Mannish - does this band have anything to do with your name?

[arthur andersen]

http://www.waterfrontbluesfest.com/p...id.html?id=106

Mannish Boys with special guest Kid Ramos, Johnny Dyer, Finis Tasby, Lynnwood Slim
This West Coast blues revue, an allstar collaboration in the truest sense of the word, includes the cream of Southern California’s blues scene.

The Mannish Boys back Arthur Adams on the Afternoon Blues Cruise, Saturday, July 3, and their entire cast of guest stars—Finis Tasby, Champion, Johnny Dyer and Kid Ramos—on the main stage, Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4. The festival will also feature Harmonica aces Dyer, Chortkoff and Lynwood SLim in the Harmonica Blow-off on the A&E Front Porch Stage, July 4.

The foundation of the Mannish Boys is the solid, hard-swinging rhythm section of drummer June Core (Little Charlie and The Nightcats, Charlie Musselwhite) and bassist Ronnie James Webber (Nightcats, Fabulous Thunderbirds). Guitarist Frank (Paris Slim) Goldwasser has toured with such notables as Lowell Fulsom, Homesick James and Jimmy Dawkins. Veteran piano ace Leon Blue spent 14 years with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, followed by seven years with Albert Collins. His impressive resume also includes stints with such legends as B.B. King, Albert King, Lowell Fulsom and Bobby Bland. Pulling it all together is harp ace and producer Randy Chortkoff.

The Mannish Boys’ special guests include:

Finis Tasby
Powerhouse vocalist Finis Tasby was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1940 and grew up immersed in the Texas blues tradition. He played drums as a teenager. But he switched instruments and soon landed gigs playing bass and singing backup with Dallas legends the Thunderbirds, and toured regionally with Z.Z. Hill, Clarence Carter, Lowell Fulson and Freddie King. In the early 1970s, Tasby moved to Los Angeles, where he worked with such blues greats as B.B. King, Percy Mayfield and Big Mama Thornton and began what was to become a lifelong friendship with blues great John Lee Hooker. Tasby’s reputation as a soulful vocalist culminated in a string of releases for “People Don’t Care” on Shanachie records and “Jump Children” on Evidence.

Johnny Dyer
Johnny Dyer was born in 1938 and spent some time growing up on the Stovall Plantation in Rolling Fork, Miss., where blues patriarch Muddy Waters was raised by Dyer’s grandmother. Dyer started playing the harmonica at age seven, practicing in the same cotton fields where Muddy once labored.

In 1958, Dyer moved to Los Angeles, where he began playing with Jimmy Reed, Jimmy Rogers, George “Harmonica” Smith and J.B. Hutto. During the 1960s, L.A.’s blues scene took a dive, and Dyer looked outside the music business to make a living.

"Motown just stepped in and crushed everything," says Dyer.

He took a hiatus until the early 1980s when a concert by Muddy Waters inspired him to return to the stage. Dyer began to meet and perform with the cream of the L.A. harp community, including Shakey Jake, Harmonica Fats and a very young Rod Piazza. Dyer recorded for Shakey Jake's Good Time label. In 1983, he recorded an album on the small Murray Brothers label with his old band, the L.A. Jukes. Blind Pig Records reissued the recording. He was also featured on “Hard Times: L.A. Blues Anthology” on the Black Magic label from Scandinavia and, most recently, on two albums from Black Top records, “Listen Up” and “Shake It.”

Kid Ramos
Born in 1959, in Fullerton, Calif.—the birthplace also, as it happens, of the Fender Stratocaster—blues-rock guitarist David "Kid" Ramos inherited his love of music from his parents, both professional opera singers. His father grew tired of life on the road, settled down with his family and bought a gas station in Anaheim. One day, when Kid was eight, he bought his son an electric guitar and amplifier from a customer.

By his teenage years, Ramos was playing friend's parties and nightclubs on a regular basis. He joined harmonica ace James Harman's blues-based band in 1980, playing up and down California alongside such punk bands as X, Oingo Boingo, the Blasters and the Plimsouls. Kid played with the Harman Band for most of the '80s until his departure in 1988. And although he filled in as the guitarist for Roomful of Blues, he decided to put his musical career on the backburner to focus on his home life and start a family. For the next seven years, Ramos worked as a water-delivery man.

Eventually, his desire to play music returned. And Ramos formed the Big Rhythm Combo with singer/harmonica-player Lynwood Slim. In addition, he released his first- solo album, “Two Hands One Heart” on the Evidence label in 1995. The same year, Ramos joined one of his favorite all-time bands, the Fabulous Thunderbirds. In addition to his work with the T-Birds, Ramos has issued solo albums on a regular basis, including 1999’s self-titled “Kid Ramos,” 2000’s “West Coast House Party” and 2001's “Greasy Kid's Stuff, all on Evidence.