Blues Great Percy Strother Dies at Age 58

Minneapolis, MN, May 31, 2005 - Blues great Percy Strother passed away at his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 29, 2005. With his wife of 35 years Roseanna Strother and his son Percy Strother, Jr. at his side, Percy succumbed to complications from liver cancer and diabetes at age 58. Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on July 23, 1946, Percy Strother was revered as a gritty and soulful blues singer, an expressive and emotional guitar player and an outstanding songwriter. Percy left Mississippi at age 14 in the wake of family tragedies, eventually settling in the Twin Cities in 1969. His many career highlights included several European tours and constant touring of the U.S., playing premier clubs and festivals. His recordings included the release "A Good Woman Is Hard To Find," written by Percy and selected as Best Blues Song of 1992 in the Living Blues magazine Readers' Award category. In addition to his wife Roseanna Strother and son Percy Strother, Jr., Percy Strother is survived by stepdaughters Anita Higgins and Juliet Higgins, son Tyrone Strother, grandchildren Theresa, Daisha, Eboni and Tyrone Strother, Jr., one sister and four brothers, and countless fans and friends. A memorial service will be held on Friday, June 3, 2005 at 1:00 p.m. at Estes Funeral Chapel, 2210 Plymouth Avenue North in Minneapolis (612-521-6744). Interment at Hillside Cemetery following service. As Percy did not have adequate medical insurance, donations to help pay medical, funeral and family living expenses can be sent to Strother Family, P.O. Box 22193, Robbinsdale Branch, Robbinsdale, MN 55422.

More information on the life of Percy Strother. Percy Strother was born on July 23, 1946 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. Percy was one of six brothers and a sister. His father worked as a sharecropper and a porter and his mother was a teacher who supplemented the family income by doing odd jobs. Growing up in a farmhouse with no electricity, Percy's family looked to music for comfort and entertainment. Everyone in the family sang and loved the blues music that was literally born in their region. Percy's father was his earliest influence, teaching Percy his first guitar riffs and blues songs.

When Percy was eight or nine years old, his father was accused of killing a white man and he was hanged. Percy's mother was devastated, and the tragedy took a toll on her from which she would never recover. By the age of 12, Percy was working farm labor from sun up to sun down, using the meager pay to help feed the family. This type of work at such a young age, and under such personal circumstances, could break a person's spirit. Percy endured the struggles, in large part, by singing while he labored. Songs by heroes like Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson would get him through the days.

By his early teens, Percy was singing in clubs in Vicksburg and nearby towns. Always a devoted performer, Percy would walk five miles to one of the rougher clubs just to take the stage.

When Percy was 14 years old, his family lost their farm and his mother lost her battle with grief and alcohol. With no intention of entering a nearby orphanage, Percy took his younger brothers and hitchhiked out of town, staying for a while in Jackson, Mississippi. He soon made his way to North Carolina, where he worked cropping tobacco, and then Florida, where he harvested oranges and other fruit.

By the 1960s, Percy had traveled and worked his way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As he had in previous locales, Percy sought out chances to hear live music and sit in with bands as a singer. His "day job" was typically grueling, working in a foundry. In 1968, Percy formed his own band with a home-base of Racine, Wisconsin, not far outside of Milwaukee. He then spent about four months living in Chicago, catching live sets by legends like Magic Sam, but not regularly performing himself.

It was around 1969 or 1970 that Percy Strother, along with his brother Max, visited relatives in the Twin Cities. Percy was impressed by the surprisingly rich blues scene in town, and settled in the Twin Cities for the rest of his life. In his early twenties and with plenty of tough life experience behind him, Percy was embraced by the blues community and encouraged and mentored by a new friend, Twin Cities blues legend Lazy Bill Lucas. Lucas, a piano player and singer who hosted house parties that were a focal point of the local scene, was known to exclaim "Have Mercy, Mr. Percy" when Strother stepped forward with his powerful vocals.

