Johnny Shines - Dynaflow Blues [HD]

Johnny Shines sings 'Dynaflow Blues' from the 1971 Vanguard 2xLP compilation album 'The Great Blues Men'. The song was first on the 1966 Vanguard album 'Chicage/The Blues/Today!'. The lyrics are below with comments on the album and Johnny Shines.

Note: Johnny Shines had toured with the legendary Robert Johnson and was one of the last of the Delta blues singers.

[Vinyl/18-Images/WAV]

Dynaflow Blues (Singer: Johnny Shines)

Well, I feel so lonesome
Baby, hear me when I moan
Well, I feel so lonesome
Baby, hear me when I moan
Mmmm, who been drivin' my Dynaflow, mama
For you since I been gone?

I flash my lights, mama
And my horn won't even blow
I flash my lights mama
And my horn won't even blow
Wires gotta bad disconnection, baby
Woo babe, somewhere down below

Coils won't even buzz, mama
Generator get no spark
Motor's in a bad condition
Gotta have my batteries charged
I'm cryin' please
Please don't do me wrong

Who been drivin' my Dynaflow, mama
Since I been gone?

I can't find my light
And my horn won't even blow
I can't find my light, mama
And my horn won't even blow
She got a bad disconnection, baby
Down below

Hey Mr. Highwayman
Don't block my road
Mr. Highwayman
Don't block my road
It registerin' a cool one hundred, boy
And she's broke and she's gotta go

Songwriter: Johnny Shines
[Lyrics from Musixmatch]

Personnel: Johnny Shines - vocal, guitar, Walter Horton - harmonia, Floyd Jones - bass, Frank Kirkland - drums.

Wikipedia states:

Chicago/The Blues/Today! is a series of three blues albums by various artists. It was recorded in late 1965 and released in 1966. It was remastered and released as a three-disc album in 1999.

In 1965 Samuel Charters at Vanguard Records asked nine different blues artists to come into the studio and record several songs each, so that he could produce a sampler of Chicago blues music. The albums made a significant impression on some now-well-known American and English rock musicians, who at the time had not had much exposure to electric blues.

The artists featured on Chicago/The Blues/Today! are Junior Wells, J. B. Hutto, Otis Spann, James Cotton, Otis Rush, Homesick James, Johnny Young, Johnny Shines, and Big Walter Horton. Also contributing are other musicians such as Buddy Guy, Willie Dixon, and Floyd Jones.

John Ned Shines (April 26, 1915 – April 20, 1992) was an American blues singer and guitarist. Shines was born in the community of Frayser, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent most of his childhood in Memphis, playing slide guitar at an early age in juke joints and on the street. He moved to Hughes, Arkansas, in 1932 and worked on farms for three years, putting aside his music career. A chance meeting with Robert Johnson, his greatest influence, gave him the inspiration to return to music. In 1935, Shines began traveling with Johnson, touring in the United States and Canada. They parted in 1937, one year before Johnson's death.

In 1966, Vanguard Records found Shines taking photographs in a Chicago blues club, and he recorded tracks for the third volume of Chicago/The Blues/Today!. The album became a blues classic, and it brought Shines into the mainstream music scene. Shines toured with the Chicago All Stars alongside Lee Jackson, Big Walter Horton and Willie Dixon.

"Born in 1915, Shines is the most vigorous surviving practitioner of acoustic Delta blues. With his intense vibrato, his observant, imaginative, yet tradition-soaked lyrics, and his incomparable slide guitar, he ought to be recorded once a year by the Library of Congress."
—Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981)

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Shines toured with Robert Lockwood, Jr., Robert Johnson's stepson, another one of the last living original Delta blues musicians. In 1980, Shines's career was brought to a standstill when he suffered a stroke. He later appeared and played in the 1991 documentary The Search for Robert Johnson. His final album, Back to the Country, with accompaniment by Snooky Pryor and Johnny Nicholas, won a W. C. Handy Award.

In 1989, Shines met Kent DuChaine, and the two of them toured for the next several years, until Shines's death.

Shines died on April 20, 1992, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame later the same year.

According to the music journalist Tony Russell,
Shines was that rare being, a blues artist who overcame age and rustiness to make music that stood up beside the work of his youth. When Shines came back to the blues in 1965 he was 50, yet his voice had the leonine power of a dozen years before, when he made records his reputation was based on.