Ron Thompson - Marie Marie

New Orleans’s blues heritage encompasses two related traditions, small band, jazz based blues and piano professors who delighted audiences with their combination of artistry and showmanship. Both traditions trace their origins to the turn of the twentieth century, when solo pianists could earn good money by playing in labor camps, informal drinking establishments, and legalized houses of prostitution in Storyville. As the century progressed, New Orleans pianists absorbed the newer boogie woogie and stride piano styles while remaining faithful to the Spanish and French influences that filtered into the city through the Caribbean. These styles flavored early R&B and rock ’n roll with relaxed tempos and strong, syncopated rhythmic patterns that came to be known as the New Orleans sound.

At the same time, traveling medicine shows, vaudeville, and neighborhood dance halls fostered a small band tradition that shaped early jazz. In fact, early blues and early jazz were so thoroughly intertwined in New Orleans that in many cases it was impossible to tease them apart... The blues originated in rural areas and small towns, of course, and musicians from less populated parts of Louisiana also contributed to the state’s blues heritage. Beginning in the late 1940s, Alexandria native Little Walter explored ways to combine blues harmonica with electric amplification, cupping a harmonica and microphone in his hands while playing.

Source: Blues Music by Roger Hahn

Ron Thompson - Marie Marie

• Released on: Treat Her Like Gold/No Bad Days album
• Released in: 1983
• Genre: Blues, Electric Blues

"Ron Thompson was an American electric blues and blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter. Thompson commented, blues is like a medicine, or religion to me, it'll cleanse your soul."

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