It was also during this period, in 1970, that Percy Strother married his wife Roseanna, with whom he would spend the rest of his life. Roseanna inspired Percy in every way, including his music, his songwriting and his focus on family. "Sharing my life with Percy was a gift," says Roseanna Strother. "He was a very loving and protective husband. Percy cherished me, and I cherished him."

Percy built a reputation over the following years as one of the Twin Cities best and most authentic blues vocalists, with a growling, haunting sound in the tradition of Delta-born legends like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. During the 1970s, Percy cut a single on his own P.L.S. label to get on Twin Cities jukeboxes and radio and generate a little more interest in his career. In 1977, a teenage R.J. Mischo encountered Percy's talents in a local music store and sought out his advice for Mischo's new blues band. Always one to help out and teach young, aspiring blues musicians, Percy took the harmonica player under his wing, a kindness that would be appropriately reciprocated by Mischo years later.

Percy performed throughout the 1970s and 1980s as a vocalist in the Twin Cities and other regional locations, but it was not until 1990 that he began playing guitar publicly. Other than early tips from his father and his keen observation of peers, Percy was a self-taught guitarist who decided to focus on the instrument mid-career. According to Twin Cities guitarist Curt Obeda of the Butanes, "One of the things that impressed me most about Percy was his lifelong pursuit of learning more about music and getting better. He could have just gotten up and sang and he would have been fine, but Percy was always trying to improve and find more ways to get his music heard."

In 1992, Percy Strother would finally gain international recognition for his blues vocals, recognition that he had not previously received or sought, for that matter. At the insistence of R.J. Mischo, the blues harmonica player that Percy had mentored years earlier, Percy participated in a recording that would go on to receive critical acclaim and help bring Percy into the spotlight. Ready To Go (1992 Blue Loon Records) by R.J. & Kid Morgan Blues Band Featuring Percy Strother was a recording in the style of 1950s classic Chicago blues. Percy finally had a proper recording to help spread the word.

Buoyed by the warm reception given to Ready To Go, Percy went into the studio in 1992 to record his own album, A Good Woman Is Hard to Find. Released that same year on the Blue Loon label, Percy surprised fans and the blues press by stepping outside 1950s style Chicago blues. With a horn section and tons of soul, the album established Percy as a huge talent in the R&B style of blues associated with the Memphis sound. Living Blues magazine picked the album as a runner-up for Best Blues Album of 1992 in their Critics' Awards, and readers picked the title track "A Good Woman Is Hard To Find" as Best Blues Song of 1992 (in a tie with Robert Cray's "I Was Warned"). The song was written by Percy for his beloved wife Roseanna.

With successful recordings helping pave the way, Percy Strother undertook his first European tour in 1993, including a live show for the national Dutch radio. Percy was so well received by the appreciative European audiences that he would return there to play festivals and clubs throughout his life, the last time in Fall 2004. He tirelessly toured in the U.S. as well, a welcomed regular headliner at clubs like Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago and the Terra Blues club in New York City.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Percy continued to add outstanding recordings to his discography. The Highway is My Home (1995 Black Magic Records), It's My Time (1997 JSP Records) and Home At Last (2001 Black & Tan Records) are the work of a powerhouse singer and versatile artist, whether getting low down with gritty Chicago blues or pumping up some soulful R&B.

Despite battling illness, Percy Strother continued to put on magnificent shows within weeks of his death. His final appearance was at Famous Dave's BBQ & Blues in Minneapolis on April 15, 2005. Percy played solo, and the packed crowd included many members of his family and his band. Percy put on a typically joyous and powerful performance, fielding requests and lifting the spirits of everyone in attendance.

Well loved for his music, Percy Strother the man was equally admired. His kindness and (sometimes disarming) sense of humor touched the lives of innumerable friends and fans. His love of family and the blues were rivaled only by his passion for fishing. "I have heard stories about people spotting Percy out fishing when most people would be sitting by a fire to get warm," said Twin Cities musician Paul Metsa. "Even when he was fishing he had style, dressed like he was ready to go on stage in his ever present hat, cape and snakeskin boots. Percy was the ultimate professional and he'll never be replaced. For my money, Percy's vocals were as deep and powerful as guys like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf." So refined was Percy's fashion sense, he was chosen to act in commercials and model for magazine advertisements that ran in Rolling Stone, GQ and other media outlets.

