The Christmas Blues with Jontavious Willis

This week I'm talking with blues artist Jontavious Willis, who
recently released his album West Georgia Blues. 


I wanted to talk to Jontavious not because of his Christmas
music--he doesn't have any yet--but because he's doing something
that I've been trying to pay attention to as people make
contemporary music in traditional forms. We go a little longer
with Jontavious talking about the blues in general to help get at
that thought a bit. 


But we also got to a number of his favorite blues Christmas
songs, and I like that he's not doctrinaire in his choices,
folding in Rev. J.M. Gates, The Emotions and James Brown among
others. Early on he mentions Minnie Ripperton, and it takes a bit
before I get to her, but I played "Christmas Love" by the Rotary
Connection, which featured Minnie Ripperton on lead vocals.


In the episode, I also mentioned that I did a guest spot recently
on the Totally Rad Christmas podcast, which focuses on
Christmas in the '80s. We talked about "Do They Know it's
Christmas" by Band Aid and Band Aid II from 1989 with a version
of the song produced by the British pop hit making team of Stock
Aiken Waterman. It's a fun conversation and worth the time. 


Finally, Jontavious mentioned Lowell Folsom's "Lonesome
Christmas," then rolled on to other songs so I never got to
include a song by him. If you haven't heard it, here it is.