livingblues.com

Other unexpected delights include Strawberry Lady, with its acoustic Delta slide guitar pattern encased in horns-and-high-tech gloss; Dream (Turn Off the Phone), a string-washed digital-age seduction ballad (“Turn off your phone, turn off your computer / Come over here, baby, I’ll be good to ya”);  and My Brother, another roots-rich outing based on traditional southern blues, but this timeless ironically detached (the lyrics bemoan the psychic devastation that accompanies familial tragedy and dissolution).

John Bigham sounds as if he wants to bring to contemporary blues the same mix of   irreverence, self-mocking goofiness, seriousness of purpose, and genre-busting musical adventurism that P-Funk and their co-conspirators brought to mainstream R&B so many years ago.  The result is a musical feast for listeners with ears big enough to savor it.

—David Whiteis

 

ROD PIAZZA AND THE ALL MIGHTY FLYERS

Almighty Dollar

Delta Groove – DGPCD147

“One step ahead, and two steps back/Seems like my whole life’s in the red, can’t make it to the black,” sings Rod Piazza as he chases the ever-elusive Almighty Dollar, an experience a lot of listeners will certainly relate to this summer. In a subtle nod to the track’s title, Piazza’s enduring cohort has been rechristened the “All Mighty Flyers” for their fourth Delta Groove album. The name change is merely cosmetic, however, as this is the same hard-working trio that has appeared alongside the West Coast harp giant for the past several releases (and in Honey’s case, much longer than that). Joining that core group of Honey Piazza, Henry Carvajal, and Dave Kida are special guests Rusty Zinn and Johnny Dyer, as well as Jonny Viau on tenor sax and bassists Norm Gonzales and Hank Van Sickle.

One of the great strengths of this band (in all its various lineups) has always been their ability to create records that maintain that signature harp-based, swinging West Coast sound while still sounding fresh and new. The latter is not really the case with Almighty Dollar, a record that doesn’t look forward so much as it looks back—and in the best possible way. Those who have been following Piazza throughout his many decades in the business will recognize this as a throwback record reminiscent of the band’s best work during their tenure with Black Top and Tone-Cool.

Classic Flyers fare like the jump blues Move Out Baby and Baby Don’t Go overshadow a rather drab cover of We Belong Together, and Piazza’s fat-toned harp anchors the proceedings, shining particularly bright on the instrumentals That’s It and Con-Vo-Looted. The veteran Dyer doesn’t blow much harmonica in the studio these days, but his vocal appearances are always special, and he contributes two of them on Loving Man and Confessin’ the Blues. This record may not be markedly different from previous Piazza outings, but the Flyers convey such a sense of confidence in their art that listeners will appreciate this for what it is: a group of veteran blues artists doing what they do best.

—Roger Gatchet

 

CD REVIEWS JUNE 2011

THE BO-KEYS

Got To Get It Back!

Electrophonic Recording – ER-106

It’s as if a tornado touched down on the Stax, Royal, and American recording studios circa 1966, sucked up some of the best instrumentalists and singers, and deposited them unharmed back in Memphis some four decades later. The 11 songs that make up the Bo-Keys’ sophomore CD, all but two of them composed by members of the band, are pure ’60s-style Memphis soul of the kind the Mar-Keys, M.G.’s, Willie Mitchell’s band, Otis Redding, James Carr, Al Peebles, and so many others were making before Don Davis began adding tambourines to Stax sessions and Mitchell started sweetening Al Green’s songs with strings. And no Pro Tools were involved. Producer, bassist, and band leader Scott Bomar cut the tracks using analog equipment.

Other than Bomar, keyboardist Al Gamble, and several members of the horn section, all the Bo-Keys are venerable Memphis studio players from back in the day: guitarist Charles “Skip” Pitts, keyboardist Archie “Hubbie” Turner, drummers Howard Grimes and Willie Hall, trumpeter Ben Cauley, and baritone saxophonist Floyd Newman. Hard-punching horn riffs, swelling organ chords, rock-solid four-on-the-floor drum grooves, and Pitts’ brittle-toned, Steve Cropper–inspired rhythm and lead guitar parts mark four of the set’s six instrumentals, while the Green Onions–like shuffle Jack and Ginger and the slow blues Sundown on Beale offer changes in rhythmic pace. Memphis recording veterans Otis Clay, Percy Wiggins, and William Bell each take a commanding turn at the vocal mike. A fourth vocalist, Charlie Mussewhite, may not be associated with Memphis soul, but he did reside in the cotton capital during much of his youth. He sounds quite comfortable singing and blowing his harmonica on the aptly titled I’m Going Home, a blues rumba with an imaginatively swinging eight-bar stop-time bridge that was written and originally recorded in 1961 by Prince Conley for the pre-Stax Satellite label.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

JOHNNY RAWLS

Memphis Still Got Soul

Catfood - CFR-008

The cover shows Johnny Rawls posing on Beale Street, but the disc itself was recorded in Tornillo, Texas, and Helena, Arkansas.  Nonetheless, the overall message is obvious:  Rawls, who cut his teeth on the chitlin’ circuit with the likes of Little Johnny Taylor and O.V. Wright (whose Blind, Crippled, and Crazy he lovingly covers here), is celebrating his roots.

One of Rawls’ distinguishing modern-day characteristics is the way he melds his fatback musical background pop-tinged breeziness.  Here, though, apropos of the CD’s stated theme, he sticks close to the sanctified grit on which he was nurtured.  The ballad Stop the Rain, which he delivers in his most ravaged-sounding croon, is as vulnerable and wounded-sounding as anything he’s ever done;  the title tune, which nostalgically name-checks Stax Records among other Bluff City landmarks, is a straightforward deep-soul workout; Give What You Need and Flying Blind, although seasoned with characteristic Rawlsian nods to post-deep-soul pop and mainstream R&B, are instrumentally rooted in the vintage southern soul tradition with their crisp horns and Booker T.–like organ lines.  And out in front, Rawls’ churchy vocals convey intense feeling that never crosses into bathos or overkill.   His guitar is somewhat less prominent than usual, but when he showcases it he does so with imagination and unerring musicality.

The retro-style Don’t Act So Innocent harks even farther back musically, although the lyrics are hard-edged and up-to-date; Love Stuff and Blues Woman sound closer to contemporary southern soul-blues, and Burning Bridges brings an element of rock intensity into the mix.  Overall, though, this is an unabashedly roots-rich outing, featuring Rawls’ voice at its meatiest and his guitar work at its most elegant and understated.

—David Whiteis

TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND

Revelator

Sony Masterworks – 886978142023

Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks have contributed to several of each other’s albums during their ten years of marriage, including her Back to the River and his Already Free, which competed with each other for the Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy Award last year. (His won.)  And in 2008, their separate bands joined forces as the Soul Stew Revival for a series of shows during which they performed R&B oldies as well as songs from their own albums.  A year and a half ago, however, they disbanded their groups, put together an all-star band that features them both, wrote a bunch of new songs with several collaborators, and began recording a CD in a studio in the backyard of their Jacksonville, Florida, home.

Revelator will come as a revelation to fans of bluesy roots rock. It’s simply one of the most thoughtfully conceived and brilliantly realized recordings ever associated with that genre. The songs are rife with catchy, hook-filled melodies that have pop appeal without making concessions to fleeting trends, deeply soulful singing by Tedeschi, and searing slide guitar flights by her husband. Hammond B-3 organist Kofi Burbridge, bassist Oteil Burbridge (brothers who also play with Trucks in the Allman Brothers Band), and drummers Tyler Greenwell and J.J. Johnson lay down tightly syncopated grooves that don’t let up. Background singers Mike Mattison, Ryan Shaw, and David Ryan Harris frequently blend their voices with Tedeschi’s powerful, sustain-rich alto to create haunting, gospel-imbued harmonies. A three-man horn section joins in on many tracks and gives the ballad Until You Remember an especially mournful introduction reminiscent of Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness. Trucks’ obligatos on that tune suggest Duane Allman, yet he is no mere Allman imitator. His serpentine lines are strongly influenced by post-bop jazz, and he brings a jazz improvisers’ unfettered aesthetic to his solos. The phrases he trades with molten-toned tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williiams and with his guitar-playing wife on the funky, Tower of Power–inspired Love Has Something to Say are blistering marvels of musical invention.

—Lee Hildebrand

RORY BLOCK

Shake ’Em On Down:  A Tribute to Mississippi Fred McDowell 

Stony Plain - SPCD-1344

Although she’s sometimes criticized for her pristine recreations of music born of struggle and oppression, it can be argued that Rory Block is no more a dilettante than the artists she honors.  She learned firsthand from Fred McDowell, Son House, and other “rediscovered” bluesmen when she was in her mid-teens; she felt their passion, listened to their stories, and absorbed the life lessons they conveyed.  In other words, she learned “blues,” not just “notes.”

That being said, this outing is, by Block’s own admission in the liner notes, “rather nervy.”  Her readings of songs either written by or associated with McDowell are predictably fiery and imaginative, but she intersperses them with originals, several of which she sings from the first-person perspective of an African American of McDowell’s time.  Steady Freddy relates McDowell’s life story in what Block has intended to sound like his own voice.  Ancestral Home, which she sings in a Creolized dialect, recreates the kidnapping of McDowell’s ancestors from their African homeland.  She also includes a vignette of her own initial meeting with McDowell—a 15-year-old runaway, wild with dreams and desire, locks eyes with a libidinous old blues rake—and a reverse-gender take on Good Morning Little School Girl.  The result is an interweaving of voices, lives, even psyches, in which the separate identities of Rory Block and Fred McDowell virtually disappear—a new entity, neither Rory nor Fred but an almost Burroughsian cut-up of the two, emerges.

Has Rory Block, with her high-art aspirations and position of cultural privilege, violated the territory she intended to praise?  It’s a difficult call—and maybe an unnecessary one.   There’s plenty to admire in her torrid slide work, the passion she infuses into her reedy vocals, and the obvious dedication with which she has undertaken this project.  That will be sufficient for most listeners.

—David Whiteis

BEAUTIFUL BOBBY BLACKMAN

Yeah Baby! 

B3 - (No #)

Bobby Blackman claims B.B. King and Wayne Bennett as two of his guitar heroes, and his playing reflects both their sophistication and their fire, even if his lines are a little more stripped-down and his harmonic ideas more elemental than theirs.  His band is tight and funkified, and they’ve mastered the too-seldom realized art of kicking up the energy level without blowing out the speakers (or the ears).  Blackman’s own approach likewise eschews overkill in favor of honesty: even on a song like I’ll Show You What I Got, a double-entendre-laden tale of lust and booty-shaking at the juke, he manages to play the role of the leering Lothario while avoiding both puerility and macho obnoxiousness.  I Like Yo Thang is likewise good-naturedly lascivious; the title tune, airy and pop-tinged, finds the singer descending into an affected Latimore-by-way-of-Barry-White murmur, but despite the self-deprecating playfulness, the sincerity of his amorous message seems to ring true.  His interpretation of Hey Joe accentuates the storyline’s sense of tragic fatalism, and his remake of Shirley Brown’s Sleep With One Eye Open jubilantly conflates the male and female roles—aggressor, seducer, seductress—to create an entirely fresh scenario out of the Frederick Knight lyrics.

Blackman’s gifts shine even more brightly on ballads.  Early One Sunday Morning, a tale of love and loss, is a masterpiece of understatement:  Blackman’s lyrics tell the story with almost prosaic straightforwardness, and both his singing and guitar work are low key but charged with smoldering emotional power. The Love That Got Away tells a similar story, this time intensified by a heartbeat-like stop-time cadence and an ironically smooth-sheened organ backing.

Passion, emotional honesty, musicianship, and taste—you can’t do much better than that.

—David Whiteis

 

SOLOMON BURKE & DE DIJK

Hold On Tight

Verve Forecast – 80015256-02

Solomon Burke never made it to the sold-out October 2010 concert at an Amsterdam church celebrating the release of Hold on Tight, his collaboration with the Dutch rock band De Dijk. Not that he didn’t try.  He had arrived from Los Angeles two days in advance but died of natural causes at the city’s Schiphol Airport before he could disembark the plane.

