the Blues, Percy Mayfield from his song “Please Send Me Someone To Love,” Circa 1950

In about 1979, I had backslid into the town of Hayward from where I’d graduated high school some 11 years prior to that. Wandering aimlessly downtown one day, I noticed that the marquee on the Brickhouse nightspot proclaimed, “Percy Mayfield, One Night Only....


CyberSoulMan: R.I.P. Koko Taylor, 1928-2009
Monday, 08 June 2009

I ain’t in no hurry
but I ain’t got no time to lose ...
– Chicago Blues Queen Koko Taylor, June 5, 2007

These are difficult times for your CyberSoulMan. Some of you may know that my mother recently left this earth for the next level and I’m dealing with all the accompanying emotion that accompanies a loss of that magnitude.

Koko Taylor, who passed June 3, was an artist dear to my mom’s heart, as well as my own....


CyberSoulMan: An evening with The Manhattan Transfer
Monday, 01 June 2009

“Hey! Would you all like to come on the road with us?”
– Aside to crowd by Manhattan Transfer member Alan Paul after the second standing ovation

At some point on Saturday at Cache Creek Casino Resort, during The Manhattan Transfer’s magnificent reading of their 1980 Grammy award-winning mega hit, “Birdland,” it became apparent to me that all the cats mentioned in the lyrics of the song are now in Bop Heaven. I think the last one standing was the innovative percussion pioneer Max Roach, who ascended in 2007.....


CyberSoulMan: The Spinners Stimulus Package, part two
Saturday, 23 May 2009

Immediately after the Spinners exemplary show last Saturday May 16, photographer David Stearn and I sought out Spinners Road Manager Tunis Wilson and he led us back to the dressing room where the group held forth.

Original Spinners Bobbie Smith and Henry Fambaugh did most of the talking while the newer members just kinda sat around and soaked it up. Though they, too (Charleton Washington, Spike Delong and Jessie Peck), were very knowledgeable about the group’s history....


CyberSoulMan: The Spinners Stimulus Package
Sunday, 17 May 2009

Longevity has its place…
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
April 3, 1968

Many of the “Old Masters” in popular music have infused their career by the inclusion of younger players in their ensembles.

In Jazz, Art Blakey and Betty Carter always had a rotating cast of younger players in their respective bands. In the Funk realm, The Ohio Players, led by Leroy “Sugarfoot” Bonner and James “Diamond” Williams similarly keep their funky edge by adding new players who weren’t even born when the original music was recorded. Those are just a few examples of a widespread practice in the music biz. There is no shame in it....


CyberSoulMan: Musings on Marley - Part 2
Sunday, 10 May 2009

I see people victim
prices rising
gas shortage
and the dollar devalue
Crystal Ball

Peter Tosh circa 1979

As I explained last week, I was able to actually speak with Bob Marley during the Wailer’s second North American Tour in the late 1970s. Though it seemed like a tiny quirk of fate at the time, I believe it was the signal from On High that music journalism was to be an integral part of my career path....


CyberSoulMan: Musings on Marley - Part 1
Sunday, 03 May 2009

The power of philosophy
floats through my head
light like a feather
heavy as lead …
CyberSoulMan:

Bob Marley, circa 1978

Bob Marley, Robert Nesta Marley, really impacted my consciousness when his music broke through the airwaves here in America....


CyberSoulMan: Concert with Conversation
Sunday, 26 April 2009

I’ve always found it a drag to hear an artist whose recorded output sounds better than a live performance. I’ve seen some pretty major artists whose live shows left a lot to be desired. This goes back to the early concert going days of my youth when the critical standard of measure that we used was, “Yeah, but did she or he sound like the record?”...


CyberSoulMan: Tee Dot Journalism (The Formative Years)
Sunday, 19 April 2009

at the age of eight I was livin’ in the haight-
ashbury, if you prefer.
hangin’ with the flips, we wuz doin’ the dip
i was a stone cold procurer…

T. Watts, circa 1979

Though I was born in uh, San Fran Ditto, I spent many of my formative years in the East Bay – Oakland and Hayward.

The city was cool. We lived there until I was 10 years old.

I remember when my dad took me to the Boys Club in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood we lived in and signed me up. I think I was in about the second grade...


CyberSoulMan: Tis the season to be wary
Sunday, 12 April 2009

Don’t drive drunk…”
Stevie Wonder, circa 1984

A few season’s ago when my son was a senior in high school, his school partnered with local law enforcement and emergency agencies and presented a great public awareness program around the hazards of drunk driving.


CyberSoulMan: The King Of Motown
Sunday, 05 April 2009

It was announced last week that Smokey Robinson will be appearing at Konocti Harbor Spa & Resort later this summer. Robinson is one of the ever-shrinking group of legendary Motown artists still performing on a grand scale.