A true bluesman, singer, songwriter, guitarist, harmonica player and charismatic performer Percy Strother will be greatly missed by the blues world.

The R. Crumb Handbook provides even greater insight into the oft-dissected artist. Thanks to Terry Zwigoff's much-lauded 1994 documentary Crumb, you don't need to be a Zap Comix enthusiast to know who R. Crumb is and why he's so damned special. The priapic cartoonist, chubby-chaser and record collector is ringed by an unlikely aura of intrigue; who knew a googly-eyed old pervert could attract such a vast and worshipful fanbase? That said, The R. Crumb Handbook (MQ Publications, $25) is bound to be a hit with its target demographic. (You know a book ain't aimed at Crumb newbies when it's cross-marketed with a "Win a Date with Aline Crumb!" promotion, though who could pass up the opportunity to wine and dine the artist's equally twisted missus?) Written by Crumb and Peter Poplaski, the Handbook is a loose collection of world-according-to-Crumb essays accompanied by comics both famous and rare. (Angelfood McSpade, Mr. Natural, and the infamous Family That Fucks Together are all present and accounted for.) We also hear more (much more) about how Crumb loves getting sexualized piggyback rides from zaftig women, a subject that may have been exhausted in Zwigoff's documentary. Still, the crotchety screeds from an aging Crumb are worth reading; his philosophies on life are remarkably honest, refreshingly pessimistic, and quite poignant. And then there are those comics--Crumb's drawings crawl with energy, and that slavish attention to detail reveals that those comparisons to the Dutch masters are warranted. This book is a must-have for Crumb junkies, and certainly accessible enough for the Crumb-curious. Plus, the firm yellow binding makes this tome feel like the dirtiest textbook you never read. One caveat: Don't page through this on the bus unless you want your seatmate to get up and move. Crumb, bless him, can even offend from afar.

R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton (Berkley, $7.99)

The alphabet isn't going by nearly fast enough in Grafton's tedious series about detective Kinsey Milhone, and now she even seems at a loss for title words that apply to her stories. Ricochet? Only one gun is fired in the whole book, and it misses. There's virtually no violence of any kind, and most of what there is gets done off-stage. Instead, the "action" involves detailed accounts of every time Kinsey eats QPs with cheese, is screwed by a cop buddy of hers (again, off-stage), or gets involved with her 87-year-old landlord's romantic problems. And it's all as gosh-darned cute as it sounds.

Grafton's specialty seems to be mystery-free mysteries, and this one is particularly pristine in that regard. The plot involves a single white-collar crime of the dullest kind, and characters who don't do much and are all too pleased with themselves to be interesting. The dialogue is noteworthy only for how much there is and how little is really said, and Grafton does these scenes like she's being paid by the word and every "Oh?" counts.

Even though Kinsey is 37, the book seems like it's meant for much older folks. Unfortunately, Grafton's next book won't be out in hardcover until the end of the year, so it will still be awhile before Z is for Zzzzzz, when Kinsey Milhone finaly dies in her-- and our-- sleep.

Back in the early days of the good ol' internets, everybody and their mother was obsessed with a Turkish Don Juan who had a hard-on for nude models, ping-pong, and his trusty foto-camera. But Mahir quickly became like the dancing baby: So obnoxiously 1996 they're both bound to be found on an ironic '90s-nostalgia T-Shirt at Urban Outfitters, hanging right next to the "I Love the Backstreet Boys" T-Shirts (wink! wink!). Almost ten years later, their popularity has inspired contests like the Contagious Media Showdown, where goofy Web sites and those intended to look like real advertisements battle it out to pass through the most office cubes and become an internet hit.