Recorded in Brussells 12 months earlier, the CD pairs the powerful King of Rock and Soul with the eclectic Amsterdam octet for a dozen songs previously recorded by the band with leader Huub van der Lubbe singing Dutch. For Hold On Tight, van der Lubbe assumes supporting roles as acoustic guitarist and co-producer and turns the vocal mike over to Burke for new English-language versions of the tunes, many of which the American guest is credited with helping translate.

The title song—with its organ chord cushion, basic four-on-the-floor bass-and-drum groove, and crisp trumpet-trombone-saxophone riffs—sounds even more like it was cut in Memphis than much of Burke’s previous release, Nothing’s Impossible, which actually was. That terrific track and a rather meandering blues ballad titled No One both feature some stinging guitar work, either by Nico Arzbach or J.B. Meijers.  Jaunty piano lines by Pim Kops help give the mid-tempo Good for Nothing a Bert Berns–like Brill Building pop-soul flavor. The up-tempo I Got to Be with You rocks hard in a manner reminiscent of some of the early ’60s Burke sides for Atlantic that so captured the ears of the Rolling Stones and ends even more fervently with a double-time shout beat.  Much of the rest of the program is more rock oriented, and some of it even ventures into the folk-rock realm with reedy accordion and jangling mandolin and acoustic guitars. Burke is in strong vocal form throughout, and even if some of the material doesn’t quite fit his style, he delivers it with the kind of conviction that made him one of the greatest soul stylists of all time.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

ERIC BIBB WITH STEFAN ASTNER

Troubadour Live 

Telarc - TEL - 32760-02

Although sometimes still labeled a “folk-blues revivalist,” Eric Bibb has moved far beyond that stereotype.  Recorded live in Paris last year (except for two “bonus studio tracks” included at the end), this set features no Delta or Piedmont chestnuts—rather, everything but the opening selection, Guy Clark’s The Cape, was either written or co-written by Bibb himself.  His guitar work is impeccable, and guest fretman Stefan Astner contributes both sharply focused leads and, when appropriate, deft chording.  At various points several other musicians and singers also appear, and their contributions are unerringly tasteful and imaginative.

Blues-oriented songs like Walkin’ Blues Again and New Home use venerable musical and lyric blues tropes to express universal human concerns (although one wonders what vintage Delta jukers would have thought of Bibb’s “Everybody clap your hands!” hootenanny affectations).  Tell Riley, sung from the perspective of B.B. King’s cousin Bukka White, is an ingenious slice-of-fictional-life that unfortunately only diehard blues aficionados will understand. The gospel-style Thanks for the Joy, complete with close-harmony backing, is a heartfelt (if not quite house-wrecking) celebration of life well lived and wisdom hard won.

Some of the other material here may be a bit more challenging for some LB readers to embrace.  Sensitive-folkie offerings like For You and Connected reflect both deep feeling and finely honed craftsmanship, but their unrelieved earnestness borders on the cloying; the socially conscious New World Comin’ Through and the preachy Put Your Love First likewise straddle the line between inspiration and archness.

Overall, though, Bibb’s admirers will find this intimate portrait of a modern-day songster both uplifting and musically satisfying.

—David Whiteis

 

WARREN HAYNES

Man in Motion

Stax/Concord Records – 32986

Warren Haynes’ first solo record in 18 years is a return to his soul-music roots.  From the moment Man in Motion’s title track kicks off with Haynes’ slinky licks, George Porter Jr.’s pulsing bass, Ivan Neville’s laid-back organ, and Ian McLagan’s percussive piano until McLagan’s and Neville’s delicate church-keyboard fills close the pleading hymn Save Me, the entire affair sounds as if it could have been recorded for Stax in 1971 instead of 2011.  Yet Haynes’ emotional guitar playing and vocals firmly establish Man in Motion’s modern presence, and the combination makes for an ultimately timeless-sounding album.

Nine of the ten songs are Haynes originals.  Sick of My Shadow and Take a Bullet are both Big Easy–funky, with Porter, Neville, drummer Raymond Webber, and saxophonist Ron Holloway laying down the groove.  A bit of that funk also creeps into the Johnnie Taylor–esque On a Real Lonely Night and the uplifting gospel of River’s Gonna Rise (“The river’s gonna rise/Wash our troubles away”).  There’s a slight Allman Brothers flavor in A Friend to You, while Your Wildest Dreams sounds like a forgotten Otis Redding ballad; Haynes’ urgently tender vocal is matched at the end by Holloway’s liquid-fire sax.  The lone cover, William Bell’s Everyday Will Be like a Holiday, is a highlight.  Neville and guest Ruthie Foster provide sweet, sensitive harmonies, and Haynes’ call-and-response guitar playing throughout the song culminates in a passionate, extended solo.

Haynes’s fretwork is as fine as always, but ultimately it’s his singing that stands out the most.  His honeyed-whiskey tones easily range from quiet and gentle to powerful and commanding—often within the same song, as in the cautionary tale Hattiesburg Hustle.  “Take me back in time/Show me things as they were/Let my soul unwind/Take me to the place where things ain’t such a blur,” he cries in the bridge, and these lines sum up the aesthetic heart of Man in Motion.

—Melanie Young

 

MARCIA BALL

Roadside Attractions

Alligator Records – ALCD 4942

“It’s not the destination, it’s the trip/It’s the moss you gather while you roll,” Marcia Ball declares on That’s How It Goes, the stomping opener on Roadside Attractions.  There’s much truth in that observation, but Ball doesn’t sound as if she’s slowing down one bit.  Her piquant gumbo of Louisiana bayou boogie and smoky Texas blues is as spicy as ever on her latest release.

One thing she has acquired over her 40 years on the road is a keen songwriting ability, and she shows it to full advantage here; this is the first time Ball has written or collaborated on every album track.  She’s got a little something for everyone—good-time anthems (The Party’s Still Going On, written with Gary Nicholson and Tom Hambridge), 12-bar blues (Mule-Headed Man), New Orleans stride (Everybody’s Looking for the Same Thing), and even a fun ode to the sweet stuff (Sugar Boogie).  Nicholson also lends a hand on the other-woman’s lament I Heard It All and the funky Believing in Love, and both he and Dan Penn contribute to the hard-won wisdom of Look Before You Leap. But Ball’s best song-writing moments may be her solo turns.  Often her glance turns homeward, as it does in the title track and the gently rolling Between Here and Kingdom Come.  The poignant This Used to Be Paradise chronicles the heart-breaking loss of her fisherman grandfather’s—and by extension, an entire community’s—way of life; the references to the “oil man” are all too timely in the wake of last year’s disastrous BP Gulf oil spill.

Ball’s soft-grained drawl is expressive and clear, and her Professorial way with the keys is ably supported by guitarists Colin Linden and Mike Schermer, bassists Steve Mackey and Don Bennett, drummers Lynn Williams and Damien Llanes, and organist Reese Wynans.  Saxophonist Thad Scott and the Mingo Fishtrap Horns add a nice dash of spice; Joel Guzman’s mournful accordion on Paradise provides an appropriate shot of bitter.  Roadside Attractions is the soundtrack of a life well lived. Let’s hope Ball has many more stories to share with us.

—Melanie Young

 

GRANA’ LOUISE

Gettin’ Kinda Rough!

Delmark - DE-812

Chicago-based vocalist Grana’ Louise has been a local club mainstay for years, but this is her first recording under her own name.  Her material here covers a wide range, from postwar R&B and blues (Stagger Lee, Queen Bee) through deep soul (I Can’t Stand the Rain) to her own  roadhouse-rocking creations (Lead Foot Mama, Big Dick M’isipi, Bang Bang Ba-Bang Bang Bang Bang!), along with a foray into classic-rock nostalgia (Hey Joe).

Seven of these tracks were cut in the studio; the rest were recorded live at Blue Chicago, the downtown Chicago club where Grana’ Louise holds forth on a regular basis.  She’s capable of considerable nuance when she chooses to show it (she’s done sets dedicated to the classic blues women, accompanied only by piano), but here she emphasizes her crowd-pleasing bad-mama persona (many singers would approach a double-entendre novelty like Big Dick, M’isipi with wink-wink-nudge irony; Grana’ Louise delivers it as a full-frontal assault, virtually daring us not to take her at her word).  The unremitting aggression can wear thin over the long haul, but on a track-by-track basis it’s effective.  Her leaps from her natural alto into soprano shrieks and hollers are dramatic, and when she does tone things down, as on the opening bars of I Can’t Stand the Rain, the inevitable explosion into high-energy testifying is all the more effective.

Despite her back-up band’s occasional reliance on “blooze” overkill instead of honest emotional expression to get their point across, Grana’ Louise’s combination of soulfulness and sass should please most fans of the modern urban style.  Let’s hope, though, that next time out she summons the courage to show us her more nuanced, emotionally vulnerable side—she’s too talented an artist to allow only one facet of her musical personality to shine.

—David Whiteis

 

CD REVIEWS MAY 2011

REVEREND JOHN WILKINS

You Can’t Hurry God

Big Legal Mess - BLM0259 

John Wilkins is the son of Robert Wilkins, the legendary singer-guitarist from Hernando, Mississippi, whose prewar blues and postwar sacred recordings stand among both genres’ benchmarks. He is also the pastor of Hunter’s Chapel Missionary Baptist church in Como, just south of Hernando, previously known from the LP that Fred and Annie Mae McDowell recorded with three other parishioners for Testament in 1966.

Although the younger Wilkins has been involved with music for nearly half a century, this is his first full-length recording. Its centerpiece is an almost eight-minute Prodigal Son, an uncanny channeling of his father’s best-known song, which was itself a reworking of his 1929 blues That’s No Way to Get Along. Wilkins senior also recorded Jesus Will Fix It, but this time his son’s interpretation is radically different, adding guitarist Jake Fussell, bassist Eric Deaton, and drummer Wallace Lester to lay down a rousing hill country stomp that summons up the ghost of R.L. Burnside. The familiar You Got to Move gets a similar treatment, though perhaps leaning a bit closer to Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint—still, as Robert Pete Williams once introduced Motherless Children, “It might sound like a blues, but it’s a church song.” Adding Adam Woodard’s organ helps Sinner’s Prayer and the title track serve as reminders that Wilkins played guitar for the Nucleus of Soul, O.V. Wright, back in the 1960s, while solo performances echo Roebuck Staples on Let the Redeemed Say So and McDowell on Thank You Sir. As bluesy as Wilkins can get at times, there’s no doubt about the provenance of I Want You to Help Me and On the Battlefield, where Wilkins’ daughters join the ensemble to help their dad rattle the church’s rafters.

Don’t get the idea, though, that this album’s blend of so many styles makes for a disjointed listening experience.  Much to the contrary, the Rev. Wilkins has the talent, and more importantly the emotive force, to blend everything into a seamless whole—and, as the notes say, “This sound can have only been made by a child of the North Mississippi Hill Country.”

—Jim DeKoster

 

LC ULMER

Blues Come Yonder

Hill Country Records – HC 2116

Jasper County, Mississippi, native LC Ulmer is a treasure—a traveling troubadour of a type seldom seen anymore.  Growing up in a sharecropping family that loved music, he learned to play guitar at a young age and would eventually perform all over the U.S., from California to Chicago and back again to Mississippi.  He has crossed paths with everyone from Jimmie Rodgers to Nat King Cole, and has played on bills with Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and Howlin’ Wolf.  That he has remained largely unknown until recently is a marvel.

Blues Come Yonder is his first studio album and his second for Hill Country Records (his first, Long Ways from Home, features a live performance from the Rootsway Festival in Parma, Italy).  Ulmer sings nine originals, along with his versions of the traditional Trouble No More and Hank Williams’ I Saw the Light.  A multi-instrumentalist, he plays guitar, banjo, and mandolin; Jimbo Mathus and Wallace Lester take turns backing him on drums, while producer Justin Showah holds down the groove on bass.

