Tina Mayfield, Champion Of The Blues, Passes!

From: The Los Angeles Times
By: Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Times Staff Writer

Tina Mayfield was a guardian of the blues, a patron who treated its performers as if they were family and the music as if it were a precious heirloom. Through her work as a promoter she helped keep the blues alive and accessible to audiences in Southern California.

But it was her efforts on behalf of artists themselves, some of whom knew her as "Mama Tina," that may prove most enduring. She fought for their royalties, provided them money in lean times, offered them opportunities to perform, visited them when they were sick and aging.

In an unforgiving business, Mayfield, the widow of blues great Percy Mayfield, was one sure source of help and encouragement, said friends and family.

"The Grammy people don't know who she is, but she was queen in this community," said blues artist Barbara Morrison, a longtime friend.

Tina Mayfield died Dec. 14 of gallbladder cancer at her home in Palmdale. She was 77.

Over the years she befriended and assisted a long list of blues artists, including Big Mama Thornton and Lowell Fulson. She was not a musician or a songwriter, but "she was a good businesswoman," said Billy Diamond, a friend who served with Mayfield in the International Blues Society. "She's taken care of business."

Tom Reed, author of "The Black Music History of Los Angeles — Its Roots," called Mayfield a driving force behind "blues in this city."

"She was able to put together and produce some of the most important blues shows here in Los Angeles," Reed told The Times this week. "A real down-home, strong, aesthetically pure blues show."

Mayfield was born Earnestine Jermany on Oct. 17, 1929, in Stamps, Ark., the second of 16 children. Her father, Hugh Jermany, was a schoolteacher. Her mother, Zoreeda, was a housewife.

Blues was a part of the landscape in Arkansas, and even as a child, Mayfield was drawn to it. But the same sound that attracted her was frowned on by her mother, who belonged to a Pentecostal church. Under her mother's strict religious teachings, there was no place for the blues.

Mayfield was faced with a choice: Leave the blues alone or find a way to enjoy it in spite of her mother's views.

"They snuck around with the music," said her daughter Rennie Euwing. "It inspired her to achieve faster … to move on and get educated, so she could go do what she desired to do."

After graduating from high school in Stamps, Mayfield married Clarence Euwing in the mid-1940s and left the South. Before divorcing many years later, the couple would have five children. In addition to Rennie Euwing, of Palmdale, Mayfield is survived by a son, Edward Euwing of Caldwell, Ark., and three other daughters, Linda Euwing of Palmdale, Eliza Euwing-Jones of Los Angeles and Dena Euwing-Kendrick of Palmdale.

Over the years, Mayfield lived in Chicago, Detroit and New York, always taking in the blues scene. While living in Wisconsin, she earned a degree in nursing and other medical specialties and began a career in the medical field.

But her love for blues was a constant and her knowledge encyclopedic. She knew the biographies and discographies of artists and followed their careers, including that of Percy Mayfield, a singer and composer from Minden, La., whom she later befriended and then married.

He was known as the "poet laureate of the blues." He wrote and performed his hit "Please Send Me Someone to Love" and found great success as a songwriter for Ray Charles, penning "Hit the Road, Jack," "Danger Zone" and others.

The performer, a resident of Los Angeles, was also an astute businessman. He offered his future wife, who moved to Los Angeles in 1972, on-the-job training.

"She was his right-hand man," Rennie Euwing said.

Mayfield used what she learned over the years to help artists, especially older performers who sometimes did not understand contracts and how to obtain royalties owed to them.

"Some of them couldn't read," Morrison said. "She was just real smart. She would let them know what was happening…. She would articulate in their terms."

After Percy's death in 1984, the same year they married, Mayfield founded the California Black Blues Society to further understanding of the blues. Through that and other organizations she supplied scholarships to young blues artists. To friends like Morrison, she supplied encouragement. Morrison and Mayfield met at a Long Beach cocktail lounge in 1973, when Morrison was a green 21-year-old new to the city and the business.

"She just kind of took me under her wing," Morrison said. " 'Barbara, you can't be doing this, and you can't be doing that.' "

Over the years, Morrison also learned from Mayfield what a difference support can make in the life of a performer and an artistic community.

In the early 1990s, when Morrison opened a cultural center in Inglewood and funds were tight, Mayfield would surprise her with a check, unrequested, to help with rent or utilities. When the home of blues artist Lady G.G. and her fiance, Eddie Daniels of the Amazing Platters, burned, Morrison covered their stay at a hotel.

"We were like her children," Lady G.G. said, echoing a sentiment shared by many.

When older blues artists were hospitalized, Mayfield visited them, and when Fulson could not care for himself, she cared for him.

In the days before her death, as she battled illness, the music she spent a lifetime protecting was present. It played in her home every day, along with gospel music.

"She never denied herself the blues," Rennie Euwing said. "That was something she had engraved in her heart and spirit."

Mayfield's funeral will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. at First AME Church, 2270 S. Harvard Blvd., Los Angeles, 90018.

Smokestack Lightnin' Rockin' Again!

There's a new show up and running from our friends in Maitland, Florida. Smokestack Lightnin' continues to present the best of the Blues at all times.

Due to a space constraint, we are showing SSL's Top Ten CD's of The Week. We will leave it up to you to go directly to SSL's website for the rest.

Enjoy!

SSL's Top Ten Blues CD's Of The Week!