Some of them seem lamer than Ally McBeal's biological-clock-inspired apparitions: Blogebrity, for example, focuses on "the celebs" of blogging. (Yes, there's a scene composed of people who have actually never seen each other.) And then there's the hilarious cryingwhileeating.com, where people send in their homemade videos of themselves (what else?) crying while eating. Pringles cascading out of a guy's mouth only gets funnier when you know it's because his girlfriend is making him go to therapy.

I got a little steamed this morning reading the following paragraph from Chris Riemenschneider's story about Dessa Darling, MC with local hip-hop collective Doomtree:

"The truth is, Darling, 24, didn't grow up a B-girl. She was a smart kid from Minneapolis Southwest High School who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2002 with a degree in philosophy. That hardly sounds like the background of a rapper."

First off, I don't like how "smart kid" is used in opposition to "B-girl." realize that "smart kid" is probably being used, innocently enough, to mean "nerd" or at least "someone more interested in scholarly pursuits than in outward expressions of cool." But one doesn't have to engage in any in-depth semiotics to find an implication that the average "B-girl" or "B-boy" is a "dumb kid." (Of course, some are -- dumb people are everywhere, as everyone knows.)

As far as Darling's history "hardly sound[ing] like the background of a rapper," well, her background is atypical but not incongruous. Yes, most rappers don't have philosophy degrees. Nor do most popular musicians. Obviously, many of the greatest and most famous rappers grew up very poor and in situations that didn't encourage going to college. And some of the greatest and most famous rappers did go to college, such as Kool Moe Dee (who attended after he had already put out records) and Chuck D.

My personal experience with musicians in general is that most either didn't go to college or didn't finish college. Even musicians in the indie-rock milieu, which tends to attract middle- and upper-middle class partisans and is culturally tied to collegiate life, are largely college dropouts. Now as far as orchestra musicians go, those folks are lucky to make it out of junior high.

I have been balling since last night. I cryed so hard my pillow got wet and so did Bunny and my very special Vermount teddy bear that my Dad got me for Childrens Day last year. (Every day is Childrens day at my dad's house!!! :-) Do you want to know the reason why Im sad? Well Ill tell you. Carrie Underwood (SCARY UNDERWARE) won American Idol last night. Even though her singing is bad and her STUPID LESBAIN SONG stank and her hair looked all tangeled like my Flava doll who's head got stuck in one of the jets in my Dad's hot tub. (My Flava name is "Wonder Boo!") As soon as I found out Carrie won I got on the phone and called my cousin Hannah. We balled together. She said "Amelia I think one day you will marry Bo Bice. You have a Special connection like Trista and Ryan."

I hope it is true. Bo my email address is clay_aiken@huffmail.com. I promise I will always be true to you. I am not like those girls who like one guy on American Idol and then forget all about him next year. I beleive getting married is FOREVER unlike my mom the hore.

Reasons why Bo Bice should have won, by Amelia (me!)

1. I could drownd in his blue eyes.

2. He can sing good even after taking lots of Cocaine.

3. I heard his girlfreind is pregnant. They should do it two more times so they can have triplets!

4. He has the same birthday as my cousin Cassie.

5. He is freinds with a very famous and good musician named Leonard Skinnard.

So you see I am right. I am always right. I hope Carrie becomes very unfamous quick.

Daniel Heilicher, a central figure in several of Minnesota's biggest contributions to the music industry, died this week. He and his brother Amos started in business in the '30s, distributing and stocking jukeboxes. In 1954 they founded Soma Records and started producing records out of Kay Bank Studios at 2541 Nicollet. Eventually a number of huge hits would come out of the effort, including the Fendermen's "Muleskinner Blues," Dave Dudley's pioneering truck-driving anthem "Six Days on the Road," the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird," and the Castaways' "Liar, Liar." Those latter two singles were the biggest hits from Minneapolis's golden, mid-'60s era of teenage rock, and their success and devil-may-care energy inspired countless heartland high schoolers to entertain dreams of one-hit-wonderdom.

