Mighty Mo Rodgers
Los Angeles, California, United States | INDIE
Music
Press
Metaphysical Blues: New Frontiers in Music Making
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04tENvLeu4A&feature=search - UCSD
Maurice Rodgers, "Mighty Mo", was born in 1942 in Chicago, Indiana but actually studied classical piano as a lad. Of course growing up in the 60s meant you had to be affected by the brilliant soul music coming out of Memphis and soon Mighty Mo started his own soul band the Rocketeers while in high school but by college started the Maurice Rodgers Combo. He quit college and headed to Los Angeles and started performing, recording as a session player where he gigged with T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Jimmy Reed, and many others. He played Farfasa organ on Brenton Wood's 1967 hit "Gimme Little Sign". He also served as a producer, most notably on Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee's classic 1973 A & M record "Sonny And Brownie".He selected the material, which featured three of his own compositions, rounded up John Mayall, Arlo Guthrie, John Hammond, Michael Franks, Sugarcane Harris and others as backing musicians. He gave up music for awhile heading to Cal State Northridge where he earned a degree in philosophy while simultaneously working as a staff songwriter for Chappell Publishing and Motown. He’s completing a Masters degree in Humanities with an astonishing thesis, "Blues as Metaphysical Music (Its Musicality and Ontological Underpinnings)", and this can be felt on his first album released under his own name in 1999, "Blues Is My Wailin' Wall" on Blue Thumb.
- http://www.soulbluesmusic.com/
Maurice Rodgers first got into the music business when a wrestling scholarship led him from his native Gary, Indiana, to the campus of Indiana State University in Terre Haute, where he ended up fronting a band on the local fraternity circuit and soon headed west to Los Angeles. There, he fell in with the local soul and funk acts, recording as keyboardist for Brenton Wood, among others. His own debut album, Blues Is My Wailin’ Wall, came out on North Star in 1998, and, following the release of Red, White And Blues and Redneck Blues, Rodgers is back with what is billed as “the 4th cycle of a 12 cycle blues odyssey.”
Dispatches From The Moon is a full-blown production piece that casts Rodgers as the—or at least a—man on the moon, all-seeing and all-knowing, answering telephoned inquiries from the home planet. In so doing, he holds forth on global warming, nuclear proliferation, and the political ills of Europe and Africa, pausing along the way to pay tribute to Michael Jackson and President Obama. Rodgers’ declamatory vocal style is well suited to all the preaching going on, while the backing tracks, laid down in Paris and L.A., are in something of a new-agey, space blues bag apropos of the disc’s theme and often incorporating African and Caribbean elements.
As with any concept album, it can be a little tricky to look past the concept to the music, but in this case it’s well worth the effort to do so. It’ll be interesting to see where the next eight cycles of Rodgers’ odyssey will take him—and us.
—Jim DeKoster - http://livingblues.com/
Discography
Mighty Mo Rodgers - WAILING WALL (1st blues cycle)
Blues comes from a place so deep that even madness cannot penetrate there. Blues is free then, and it makes sense of the madness by changing what was disfigured into something wonderfully transfigured. Blues is my story and my glory. Blues is my wailin' wall.
Mighty Mo Rodgers - RED, WHITE, AND BLUES (2nd blues cycle)
Blues is an Americana music, coming from those dark places of wisdom an oral testament to our self determination. It is a spiritual commodity of exchange, a tool that we use to negotiate and navigate our way through the marketplace of life. And because of Blues, I am free to be me. So I don't have to behave.
And I am happy, happy as a runaway slave.
Mighty Mo Rodgers - REDNECK BLUES (3rd blues cycle)
People go to Africa looking for the roots of the Blues, which is only half correct at best. You might as well go to Europe too, for you can't have one without the other. Philosophically this makes Blues a Hegelian thesis/antithesis/synthesis scenario. But Blues is much more than that. Born in America in the South of myth, magic and madness it is our greatest poetry.
Mighty Mo Rodgers - DISPATCHES FROM THE MOON (4th blues cycle)
I dedicate this CD to the people of Earth, who keep trying in spite of the overwhelming odds. We gotto keep pushin'. PUSH (Pray Until Something Happens). God is good, God is great, God is love.
Mighty Mo Rodgers- CADILLAC JACK (5th blues cycle)
It was a magical time in America, from 1959 to 1963 when we believed that anything was possible, even going to the moon. We were the undisputed number one country in the world and Cadillac was the car. This album is the musical journey encapsulating the time on Route 66 where Blues became Rock n' Roll.
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Bio
Combining soulful, gritty vocals with driving rhythms, Mo creates a wholly personal panorama of songs like “Took Away the Drum,” “The Kennedy Song,” “Tuskegee Blues” and a moving tribute to his childhood friend with “Willie B. and Me”. Blues Is My Wailin’ Wall has already made an indelible impression on listeners, both as a recording and as a live performance.
Mo became a member of the Indiana State student body and began exploring the songwriting aspect of his musical abilities, fronting The Maurice Rodgers Combo on Wurlitzer piano. Performing a mix of R&B covers and Rodgers’ own Ray Charles/Otis Redding inspired tunes, the band was the high point of Saturday night frat parties. With music as his guide, Rodgers traded in his schoolbooks for a one-way ticket to L.A. where he gigged with T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Jimmy Reed, and many others. That’s his Farfisa organ on Brenton Wood’s 1967 hit, "Gimme Some Kind Of Sign."
But still what he considers as one of his most important accomplishments was producing an album for his all-time greatest heroes, folk/blues harmonica legend Sonny Terry who teamed up with the equally renowned Brownie McGhee. The critically acclaimed 1973 A&M release, Sonny and Brownie, was a watershed event for Rodgers. He selected the material, which featured three of his own compositions, rounded up John Mayall, Arlo Guthrie, John Hammond, Michael Franks and Sugarcane Harris and others as backing musicians and galvanized his relationship with Terry and McGhee.
Disillusioned with the Hollywood formula that began dominating music, he enrolled at Cal State Northridge where he earned a degree in philosophy while simultaneously working as a staff songwriter for Chappell Publishing and Motown. Leave it to Rodgers to bridge the impasse between music and academia; he’s completing a Masters degree in Humanities with an astonishing thesis, "Blues as Metaphysical Music (Its Musicality and Ontological Underpinnings), the result of his exploration of the spiritual connection he has with the blues and his need to express it meaningfully in a forum in addition to Blues Is My Wailin’ Wall.???Whether on paper, on record, or in conversation, it’s Rodgers’ meaningful exploration and expression of life through music that makes the trip soul-satisfying.
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