Danny Caleb, guitarist for The Blues Project, has died at the age of 80. He died Saturday in a nursing home in Brooklyn.
The news was confirmed by Jonathan Kalb's brother who said New York times That his brother was diagnosed with cancer about three years ago.
Born in Brooklyn, Daniel Ira Caleb, the guitarist grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, and began performing when he was 13. He attended the University of Wisconsin and was popping up at local coffee shops when he met another young musician on his way to something bigger Bob Dylan.
"Dylan bumped into me for a few weeks in Madison on the way from Hibbing, Minnesota, to New York," Caleb said. New York in 2013. “We had so much fun, I dropped out and followed him.”
Caleb later meets Dave Van Ronk, an influential figure in the Greenwich Village folk music scene. The guitarist quickly became a mainstay of the scene himself, performing and recording with the likes of Dylan, Judy Collins and Phil Ochs.
He contributed two songs, "I'm Troubled" and "Hello Baby Blues" to 1964 The Blues Project: A Compendium of the Best of the Urban Blues Scene, which featured musicians from around Greenwich Village who played traditional acoustic blues. Caleb decided to focus on electric blues after watching John Lee Hooker perform at the time.
Listen to "Hello Baby Blues" by Danny Kalb
The following year, Caleb formed the Danny Caleb Quartet with rhythm guitarist Artie Traum, bassist Andy Kohlberg and drummer Roy Blumenfeld. Traum was soon replaced by guitarist Steve Katz. After that singer Tommy Flanders joined and the group changed its name to Blues Project, a reference to Elektra's album Caleb Back.
The band then auditioned for Columbia Records, where producer Tom Wilson hired session musician Al Kooper, who had worked with Wilson on Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone. Columbia did not offer them a deal, but Cooper was later invited to join the group and soon left Flanders. Wilson then moved to MGM, signing the Blues project with one of the label's affiliates, Verve/Folkways. their first album, Live at Au Go Go Caféwas released in January 1966, followed by a US tour
The Blues Project's only studio project, 1966 expectationsIt featured Muddy Waters' "Two Trains Running", a song that had long been a part of Kalb's collections. That same year, the Blues Project shared a bill with Waters. After the show, a dog approached his hero.
"I had to find out, in the deepest part of me, what he thought of our version of this tune that started in the South many years ago, before he'd recorded it with any electric band," Kalb said. UCR in 2016. And these weird whites were doing this song: What was that? So right before Muddy opened the door to go in, I went up to Muddy Waters and said to him, 'Mr. Waters—well, what do you think?' "
Caleb added, "I knew at that point he knew what I was asking him about, and he said, 'You really got me.'" "If I had died then, that would have been enough."
Listen to "Two Trains Run" on The Blues Project
This was followed by another Blues Project album from the classic era, 1967 Live in Town HallThe band also performed at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. By then, the Blues project had begun to splinter. Release a dog cross currents with Stefan Grossman in 1968, but they haven't been back in the studio for decades. planned obsolescence He also arrived in 1968 under the Blues Project banner, but only appeared on Blumenfeld and Kulberg. Subsequently, many other groups released a series of LPs that many had not heard of from the 1970s era.
Kalb's solo career resumed with 2003 all together now2007 I played a little fiddle2008 I will live the life I sing about and 2013 moving blue. Kalb also memorably reunited with Katz and Blumenfeld in 2012 as the Blues Project, along with other musicians.
Although they were known for translating songs written by others, Caleb felt it did not detract from the Blues Project's creative talent. "We're not a copycat type of band," he told UCR, "although we've used other people's material a lot." "But just because you write your own songs, unless you're a great songwriter like Dylan or someone like that, doesn't mean all your songs are great, just because you wrote them. I believe in that. I believe in songwriting and I encourage it. But we were an amazing band." That's all I want to say."
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