Lead Singer DADDY HEMINGWAY was born in Boston, Mass. and attended local Boston schools. He began singing in church and in school, continuing on the streetcorners of Boston's Roxbury district. A member of the Beat Poets who read in New York City coffeehouses (along with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Ted Joans, Ray Bremser, Leroi Jones, etc.) in the late fifties-early sixties, he managed & promoted bands out of Boston & New York. Most notable were Roy Haynes' early quartets (with Eric Dolphy & Richard Wyands), John Coltrane's 'Love Supreme' quartet, T-Bone Walker's Paris, France & Boston, Mass. bands (1968-1974).
As record producer & arranger, his Paris, France recording of T-Bone Walker ('Good Feelin') won a Grammy Award in the category 'Best Ethnic Or Traditional Recording-1970'. He first started a band known as The Blackriders in Boston in 1974 and worked with them off and on up to the Eighties. He started up the band again in Paris in 1991, and then moved it to Berlin where he could find work for such a large eclectic Blues ensemble.
The recordings on the MP3 files available for download are from Berlin in 1998 and Berlin's Deutsche Oper in 2000. The mainstays of The Blackriders Orchestra, in addition to Hemingway on vocals and kazoo, are Jean Dikoto, bass guitar & vocals; Hartley Severns, violin, viola & tenor saxophones; Veronika Vogel, guitar & vocals; Renard Hoover, guitars; Gary Wiggins, tenor saxophone; Phil Berry, drums; Souleyman Toure, talking drum & percussion; Varick Grant, 2nd bass guitar; Christophe Sorci, piano & keyboards; Loomis Green, guitar; Tony Hurdle, trombone. The band's conductor is Kevin McCutcheon.
In 1999 a test CD single was released in the New York/ Washington, D.C. area entitled "BLACKRIDERS TANGO" and it included the song 'ODE TO PRESIDENT CLINTON (BUBBA, SAVE THE WORLD!)'. A copy was sent to the White House and President Clinton promptly replied, thanking the orchestra for the song. The song was critical of him and implored him to get off his *** and do his job. This song was a combination of Hip-Hop & Blues, and is a recurring music the Blackriders come back to time & time again. This first CD single will be made available at a later date here on CDBABY. Watch for it!!!
The second "Red Light, Blues Night" was held in Berlin on the 29 November 2000, and Hemingway along with recording engineer Thomas Stiehler mixed and mastered these recordings in Berlin in April 2001. Hemingway returned to Malibu, California headquarters to prepare Blackriders Orchestra's upcominhg release, "Tales Of The South," and to finish writing the libretto for "Red Light, Blues Night."
More News! Blues & HipHop! EOL FEATURING DADDY HEMINGWAY!
The Los Angeles band EOL(High-Concept Records)flew to Berlin to make their first recording ever. Bringing with them one of the West Coast's top recording engineers, Tyson Leeper (Tupac, Wu Tang Clan, Michael Bolton, etc.), and producer-musician Colin Wolfe (Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre's posse, etc.), they proceeded to set up shop at Berlin's Nucleus Studios. One of the songs recorded there was a collaboration with Daddy Hemingway, and in 2005 Hemingway took the tapes to Paris, recording a French rap in France for this new single entitled "ELLE S'EN VA" (She Left Alone). Tested on Berlin's hiphop radio, KISS-FM, in the English version, the calls were overwhelmingly in favor of release! The French versio was tested at Paris' SKYROCK-FM. Same reaction! More info later....Slated for a June 2006 release.....Also, Daddy Hemingway recorded with Elektronauten's Chris Keller ("Goodbye Lenin") an anti-war song "Blues Fo' Baghdad" and an anti-slave song, "Slave Hanging", all listenable at http://rawcity.net/home/blackriders/music___cd_s___lp_s__selection_.htm
More trip-hop than hip-hop, 'Baghdad' & 'Slave Hanging' will be released together with the tracks from the EOL sessions presenting a new kind of Blues from daddy Hemingway & His BlackRiders Orchestra. Keep checking this site!
Read more...