His playing is trance-like, with few chord changes.  There is a touch of hill country drone in such songs as Left Me Standing Behind and Hard to Get Along.  The title track reflects his days on the rails both lyrically and musically. Peaches Falling and Rounding Up Girls All Day are sultry and brooding; a Reed-like danceability slips in to There Go All My Dough and Hip-Shake.  Get Along Cindy, which includes lines from the folk standard as well as from Stephen Foster’s Oh Susanna, and the Hank Williams cover prove that his influences stretch well beyond blues.

It is a spare affair, recalling the spirit of Waters’ 1964 Chess album Folk Singer.  “Folk singer” would be an apt description for Mr. Ulmer, for his music contains the history of a time in America long past and echoes of those he has met throughout his journeys.

—Melanie Young

 

WALLACE COLEMAN

Blues in the Wind

Ella Mae Music 3335

Since the 1996 release of his eponymous debut disc on Fishhead, Tennessee-born and Cleveland-based Wallace Coleman has held a place among the leading harmonica players on the current blues scene. Fittingly, his latest effort is dedicated to his late friend and mentor, Robert Jr. Lockwood.

Coleman’s tribute opens with Blues in the Wind, a relaxed stroll accompanied by Robin Montgomery’s rolling piano and George Lee’s walking bass. Next up is Uptown Blues, a brisk instrumental in the Lockwood/Aces manner with D.C. Carnes (who played on Lockwood’s acclaimed Verve CD, I Got to Find Me a Woman, back in 1996), Eddie Tomecko, and John Lucie on guitar and Vernondo Parker swinging lightly on drums, followed by Big Bill Broonzy’s Southbound Train. Other titles include the traditional Corrina, Corrina, Sinking Sun, and Matchbox Blues, the most overtly Lockwood-style performance, and Sting’s Fields of Gold, which Coleman, with Kevin Okey and Dean Cohen on guitar, turns into a poignant instrumental to close the set. Coleman also contributed the acoustic ditty Too Much Time on My Hands and a Louis Jordan–inspired Little Joint Way Cross Town, as well as his spoken reminiscence on Robert Jr.

In sum, Coleman’s tribute to his mentor is both tasteful and tasty—just the way Mr. Lockwood would have liked it.

—Jim DeKoster

 

LEE SHOT WILLIAMS

The First Rule of Cheating

CDS – CD 1039

Lee Shot Williams has had his share of health setbacks in recent years, but here the soul and blues veteran sounds rejuvenated.  The backing tracks are resonant, full-bodied, and propulsive (at least by synth-driven soul-blues standards), and he’s hitting notes at the top of his range that many probably thought he’d lost the ability to reach.  There’s even some steaming straight-ahead blues fare on offer, albeit grafted onto a funk/R&B framework: Get Up Get Funky Get Loose showcases Williams’ grits-and-sandpaper rasp in a modern context, as he bellows out encouragements to an imaginary nightclub audience (“Act like we don’t care / sing like a bird in the air”) with full-bodied ebullience.

(Sleeping in the) Wrong Bed, by contrast, brings new pathos to the venerable southern- soul cheating theme: here the cuckolded protagonist finds his woman sneaking out of a Motel 6 while he’s “on my way to the hospital” because “one of my kids got sick.”  Williams summons a wounded mellifluousness that, yet again, a lot of his admirers may have thought beyond him.  Even deeper is the 6/8 soul ballad You Can’t Hide From the Blues, on which Williams’ voice seems to age from a callow croon to a world-toughened wail over the course of the song’s five-plus minutes.  The title song, laid over a moody, organ-drenched backing, isn’t the novelty throwaway one might have expected, but a knowing tale of wrong-doing and retribution (written and originally recorded by Roy Gaines).  Williams delivers it with sobering intensity.

It may have been hubris for Williams to take on the still-formidable spirit of Solomon Burke, but his reading of Cry to Me succeeds remarkably well; he even inserts a few Burkian “Hmm/Hmm-hmm” punctuations to heighten the emotionality.  His final, ascending testimonial echoes the late Rev. Dr. Burke at his churchiest—it’s a heartfelt and moving tribute.

Listeners tired of the juvenile, almost cartoonish fare Williams had been saddled with before moving to CDS will rejoice in what’s here: no cheese-eating “nibble-man” silliness, no self-parody (intentional or otherwise)—just a straightforward set of soul-blues, shot through with both emotional and vocal power.

—David Whiteis

 

DOUG MACLEOD

Brand New Eyes

Fresh! - FR703

What’s remarkable about Doug MacLeod’s music is the stuff you don’t hear. MacLeod does not dabble in filler or extraneous patter. He’s a master of direct, Delta-inspired storytelling, with an audible foot tap present throughout and a National Reso-Phonic guitar upon his hip speaking in steel-timbered tongues. MacLeod’s creed of “play what you know” and “play the notes you hear,” passed on to him from mentor and Piedmont guitarist Ernest Banks, is practiced on MacLeod’s Brand New Eyes disc.

MacLeod exudes credibility, passion, and a quiet fire of artistic expression. His real-deal presentation has garnered him sideman gigs with folks like George “Harmonica” Smith, Pee Wee Crayton, and Lowell Fulson, and his songs have been covered by greats like Albert King and Joe Louis Walker. MacLeod’s sense of optimism is evident from the get-go with the album’s title track. “I’m looking at the same old world, seeing with brand new eyes” he attests, while seeming to sprout a couple of extra fingers on his right hand in a cyclone of picking—Piedmont-meets-bluegrass-style shredding that is no doubt a hot topic at his guitar workshops. Something Dark Is Walking is a bare-bones, John Lee Hooker-at-his-scariest voodoo tale, where McLeod’s whispery inflection tells the listener this is a bad place to be.

The Train of Change could be summed up as Delta gospel, with righteous quips like “I saw people of different colors, different neighborhoods/coming together for common good” and lyrical guitar lines that sit atop an upright bass and drum brushes. Similarly inspirational is Some Old Blues Song, recorded as I Can Count on My Blues by Son Seals on his 1984 Bad Axe record. The Sunday morning– style promise in MacLeod’s sturdy voice, which brilliantly segues into a soft falsetto for added effect, is also evident in the space and steely echo between guitar passages. He hits home with the line “there’s so damn much that the blues can do.”

Doug MacLeod conveys shades of dark and light through his fingers. His labyrinth-like slide/picking hybrid is eclipsed only by his honesty, which is ingrained in every song he sings.

—Mark Uricheck

 

DRINK SMALL

Hallelujah Boogaloo

Music Maker - MMCD 137

Drink Small’s first release on the Music Maker label is a special treat for Small fans as it offers 11 mostly original songs culled from three recording sessions with Tim Duffy, in May 1997, June 1999, and October 2005. The album is solo and all Small, full of his mischievous charm and distinctive take on Piedmont blues. Hallelujah Boogaloo features Small on both acoustic and electric guitar but features none of his equally unique piano playing. The album’s artwork presents a couple of striking photos of Small by Raleigh-based photographer Jimmy Williams.

The opener Widow Woman is a melancholy song with a circular, trickling cadence that has less in common with a traditional blues than a folk song, which Small admits at 3:04, saying, “Let me play it in the folk style/He say, Drink Small, you can’t play no folk music/Check it out.” So Sweet is more in line with Small’s typical swagger and features some deep guitar picking in addition to the bravado. Motherless Child has barely a slight resemblance to the standard, as Small makes it his own with his soulful interpretation and more rollicking guitar playing.

Small sings about being the biggest bullshitter around and proves as much by stringing together a number of x-rated rhymes through the freewheeling Moanin’.  And Women Love a Man That Can Play the Slide lives up to its title, slinking suggestively along during its four-minute runtime. In Song with No Name we learn another of Small’s many nicknames, the Moanin’ Wolf of South Carolina, as he compares himself to Howlin’ Wolf of Chicago. In One Woman Small sings, “One thing about the Piedmont blues, you sound good playing by yourself/it’s just like loving your woman, you don’t need nobody else,” and then goes onto sing about a Gullah woman with a stutter to whom he once made love. The ballad Greenback follows and tells the story of a guitar-playing friend who died in a fire Small’s hometown of Bishopville, South Carolina, over 60 years ago.

Hallelujah Boogaloo ends with the loose Drink Blues, with Small bragging, “When it come to Piedmont blues, Drink Small is a man.” The album evokes hanging out in Small’s South Carolina living room listening to him play whatever tunes happen to come to mind. While there is nothing earth-shattering here, the album is vintage Small and a lot of fun to listen to. As of this review, the CD is currently out of stock at the Music Maker online store, but it can be downloaded from Apple’s iTunes.

—Mark Coltrain

 

ROOMFUL OF BLUES

Hook, Line, & Sinker 

Alligator – ALCD 4941

By now, fans know what to expect: brawny, horn-driven shuffle-swing, vocals that compensate in passion for what they may lack in nuance, and mostly good-timey material heavy on the postwar Gulf Coast-to-California influences (the set list includes covers of tunes by such artists as Gatemouth Brown, Earl King, and Amos Milburn).

Guitarist Chris Vachon may lack some of the subtlety of some of his Roomful predecessors (Duke Robillard et al.), but his searing tone, dexterous finger work, and especially his rhythmic sureness allow him to artfully segue between his dual roles as accompanist and lead man.  Phil Pemberton’s high-pitched vocals (he sounds disarmingly like Big Maybelle when he’s not channeling J.B. Lenoir or Roy Brown) are keening but not shrill, and if acoustic bassist John Turner sometimes sounds as if he has to almost thump his fingers off to be heard, he nonetheless works effortlessly in synch with drummer Ephraim Lowell.  Individual sax credits aren’t given, but both Rich Lataille and Mark Early are accomplished reedmen—at least one of them solos with a Lester Young–influenced tenderness that doesn’t diminish the swing but provides a welcome tinge of sophistication (and sometimes deep-blue melancholy), even on rave-ups.

One of the most attractive things about this band is its ability to sound balls-to-the-wall enthusiastic without overplaying—even at their most houserocking, these guys sound as if they’re still using their brains.  They’re also to be complimented on their ability to mine treasures from unexpected sources (e.g., Sugarcane Harris’s antic, over-the-top Kill Me).

At this point, Roomful are an institution as much as a band—but they’re also one of the most dependably pleasing and uplifting aggregations still on the road.  Long may they drive.

—David Whiteis

 

FRANKIE’S BLUES MISSION

Sleepin’ Dog

No label – (No #)

Frankie’s Blues Mission has been working on the Atlanta blues scene for more than a decade now, and its present lineup of singer-guitarist Frank “Frankie Lee” Robinson, bassist Kermit Maxwell, and drummer Alfonso Largo has been together four years. This is their first recording, but it shouldn’t be their last.

From the echoes of fellow Georgian Johnny Jenkins’ distinctive guitar chords in the first bars of the opening original I’m So Lonely Since You’re Gone, there’s a sense that this group has something special going for it. There are six more originals on tap, of which the minor-hued Lyin’ Thinkin’, the strutting title track, and the soulful I Need Me Some You sport Robinson vocals, while the other three are instrumental features for his guitar and producer/engineer Martin Kearnes’s keyboards, with the Jenkins influence surfacing again on the aptly titled Soul Shuffle and more of a jazz feel on Blues for K.C. and McDaniel Street. The cover selections are all well done, as the slow blues Five Long Years and When a  Guitar Plays the Blues (from Robinson’s mentor Roy Lee Johnson) bring out some of Robinson’s most emotive singing, Woke Up This Morning brightens the tempo and Who’s Been Talking provides a perfect vehicle for Robinson’s shimmering guitar lines and his mates’ skin-tight backing.

Unlike the typical “no label/no number” vanity disc, Sleepin’ Dog boasts a fresh sound firmly rooted in, but not bound by, local tradition. It’s not just the same old blues, and deserves to be picked up for wider release. In the meantime, you can try the band’s website at www.frankiesbluesmission.com.