#10 Billy Gibson/Hip-Hug-Her/Southern Livin’/Inside Sounds

#9 Cleveland Fats/Blues Time/The Way Things Go/Honeybee

#8 Phil Guy/I Just Can’t Stop/He’s My Blues Brother/Black Eyed

#7 Ford Blues Band/Got A Mind To Give Up Livin’/ Bloomfield Butterfield Concert/Blue Rockit

#6 Seth Walker/I Know Its A Sin/Seth Walker/Pacific Blues

#5 Daddy Mack Blues Band/Stop Givin’ My Love Away/Bluestones/Inside Sounds

#4 Willie King/Like It Like That/One Love/Freedom Creek

#3 Steven Seagal/Dust My Broom/Mojo Priest/Mojo Priest

#2 Michael Powers/VooDoo Chile/Prodigal Son/Baryon

#1 Phantom Blues Band/Mary Ann/Out Of The Shadows/Delta Groove

Click here to go directly to Smokestack Lightnin'!

Music Pioneer Ahmet Ertegun Dies at 83!

From: The Associated Press

NEW YORK (Dec. 14) - Ahmet Ertegun, who helped define American music as the founder of Atlantic Records, a label that popularized the gritty R&B of Ray Charles, the classic soul of Aretha Franklin and the British rock of the Rolling Stones, died Thursday at 83, his spokesman said.

Ertegun remained connected to the music scene until his last days - it was at an Oct. 29 concert by the Rolling Stones at the Beacon Theatre in New York where Ertegun fell, suffered a head injury and was hospitalized. He later slipped into a coma.

"He was in a coma and expired today with his family at his bedside," said Dr. Howard A. Riina, Ertegun's neurosurgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Ertegun will be buried in a private ceremony in his native Turkey, said Bob Kaus, a spokesman for Ertegun and Atlantic Records. A memorial service will be conducted in New York after New Year's.

Ertegun, a Turkish ambassador's son, started collecting records for fun, but would later became one of the music industry's most powerful figures with Atlantic, which he founded in 1947.

The label first made its name with rhythm and blues by Charles and Big Joe Turner, but later diversified, making Franklin the Queen of Soul as well as carrying the banner of British rock (with the Rolling Stones, Cream, Led Zeppelin) and American pop (with Sonny and Cher, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and others).

Today, the company, part of Warner Music Group, is the home to artists including Kid Rock, James Blunt, T.I., and Missy Elliott.

"Ahmet Ertegun was a true visionary whose life's work had a profound impact on our cultures musical landscape, as well as around the world," said Neil Portnow, president of The Recording Academy.

Ertegun's love of music began with jazz, back when he and his late brother Nesuhi (an esteemed producer of such jazz acts as Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman) used to hang around with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in the clubs of Washington, D.C.

"My father was a diplomat who was ambassador to Switzerland, France and England before he became ambassador to the United States, and we lived in all those countries and we always had music in the house, and a lot of it was a kind of popular music, and we heard a lot of jazz," Ertegun recalled in an interview with The Associated Press. "By the time we came to Washington, we were collecting records and we amassed a collection of some 25,000 blues and jazz records."

Ertegun parlayed his love of music into a career when he founded Atlantic with partner Herb Abramson and a $10,000 loan. When the label first started, it made its name with blues-edged recordings by acts such as Ruth Brown.

Despite his privileged background, which included attending prep school and socializing with Washington's elite, Ertegun was able to mix with all kinds of people - an attribute that made him not just a marketer of black music, but a part of it, said Jerry Wexler.

"The transition between these two worlds is one of Ahmet's most distinguishing characteristics," Wexler said.

Black music was the backbone of the label for years - it was Atlantic, under Wexler's production genius, that helped make Franklin the top black female singer of her day.

"We had some pop music - we had Bobby Darin ... and we developed other pop artists such as Sonny and Cher and Bette Midler and so on," said Ertegun. "But we had been most effective that set a style as purveyors of African-American music. And we were the kings of that until the arrival of Motown Records, which was long after we started."

But once music tastes changed, Ertegun switched gears and helped bring on the British invasion in the '60s.

"If Atlantic had restricted itself to R&B music, I have no doubt that it would be extinct today," Wexler said.

Instead, it became even bigger.

In later years, Ertegun signed Midler, Roberta Flack and ABBA. He had a gift for being able to pick out what would be a commercial smash, said the late producer Arif Mardin, who remembered one session where he was working with the Bee Gees on an album - but was unsure of what he had produced.

"Then Ahmet came and listened to it, and said, `You've got hits here, you've got dance hits,"' Mardin once told the AP. "I was involved in such a way that I didn't see the forest for the trees. ... He was like the steadying influence."

One strength of the company was Ertegun's close relationships with many of the artists - relationships that continued even after they left his label. Midler still called for advice, and he visited Franklin's home when he dropped into Detroit.

"He cared first and foremost about the artist and the music - much more than the business," Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates said. "He believed that if the artist was true to him or herself, good business would follow. Sadly in today's atmosphere, this isn't the case. But, during Ahmet's days of influence it was."

His friendships extended to the younger generation, too, including Kid Rock and Lil' Kim.

Besides his love of music, Ertegun was also known for his love of art, and socializing. It was not uncommon to find him at a party with his wife, Mica, hanging out until all hours with friends.

Although he was slowed by triple-bypass surgery in 2001, he still went into his office almost daily to listen for his next hit.

Music mogul Quincy Jones called Ertegun "definitely one of the pioneering visionaries in this whole scene."

"He was a very 360-degree person. He loved to have a good time. He knew how to party, which is my kind of guy, and he knew how to work. He knew how to look into the future and how to execute to bring it to fruition," Jones said in a phone interview from Los Angeles.

Finding those hits were among the most wonderful moments in his life, Ertegun said.

"I've been in the studio when you go through a track and you run down a track and you know even before the singer starts singing, you know the track is swinging ... you know you have a multimillion-seller hit - and what you're working on suddenly has magic," he said. "That's the biggest."