"It's also true that people would rather see me or John Hammond do blues than Fred McDowell. Raitt wanted to bring these artists - especially if they were still living - closer to the forefront. Through the '60s and into the '70s, countless rock 'n' roll bands like Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers Band had often benefitted greatly from inspiration taken from older blues musicians and albums. Listen to Bonnie Raitt Perform 'You Got to Know How' "White people have been fickle before," Raitt added, "and the next year blues might not be their thing: That's why a lot of blues singers don't work anymore, why all those clubs closed down." They know that Janis Joplin was making a certain amount of money, and that Big Mama Thornton was making maybe a fifth of it – and that's why Junior Wells does James Brown songs. "They know that even if white kids happen to like blues this year, they would still rather see Johnny Winter. "Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, they have no faith in white kids," Raitt told Sing Out. Raitt recognized that a new era of interest in blues music was taking shape, but that the Black musicians who pioneered it might still get left behind. There is no difference whether I spread it using other people's words or my own songs." "I'm not a songwriter," she insisted in 1976, "and besides, that I didn't write a song like 'Love Has No Pride' myself, it doesn't mean it doesn't feel like I wrote it myself. The heavy presence of covers didn't bother Raitt. They included songs written by elder blues women Raitt admired - Barbara George's " I Know" and Sippie Wallace/Jack Viertel's " You Got to Know How" – as well as the then-recently released "Under the Falling Sky" by Jackson Browne. Like Bonnie Raitt, Give It Up arrived in September 1972 dotted with mostly covers. Cuscana said he was "knocked out" by her performance. "I didn’t even know she played guitar or sang," he told Joe Maita in 2019. She also had a new producer in the up-and-coming Michael Cuscana, then mainly known for his jazz-radio programs and writing. He'd heard mention of Raitt through Waterman, but knew nothing else when he first heard Raitt perform in Philadelphia. (Many were from around the Woodstock area.) Raitt was already accustomed to this - she recorded her debut album at an empty summer camp just outside Minneapolis - but this time, she had new musicians to work with including Paul Butterfield, T.J. This second studio effort was recorded in Woodstock, N.Y., where Albert Grossman's Bearsville Studios was just beginning to become a retreat of sorts for musicians looking to escape the bustle of big city studios. Listen to Bonnie Raitt Perform 'Love Has No Pride' "And I do respect Warners for the fact that they'd take an unknown artist like me and give me unlimited artist control." "They just give me the money and I give them the tapes," she said. A collection of mostly covers with a few originals, the LP sold only modestly but was generally well received by critics.Īt that point, Raitt described the notion of becoming a star based on albums alone as "superfluous." Still, when it came time to record Give It Up, she was grateful for the "complete control" Warner Bros. Raitt eventually accepted a record deal with Warner Bros., and she released her first self-titled album in 1971. Word began to spread about the exceptionally talented young guitarist, whose slide work in particular stood out from others. The New York City venue was once a haven for up-and-coming folk artists like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, but was then turning its ear toward blues. "It was an opportunity that young white girls just don't get," she recalled in 2002, "and as it turns out, an opportunity that changed everything."Ī 1970 at the Gaslight Cafe found Raitt opening for John Hammond Jr., son of the legendary Columbia Records executive. She began performing there locally, as well as in Cambridge and New York City. Not long after, she decided to leave school and move with him to Philadelphia. In Cambridge, she met Dick Waterman, a leader of the then-growing blues revival movement. Raitt first began to hone her skills on guitar while still a teenager at summer camp, then as a young adult on the campus of Harvard, where she majored in social relations and African studies. Raitt's mother was a pianist and her father was a musical-theater actor who appeared in productions of Oklahoma! and The Pajama Game. She took to music from a young age, with parents who encouraged her interests.
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