—Jim DeKoster

 

STEVE GRILLS

After Hours

Toogaloo - TCD910

Steve Grills is a staple on the Rochester, New York, blues scene and has been for 30 years. Grills made his musical debut in his brother’s blues band performing between sets of Rochester luminary Joe Beard in the late 1970s at a local club called the K&T Tavern. Now, Grills makes his album debut with After Hours on Rochester’s Toogaloo Label. Also appearing on the album is longtime Grills collaborator and member of his band, pianist Ernest Lane, who is perhaps better known as a member of the Ike and Tina Turner review and occasional partner of Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker, and Houston Stackhouse, among others.

After Hours opens with a blistering version of Mercy Dee Walton’s One Room Country Shack, demonstrating both Grills’ guitar skills and Lane’s keyboard mastery. Grills and his band, including veteran bassist Steve Gomes and drummer Michael Plouffe, burn their way through 11 more savvy covers of lesser blues standards: Magic Sam’s Look Whatcha Done, Albert Collins’ Frosty, and Jimmy Rogers’ You’re Sweet. Highlights include a pair of Pee Wee Crayton covers, I Love Her Still and The Telephone Is Ringing, Tampa Red’s You’ve Got to Love Her with a Feeling, and Freddy King’s I Love the Woman, featuring vocals by guest Joe Beard.

Jeff Harris, host of Rochester’s Big Road Blues radio program on Jazz 90.1, contributes a set of thoughtful liner notes concluding with a fitting summation of After Hours, “Over the years Grills’ dedication to the blues has not wavered. As evident by this recording, he is not trying to expand on the genre, rather playing with reverence and taste. He is not trying to out play his contemporaries, he has nothing to prove, only a love and respect for the genre that he wishes to share with his audience.” That about sums this album up.

—Mark Coltrain

 

JOHN-ALEX MASON

Jook Joint Thunderclap

Naked Jaybird Music – NJBM-008

One-man blues band John-Alex Mason has assembled a fine set of collaborators for his sixth solo album.  With Cody and Cedric Burnside, Lightnin’ Malcolm, blues mandolinist and harmonica player Gerry Hundt, IBC Award–winning fiddler Lionel Young, bassist Andy Irvine, and Ghanaian artists Alya Sylla and Fara Tolno on djembe and Fasinet Bangoura on balafon, Mason’s Thunderclap sounds more like a stew—a soulful, murky gumbo that combines elements of blues, country, and world music into a rich, easy blend.

The selections are a mix of originals and well-chosen covers.  It’s no easy feat to make over the standard Rollin’ and Tumblin’, yet Mason manages to do just that; his Rolled and Tumbled undulates slowly, with Hundt’s harp and Young’s fiddle drawing out the ache like water.  Irvine’s bass and Cedric Burnside’s drums groove deep on Signifyin’ Monkey, and Hundt’s mandolin adds a nice spice to the hill country stomp of Fred McDowell’s Write Me a Few of Your Lines.

But the album’s best moments come when Mason does just that, writes a few lines—his originals are heartfelt and poetic.  The quiet grace of Whisper features just Mason’s voice—a smoky blend somewhere between Gregg Allman and Warren Haynes—and gentle acoustic guitar. More Than Wind billows with sadness; Mason’s voice is mournful over the slowly keening fiddle and mandolin, and the lyrics hide a mystery.  “Listen close/More than words to hear,” he sings, and this could be said of the entire album.

—Melanie Young

 

CD REVIEWS FEBRUARY 2011

 

JOHN PRIMER

Call Me John Primer: His 15 Best Songs

Wolf 120.823 CD

“Best”?  For an artist with as rich and diverse a catalogue as Chicago-based veteran John Primer, of whom it’s often said you can’t go wrong on virtually anything he’s ever recorded, that’s a rather tall order. But this sampling of previously released offerings, along with five heretofore unissued live gems, lends even more credence to the argument that Primer is one of our most important carriers of the postwar blues torch—a man worthy of walking in the footsteps of his former bandleader, Muddy Waters.

Although Primer was playing slide guitar before he joined Muddy (he has credited the late Sammy Lawhorn with kindling his interest in it while both men were working as Junior Wells’ sidemen at Chicago’s Theresa’s Lounge in the ’70s), the master’s influence is obvious in his timing, his attack, and the intensity of the shiver-string wails he summons from his instrument. His vocals are similarly rootsy, whether on original material or his southern-fried takes on blues and R&B standards (he broom-dusts all over Hank Ballard’s Look At Little Sister; he transforms Wolf’s stop-time Evil into an ironically jaunty shuffle; his acoustic version of Hendrix’s Red House is drenched in backwoods mystery and midnight-at-the-crossroads fatalism).

His accompaniment throughout this set is superb; several tracks showcase him with Magic Slim, the man he worked with from the early ’80s until about 1995, and/or various permutations of Slim’s band, the Teardrops (we also hear from both Billy Branch and Steve Bell, two of Chicago’s finest postwar-style harpists).  Among other things, this means that the shuffle groove is relentless, yet flexible enough to leave plenty of room for Primer’s improvisational flair and tough-edged yet expressive vocals. It also means that the music here virtually screams “Chicago!” in all its unreconstructed urban juke-joint glory. If you can’t smell the cigar smoke and perfume, taste the pig ear sandwiches, and feel the beer and whiskey delivering sweet punches to your brain’s pleasure zones, you’re not listening hard enough.

These days, Primer calls his working aggregation the Real Deal Blues Band. “Real deal” is a term a lot of musicians have used over the years, but none have a more legitimate claim to it than Primer does. This disc shows us why.

—David Whiteis

 

JEAN SHY

Blow Top Blues

King Edward Music - 77712

Jean Shy is one of the most versatile vocalists on the planet. On her previous album, 2008’s magnificent The Blues Got Soul, the veteran Chicago-born singer delved into a mix of soul, blues, rock, and gospel, all delivered with power and passion, with backing from her tight German band, the Shy Guys. Shy’s newly issued 13^th CD, Blow Top Blues, presents her in more of a jazz-oriented mode, although there’s still some soul, rock, and straight urban blues among the 15 tracks. The booklet credits are not entirely clear, but at least some of the selections appeared on earlier releases and were recorded between 1993 and 2003 with three different bands: the Shy Guys, Poland’s Jazz Band Ball Orchestra (JBBO), and one billed as the Real Climax Band Cologne (not to be confused with England’s Climax Blues Band). Several others, including the autobiographical rocker Livin’ The Blues, feature synthesizers and drum machines.

The title track and Evil Gal Blues were early Dinah Washington hits, both written by renowned jazz critic Leonard Feather. Shy sings them with sass, backed by the Climax band. Blow Top Blues is treated to a medium tempo swing groove and features the commanding guitar work of Guenter Allmer. Evil Gal Blues is rendered as a hard-driving shuffle, with solos by high-note trumpeter Martin Reuthner and two-fisted pianist Uli Stollenwerk. Another blues with Climax, the classic The Night Time Is The Right Time, is given a shuffle arrangement at a much faster clip than Nappy Brown and Ray Charles had taken it years earlier. JBBO leads Shy down an even more straight-ahead jazz path on three of her own compositions, of which Maze (I Just Wanna Escape) is especially outstanding.  And, with the Shy Guys, she nicely swings Fred McDowell’s You Got To Move.

Shy can really belt the blues, but she also has a tender side on which her breathy tones at times suggest an Esther Phillips influence. Among the disc’s strongest ballad performances are the standard Willow Weep For Me, Sam Dees’ Love All The Hurt Away, and a sweet, heartfelt version of Where Have All The Flowers Gone? She and Climax give Pete Seeger’s anti-war anthem a For Your Precious Love–like triplet arrangement, with Shy singing the lyrics entirely in German as Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind, a translation by Max Colpert that was originally performed by Marlene Dietrich.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

KENNY “BLUES BOSS” WAYNE, JULIAN FAUTH, CURLEY BRIDGES, BOBBY DEAN BLACKBURN

Blues Piano-Rama

Electro-Fi - EFI 3420

This is a sampling of offerings from four artists in the Electro-Fi stable, each of whom, in his own way, is a roots-rich traditionalist with a forward-looking streak. It was recorded live in 2009 at the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom in Toronto, a convenient location for these pianists, all of whom have longstanding histories in Canada.

Blackburn, who has spent most of his professional life entertaining lounge audiences in Toronto, weighs in here with a live version of 24 Hours A Day, which he also includes on his current Electro-Fi release. (This time he acknowledges that the first part of his arrangement is, in fact, Back To The Chicken Shack.) He comports himself admirably, although he and the band sound as if they didn’t work out the ending very well before the show.

Fauth, a relatively young German-born pianist, plays with a maturity beyond his years, delving into harmonic and rhythmic realms that harken back to the great melodicists of the stride era (his ballads summon a deep-blue melancholy reminiscent of Jimmy Yancey). On Blues For Mel Brown, his tribute to the late Texas guitar master, his voice attains a similar understated yet forceful conviction.

Bridges, yet another veteran with a long-running career in Canada who’s virtually unknown in the Lower Forty-Eight, weighs in with some delightful off-center N’Awlins-to-Toronto rhythms (locked in tightly with his rhythm section) on B.B.’s Rock Me Baby, which is virtually reborn in his hands. Chris Whiteley’s slide guitar adds to the southern-fried feel. Bridges’ slow-swaying take on You’re The One, sounds even swampier (Don Robey took the original writing credit as “D. Malone,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had actually been penned by a Louisianan), and Whiteley again accentuates the mood with his Guitar Slim–style solo.

Kenny “Blues Boss” Wayne is the best known of the four, and he comports himself with his usual ebullience, boogying up a storm while his vocals infuse everything (even the rollicking, Louis Jordan/Big Joe Turner-like Something’s Going On In My Room) with a feel of tender-hearted soulfulness. From the sound of this disc, on any given night in Toronto, blues lovers can probably find more unadulterated keyboard genius in action than their counterparts can find in most of the U.S.’s putative blues strongholds. There’s an unfettered sense of joyful release to this set, deepened by blues grit, that will inspire and refresh anyone fortunate enough to hear it.

—David Whiteis

 

LIZ McCOMB

I Believe

Naïve/GVE - ND 68568

Liz McComb is easily the most innovative gospel singer performing today.  She plays out her bold, yet tradition-rooted wonders not within the U.S. gospel music community from which she sprang but from European concert stages and on recordings made in France. Her long residency abroad has afforded her the luxury of following her creative instincts rather than being limited by the commercial currents of gospel music at home.  Her sound is rooted in gospel’s so-called golden age—the music of such groups as Dorothy Love Coates and the Gospel Harmonettes, the Ward Singers, and the Davis Sisters—yet she spices it with ample doses of jazz, blues, African, and European classical influences. The onetime Cleveland, Ohio, church girl has, in the process, transformed herself into a world-class concert artist.

An hour of music on CD and nearly two hours of concert footage on DVD fill out I Believe, McComb’s twelfth release since 1992. She applies her robust, remarkably pliant alto tones with consummate passion to a mixed, wonderfully varied repertoire of original and traditional songs on both discs. She uses playfully rhythmic word repetition from time to time, frequently breaks up lyrics with scat interludes (even interjecting wordless lines from Duke Ellington’s I’m Beginning To See The Light during her swinging treatment of There Is No Color Line Around The Rainbow), leaps octaves with subtle ease on occasion, and adds Bessie Smith–like growls here and there. Too often, however, McComb’s jazzy slurs interfere with her enunciation of words, thus making some of her messages difficult to decipher. She often supplies her own piano accompaniment and is joined on the CD by a changing cast of players that includes sacred steel guitar virtuoso Calvin Cooke, blues guitarist Richard Arame, and organist and occasional vocal duet partner Harold Johnson. The most moving performance on the CD, however, is the only a cappella selection, I Bowed On My Knees And Cried Holy, delivered by McComb and her backup singers with heartfelt reverence.

The DVD, which captures McComb and her musicians in front of an audience of several thousand at an ancient Roman amphitheater in Vienne, France, is even more diverse. On some selections, she’s backed only by a chamber ensemble made up of a violinist, cellist, and harpist. A rhythm section joins in on many numbers, and the guest musicians—Cooke, jazz violin great Regina Carter, and cellist Akura Dixon—are afforded plenty of space to improvise at length. It is a presentation of American gospel music quite unlike any ever seen on American shores, in which McComb and company move from whispers to shouts to create a unique, emotionally overwhelming musical experience. How lucky the French are!

