Category Archives: Brian Smith Blues Photos

Fine tuning

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As we are about to send out updated press releases, Brian Smith’s Boom Boom photo book cover has had a little more time spent on it, in particular cleaning up the edges of the cut-out images which had been done only roughly until now. If you are wondering who is who on the cover, that’s Screaming Jay Hawkins on the far right with Brian Smith himself joining in the fun, taken by one of Brian’s mates; I wanted to sneak Brian onto the cover if we could!  Little Richard in the centre is a star more people might recognise. I realised a few days ago we ought to try and get John Lee Hooker onto the front too, so tweaked things to enable this and fitted him next to Little Richard.  On the left is Buddy Guy. The main cover photograph is of Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson. Several of these images were taken inside the Twisted Wheel Club, one of Brian’s regular haunts

Previewed

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We have added another page of previews of Brian Smith’s Boom Boom Boom Blues Photos book to this site. Some of these spreads have been up here before but are now replaced by updated and higher resolution versions. The images below show Chuck Berry warming his fingers up in the dressing room, and Sonny Boy Williamson relaxing back at Roger Eagle‘s Manchester flat before heading back into town for the show that night. The story behind those shots is worth the price of the book alone, trust us!

Work in progress

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Snapped at the designer’s (1960s Ercol) worktop a few weeks ago: “I often use a split screen set-up for the design and layout but here preferred to work on the laptop; on a final run through like this any changes are likely to be very minimal, most of the heavy work has – hopefully – been done..!” Each page of the Boom Boom Blues Photo Book is here being signed off via a monochrome laser print prior to preparing the PDF for the printer. The page on screen shows Buddy Guy in action at The Twisted Wheel Club, one of a series of terrific live shots Brian got on the night. Amazingly Buddy’s backing band for the first show were delayed getting there, and a local Manchester group were called in with zero rehearsal time. Buddy almost brought the house down, smashing his guitar into the Wheel club ceiling at the end! We did try a few times to get Buddy to write us a few words for the book but his useless manager rudely ignored all our emails.

Celebrity endorsement!

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Well clearly just the publishers having a bit of fun, with Willy Dixon pointing up the forthcoming book of Brian Smith’s blues photographs. This great shot was taken backstage by Brian and at the time Willy was chatting with Twisted Wheel promoter Roger Eagle. Roger had managed to get Willy to hold up a couple of copies of his ground-breaking blues magazine R’n B Scene (and the original photo is of course in the new book in the original monochrome). The publishers will be sending out a newsletter with updates on the book later this week and you can join that dedicated mailing list at any time.

Having fun

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Another of Brian Smith’s great images. But for once is NOT shown in the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book! Why you may ask? Well, when we first began investigating Brian’s material it quickly became clear that his archive fell into two distinct phases. There was the collection of black and white blues photographs made up to around 1966. Then there was his second phase of work which began after a period away from photography, when he moved into colour in the 1970s. This was also very extensive and covers a longer period as well. So we decided to tackle the mono work first and if there is enough interest, and we feel there might be, a follow up of the colour work might be on the cards. But in the meantime, Brian continues to work with blues labels on their reissues and this striking new CD sleeve is from JSP Records uses Brian’s colour photos on the front and back inlays, and the booklet inside. So we thought we’d show it off here anyway! It’s a scary thought that while we sort of looked upon this material as modern when deciding on the book contents, these shots are already over thirty years old. What was it Cher sang about turning back time? Thanks to Brian and JSP for the artwork scans.

Spencer Davis Group

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Another of Brian Smith’s great images. This is an early appearance of Spencer Davis on the stage of The Twisted Wheel in 1965, with Stevie Winwood on the right. It has been used for the sleeve of a new collection of Spencer Davis BBC archive sessions by the 1960s Records lab and works quite well we think. They have used other shots from Brian in the past. The original shot is shown in the Brain Smith Blues Photo Book.

On screen

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on screen

A quick snap of our designer’s computer screens during work on the Boom Boom Blues Book, as it is alliteratively referred to in the office! Most of the earlier design work has been done on the laptop but as we reach the more detailed final page layout, a split screen process is employed. The actual pages are shown on the larger monitor, with all the software windows, tools and options held on the laptop screen, along with the book pages menu which allows us to zip about the book more quickly. This enables us to see the pages at a much larger size and spot things which might otherwise be missed and do more precise adjustments. Though it does call for nifty hand eye co-ordination or the cursor disappears into who knows where! As you can see there is still room for the old fashioned skills of print-outs and a couple of pencils. Quite what the 1964 packet of Shreddies is doing on the desk though we’re not sure.

Little Richard

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Little Richard Oasis Club 014 copy.jpg

Just a few days on from bemoaning the death of Millie, a proper pop star, than another of the acts Brian Smith photographed in the Sixties passes away, this time a proper rock and roll trailblazer, Little Richard.  Brian was lucky enough to catch a performance at one of Manchester’s most famous venues of the time, The Oasis Club, in 1964.  Just seeing his pictures makes you jealous, as Richard seems in amazing form while the crowd are in awe judging by some of their expressions. Local group The Dakotas got to back him, all under the shadow of a huge Beatles mural decorating the back of the stage.  Which is a tad ironic given how much they owed to Richard amongst others!  Brian also caught the filming of Little Richard by Granada TV for one of their highly regarded pop specials of the time.

This great shot from the Oasis shows Little Richard working the crowd at the height of his set, and would have made the final selection for the book of Brian’s pics we’re wrapping up – except some of the others are even better!

Richard leaves a musical legacy only a few could equal even back in the Sixties, but his contributions to rock music’s development are unlikely ever to be surpassed in the future.

Millie at the Twisted Wheel

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Millie in Twisted Wheel office 1964.jpg

Our designer was working on the Millie Small photographs for the Boom Boom Blues Photo book the other day (and researching her backing group). As he has a home office anyway, the self isolating issue has not been too hard a chore so far. “I love little more than digging through old photographs, who needs the real world! These are some of my favourites from Brian Smith’s book. Millie was a real natural anyway but seems to have hit it off with Brian, who was taking the photos up in the legendary Twisted Wheel club offices. He and Roger Eagle, who was the resident DJ there, were given the rather nice job of looking after Millie for the afternoon. It was probably a bit risky trying to walk around Manchester given that her hit single was so massive, so they passed away the time until the show just taking a few pictures and chatting. I bet a few of us would love to rifle through all the paper ephemera on the shelves too, there looks to be piles of tickets for future gigs in one corner.
During the show itself Brian tried to take a few more shots, but the teenage crowd were just going mad, you can hardly see Millie’s band and she was signing album covers during the set itself!
All the photos have a certain amount of dust and marks on them after 56 years but they have cleaned up nicely for the book. As this one isn’t in, it has not had any treatment!”
We’ve got the best of the photos in the forthcoming book which we’re pushing on with, but thought we’d show this one which hasn’t made the final edit as it is so full of life. You can read more about the book on the site.  There is a post about the book’s cover below.
Obviously the current health crisis has thrown all our plans in the air as it has everybody, so we aim to crack on with projects where we can do so safely and then hopefully pick up the pieces later.

Boom boom

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Boom Boom Boom Boom, Rhythm & Blues Photographs of Brian Smith

There is an interesting feature on the design of our forthcoming book Boom Boom, Boom Boom, which brings together hundreds of archive photographs of visiting black blues artists playing in Manchester taken by a young teenage fan, Brain Smith, over on the designer’s website. It shows the way he has developed the cover and arrived at the final artwork.