KEXP Playlist

Stephen Marley contributed this track to "Heart of Gold: The Songs of Neil Young". The full album releases on April 25th, and features covers by Eddie Vedder, The Lumineers, Sharon Van Etten, Mumford and Sons, Brandi Carlile, The Doobie Brothers with Allison Russell and more. Proceeds from the album will benefit The Bridge School in Hillsborough, California. www.store.killphonicrights.com

Leonard Keala Kwan played ki ho'alu, Hawaiian slack key guitar, for over fifty years and along with late slack key greats Gabby Pahinui and Sonny Chillingworth, he is one of the three most influential slack key players in history. www.dancingcat.com

Born to a musical family in Houston, Texas, Mandrell began playing the accordion and reading sheet music before she could read words. By age eleven, she was a prodigy on the steel guitar, which prompted her father to take her to a music trade show in Chicago. Her performance caught the attention of legendary country guitarists, Chet Atkins and "Uncle" Joe Maphis. barbaramandrell.com

Speedy West was inducted into the Pedal Steel Guitar Hall of Fame as one of the instrument’s most innovative performers. He was able to apply his unique style to country, jazz, and popular music. As a driving force on classic recordings with Jimmy Bryant, Speedy was also a long time product endorser for Fender Guitars. As a well respected gentleman, Speedy never lost his farm boy feeling and would sit and chat about music as much as his love of ranching. www.namm.org

Canned Heat rose to fame because their knowledge and love of blues music was both wide and deep. Emerging in 1966, Canned Heat was founded by blues historians and record collectors Alan “Blind Owl” Wilson and Bob “The Bear” Hite. Hite took the name “Canned Heat” from a 1928 recording by Tommy Johnson. They were joined by Henry “The Sunflower” Vestine, another ardent record collector who was a former member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. Rounding out the band in 1967 were Larry “The Mole” Taylor on bass, an experienced session musician who had played with Jerry Lee Lewis and The Monkees and Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra on drums who had played in two of the biggest Latin American bands, Los Sinners and Los Hooligans. A cover of Charley Patton! cannedheatmusic.com

Chuck Berry is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist who was one of the most popular and influential performers in rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll music in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. www.britannica.com

Casey Bill Weldon was one of the most talented, yet enigmatic, blues slide guitarists of the early twentieth century. Known as the “Hawaiian Guitar Wizard,” Weldon exhibited a range of material encompassing rag, hokum, and blues, though the majority of his more than 100 recorded songs are considered blues. Though he had a solid body of recordings and played with some well-known performers and bands of his day, much of his life is still shrouded in mystery. encyclopediaofarkansas.net

Edwin Bradfield Liloa “Sonny” Chillingworth, Jr. was born on July 14, 1932, in Honolulu, Hawaii. By the time Sonny was 12, he was living with his Grandparents on the island of Molokai and learning how to play Slack Key guitar. His father gifted him with a Victrolla record player, and a 78-rpm record that would change his life. It was Gabby Pahinui’s first recording of “Hi’ilawe”. At 15 years of age, Sonny’s mother brought him to Honolulu, and introduced him to Gabby Pahinui. The two men became lifelong friends, and today are both recognized as masters of the Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar.

Papa Cairo is the pioneering father of Cajun music and steel guitar. Born Jules Angelle Lamparez, the steel guitarist who would come to be known as Papa Cairo was a unique player on the steel guitar in Cajun music as well as the vocalist featured on fiddler Chuck Guillory's 1949 hit single "Big Texas. Since Cairo's instrument was less in demand in Cajun music than the fiddle or accordion, he also branched into steel-happy institutions such as Western swing and country, appearing for a time as a sideman to Texas honky tonker Ernest Tubb as a popular guitarist, steel guitarist and country string band artist in Louisiana and southeast Texas during the 1930s through the 1950s. He would later be known as the first person to write the tune "Grand Texas" which would later be popularized by Moon Mullican and Hank Williams as the song Jambalaya. www.allmusic.com adp.library.ucsb.edu

Elmore James was an American blues singer-guitarist noted for the urgent intensity of his singing and guitar playing. Known as the “King of the Slide Guitar,” he was a significant influence on the development of rock music. www.britannica.com

At some point Hoopii's first marriage crumbled -- and the saga of his getting into a second relationship is a tangled one. The young woman with whom he settled in Seattle was Anna Eleanor Hutchinson (1913-2003), who had grown up on Queen Anne Hill and attended Queen Anne High School. Hutchinson, whose father had given her a brand-new Martin 2-17 acoustic guitar in 1931, and her sister Mary both fell hard for the Hawaiian music craze, which happened to have an unusually strong profile in Seattle. Indeed, the town boasted a sizeable community of ex-pat Pacific Islanders and -- ever since Hawaiian music made its local debut at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYP) of 1909 -- a considerable fan base for that music. (The Hutchinsons weren't the only Seattle sisters transfixed by Hawaiian music. Another Seattleite, Helen Greenus (1887?-1919), had much earlier joined forces with traveling musician Palakiko Ferreira (1885-1951) and the guitar-playing duo -- working as "Helen Louise and Frank Ferera" -- carved out a successful performing career. They cut their first of countless records in 1915 and, after being joined by Helen's singing sister, Irene Greenus, in 1917, went on to much further success as a trio on stage and with major-label recordings.) www.historylink.org

