My Babe

"My Babe" is a blues song and a blues standard written by Willie Dixon for Little Walter. Released in 1955 on Checker Records, a subsidiary of Chess Records, the song was the only Dixon composition ever to become a #1 R&B single and it was one of the biggest hits of either of their careers.

Background

The song was based on the traditional gospel song "This Train (Is Bound For Glory)", recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe as "This Train", a 1939 hit. Dixon reworked the arrangement and lyrics from the sacred (the procession of saints into Heaven) into the secular (a story about a woman that won't stand for her man to cheat): "My baby, she don't stand no cheating, my babe, she don't stand none of that midnight creeping."

Recording

Although no documentation exists, the song was probably recorded at Universal Recorders in Chicago, the site of the majority of Chess and Checker sessions until Chess opened their own studio in 1956 or 1957. Backing Little Walter's vocals and harmonica were Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Leonard Caston on guitars, Willie Dixon on double-bass, and Fred Below on drums. Guitarist Luther Tucker, then a member of Walter's band, was absent from the recording session that day. "My Babe" was re-issued in 1961 with an overdubbed female vocal backing chorus and briefly crossed over to the pop charts.

Little Walter

Marion Walter Jacobs (May 1, 1930 – February 15, 1968), known as Little Walter, was an American blues musician, singer, and songwriter, whose revolutionary approach to the harmonica earned him comparisons to seminal virtuosos Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, for innovation and impact on succeeding generations. His virtuosity and musical innovations fundamentally altered many listeners' expectations of what was possible on blues harmonica. Little Walter was inducted to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008 in the "sideman" category, making him the only artist inducted specifically as a harmonica player.

Biography

Early years

Jacobs was born in 1930 in (although recently uncovered census data suggests he may have been born earlier, possibly as early as 1925) in Marksville, Louisiana, and raised in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he first learned to play the harmonica. After quitting school by the age of 12, Jacobs left rural Louisiana and travelled around working odd jobs and busking on the streets of New Orleans; Memphis; Helena, Arkansas; and St. Louis. He honed his musical skills on harmonica and guitar performing with much older bluesmen, including Sonny Boy Williamson II, Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards and others.

Mariah Carey

Mariah Carey (born March 27, 1969 or 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actress. She rose to prominence after the release of the first single taken from her eponymous debut album in 1990, "Vision of Love". More than two decades later, Rolling Stone defined the song as an influence on "virtually every other female R&B singer since the nineties". Mariah Carey produced four chart-topping singles in the US and began what would become a string of commercially successful albums which solidified the singer as Columbia's highest selling act. Carey and Boyz II Men spent a record sixteen weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 with "One Sweet Day", which remains the longest-running number-one song in US chart history. Following a contemptuous divorce from Sony Music head Tommy Mottola, Carey adopted a new image and traversed towards R&B with the release of Butterfly (1997). In 1998, she was honored as the world's best-selling recording artist of the 1990s at the World Music Awards and subsequently named the best-selling female artist of the millennium in 2000.

Aaron Lee

Aaron Lee Soon Yong (born June 7, 1972) is a Singaporean prize-winning poet who writes in English. He was born in Malaysia but received his education in Singapore and became a Singaporean in 1996.

Career

Early beginnings

Aaron began writing poetry during his days at Raffles Institution, a secondary school in Singapore where he befriended other students who would also eventually go on to become published Singaporean writers. By 1990, he had, along with other ex-school mates, Jonathan Kuan Wei Han, Tong Jo Tze, Alvin Pang and Jeffrey Lim, interested a Singapore publisher, VJ Times, in the publication of an anthology of poems contributed by the five writers. This collection, In Search of Words, was published in 1991.

Publications

Lee's first collection of poems, A Visitation of Sunlight, was named one of the best books of 1997 by The Straits Times. The collection was well received and played a part in a late 1990s resurgence of interest in Singapore poetry centred on a new generation of Singapore poets.