These are two of my latest pieces. They are currently on display at ArtSpaceNC in Raleigh as part of the "12 x 12 Member Showcase" and "Art Bash".
To “display” these woodblock paintings of Big Boy and Slewfoot I added tuning pegs from an electric bass guitar. The viewer can turn the machine head to see both sides.
This demo video shows the tuning keys for these art assemblages in action. The two-sided Big Boy Henry piece has my painting of him on the front and the back has a short Bio that I hand-wrote in charcoal. The Slewfoot painting has his obituary from the New Orleans Times-Picayune pasted on the back. I was heartened when I read that New Orleans gave Slew a Jazz funeral when he passed in 2011. He deserved nothing less!
That is Big Boy Henry playing guitar and singing in the background in the first part of the video. The song is “I’m not lying this time” from his album of the same name. He recorded it in 1947 in New Bern, North Carolina. The music in the second part of the video is Slewfoot singing one of his originals probably written or at least partially inspired by his time living in North Carolina.
This is a vid of me playing a couple of the songs I used to play with Slewfoot and Big Boy when I played music with them around Durham, NC in the late 80s.
The first part of vid is my version of Slewfoot's version of the Sonny Boy Williamson song, "Nine Below Zero". The second clip is me playing one of Big Boy's originals, "I'm Goin Back to New Bern".
