The Move in 1968: L to R: Bev Bevan, Carl Wayne, Roy Wood. Front: Trevor Burton The Move, one of the great English rock bands of the 1960s, spawned Jeff Lynn of the Travelling Wilburys and ELO (Electric Light Orchestra); and Roy Wood co-founder of ELO and Wizzard, just to name two of their illustrious members who went…

The minuscule YZ of blues. The final two letters of the AMERICA’S Gift index, plus some numbers.    A Ziegfeld girl   Why is AMERICA’S Gift’s YZ index so brief?  It goes to show just how few people, places and songs, in the blues lexicon, begin with Y or Z. Virginia Liston’s raunchy old blues song ‘You’ve Got The…

  I certainly didn’t – until I researched AMERICA’s Gift. What I found amazed me so much, I had to share it If I had a buck for everyone who told me they’d like my two blues eBooks turned into a ‘proper printed book’, I’d have … well, about 70 bucks. This wouldn’t make me rich,…

  America’s Gift’s VW Index. Where the figures aren’t fudged.  As you might expect, the entertainment genre, ‘vaudeville’, features on many pages in the book because that’s where most entertainers playing prototype blues in the early twentieth century were performing. You’ll see Muddy Waters gets quite a few mentions, too, even though AMERICA’S Gift doesn’t reinvent the…

The STU INDEX of America’s Gift: dedicated to Stu Stewart, the sixth Rolling Stone The young Stones with Ian Stewart, left. Ian Stewart was thought too ugly to be a Rolling Stone, even though he was founder Brian Jones’ first recruit. With Mick Jagger on vocals, Keith Richards on guitar, Mick Avory (later of the Kinks) on drums, Dick…