Blues Guitarist Jerry Ricks Dies
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) – American blues guitarist “Philadelphia” Jerry Ricks, who mastered the sound of the 1930s’ Delta Blues, died in a clinic in Croatia on Monday. He was 67.
Ricks learned from and performed with blues greats such as Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
He and his wife, Nancy, moved to Croatia this year after performing a concert in the country. His death was announced by the Croatian Music Union, which said he had been hospitalized in August after a stroke.
Ricks was born in Philadelphia and began playing guitar in the coffee house where he washed dishes.
He played throughout Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, recording albums in Germany, Hungary and Yugoslavia. In the 1990s, he returned to the United States to live in the Mississippi Delta, before deciding this year to move to Kastav, Croatia.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately made public.
Source: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jKWk0kw3A6LT2POPwyd5bQYPppHwD8TEQMEO1
Biography
by Richard J. Skelly
“Philadelphia” Jerry Ricks has taken the art of blues guitar to new levels with his two groundbreaking releases for the Rooster Blues label. Raised in the City of Brotherly Love, Ricks has been splitting his time between Philadelphia and parts north during summer and Mississippi during the winter in recent years. Ricks got his master’s degree in acoustic blues by hanging out with the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, and other 1960s blues revival folk-blues musicians when they came to coffeehouses and small bars in Philadelphia. These were artists who were both great names and great personalities: Son House, Jesse Fuller, Libba Cotten, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and others who were around for the 1960s folk and blues revival. In his capacity as booking manager for the Second Fret Coffee House in Philadelphia from 1960 to 1966, he had the chance to learn and practice “hangout-ology” with all the above-mentioned bluesmen and Cotten and other blueswomen.
Ricks was born May 22, 1940, in Philadelphia. He began playing guitar around Philadelphia area coffeehouses in the late ’50s. “I played trumpet as a child and then switched over to the guitar because I used to watch people playing guitar in the streets,” Ricks recalled in a late ’90s interview. Lonnie Johnson and a few other classic bluesmen showed Ricks his first few blues chords while he was learning to play guitar. After traveling with Buddy Guy’s band to East Africa in 1969 on behalf of the U.S. State Department, he caught the travel bug. He did some field research in Arkansas in 1970 for the Smithsonian Institution, working under Ralph Rinzler, and then departed for Europe.
Unlike other bluesmen who came up in a less progressive era, Ricks didn’t leave the U.S. because he found the racial atmosphere too oppressive at home, as did people like Memphis Slim and, later, Luther Allison. (To be fair, Allison and Memphis Slim both found more work in Paris.) “I wanted my kids to be able to learn a foreign language,” he said, “and it was good for me, ’cause there were like five blues people in all of Europe. I got married and divorced while I was over there, and after my divorce, I stayed there.” Ricks said he got to know so many of the classic acoustic bluesmen on good terms because the performers would typically have “residency” shows at the Second Fret in Philadelphia. “I lived a couple of blocks away, so they would stay at my house. Acts at that time would have to play a minimum of two or three weeks, so I had them all day and all night for almost a month. We brought in Reverend Gary Davis, Jesse Fuller, Sleepy John Estes, and later, in 1963, we had Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James.”
Ricks has two albums out on the Rooster Blues label, the critically acclaimed Deep in the Well and Many Miles of Blues, a 2000 release. Deep in the Well, released in 1998, garnered Ricks W.C. Handy Blues Award nominations in three categories: Acoustic Blues Artist of the Year; Acoustic Album of the Year, and Comeback Blues Album of the Year, the last because Ricks had spent so much time overseas and American audiences were largely unfamiliar with him. Despite a 13-album discography in Europe, Deep in the Well was Ricks’ first U.S. release. He credits the great classic bluesmen of the 1960s for helping him to keep the faith (and enthusiasm) for live performing through the years. “I already knew how to play guitar when I met a lot of them,” he explained, “and I had figured out a lot of stuff from their old records. Mainly, they talked to me about how to keep my head together and not run off on some kind of trip.”
Source: http://wm02.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:39fqxqugldse~T1
U Rijeci umro “Philadelphia” Jerry Ricks
Amerieki blues gitarista,jedan od najznaeajnijih predstavnika tradicionalnog,odnosno country bluesa,umro je danas, (ponedjeljak,10.12.2007.g.) u Rijeekoj bolnici u kojoj se od sredine kolovoza lijeeio od posljedica te1kog mo 3/4 danog udara. Veae neko vrijeme 3/4 ivio je u Gradu Kastvu – praktieno je postao naturalizirani primorac,odakle je odlazio na turneje po Europi.U Hrvatsku je stigao na poziv poznatog gitarista Damira Haliliaea – Hala.
Roden je 1940.g. u Philadelphiji (Memphis – USA), sredi1tu crnaeke glazbe i bio je primjer pravog “ramblera”, lutalice, koji se nikada nije mogao zadr 3/4 ati na jednom mjestu. Obi1ao je svijet promieiaei autentieni crnaeki blues. Vi1estruko je nominiran za euvenu nagradu “W.C.Handy Awards”, a u bogatoj diskografiji nalazi se vi1e od 20 naslova i nekoliko solo albuma. Bio je strueni suradnik i savjetnik brojnih institucija koje se bave proueavanjem bluesa i folklora. Nastupao je sa velikanima bluesa kao 1to su Lighting Hopkins, Sonny Terry,Jesse Fuller,Doc Watson… te sa nekim istaknutim imenima modernog jazza : Archijem Sheppom i McCoyem Tynerom.
Hrvatska glazbena unija
Primorsko goranska 3/4 upanija
Podru 3/4 nica br.3 Rijeka
Formatted for CROWN by Marko Puljiae
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