CyberSoulMan: Police and thieves
Sunday, 29 March 2009

Sometimes life just gets in the way of music. From the CyberSoulMan point of view many of the ills of humankind are banished from consciousness in the face of good music. Then again, some songs and music can identify the different types of struggles we go through when...


CyberSoulMan: The Original Lowrider Band declares war
Sunday, 22 March 2009

Friday night I journeyed again to the city of my birth, San Francisco. I drove down to catch the nucleus of the phenomenal Los Angeles South Central Septet that used to be called War. They are appearing as the Original Lowriders as a result of the courts stripping them of the right to use the name War...


CyberSoulMan:Concert Review: Mel Waiters at the Reno/Tahoe Blues Festival
Sunday, 22 March 2009

This is your West Coast Soul-Patrol correspondent filing a report on the star studded 4rth Annual Reno Tahoe Blues Festival. The two day event continues to attract upwards of 10,000 patrons of the Blues to the lush landscape of Rancho San Rafael Park in Reno, Nevada....


CyberSoulMan: A conversation with Jerry Garcia's favorite guitarist
Sunday, 15 March 2009

Earlier this week I was surfing for vinyl on Ebay and I came across a collectible copy of the Flamin Groovies album entitled “Now” from 1978. Packed away in my CyberSoulMan arsenal of facts is the knowledge that the Groovies were No. 4 on the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top 100 Bay Area Bands, ...


CyberSoulMan: Hangin' out with the champion of the planet
Sunday, 08 March 2009

...uring a Black Student Union program, in strode Walter Pittman with Big George Forman. Mouths dropped open. Your CyberSoulMan thought it was due to some profound utterance he had stated. You see, I was...

CyberSoulMan: Memories of Aretha, and other related Soulbits
Sunday, 01 March 2009

...yond belief. Amazingly enough, I still possess my journal from 1971 and I hereby gleefully quote the young CyberSoulMan: “She had the baddest band I’ve ever seen. King Curtis (mu...

CyberSoulMan: The African Birthday Horse
Sunday, 22 February 2009

A children’s story: For, EJF, ADLN, ARB, JNW, JBLD, JJD, RTMW, TLH and all children, everywhere. One sunny morning Brownette woke up and it was her birthday. It had taken her a lo

Chittlin Circuit: Irma Thomas & The Professionals At Yoshi's San Francisco
February 2009

CyberSoulMan: Black History Month and a guide from the other side
Sunday, 15 February 2009

it is no mystery we makin’ history … Linton Kwesi Johnson, “Making History” circa 1984 Black History Month is upon us again.

CyberSoulMan: Alchemy and cryptic experiences
Sunday, 08 February 2009

...t Goin’ On Sylvester Stewart, circa, 1971 Actually, there’s still a riot goin’ on in my CyberSoulMan head regarding an incident that happened to me in small claims court here i...

CyberSoulMan: Encounters at the toll booth
Sunday, 01 February 2009

... For the superstitious and/or the faint of heart, you may take solace in the fact that on Oct. 17, 1989, your CyberSoulMan was ensconced inside Toll Booth number 13 when the Loma Prieta earthquake h...

CyberSoulMan: An artist's unique perspective
Sunday, 25 January 2009

...tudents. Our English professor was a kindly matron whose name I recall as Mrs. Bothun. On that fine day of CyberSoulMan excellence, Mrs. Bothun asked the class in general, in whom did Dr. Martin ...

CyberSoulMan: Change ? a long time coming
Sunday, 18 January 2009

...sino on Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8 p.m. * * * * * Correction from last week’s blog Yes, the CyberSoulMan will interview Teeny Tucker on Blue Monday at KPFZ 88.1 FM on Monday Jan. 2...

CyberSoulMan: Appreciation for greats who are gone
Sunday, 11 January 2009

...n: Who could play Matriarch of the Blues, Etta James, if and when her life story is given a film treatment? The CyberSoulMan would like to submit for your approval one Teeny Tucker, daughter of acclai...

CyberSoulMan: Thoughts on the election, music and Eartha Kitt
Sunday, 04 January 2009

For those of you who don’t know, jazz trumpeter Eddie Gale is a property owner in Lake County. He also has an interesting take on Obama as president. I called him on New Year


Published by www.soul-patrol.com: Taj Mahal Profile/Interview
January,2008


Published by www.soul-patrol.com: Notes on Sugar Pie DeSanto's 2008 Chicago Blues Festival Performance
June,2008


Soul-Patrol Convention: Jazz Panel Discussion Moderated by Tee Watts
May 2007 :
Monday, 19 March 2007


Out of a dream: Mary Wilson shines at Robinson
Monday, 19 March 2007


Blues Revue: Articles on Irma Thomas, Marva Wright and Jimmy McCracklin. CD review on Denise LaSalle.
February - March 2007


Blues Revue: Article on Sugar Pie DeSanto
August - -September 2006


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