—Lee Hildebrand  

 

BOO BOO DAVIS

Undercover Blues

Black & Tan - CD B&T035

James “Boo Boo” Davis arrived in East St. Louis by way of Drew, Mississippi, in the ’60s, but didn’t get a chance to record until he drummed and sang on harp master Arthur Williams’ 1999 Fedora CD, Harpin’ On It. A European tour soon followed, resulting in Davis’ first release under his own name on Black & Tan. By the time of his follow-up CD a couple years later, he’d moved out from behind the drum kit and picked up the harmonica, with an all European supporting cast that included Jan Mittendorp on guitar. Over the course of four more albums for the same label, Davis has stuck with Mittendorp, eventually paring the backing unit down to just him and a drummer, and, with John Gerritse filling Davis’s old role on drums, that’s the lineup for this all-original set as well.

Despite the bass-less format, the trio gets a heavy, dense sound, taking most of the dozen tracks at medium to up-tempo. Have A Good Time gets a lighter touch, as do the ballad Don’t Worry Baby and Xmas Blues. The influence of Howlin’ Wolf on Davis’s singing is most apparent on the rollicking Shoot The Dice, and the set closes on a somewhat bizarre note with Thank You Dave, a gospel number that takes off from an a capella intro on which Davis recounts Jesus coming to him in a dream and telling him to call him “Dave,” and ends with a sermon.  The live-in-the-studio analog recording does a good job of capturing the band’s raw, aggressive sound, though Davis’s voice and harp seem a bit too far back in the mix at times.

Inevitably, there’s a touch of Euro-rock to be heard here, and, while some might welcome this as a fresh take on the blues, others might hear a regrettable departure from the East St. Louis roots of Davis’s first recordings.

—Jim DeKoster

 

DR. “FEELGOOD” POTTS

Mempis Blues International

Pottstown - PT-2010-2

Seldom do we see an artist abandon soul blues stylings in favor of more traditional blues, but that seems to be the case with Memphis-based harmonica player Robert Potts since leaving Ecko to record for his own Pottstown imprint a few years back.

This, Potts’ second self-produced release following 2007’s Going Down To Memphis, consists of all original blues from start to finish. The sprightly title track that opens the set builds off James Coleman’s irresistibly catchy guitar pattern as Potts stakes his claim for Memphis blues as the world’s very finest. The good-time sound that might be expected of a man called “Feelgood” is also evident on the set’s two harmonica-led instrumentals, Beale Street Stomp and Harmonica Boogie, as well as on Going And Buy Me Some Whiskey and I Wanna Get Physical With You. Even when something is troubling Potts, he tends to address the issue with a touch of humor, as he does on Gravy Train Blues, My Mother-In-Law, I Can’t Joy Ride and Monkey Doing Man. Stylistically, Potts at times recalls such men as Jimmy Reed, Slim Harpo, Sonny Boy Williamson, Bobby Rush, Big Lucky Carter, and Jerry McCain, but manages to emerge with his own sound. The set was recorded by the legendary Roland Janes at Sam Phillips’ Studio, and the rest of the supporting cast includes guitarist Haroll Otis, pianist Ross Fowler, and drummers Robert Potts Jr., James McMullen and Calvin King.

Don’t expect anything fancy here, just a program of honest, unpretentious downhome blues that’s the perfect prescription for a feelgood listening experience.

—Jim DeKoster

 

THE HOMEMADE JAMZ BLUES BAND

The Game

No label – (No #)

Homemade Jamz continue to evolve as a musical unit. Harpist/paterfamilias/instrument maker Renaud Perry and his kids have honed a sound that manages to evoke deep blues passion and even occasional erotic heat, while remaining appropriately G-rated and (mostly) uplifting.

Their eclecticism is one of their strongest points. Here they take on everything from Burned Down The House, a Mayall-tinged uptempo barnburner, through Gotta Bad Bad Feeling, a slow-grinding tale of love-wracked torment, to Washing Clothes, a jubilant trance-boogie workout. Ryan Perry’s vocal technique, while still occasionally crossing the line from emotionalism to emoting, has matured admirably—he summons a winning combination of youthful innocence and soul. Young Taya Perry summons admirable power in her drumming, even if her technique and ideas remain pretty elemental. Kyle Perry’s basswork, the most musically accomplished element aside from daddy Renaud’s squalling harp, is both rhythmically solid and melodically inventive.

Not everything here succeeds entirely. Nothing’s Changed For The Po, a ’60s-flavored cruncher, isn’t full-bodied enough to do justice to the legacy it sounds intended to evoke. Ryan has to force his delivery to put over a macho anthem like I’m The Man, and lyrics like “Grab you by your wig, drag you like a caveman / You’re in my jungle, baby, and I’m your Tarzan” don’t help matters any.

Nonetheless, admirers of this feisty, still-evolving band will enjoy most of what’s here. One can’t help but wonder, though, what the music will sound like when (if?) the Perry kids ever decide to leave the roost and strike out on careers of their own.

—David Whiteis

 

RICH DELGROSSO AND JONN DEL TORO RICHARDSON

Time Slips On By

Mandolin Blues – MB10002

Blues mandolin virtuoso Rich DelGrosso is both heir and champion of a blues tradition unknown to many fans. But men like Howard Armstrong, Yank Rachell, and Johnny Young applied their blues sensibilities to the normally non-blues instrument.  Yet on his latest release, Time Slips On By, DelGrosso doesn’t merely echo his mentors.  Together with guitarist Jonn Del Toro Richardson and several other fine East Texas-based musicians, DelGrosso uses the inspiration of his instrumental forbears to forge a unique sound somewhere between blues, rock, and roots, with a healthy dose of Tex-Mex thrown in to keep things interesting.

All of the 14 tracks are originals, written either by DelGrosso or Richardson, who likewise alternate lead vocals.  On the opener, Baby Do Wrong, (the one song credited to both) DelGrosso’s moody intro, picked on a vintage mandola, quickly gives way to a raucous dancehall stomp fueled by both he and Richardson’s furious licks.  On the title track, the Texas Horns—consisting of Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff on tenor sax, John Mills on baritone sax, and Al Gomez on trumpet—lend a soul-blues flavor to Richardson’s tale of loneliness and missed opportunity.  The loping roadhouse ode Mandolin Man finds DelGrosso name-checking Rachell, Young, Charlie McCoy, and W. C. Handy while firmly placing himself in their shoes—“’Cause I’m a mandolin man/Give me eight strings/I’ll play the blues like nobody can.”  This is no mere boast; he lets his fingers do the talking, and his beautiful, clear tone and fluid technique are a delight.  The harmonica work of Sonny Boy Terry adds a nice dash of Chicago cool to the mix.

The conjunto-tinged Summertime Is Here is a lovely change of pace; Joel Guzman’s accordion solos shimmer like desert heat.  Shotgun Blues, based on the Rachell-penned song of the same name, is updated with swinging brass and Nick Connolly’s sultry keyboards.  Percussionist Carl Owens and bassist Ed Starkey lay down a smooth, deep groove on Hard To Live With, allowing both DelGrosso and Richardson ample space for their extended solos.  “I’m know I’m hard to live with/But I’m easy to love,” DelGrosso purrs, and the latter of these two sentiments certainly applies to this disc.

—Melanie Young

 

HARMONICA HINDS

Anything If I Could

No label – (No #)

Chicago-based bluesman/songster Mervyn “Harmonica” Hinds here fronts a group of Windy City stalwarts (guitarists Eddie Taylor Jr. and Rick Kreher, bassist Edward McDaniel, drummer Kenny Smith) for a set that sounds for the most part as if it could have been recorded at 2120 S. Michigan in 1955 or 1960. Smith, who learned how to shuffle from his father, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, has added a subtle but pronounced Freddie Below–like swing to his repertoire; McDaniel, who was likewise tutored by a famous father (the late guitarist Floyd), keeps the pocket deep and the groove steady. Both Kreher and Taylor are in full command of postwar Chicago rhythmic, chordal, and harmonic conceits, and their dexterity and accuracy are spot-on. Hinds himself is a more than competent keeper of the Sonny Boy/Sonny Boy/Walter/Walter torch.

The only potential drawbacks are Hinds’ lyrics and vocals. In his attempts to sound folksy, he sometimes descends into overly prosaic imagery (“Politics and personality / you find ’em anywhere you go / you might already know about them / if not, it’s something you should know”), and his hoarse baritone growl sometimes can’t rise to the challenges he sets it to.

The music, though, is tasty throughout. Thinking Bout The Good Times evokes Chess-era classics like Walkin’ Thru The Park and Mellow Down Easy, yet it’s a fully realized original conception. Way Down South unearths deep roots with its countrified, pre-blues rhythmic and harmonic structures (it sounds almost like something the Carolina Chocolate Drops might have come up with). Horse lopes and saunters like the title animal, with both muscularity and grace.

Whether the less-than-sure singing and wordcraft are enough to deter you from this set is going to be your call, but on purely musical terms it’s hard to argue with most of what’s here.

—David Whiteis

 

DAMON FOWLER

Devil Got His Way

Blind Pig - BPCD 5139

Florida native Damon Fowler treated us to a bayou-flavored good time with his 2009 Blind Pig Records debut Sugar Shack. Little more than a year and a half later, he’s back with an even more adventurous set that showcases his artistic maturation. Devil Got His Way is full of lyrically rich, confident songwriting and shimmering Americana-laced guitar.

Fowler is not a fret-burning CUT Johnny Winter–style player, though Winter’s a big influence. Winter’s TV Mama has been a highlight of Fowlers live set (check out a grinding cover of the track on the Fowler Band’s 2003 Live At Skipper’s Smokehouse disc). Fowler’s more in the vein of Ry Cooder, Jeff Beck at his less avant-garde, or even Derek Trucks, who fires these prickly, finger-picked zingers past you on a variety of instruments including Dobro and lap steel. He sets an atmosphere—whether it be a crunchy, echo-laden barnburner (We’ve Got a Good Thing), contemplative, ethereal soul ballad (After The Rain), or southern boogie bombast (Once In a While) where Fowler’s at his breakneck best—“even good girls gotta let loose once in a while,” he offers, just before a flurry of the tastiest chicken-pickin’ this side of the late great Danny Gatton.

Other standouts include the impishly fun double entendre (“she’s got the ripest melons, tomatoes on the vine, sometimes I catch myself daydreaming that they all were mine”)  Fruit Stand Lady, where Fowler “makes it talk” trading off exquisite licks between his Tele and lap steel, both instruments seeming to squeal with glee. Then there’s the dank economy of Cypress In The Pines, on which Fowler’s swamp-shack blues vibe is in full effect. Fowler is as expressive a songwriter as he is singer and instrumentalist.

Damon Fowler takes a major leap with this outing. Open the liner notes to reveal a photo of Fowler presiding over a live audience, lap steel at his hips—eyes closed, head cocked, like he’s preaching an otherworldly, Americana-themed gospel from a six-stringed pulpit. He is a roots guitar guru in the making.

—Mark Uricheck

 

CD REVIEWS DECEMBER 2010

JUNIOR WELLS & THE ACES

Live In Boston 1966

Delmark - DE 809

This is Junior Wells backed by the band he fronted during his hot-blooded early ’50s in Chicago. Any fan of Chicago blues who sees this lineup will know what to expect: unassailable musicianship, deeply rooted yet also graced with the lithe, swinging hipness that the Aces were largely responsible for infusing into the Chicago postwar sound; deep blues passion; and an irrepressible sense of fun.

What a treat to hear Junior in full voice, impishly humorous yet fully focused, in command of his entire armamentarium of harmonica licks! What a gift to hear everyone inspired and prodded by Fred Below’s jazz-laced drumming and unerring musical sense! How inspiring to hear Louis Myers’ flawless fretwork, Delta-rich one moment (as on Junior’s riveting version of Worried Life Blues), big-city aggressive and hard-swinging the next (Hideaway; the Jimmy Reed-like If You Gonna Leave Me; the breezy closing theme). The only drawback is that, aside from his break on Junior’s Whoop, a song that Wells apparently threw together on the spot, Louis doesn’t get as much solo space as a lot of his admirers would probably prefer.

