booker t. & the mg's

booker t. jones

donald "duck" dunn

al jackson jr.

steve cropper

barbara lewis

joe tex

rufus thomas

wilson pickett

lavern baker

otis redding

For a full biography of Otis Redding, go to:

http://www.mchester.co.uk/html/pers_01.html

(That means you, Collins)

eddie floyd

Eddie Floyd found early success as a member of vocal harmony group The Falcons scoring hits with "You're So Fine" and, with Wilson Pickett on lead vocals, "I Found A Love". As a songwriter at Stax, he wrote material for Carla Thomas, Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Johnnie Taylor and many others. Floyd was also a hitmaker in his own right and his greatest moment on record came with the 1966 release, "Knock On Wood", a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

king curtis

To the casual listener, the name King Curtis may not be a familiar one, but even if you don't know the name, you're sure to have heard one of the many records the saxophonist played on. He supplied the blistering solo on the Coaster's 1958 single "Yakety Yak", backed Buddy Holly in the studio and Sam Cooke live, was musical director for Aretha Franklin and played on many of her sessions as well as on those of fellow Atlantic artists such as Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke and Don Covay, and had hit records of his own with "Soul Twist", "Soul Serenade" and "Memphis Soul Stew". It was his mellow, bluesy cover of "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" which provided the soundtrack to the opening scene of cult film "Withnail And I". Curtis had just finished work on a John Lennon session in August 1971, when he was stabbed during an altercation outside his New York home. He died from his injuries, aged just 37.

now, where were we?

Oh yes, just before Christmas, if you remember, I'd started a series of Stax-Atlantic portraits. My trip to Thailand (see previous posts) brought that project to a temporary halt, but now I'm ready to pick up where I left off, and 'am aiming to finish the remaining portraits in the series before the end of the month. A new post will appear tomorrow.

(pictured above: Ray Charles, Don Covay, Ben E. King, Solomon Burke)

buddha head

spicky

Ah, Potato Spicky. The snack equivalent of crack cocaine...

ko surin idols

grounds of wat pra singh

wat pra singh

wat mahathat spire

wildlife

No snakes or spiders or scorpions I'm afraid, and we didn't get any photos of the lemurs and macaques we saw on Ko Surin or, for that matter, any of the countless species of fish we saw when diving off the coast (no underwater camera). But these are pretty good, no?

wat mae chon

Spotted on our second day in Sukhothai National Park, on route to Wat Si Chum.

On the first day, we'd stayed in the 'Central Zone' of the Old City, cycling around the grounds and stopping occasionally to do some drawing. The following day, we decided to explore the various zones beyond the city walls, but our coach to Bangkok was leaving in the afternoon so we were in something of a hurry. The receptionist at the hotel had told us that we absolutely must see the large statue of the Buddha — the largest in Sukhothai — at Wat Si Chum, and also to visit Wat Saphan Hin, a hilltop temple situated to the west of the city.

I was paranoid about encountering deadly snakes on my trip and was frequently witnessed gesticulating wildly and shouting 'COBRA!' whilst running away from lengths of hosepipe, electricity cables etc., so it was with some irony that the only snake I, ahem, came across during my stay was a dead one lying in the road that I ran over on my bike. At least, that's what J told me. I didn't see it as I was consulting a map at the time. If I had seen it, I imagine it would have been at least fifty feet long and would have had a glimmer of life about it, just enough in fact to stretch up and try and give me a fatal bite with it's dying breath. So, my running over the unfortunate reptile was a very brave act indeed...

Click on the image to see a larger version.

yaksha

Photographed at the Grand Palace, Bangkok, these giant statues — representing demons from the Ramayana — watch over the Emerald Buddha and ward off evil spirits.

steinbeck

holiday reading material

patterns

school milk

A plastic pouch of school milk that Dirty D 'liberated' from her place of work. She said that not all the kids wanted it, so there was milk to spare, but I like to think that she deliberately stole this rich source of calcium from her charges, thus hampering their physical development and giving them all brittle bones in later life. Dirty by name...

On a technical note, this sketch is, for me, a rare foray into pen and watercolour wash, largely because I can't find a pen that I'm comfortable with that will take waterproof ink. Before I'm beseiged by cries of 'Noodler's Ink!, Noodler's Ink!', that's what I used here, but I'm still not happy with it. Although it's much better than other inks I've used, it's still not 100% waterproof and my favourite Parker fountain pen doesn't seem to like it very much. So until I find a better 'colouring-in' solution, I'm sticking with Photoshop.

guide

The 'breakfast sweets' in question were like small suet puddings wrapped up in banana leaves. One had some unidentified purple fruit inside whilst the other contained sweetcorn. Like most desserts in Thailand they were incredibly sweet but as long as you didn't eat the whole thing, you managed to avoid instant diabetes.

We took the overnight bus to Khuraburi and arrived on the morning of the 21st December. We were supposed to arrive at 7am but the coach driver must have had his foot down as we reached our destination at around 5am. We hung around for an hour or so, then walked to a nearby market for a breakfast of rice soup and bananas. The rice soup was fresh, tasty and laced with a liberal amount of ginger — a good pick-me-up after a rather inconsistent night's sleep on the coach. More about the bananas later...

An hour or so later we were dropped off at a dock where the speedboat we'd booked ourselves onto was due to take us across to the island of Ko Surin. However, we couldn't leave until all the other passengers turned up and it was another couple of hours before they did. In the mean time, the staff of the boat company (Greenview) looked after us, gave us tea, coffee and the aforementioned sweets, and, having discovered she could speak Thai fluently, chatted to J.

twenty baht note

Twenty baht probably won't be enough to buy you lunch, but it would get you a couple of drinks, a ride on a river boat, or a bunch of bananas.

thai type

Not so much a tea-powered scribble as a series of noodle-fuelled photos. Still, I like these and wish I'd taken more.

NB. The keen-eyed Thai speakers amongst you will notice that the largest characters on the graffiti photo (centre left) say, 'LOVE'.

wat mahathat

This is a statue of the Buddha at Wat Mahathat, Sukhothai. Sukhothai was one of my favourite places in Thailand about which I'll write more later.

I made an attempt at colouring this today, but the original black and white image is stronger. I may return to this at some point and try again, but until then...

thailand

I've just spent a lovely four weeks in Thailand hence my recent lack of posts. Over the next few days, I'll upload some sketches I made whilst I was over there and I'm also intending to draw some images based on the many, many photographs I took during my stay.

Not forgetting the soul series I began before I left...