The Heilicher brothers also founded Musicland, and later merged with Pickwick International to expand their distribution business. They sold Pickwick and Musicland to American Can Co. in 1977. Daniel also invented a computer-based sales-tracking system, a precursor to today's Soundscan. For more on Heilicher and quotes form Amos, see the Star Tribune's obituary.

Why Minnesotans can't find a good bagel, and other bigoted observations on diphthongs gone wrong

Having spent 14 years--that is, my entire adult life--as a resident of the state of Minnesota, I think I can safely say that while I like Minnesotans plenty, I can barely stand the way they talk. Normally I'd say "we": I live here; I work here; I no longer belong anyplace else. I've gotten used to the word "pop," which has the goofy virtue of making everyone seem like a little leaguer. And I recognize that "come with"--like the South's "y'all"--serves an identifiable purpose in human communication.

But I cannot own the awful things you people do to English vowels. The accent?it is either charmless or monstrous. The reason no one in Minnesota has ever eaten a good bagel is because the word itself does not exist. (I have no idea how to format a schwa with this blog software, but I can say definitively that "beggl" is not acceptable.) I suspect the reason Minnesotans, alone among Americans, picked Mondale over Reagan owes to the fact they couldn't pronounce the Gipper's name. (It's more like "Raygun" than "reggn" or "raggn"--where the "a" sound rhymes with "rat." This pronunciation phenomenon is a variant on what linguists term the "northern shift.")

Accents can be a wondrous thing, suggesting the cultural texture of a nation that otherwise seems to have been homogenized by retail chains and monolithic media. I recently returned from a road trip through the Chesapeake, where I encountered one of the most bizarre regional accents I've ever heard. I can barely begin to describe it: Everyday vowel sounds become diphthongs. Diphthongs become time-travel experiments to the Elizabethan age. Try saying the word "water" while making an exaggerated O with your mouth and pronouncing the ska exclamation "Oi!" and you may begin to have a faint idea what's going on.

I suspect this Delmarva accent is dying out, like my grandmother's old-style Bronxese, in which the word "toilet" came out like "terlit." (It's a word I heard too often, as my grandmother held fiercely to the belief that children could not safely flush by themselves.)

Immigrants to Minnesota have an innate sense that something is not OK with the way people here talk. But the results of the Dialect Survey conducted online by professor Bert Vaux (formerly of Harvard, now at Wisconsin) codify what's so offensive to the ear. Native Minnesotans, naturally, will appreciate the opportunity to heap scorn on the linguistic transgressions committed by people on the Eastern seaboard. I don't begrudge them that right, but I do hope in my heart that they know they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

 

Marshall Field's recently introduced the Althorp-Living History furniture collection, "inspired by the history and grandeur of Althorp, the ancestral home of England's legendary Spencer family." The legend part, to non-Anglophiles, alludes to the late Princess Diana (formerly Lady Diana Spencer) whose brother, Charles, the ninth Earl, will be at the Southdale Home Store on June 3 hawking ottomans and hampers just like the ones at his house... where Princess Diana used to live! For, like, two years!

Ronnie VanZant returns from the dead to become the next American Idol

Not even a deadly plane crash can stop a good ol' boy from Jacksonville, Fla. Almost 30 years after his death, the Lynyrd Skynyrd frontman has apparently tunneled his way out of his grave and into the hearts of Simon, Paula, Randy, and millions of Americans to become the mic-stand-slingin' hearttrhob of this season's American Idol. Reliable Sources (TM) say the singer had to change his name to Bo Bice for legal reasons, but otherwise, the formerly dead Southern man has been perfectly preserved by his years spent under America's finest soil. (Lord knows, he can't chaaaaaange.) For proof, click on his before-the-crash picture here, and his back-from-the-grave picture here. Sing it real purdy for Alabamy, Ron...I mean, "Bo Bice."

Update: Ronnie reunites with his band, but the angels weren't listening.