Little Martha is out today

and here are a few words from David about each track on the album:


1. YES! JESUS LOVES MEAn Episcopal hymn learnt from a John Fahey record.
2. EMBRYONIC JOURNEYFrom Jefferson Airplane's 'Surrealistic Pillow', which is a rubbish album. This is a nice tune, though. 
3. BIRTHDAY SONG FOR NINASimon called me a cheapskate when I told him the title of this one. I didn't actually try to pass it off as a present.
4. LITTLE MARTHAWritten by the immensely talented Duane Allman. Such a sweet little tune. He recorded it a few weeks before his death in 1971, in a motorbike accident at the age of 24. Leo Kottke, who ought to know, called this ''the most perfect guitar song ever written''. My version doesn't do justice to it. It's well worth hearing both the original and Kottke's cover of it. It was Simon Trought's idea to name the album after this song.
5. BOXING YOUR BIRTHDAYA companion song to track 3. It isn't at all obvious how you are supposed to title instrumentals. I made up the titles for my ones on the day, to be honest. 
6. THE SUNSHINE HOTELThis is named after a radio documentary which I heard the evening before I went into the studio.
7. HAPPY MICHAELFor my father, Michael Tattersall. My first guitar teacher, and the one who introduced me to all the guitar music I love to this day.
8. THE RED PONYFahey again, but the long improvised section in the middle is all mine. Very indebted to Skip James' eerie use of D-Minor tuning. Skip James sounds like a ghost. If you hear him sing, you'll know what I mean.
9. CANDY MANFrom the king of ragtime guitar, and one of my many great heroes, Rev. Gary Davis, the funnest guitar player of all time.
10. GREAT DREAM FROM HEAVENA Joseph Spence tune. Spence was a Bahamian madman/genius - a true original of the acoustic guitar. I tried to get a little of his idiosyncratic heavily-syncopated style into this one. Playing this kind of stuff is all about the right hand. Rock guitarists are obsessed with the left hand. Except the left-handed ones, funnily enough.  
11. JOE KIRBY'S BLUESAnother John Fahey tune, with a long improvisation in A Minor. This is probably the most like my solos on the electric guitar on Wave Pictures tracks, but it isn't much like that.
12. BLACK MUDDY RIVERI learnt this tune from Norma Waterson's self-titled album. This is the only instrumental version that exists to my knowledge and my tune is so different I was tempted to give it a different name and pretend I wrote it from scratch. I didn't though. So I guess it's a variation on Norma's cover of some Grateful Dead thing. I have played this for so long I can no longer remember what the original sounds like. I play this with a brass slide. I always think about Ry Cooder when I play slide guitar. He is the cleanest and most expressive slide guitar player I've ever heard.
13. I WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREEAn American civil rights anthem, famously recorded by Nina Simone, perhaps more familiar now as the theme song to that BBC film review show. It's a lovely tune. I still haven't decided whether or not I like Claudia Winkleman. I think I do, but feel guilty about it, because she's clearly not good at reviewing films. 
14. POOR BOY LONG WAYS FROM HOMEThe blues. I love the blues. This is folk blues I suppose, or country blues. Whatever. Almost all the bluesmen did some or other variation on this theme or this title back in the day. Franic plays his socks off on the mandolin on this one. You can learn how to play this directly from John Fahey himself; the lesson is posted on YouTube.

signed pre orders

David wasn't feeling so well the other day, but struggled through, and signed inserts for all of the Little Martha pre orders... i'm posting them out tomorrow, so you should get them before release date, 29th October...

there were a couple of extra signed copies, so if you order now you could well get one:

FREE single - Little Martha

Little Martha - the album's title track - is available as a free download here:



and if you want a signed copy if the album can you place your order before 5pm (UK time) on Tuesday 16th October?... i'm meeting David after that for a mammoth signing session (and perhaps a pint or two)

Duane Allman and Little Martha

Little Martha is named after a Duane Allman tune, and released on October 29th, the anniversary of his death, so it only seemed right to get a few words from David and to ask Steve Edmond to write a bit on the great man:


LITTLE MARTHA
Written by the immensely talented Duane Allman. Such a sweet little tune. He recorded it a few weeks before his death in 1971, in a motorbike accident at the age of 24. Leo Kottke, who ought to know, called this ''the most perfect guitar song ever written''. My version doesn't do justice to it. It's well worth hearing both the original and Kottke's cover of it. It was Simon Trought's idea to name the album after this song.

DUANE ALLMAN

"From Duane Allman, co-founder and leader of the Allman BrothersBand, much sought after session musician and damn fine slide guitarist.

Howard Duane Allman was born in Nashville, Tennessee alongside his brother Gregg, (bandmate and future husband of Cher), were raised by their mother after their father was murdered when Duane was just 3-years-old.

Although Gregg was given a guitar and Duane a motorcycle for Christmas in 1960, when Duane wrecked the bike in an accident he sold the spares and bought himself a guitar.

The brothers formed several bands from 1965 onwards, initially The Kings then the Allman Joys and finally Hourglass after moving to Los Angeles – 2 albums were released on Liberty Records but failed to take off.

Following some amazing but frustrating session work in Muscle Shoals with the likes of Clarence Carter, Percy Sledge, Boz Scaggs, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin, Duane returned to his home in Florida and formed finally the Allman Brothers Band in 1969.

During his time as a session guy Duane had perfected his electric slide guitar technique, using an empty Coricidin (strong cough medicine and recreational drug) glass bottle over his ring finger as a slide, which would become his trademark in the band he then formed in Macon, Georgia with his brother Gregg, The Allman Brothers Band.

Fusing country, blues, rock and soul they toured non-stop and produced the first taste of what would become known as southern rock.  They recorded 3 studio albums and a live album recorded at the Fillmore East, which saw immediate success and achieved critical acclaim. Duane’s playing was seen inspired and imaginative and Eric Clapton asked him to play on the hugely successful Derek & the Dominos album.

However, on October 29^th, 1971, while out on his latest motorbike Duane crashed into a flatbed truck, not far from the band’s home, The Big House in Macon. Duane was taken straight to a local hospital, but died from internal injuries. The band played at his funeral. He was 24 years old.

The Allman Brothers Band completed the album they had been recording with Duane and it was released as “Eat a Peach’ in February 1972 which included the only Allman Brothers track solely written by Duane – “Little Martha”

The inspiration behind the song is thought to be Dixie Lee Meadows, “Little Martha” being his pet name for his new girlfriend. She was one of a bevy of girls that the Allman Brothers and their roadies dubbed the Hot ‘Lanta girls.

Later rumours suggested that he named the song after a young girl called Martha Ellis buried up at Rose Hill cemetery (where Duane himself was buried in 1972) – Fellow bandmate Dickey Betts comment “Little Martha, for God’s sake is not a little baby that died”.

When I visited the Allman Brothers former home and now museum, The Big House last year, I spoke to another excitable fan there that told me that Duane heard the song in a dream. A dream where he and Jimi Hendrix were holed up in a Holiday Inn bathroom and Jimi taught him the melody using the taps of the sink as the fretboard of a guitar.

 “Little Martha” continues to be played over the PA system at the end of every Allman Brothers Band show in tribute to Duane."

Steve Edmond

Hangover Lounge DJ & Southern Rock nerd