Throughout the set, though, the musical communication is unerring—both Junior’s Whoop and I Don’t Know (no relation to the Willie Mabon standard) sound spontaneously improvised, but so tightly do the Aces feel and anticipate his every move that one could easily imagine that everything had been mapped out carefully beforehand. Listen, for example, to how Junior and Below segue into and out of a spontaneous reference to Little Walter’s rhumba-driven Settle Down Easy during Man Downstairs, Junior’s take on the classic One Way Out / It’s A Man Down There theme. (They return to the conceit on Junior’s Whoop, one of those apparently spur-of-the-moment creations, which also features a delicious solo from guitarist Louis Myers). Listen also to the indelible rhythmic synergy between fretmen, harpist, and drummer on Hideaway, as well as the rare drum solo from Below, which showcases his jazz chops, undiminished after so many years of playing deep-pocketed Chicago shuffles.

Something of Junior’s impish sense of humor comes through on his extended spoken interludes (all labeled Talk on the inner-sleeve set list); by ’66 he’d honed his blues-trickster persona to a sharp edge, but his latter-day tendency to subsume his music to his clowning had not yet become evident. This is Junior sounding as strong and sure as most of us have ever heard him, backed by the band that many consider the premier postwar Chicago aggregation (with all due respect to Muddy’s, Wolf’s, and Elmore’s fabled line-ups). Like the live Otis Rush sessions Delmark released a few years ago, this set reminds us just how good (and irreplaceable) straightforward Chicago blues could be.

—David Whiteis

 

JAMES COTTON

Giant

Alligator – ALCD 4940

James Cotton’s long, fabled career is in many ways unrivaled in terms of its historic import, as very few harmonica players alive today can boast of having played or recorded with the triumvirate of Rice Miller, Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters. That alone would be reason enough to call Cotton’s new album Giant, if it weren’t for the fact that the title also aptly encapsulates so many other aspects of the man’s music and life—a Grammy, induction into the Blues Hall of Fame, multiple BMA and Living Blues Awards, and a name that is mentioned alongside some of the very best performers ever to play the instrument.

Although not a live CD, Superharp’s return to Alligator Records, a label he first debuted on with the Grammy-nominated High Compression over a quarter century ago, is remarkably similar to what one might hear at a live performance of the James Cotton Blues Band today. Recorded in Austin with his seasoned band and co-produced by Antone’s veteran guitarist Derek O’Brien, Giant offers yet more demonstration (as if more were needed) of how Cotton’s playing has cemented his place in the top tier of blues harmonica masters: that muscular tone, those brawny wails, the stinging high note bends. His ability to navigate a deep slow blues by playing on different harmonicas in the same key, as he does on the moving tribute Blues For Koko, still sends a shiver down the spine.

It would be unfair to demand much innovation from Cotton at this stage in his career, but it’s also unlikely that his fans expect it. Cotton leans hard on the deep arsenal of licks that have always marked his inimitable style, and he doesn’t disappoint. There are shades of past songs like Hucklebuck and Northside Cadillac on the fiery instrumental With the Quickness, where Cotton’s ferocious harp attack sounds something like an Iberian toro bravo snorting smoke as it paws at the ground. Tom Holland, who handles slide guitar and lead vocals with great skill on Sad Sad Day, transports the band back to 1979, with Cotton blowing a solo that is evocative of his live performance with Muddy on Deep Down In Florida.

These similarities to past recordings rarely sound stale; indeed, they only serve to reinforce Cotton’s dominance and power. Even with the well-worn How Blue Can You Get? and tunes that have already appeared on earlier releases (That’s All Right, Going Down Main Street), Cotton surprises with his energetic playing, occasionally sprinkling in fun, unexpected nods to The Creeper and Rocket 88. Cotton doesn’t sing anymore (guitarist Slam Allen does the bulk of the vocal work) but his playing is as strong as ever, and the well of talent he continues to draw from is as deep as the blues he plays.

—Roger Gatchet

 

ROY GAINES AND HIS ORCHESTRA

Tuxedo Blues

Black Gold - BGR001237

Roy Gaines was just a teenager up from Houston when he went into a New York studio to cut a handful of singles for RCA Victor’s Groove subsidiary in 1956. Now, more than half a century later, Gaines can look back with pride on a career that has found his guitar stylings employed in support of such artists as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, the Jazz Crusaders, and Quincy Jones, who landed him a spot in the movie The Color Purple.

Far from resting on his laurels, however, Gaines has continued to turn out high-quality recordings under his own name and has now brought out the most ambitious project of his long and distinguished recording career. Employing arrangers John Stevens, Leslie Drayton, George Pandis, and Benjamin Wright to craft charts for a full big band, Gaines has drawn on his love for the music of Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Billy Eckstine to present a 12-track album that mixes covers of his early idol Nat “King” Cole (Send For Me, Calypso Woman, Route 66), Louis Jordan (Inflation Blues), Michael Jackson (an instrumental version of Rock With You), Jones (Miss Celie’s Blues, with a Louis Armstrong tinge to Drayton’s arrangement) and Gaines himself (Thang Shaker, Come Home) with a handful of new Gaines compositions. Of these, Blues From Hell features a slavery-to-ghetto lyric, Good Old Days is a slice of nostalgia, Rats In My Kitchen is a bit less literal than the like-titled Sleepy John Estes opus, and Outside Looking In closes the set with its most modern arrangement. As always, Gaines sings and plays with taste and conviction, and veteran L.A. reedman Jackie Kelso and former Crusaders bandmates Joe Sample and Wilton Felder are among the featured soloists.

This was a true labor of love for Gaines, meant to stand as his musical legacy. It is all of that, and one of the most satisfying albums to come this reviewer’s way in a long time.

—Jim DeKoster

 

BUDDY GUY

Living Proof

Silvertone/Jive – 88697-78107-2

The opener here, the autobiographical 74 Years Young, is saddled with some uncharacteristically cliched lyrics (“I’ve been a dog, I’ve been a tomcat / I chased some tails, and I left some tracks”), but its acoustic opening verses are sonically effective with their echo-enhanced spaciousness. Then, at about 1:30, all hell breaks loose—as if to prove that he can still do it, Guy unleashes a fretboard fusillade as relentless and ear-shredding as any he’s ever played (and that’s saying a lot!).

Many critics (including myself) have been pretty hard on Guy for moments like that, but we need to remember that in many ways he’s been a prototype for, rather than a derivative imitator of, the latter-day generation of rock pyrotechnicians. In that spirit, outings such as his frantic-sounding portrayal of his Louisiana childhood as an aspiring bluesman (Thank Me Someday), the crunch-boogie title tune (with its life-scarred gospel theme), and the ferocious kiss-off Let The Doorknob Hit You can be heard (and enjoyed) as the kind of defiant fist in the face of the gods that other aging blues and blues-rock legends are usually praised for still being able to deliver. And when he fires down the jets, as on the moody, smoldering Where The Blues Begins, featuring a characteristically tasteful yet adventurous Carlos Santana, Guy reaffirms his ability to summon emotions of subtlety and depth, as well as relentless intensity. B.B. King (summoning the clearest, most supple voice he’s attained in ages) takes center-stage for the meditative Stay Around A Little Longer, on which Buddy obligingly keeps things tasteful and expressive as he trades verses and licks with the master. Everybody’s Got To Go, a country-fried meld of blues, soul, and gospel, digs even deeper into the listener’s heart (and, one suspects, Guy’s as well). The lyrics include an obviously heartfelt shout-out to Guy’s late brother Phil—a classy and touching move by a musician whose depth and sincerity are often questioned, but are unassailable here.

At this point, Buddy Guy is almost critic-proof—we pretty much know what to expect from him, and we know we’ll either like it or we won’t. Perhaps we should grant him the honor of having become a one-man genre unto himself. And as such, he’s impossible to deny: this disc shows that as he moves deeper into his seventh decade, he’s still got the chops to play Buddy Guy with more dexterity, intensity, and age-defying power than anyone else—and that’s saying a hell of a lot, too.

—David Whiteis

 

DENISE LASALLE

24 Hour Woman

Malaco - MCD - 7536

Cheat Receipt, the Luther Lackey–penned opener here, is the track that Malaco chose to push as the first single from this set. LaSalle has said that she disagreed with this choice, and hearing the entire CD it’s easy to see her point. On its own terms it’s an amiable southern soul-blues tale of sexual oneupwomanship, but its energy level is somewhat tepid and some of its rhymes are forced. The bluesy title tune, despite its sparse sound, might have been a more effective choice; alternately, LaSalle’s own Let’s Make Love (Like It’s The Last Time), which she infuses with all the world-weary longing and erotic heat she can summon, might have succeeded as that rarest of contemporary southern soul-blues commodities: a ballad, devoid of irony and sung from the heart, with a message both uplifting and shot through with a bluesy sense of fatalism. Too Many Women, toughened by a driving, bass-heavy synth backing, is marred by an overlong intro, but it’s a strong song nonetheless, as the brokenhearted but unbowed protagonist debates whether to simply walk away or listen to “that bitch inside me,” break down the door, and confront her no-good man and the home-wrecker he brought into their bed. (Guess which option the Queen chooses in the end?)

You Hit One Over The Fence, a John Ward composition, is a loping mid-tempo 12-bar blues that pushes its sex-as-a-baseball-game metaphor into extra innings, but on its own terms it’s fun. Edward Harris’s Ride On, as blatant a sexual invitation as anything LaSalle has ever recorded, is redeemed from coarseness by its full-bodied production, its slick yet sexy pop sheen, and its deep-toned minor-key refrain. It’s a wonderful example of how a song can be hot and steamy yet still avoid the hoochie-mama cheapness that many critics of southern soul-blues disparage. I’ll Be Your Kitten, Baby, another LaSalle original, is characteristically witty and assertive (“I’ll be your kitten, baby, please don’t treat me like a dog”), toughened by her trademark mix of womanly sexual bravado and impish double-entendre (“Listen to me, daddy, if you want to hear me purr / Rub my body gently, and kiss me in my fur”). I’m guessing that this one might soon replace Snap, Crackle, and Pop as the erotic centerpiece of her live shows.

LaSalle’s voice, richly seasoned by both age and experience, remains one of the most expressive in all of contemporary blues (“soul”- or otherwise), and her songwriting chops seem as finely honed as ever; the material she’s accepted this time from other songwriters, although not uniformly excellent, is serviceable and often much more than that. She is, in other (her own) words, “still the Queen,” and her reign show no sign of weakening or ending in the foreseeable future.

—David Whiteis

 

JOE LOUIS WALKER’S BLUES CONSPIRACY

Live On The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise

Stony Plain – SPCD 1353

At first glance, nothing seems to say “blues” less than a chartered luxury cruise ship, but for the past several years the legendary rhythm & blues cruise has been attracting waves of blues fans and musicians alike for their annual sold-out voyages. Delta Groove released an album in 2008 that featured many of the artists who appear on the cruise each year, but only three tunes on Command Performance, as it was titled, were actually recorded on the ship itself. Joe Louis Walker’s latest CD features eleven tracks, all captured live during two nights on the boat in January of this year.

Walker plays host and front man to a massive all-star blues jam, with everyone from Duke Robillard, Tommy Castro, and Tab Benoit to Kenny Neal, Nick Moss, and Deanna Bogart sitting in. The sizable cast of special guests and the show’s spontaneous “who will get on stage next?” atmosphere are some of the highlights of this release and help channel the ship’s party atmosphere to the listener at home. This loose, fun-spirited set features some truly great performances, particularly from Johnny Winter, who knocks out a downright fiery, caustic slide guitar solo on Ain’t That Cold. Curtis Salgado and Mike Finnigan’s vocals on the soulful ballad You’re Gonna Make Me Cry are particularly moving (Walker sings lead on the remaining tracks).