the Staple Singers, known far and wide as the First Family of Song, managed to achieve greatness in three separate and distinct genres during the first three decades of their storied career! In the 1950s, recording first for United and then Vee-Jay, the group was among the greatest of the postwar gospel warriors. In the 1960s, releasing albums on Riverside and Epic, the Staples linked up with the folk revival and single-handedly invented the genre known as soul folk, becoming integrally involved with the civil rights movement as led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and singing secular protest music. Then in the first half of the 1070s, during their tenure with the almighty Stax Records, Mavis, Pops, Yvonne and Cleotha embarked on making what Mavis Staples has termed “ message music.” The resulting recordings, such as “Respect Yourself,” “ I’ll Take You There,” “ Touch a Hand, Make a Friend” and “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me),” have come to define the very essence of what it meant to be soulful in that era. rockhall.com

Roebuck "Pops" Staples was born December 25, 1914, in Winona, Mississippi. Growing up on the same plantation as bluesman Charley Patton, Staples drew from both the gospel and blues traditions to forge a sound that transcends their stylistic divide. As a child in his Mississippi Delta community, Staples listened to a cappella singers in church and sang religious songs at home with family and neighbors. As a teenager, he took up the guitar, inspired by blues artists such as Big Bill Broonzy, Patton, and Barbecue Bob. In later years, his style would be influenced by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, two Delta blues musicians who relocated to Chicago and amplified their sound. Though he admired and to some extent emulated blues players, Staples developed a guitar style to accompany religious music and sang with a local gospel group, the Golden Trumpets. Staples and his wife, Oceola, moved their family to Chicago in 1936. There he worked in meatpacking, steel, and construction, but also continued his work in gospel music. He joined the Trumpet Jubilees and heard the gospel music of pioneers Thomas A. Dorsey and Sallie Martin. In 1948, he formed the Staple Singers with daughters Cleotha and Mavis and son Pervis. They sang at home and in local churches. Of those early years, Staples has said, "We just wanted to have music in the house, that's all." www.arts.gov

Chester Burnett was born on June 10, 1910, in White Station, Mississippi, four miles northeast of West Point, Mississippi, to Leon “Dock” Burnett, a sharecropper, and Gertrude Jones. His parents separated when he was one year old; his father moved to the Mississippi Delta to farm, and he and his mother moved to Monroe County, Mississippi, where she became an eccentric religious singer who performed and sold self-penned spirituals on the street. Burnett got the nickname “Wolf” because his grandfather would scare the youngster by telling him that the wolf in the woods would get him if he misbehaved. The rest of the family would then call him “Wolf” and howl at him. encyclopediaofarkansas.net sunrecords.com

McKinley was dubbed Muddy by his grandmother, who reared him on the Stovall Plantation, nearClarksdale, Mississippi; his playmates added Waters. At age ten, he taught himself to play the harmonica; at seventeen, he placed an order for hisfirst guitar with Sears and Roebuck. In 1941, folklorist Alan Lomax discovered Waters at the Stovall Plantation and recorded his solo work, which revealed the inspiration o f Delta bluesmen Robert Johnson and SonHouse. Inl943, Waters left for Chicago, a new home for many ambitious Southerners, where the commingling o f country traditions and new urban values was changing the shape o f the blues. There Waters recorded ‘ T Can’t Be Satisfied’ ’ and ‘‘I Feel Like Going Home” in 1948for Leonard and Phil Chess’s Aristocrat label. After the songs became hits, the Chess brothers formed the Chess label, which released Waters’ s ‘ ‘Rollin’ Stone’ ’ as its second single. Thanks largely to Waters, Chess became the premier blues label, attracting the country’s best musicians, who came looking fo r their own deals or the chance to work with Waters. He collaborated most notably with pianist Otis Spann, harmonica player Little Walter and guitarist Jimmy Rogers. rockhall.com

That child was Robert Johnson, an itinerant blues singer and guitarist who lived from 1911 to 1938. He recorded 29 songs between 1936 and ‘37 for the American Record Corporation, which released eleven 78rpm records on their Vocalion label during Johnson¹s lifetime, and one after his death. Most of these tunes have attained canonical status, and are now considered enduring anthems of the genre: “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain,” “Hellhound On My Trail,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Walking Blues,” “Sweet Home Chicago.” www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org

Robert Johnson was a blues singer and guitarist who lived from 1911 to 1938. He recorded 29 songs between 1936 and ‘37 for the American Record Corporation, which released eleven 78rpm records on their Vocalion label during Johnson¹s lifetime, and one after his death. Most of these tunes have attained canonical status, and are now considered enduring anthems of the genre: “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain,” “Hellhound On My Trail,” “I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom,” “Walking Blues,” “Sweet Home Chicago.” www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org

Son House is regarded as one of the preeminent blues artists. msbluestrail.org

Son House is regarded as one of the preeminent blues artists, but during his early career in the Delta, his renown was largely confined to local jukehouse audiences. He later attained international prominence during the 1960s “blues revival” through passionate,trance-like performances that highlighted his aggressive guitar style. He would occasionally rise from his chair to sing spirited a cappella gospel songs. msbluestrail.org