The legendary JOE HOUSTON

JOE sez: "OH YEAH FOLKS...THIS AIN'T NO CHURCH HOUSE....WE PLAY THE BLUES & PARTY OFF IN HERE...!!!"
The raw strength of Joe Houston’s tenor solo takes control, a surge of repetitive low notes that unexpectedly scream to a close! Though he has always been known as an instrumentalist Joe Houston is equally as exciting a singer with his powerful shouting blues voice. Well groomed and mannered on stage, wearing dark glasses, he holds his body as he plays and sings, jumping and twisting to emphasize every phrase. Houston embodies a style of performance that began in the ‘40s and ‘50s and had the raw energy of rock n roll before that expression spread to a white audience. Thirty or more years later it’s regaining popularity.
Joe Houston grew up with the “honkers”, the wild men of jazz who broke open the standards of the day and defined the idiom of rhythm and blues. They played their tenor saxophones with abandon, relentlessly honking single notes, making sudden changes to freak high tones, blowing low and dirty, igniting their audiences with crazed stage antics and crude sounds. Tension is built through repetition with slight shifts in emphasis
The basis of this kind of playing is the saxophone repeating the riff much past any useful musical context continuing it until he and the crowd were thoroughly exhausted physically and emotionally. The point, it seemed, was to spend oneself with as much attention as possible, and also to make the instrument sound as unmusical, or as non-Western as possible. It was almost as if the blues people were reacting against the softness and legitimacy that had crept into black instrumental music with swing.
Honking was a music of disassociation from the smoothness of jazz and white popular song. Honking challenged the established order and in so doing, was a response to the abysmal conditions of postwar segregation and incipient racial tensions. For black musicians, there were few opportunities for commercial success. Discriminatory practices were imbedded in all facets of the entertainment industry, from dressing rooms to radio broadcasts and recording sessions. In honking and screeching tenor solos, musicians mocked expectations and created a sound that was more stylized than personal.
Lying on his back, kicking his feet in the air, blowing rowdy notes, the honker did more than simply express his personal feelings. Honking was a burlesque-type romance that separated jazz and rhythm and blues from us musically and socially and that influenced the progress and evolution of rock n roll itself.