Other songs probably played out better live. Sugar Mama drags when recast as a 12-minute slow blues; Kenny Neal’s first position harmonica solos and fills are all but buried on A Poor Man’s Plea; and although Chicago native Nick Moss lends some hometown credibility to Born In Chicago, Jason Ricci’s characteristically energetic harmonica sounds overly indulgent on this cover. But even that can’t hide the fact that these artists sound like they’re having the time of their lives jamming together, and for folks who haven’t had the opportunity to stroll the lido deck yet, grabbing a copy of Live On The Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise may be the next best thing.

—Roger Gatchet

 

MEL BROWN

Love, Lost And Found

Electro-Fi Records - 3421

Mel Brown made his initial mark on records with a series of well-received albums for ABC’s Impulse! label that blurred the line between jazz and blues. Issued between 1967 and ’73, they featured the Jackson, Mississippi-born musician’s distinctive guitar playing, which was marked by a staccato attack and jazz-imbued phrasing. No more albums were issued under his name for the next 25 years. In the interim, he served as Bobby Bland’s guitarist, toured and recorded two albums with country singer Tompall Glaser’s Outlaw Band, worked for a time around Oakland with vocalist Monica DuPont, and recorded as a sideman, primarily as a keyboardist, for Antone’s Records in Austin. He settled in Kitchener, Ontario, around 1990 and remained there until his death last year at age 69.

Toronto’s Electro-Fi label revitalized Brown’s recording career in 1998 and issued five CDs and one DVD under his name over the next eight years, two of them with Snooky Pryor. Love, Lost And Found combines eight previously unissued performances from his Electro-Fi sessions with four that he’d begun recording for Impulse! in the early ’70s, for which he overdubbed new guitar parts two months prior to his death. He intended to sing on one of them, the mid-tempo Blues In The Alley, but was unable to due to his emphysema. Instead, his wife, Eletro-Fi  recording artist Miss Angel, wrote lyrics and applied her husky contralto to the Worried Life Blues–like melody.

Although he sang infrequently, Brown’s craggy baritone is featured on You Were Wrong, Pretty Baby, Come Back Baby, and Hoochie Coochie Man, with just his own rather rudimentary piano for accompaniment on the former two. Guitar is the focus of most selections, however. The title track is a slow blues guitar instrumental, as is Slow Moan. The similarly outstanding instrumental shuffle Red Wine And Moonshine pairs him with Italian guitarist Enrico Crivellaro. Two other instrumentals—Pattern B and Under The Counter Blues—utilize funky rhythm tracks from the Impulse! sessions. Pryor’s voice and harmonica are featured on two of his own Chicago-style compositions, and Sam Myers sings and blows on a rendition of Robert Jr. Lockwood’s Little Girl From Maine.

The notes on the package by Electro-Fi producer Andrew Galloway are brief and end mid-sentence. The reader is referred to the company’s web site for the reminder of the text.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

JAMES KINDS

Love You From The Top

Delmark - DE 811

In 1976 blues and soul singer James Kinds was named by Jim O’Neal in these pages as one of the ‘New Generation’ of young Chicago blues musicians, and he toured Europe the following year with Willie Dixon, Lurrie Bell, Johnny B. Moore, Billy Branch, Harmonica Hinds and the Harrington brothers. He recorded a couple of 45s, but his promising career stalled after he relocated first to L.A. for an ill-fated stint with Ike Turner’s studio, and then to Dubuque, Iowa, in 1993, where his daughter attended college. Fortunately Kinds’ appearance at the 2007 Chicago Blues Fest, backed by his old friends Vernon and Joe Harrington, got the attention of Delmark’s Kevin Johnson, which led to this exciting recording.

With this CD release of all-original compositions, James Kinds is poised, at 68 years of age, to be a certain front-runner for comeback artist of the year.

Kinds’ superbly expressive voice has an endearing quaver to it that is reminiscent of Syl Johnson’s restless vibrato. Kinds’ singing and playing neatly conjure up the smoky Chicago club scene of recent decades past.

I Got A Woman lovingly recalls that soul-blues era with wails, cries and pleas that wrest the emotions with a very basic two-chord danceable backdrop against which Kinds lays down a guitar break that, while rudimentary, expresses everything that’s necessary. The cheek-to-cheek dancer Take A Look At Yourself is another track on which Kinds deeply probes the blues/soul nexus, giving a heart-wrenching performance that is carried nearly entirely on Kinds’ naked emotions and scratching guitar. Yet another two-chord angst-filled groove, Johnny Mae, is beautifully augmented by veteran Wolf saxman Eddie Shaw, who guests on four tracks. The absence of bridges on these soul-blues numbers—and therefore lack of resolution—seem to reinforce the sweet longing, the smoldering pain, the lingering ache that give these songs their lasting power.

The long shadow of Magic Sam (who surely was an inspiration) is cast across this session from the very opening track, Love You From The Top, and If You Need It is one of several cuts that feature the boxed minor-key bass runs associated with Magic Sam.

Kinds’ lyrics, when they aren’t expressing raw emotion, can be quirky and as personal as his vocals. On Mason Dixon Line Blues, one of several straight-ahead blues numbers, Kinds tells of his early years in Chicago and Mississippi, where, in an interesting twist of phrase, he says, “the blues first met me.” I Didn’t Go Home is a covertly comic blues set to a brooding minor key, and includes the lyric “I got drunk last night and didn’t go home; I looked in my driveway this morning, I drove my other woman’s car home.” Body Slam, which states his desire to give his love a body slam, among other odd pronouncements, surely must join the ranks among the great non-sequitur blues.

“The Kind Man” James Kinds has plenty of time yet to create more inspired music, and Love You From The Top is indeed a very fine start.

—Justin O’Brien

 

SWISSISSIPPI CHRIS HARPER

Four Aces And A Harp

Swississippi – 5801

With a humorous cover that harkens back to the memorable scenes on the front of Little Charlie & The Nightcats LPs from the late ’80s, “Swississippi” Chris Harper reminds us that sometimes, the blues is all about having a good time. If approached with that mindset, Four Aces and Harp proves to be a satisfying collection of well-crafted standards from the Chicago/Mississippi songbook. Swiss expat Harper, who now splits his time between his homes in Chicago and the Dominican Republic, leads the charge blowing amplified and acoustic harmonica, and contributes two jazzy, swinging originals with Blues Is My Life and You Make Me Fly.

Although most of the 18 tracks here are familiar covers (Sloppy Drunk, Eyesight To The Blind, Digging My Potatoes, and Evil Is Going On, to name a few) there’s no denying the wealth of talent Harper called on to back him on this self-released effort, starting with the veteran “Four Aces”—Jimmy Burns, John Primer, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and Robert Stroger—as well as guest appearances from Chicago mainstays like Peaches Staten, Tail Dragger, Kenny Smith, Rockin’ Johnny Burgin, Felix Reyes, and Dave Katzman (who also produced the record), among others. The arrangements are loose and spontaneous, and not unlike something you might hear live in a Chicago blues club today.

Fortunately Harper, who is not the strongest vocalist, focuses mostly on harmonica and leaves most of the singing to his core band. And man is he a great harp player, pairing jazzy instrumentals like Don’t Get Around Much Anymore with the dual harp, down-home grit of Willie Smith’s own Born In Arkansas. There’s a wonderful economy to Harper’s playing, evident in the way he shapes notes and the space around them, giving them room to breath. Perhaps one of the most noteworthy (and admirable) things about this well-rounded CD is the way it documents several generations of the veteran and upcoming artists that continue to fuel the Chicago blues scene today.

—Roger Gatchet

 

R.L. BURNSIDE

The King Of Hill Country Blues: Rollin’ & Tumblin’24 Hour Woman

Wolf  - 120.92 CD

This disc consists of recordings made at what the liner notes refer to as various “impromptu locations” in Holly Springs, Coldwater, and Senatobia, Mississippi, between 1975 and 1991. Even as late as the early ’90s, R.L. Burnside was little known outside his community, so these qualify as field recordings of a “folk” musician whose career up to that point had consisted primarily of playing for friends, neighbors, and extended family in local settings.

Burnside, of course, was a hard-driving boogie-master when he armed himself with an electric guitar and fronted a band in a juke on Saturday night, but here he’s showcased mostly as a traditionalist, singing in a lonesome-sounding country wail accompanied only by his guitar. The set includes his take on such venerable Delta themes as Poor Black Mattie (both an acoustic and an electric version), Walkin’ Blues, Long Haired Doney, and the title tune. Burnside comports himself impeccably throughout, displaying his masterful slidework as well as his steady-rolling, propulsive chording and lithe leadwork. His penchant for modal harmonies, later immortalized as a vital element of his “trance blues” style, is evident, although he also shows considerable dexterity in more standard harmonic and melodic contexts. His vocal phrasing and his chording on Bad Luck sound influenced by Lightnin’ Hopkins; elsewhere, the common roots he shared with John Lee Hooker are manifest in his propulsive single-chord boogie breakdowns.

Interestingly, the earliest recordings here, which one might expect to have been his most traditional-sounding, are his most aggressive and electrified. I Be’s Troubled is a stripped-down and slowed-down variation on Muddy Waters’ Can’t Be Satisfied theme (which Muddy called I Be’s Troubled when he first played it for Alan Lomax in 1941).  Boogie Chillen is a propulsive solo version of the John Lee Hooker standard; When My First Wife Left Me, which kicks off with a vaguely Crawlin’ Kingsnake-like bass run, combines deep blues intensity with steady-rocking life-force affirmation.

It would be fascinating to know more about the actual circumstances of these recordings (on some of them, you can hear kids laughing and frolicking in the background), but the music, of course, is the primary attraction. Burnside’s earnest commitment to that music and the warmth and expansiveness of his spirit come through here almost as vividly as the depth of his musical gifts. Aficionados of the Mississippi blues tradition will not want to miss this one.

—David Whiteis

 

CD REVIEWS OCTOBER 2010

CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE

The Well

Alligator - ALCD 4939

Judging from the grim-sounding song titles and the stark cover art, one might expect this CD to be a pretty daunting experience. But Charlie Musselwhite mines the redemptive power of the blues throughout this set, resulting in a surprisingly uplifting musical offering.

Dig The Pain, for instance, is a breezy acoustic swinger, laced with good-natured irony and featuring full-toned harp work from Musselwhite; The Well is a tale of release, not entrapment, as Musselwhite relates the story of how a little girl’s bravery when she became caught in a well in Texas in 1987 inspired him to summon the willpower to quit drinking (he’s been sober ever since). He narrates his tale in a low-key, almost conversational tone, downplaying any hint of bathos and letting the poignancy speak for itself. Elsewhere, Musselwhite’s laconic vocal delivery and the low-key musical accompaniments make Hoodoo Queen and Sorcerer’s Dream (with a guitar vamp that sounds borrowed from Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Awful Dream) sound more like funny-scary Halloween stories than journeys to the Dark Side.

Musselwhite also takes on more characteristic blues themes (the Magic Sam-influenced Where Hwy. 61 Runs, the gadabout’s anthem Rambler’s Blues, the rhumba-flavored Just You, Just Blues), showcasing his Memphis-to-Chicago harp chops throughout. Sonny Payne Special pays tribute to the fabled host of Helena radio station KFFA’s legendary King Biscuit Flour blues program; Cadillac Women reprises the sorrows (and joys) of being in thrall to a no-good, but good-loving, Jezebel. The disc’s centerpiece, though, is Sad And Beautiful World, a song Musselwhite wrote after his mother was brutally murdered in her Memphis home in 2005. Again, Musselwhite mines light from despair: the tempo is upbeat, the melody buoyant, Musselwhite’s lyrics staunchly insist on the bluesman’s determination to prevail (“let the blues heal what’s been torn apart / I can rest my soul and let the river heal my heart”), and guest Mavis Staples’ irrepressible gospel fervor infuses the song with soul-stirring spiritual uplift.

“The blues is a bird that sings in the dark, before dawn” Musselwhite once sang; this disc is shot through with that kind of hard-won, life-affirming blues wisdom.

