Showing posts with label Omar Sharriff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Omar Sharriff. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Omar Sharriff - Baddass/Black Widow Spider

Dave Alexander (born David Alexander Elam), also known as Omar Sharriff, Omar Shariff, Omar Hakim Khayam (March 10, 1938 – January 8, 2012) was an American Texas blues singer and pianist. Alexander was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1938, and grew up in Marshall, Texas. His father was a pianist, and his mother encouraged him to play in church. Alexander joined the United States Navy in 1955. He moved to Oakland, California, in 1957, and began a long history of working with various San Francisco Bay area musicians. A self-taught pianist, he played with Big Mama Thornton, Jimmy Witherspoon, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins. In 1968, he recorded his first songs for the compilation album Oakland Blues, released by World Pacific Records.

He performed at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival in 1970 and at the San Francisco Blues Festival many times from 1973 onward. He was the warm-up act at the Last Waltz, a concert staged by the Band at the Winterland Ballroom, on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976. He also performed in Europe. Alexander recorded two albums, The Rattler (1972) and The Dirt on the Ground (1973), for Arhoolie Records, containing the songs "The Hoodoo Man (The Voodoo Woman and the Witch Doctor)", "St. James Infirmary", "Blue Tumbleweed", "Sundown", "Sufferin' with the Lowdown Blues", "Strange Woman", "Cold Feelin", "Jimmy, Is That You?", "So You Wanna Be a Man" and "The Dirt on the Ground".

In 1976, he began to perform as Omar the Magnificent, having changed his name to Omar Khayam. He was nominated for a W. C. Handy Award in 1993. Have Mercy! Records, a small blues label, released his album Black Widow Spider in 1993, followed by the hit Baddass in 1995 and Anatomy of a Woman in 1998. In the 2000s Alexander lived and performed mostly in the Sacramento area, where he recorded for Have Mercy! Records. He was an articulate writer, contributing several articles to Living Blues magazine. and an advocate for the blues and African-American music.

On Martin Luther King Day in 2011, the NPR Radio program All Things Considered broadcast a segment about Marshall, Texas, as the birthplace of the boogie-woogie style of piano playing. The broadcast described how Dr. John Tennison, a boogie-woogie musicologist in San Antonio, had shared his knowledge of the history of boogie-woogie with the citizens of Marshall and had located Alexander in Sacramento. Alexander had performed in Marshall in December 2010, to great acclaim. He relocated to Marshall in February 2011 and lived there until his death. On January 8, 2012, Alexander was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Marshall, Texas. He was 73 years old. /Wikipedia

Album: Baddass
Year: 1995
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 77:36
Size: 178,7 MB
Styles: Blues, piano blues
Scans: Full

1. Is There A Real Woman In The House (3:59)
2. The Bible Says (3:51)
3. My Life Is A Nightmare (5:44)
4. Uhuru (9:20)
5. Take The Bitter With The Sweet (6:39)
6. Blame It On The Nigger (5:49)
7. I Want Some Money (3:16)
8. Blue Train (4:45)
9. I'm So Tired Of Being Alone (6:05)
10. It's A Shame (4:05)
11. Machine Gun (8:23)
12. Tribute To The Founding Fathers (9:54)
13. Mystery Bonus Track (5:39)

Baddass mc
Baddass zippy

Album: Black Widow Spider
Year: 1993/1994
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 66:24
Size: 153,4 MB
Styles: Blues, piano blues
Scans: Full

1. Let's Get It On (4:44)
2. Knowing That We Found Love (4:23)
3. Fillmore & Haight (5:19)
4. Seven Years Of Torture (7:49)
5. Blue Monday (6:31)
6. Fingers Of Fire (2:19)
7. You're A Fool (3:47)
8. Burn Baby Burn (3:22)
9. Greenbacks (4:11)
10. My Favorite Things (4:57)
11. Smack Dab In The Middle (4:07)
12. Oh Dear What Can The Matter Be (4:49)
13. All Along The Watchtower (4:45)
14. Schematic Of A Woman #2 (5:15)

Black Widow Spider mc
Black Widow Spider zippy

Omar Shariff - The Raven

Year: 1992
Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 63:10
Size: 146,1 MB
Styles: Blues, piano blues
Scans: Full

1. The Raven (4:24)
2. Fillmore Street Boogie (2:39)
3. House Built By The Blues (3:24)
4. Love Is Just A Fool (3:18)
5. San Francisco Can Be Such A Lonely Town (4:31)
6. Great Balls Of Fire (1:55)
7. This Is Love (5:17)
8. Stranded In St Louis (3:48)
9. Omar's Boogie (3:17)
10. Just A Blues (3:46)
11. The Rattler (3:07)
12. The Hoodo Man (5:32)
13. Blue Tumbleweed (2:27)
14. Suffering With The Lowdown Blues (3:44)
15. Cold Feeling (4:48)
16. Jimmy, Is That You? (4:00)
17. So You Want To Be A Man (3:05)

Omar Shariff returned from a two-decade recording layoff with The Raven, an impressive update of his native Texas blues style with elements of Latin and jazz. /Jason Ankeny, AllMusic

Texas blues singer and pianist Omar Shariff was born March 10, 1938; during the 1960s he relocated to San Francisco, where in 1971 he recorded a pair of albums for the Arhoolie label under his given name, Dave Alexander. Upon adopting his stage name, he kept a low profile and did not record for another two decades; The Raven, a collection made up of ten songs cut in 1991 and seven songs cut in 1972, marked his return to prominence.

Shariff was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award in 1993. In 1996 small blues label Have Mercy released Baddass and followed it up with Black Widow Spider in 2000. Both records are stripped-down nasty blues: song titles like "My Life Is a Nightmare" and "Seven Years of Torture" give the listener an idea where Shariff is coming from. His next album, Anatomy of a Woman, was a concept album about Shariff's favorite subject: women. Shariff remained an obscure but blues-to-the bone artist until his passing January 8, 2012. /Biography by Jason Ankeny, AllMusic

The Raven mc
The Raven zippy