—David Whiteis

KENNY NEAL

Hooked On Your Love

Blind Pig BPCD 5137

Having prevailed over both family tragedy and life-threatening health problems in recent years, Kenny Neal has revitalized his music and his career with a jubilant panache that can only be described as inspiring. Everything he does these days sounds shot through with redemptive joy. Here, his rendition of William Bell’s New Lease On Life pulsates with life-affirming urgency as he shapes his voice into an appropriately churchy old-school soul rasp.  Voodoo Mama triumphs over its cliched subject matter by grace of Neal’s playfully cartoonish vocals and the second-line strut of the rhythm section and horns. Bitter With The Sweet finds him evoking James Carr with his countrified deep-soul vocals, as Vasti Jackson contributes lovely country-soul rhythm guitar and Lucky Peterson chimes in with similar colorations on piano.

Neal’s take on Blind, Crippled, And Crazy sounds more like a blithe kiss-off than the agonized and angry declamation O.V. Wright offered; on Old Friends he showcases his harp chops along with his swampy, greens-and-pot-likker country-blues vocals; on the Bobby Bland standard Ain’t Nothing You Can Do he summons an appropriately jaunty irony while deftly inserting his guitar leads into the spaces left open by the brawny-sounding horns.

In fact, the precision of Neal’s guitar work is one of this disc’s greatest pleasures: he’s mastered the art of always playing ideas, not just notes, even at his most passionate and unfettered. Just as important, though, is the way he insinuates himself into ensemble settings: rather than hog the spotlight he consistently steps back to allow his accompanists to their place in the sun, and even when he’s soloing he keeps an obvious ear out for what they’re doing—he crafts his lines to both reflect their contributions and prod them into new directions.

Maturity, joy that sounds both spiritually charged and hard-won, deep blues passion, and impeccable musicianship—what more can a blues-loving listener ask for?

—David Whiteis

 

DADDY MACK BLUES BAND

Bluesfinger

Inside Sounds - ISC0536

Veteran Memphis juker Mack “Daddy Mack” Orr and his crew return here with a characteristically eclectic and rough-hewn blast of Bluff City blues and soul. The title tune, a bluesified version of the Bar-Kays’ classic Soul Finger, is pushed relentlessly by drummer William Faulkner’s raucous rim shots. Mack’s sinewy guitar lines fire off the melody in unison with guest Billy Gibson’s squalling harp; later, they each break out into joyously ragged-around-the-edges solos. Can’t Make It Without Your Love, a country-tinged soul ballad, pushes Mack’s vocal chops to their limit as Faulkner lays down an atavistic-sounding 4/4/ cadence; a well-burnished horn section and a wafting vocal backing from Vicki Loveland and Jackie Johnson add a bracing dash of sophistication.

The B.B.–like slow blues All Tore Up & Cryin’ features Mack’s guitar at its most expressive—his lines are straightforward, even basic, but his focus is precisely honed: this is blues expression stripped down to its sinew. His vocals, meanwhile, reflect latter-day carriers of King’s torch like Artie “Blues Boy” White. Long Hard Road lurches along at a bone-crunching mid-tempo; again, Faulkner’s primal can-bashing both sets the tone and provides the impetus.

If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that only Bluesfinger and two other tracks—If You Got It (usually associated with Albert King) and You Got My Money—could be considered genuinely up-tempo. But in fact, the Daddy Mack Blues Band are at their best when they’re not pushing too hard. Their boogie shuffles sometimes verge on the generic, but their ballads and mid-tempo numbers seethe with emotion and leave plenty of space for the soloists to strut their alley-tough, no-frills chops. Legendary Memphis jukes like Green’s Lounge may be gone, but this band summons tantalizing echoes of what a Saturday night at such fabled venues was like.

—David Whiteis

 

PEACHES STATEN

Live At Legends

Swissississippi Records - SR 5803

Mississippi-born Faye “Peaches” Staten recorded this set live at Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago, a scant six miles or so from Rosa’s Lounge where, while working as a waitress a few years ago, she first took the stage to sing. After a stint in a zydeco band, where she first played the corrugated rubboard she still brings out to her gigs, she branched out on her own and about a dozen years ago began making waves in Europe. Apart from two European CDs, Time Will Tell, and a live recording with Italian guitarist Nick Becattini, this is her first U.S. release.

In her live shows Staten covers all corners of the stage like an espresso-fueled carhop working solo. She is indeed a crowd-pleaser, as are her equally frenetic Groove Shakers—Mike Wheeler on guitar, Larry Williams bass, Brian James on keyboards, and Cleo Cole on drums. Contributing harp on several numbers is executive producer and Swiss native (hence the new “Swississippi Records”) Chris Harper.

Staten mixes up the pace like a pro, moving from straight barroom blues to ballad to barn burner. Four originals include two rousing shuffles, Long Distance Phone Call (no, not the Muddy composition) and Hole In The Wall (no, not the Mel Waiters tune), soul ballad Don’t Rush Me, and a zydeco-style number, Gotta Find My Man. Fleshing out the set is a fully cranked funk take of Chico Banks’ It Must Be Love, Robert Palmer’s Bad Case of Lovin’ You, the slightly obscure Keep On Keepin’ On from Alberta Adams, and an earnest take of the Etta James’ classic I’d Rather Go Blind.

From soaring shouts and exhortations, Staten’s vocal range also permits her to hit rumbling low notes and growls. The latter seem to be in imitation of other local blues divas, which suggests her own style may still be evolving. But as her performances clearly demonstrate she has no time to wait.

—Justin O’Brien

 

MAVIS STAPLES

You Are Not Alone

Anti- - 87076

On You Are Not Alone, her fourth solo CD since the death of her dad nearly a decade ago, Mavis Staples not only comes close to recapturing the plaintive sound the Staple Singers first made famous on their gospel recordings for Vee-Jay between 1955 and ’61 but, at age 71, brings even greater vocal virtuosity and depth of feeling to her performances than she did when she was a teenager. Much of the credit goes to producer Jeff Tweedy of the Chicago alt-rock group Wilco. He provides the Chicago-born singer with ideally laidback support throughout the 13-song set, with harmony vocals that recall those of her dad and her siblings and subtle instrumental backing by a band that features Rick Holmstrom, who alternates between reverberating Roebuck Staples–like rhythm guitar and brittle leads that reflect his blues background.  Bassist Jeff Turmes and drummer Stephen Hodges complete the rhythm section, with guitarist Tweedy and Wilco keyboardist Patrick Sansone lending their hands from time to time.

Besides reviving Staple Singers classics Don’t Knock, Downward Road, and a medley of Too Close and On My Way To Heaven, Mavis applies her throaty contralto with consummate passion to a mix of spiritual and secular material that includes a hauntingly harmonized a cappella reading of Wonderful Savior, the spiritual Creep Along Moses, Rev. Gary Davis’s I Belong To The Band, Randy Newman’s Losing You, Allen Toussaint’s Last Train, John Fogerty’s Wrote A Song For Everyone, and Little Milton’s Civil Rights Movement–era hit We’re Gonna Make It.  Veteran studio vocalist Donny Gerrard duets with Mavis on that tune and takes the helm on Too Close as Mavis drops to the bottom of her range to join the harmony singers, much as she did back in the day. Tweedy contributed two original songs to You Are Not Alone, including the sweetly soulful title track.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

LUCKY PETERSON

You Can Always Turn Around

Dreyfus Jazz - 36966-2

Multi-talented musician Lucky Peterson has come a long way since his debut recording for Today alongside his father, James, at age seven. That was back in 1972, and since he returned to the studio with a 1984 LP on the French Isabel imprint, he has recorded on a fairly regular basis without ever attaining the super-stardom that some had predicted for him.

This, his second album for Dreyfus Jazz, could hardly be more different from 2003’s Black Midnight Sun or, for that matter, his recent JSP offering, Heart Of Pain. Turning away from the hard blues and funk of those sets, Peterson and co-producer Doug Yoel opted for an eclectic mix drawn from soul, gospel, rock, and pop sources as well as the blues canon. The disc opens with a brisk rendition of Dust My Broom on which Peterson plays an acoustic duolian resonator guitar, an instrument that he also employs on Blind Willie McTell’s Statesboro Blues and Reverend Gary Davis’s Death Don’t Have No Mercy. Gospel-style piano underpins Ray LaMontagne’s Trouble and Nina Simone’s I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, one of two tracks on which Peterson’s wife, Tamara, joins in on vocals. Tom Waits Trampled Rose adds a Middle Eastern tinge, while I’m New Here is a “talking blues” by way of Bill Callahan and Gil Scott-Heron. Peterson turns to full-blast electric guitar on Lucinda Williams’ Atonement before reverting to acoustic for Why Are People Like That, the Bobby Charles opus that opened Muddy Waters’ Woodstock album, and Four Little Boys, an autobiographical number that’s Peterson’s lone contribution to the playlist. The program closes with an instrumental version of Curtis Mayfield’s Think, which is not to be confused with the Lowman Pauling R&B classic of the same title.

Depending on your viewpoint, Peterson’s latest effort can be considered either a sellout or a triumph. Either way, it probably represents the best showcase he’s ever had for his abilities as a singer.

—Jim DeKoster

 

CHRIS BEARD

Who I Am & What I Do

Electro Glide - EGR 10102

Guitarist Chris Beard, the son of Rochester, New York, bluesman Joe Beard, impressed with his 1997 debut for JSP and its 2001 follow-up, but since then has been heard only on Northern Blues’ Live Wire in 2005. Now he’s back with this self-produced disc that finds him looking to fellow blues sons Ronnie Baker Brooks and Luther Allison for five of the 12 songs on offer.

Beard kicks things off with the autobiographical rocker Blues Is My Livin’. Next up is the grinding mid-tempo Insecurities, but the pace slows for Brand New Heart before picking up again on the shuffling Hard Out Here. There are touches of Johnny “Guitar” Watson in Beard’s vocals on Allison’s ballad That’s The Way Love Was Meant To Be and After I Said I Do, a sardonic look at sex after marriage penned by Beard’s brother, Duane. Hell Of A Lovin’ Man is another shuffle and Tied Up, Tied Down And Twisted is an intense slow blues that provides Beard with a better vehicle than the pop-inflected title track. Gotta Find My Baby, credited to Syl Johnson, gives the elder Beard a chance to show that, at age 72, he’s still got plenty left in his tank, too.

Annotator Art Tipaldi relates that Buddy Guy, a Beard family friend, keeps telling this son of the blues just to “Keep on doing what you’re doing”—and that, indeed, is all that he needs to do.

—Jim DeKoster

 

ALABAMA MIKE

Tailor Made Blues

JukeHouse - JHCD 0020

Vocalist Alabama Mike Benjamin was born in Talladega, Alabama, in 1964; he bills himself as a “hard-driving Chicago-style blues singer with the ability to make you feel as if you’ve revisited the early Chess Records days.” Well, let’s not get carried away. Mike’s keening vocals are both supple and tough, and they carry a powerful emotional wallop. At times, as on Eddie Lee (with its “rooster crow ’fore day” lyrics and loping, Country Girl–derived bassline overlaid by squalling harp) and a molasses-slow remake of Junior Wells’ classic Hoodoo Man Blues, he admirably evokes the postwar blues’ Windy City glory days. In general, though, the musical context here calls up images of Memphis more than Chicago.

That, of course, is not a bad thing. Mike’s backup personnel vary from track to track here, but they’re uniformly tight, and they augment and complement his lyric themes with big-eared attentiveness. Whether charging through a B.B.–style big-band barnburner (the title track), painting a grim, hard-edge portrait of urban decay and crisis (Ghetto Life), or evoking the churchy, fatback-flavored redolence of classic-era deep soul (Enough To Keep Me Holding On, Easiest Thing I’ll Ever Do), they combine crisp musical proficiency with lively improvisational imagination and what sounds like truly passionate commitment.

At times, Mike’s rootsiness sounds a bit forced, as on the faux rave-up vocal pyrotechnics that kick off the Wolfian Moon Dog Howl, but in general he stays focused. The swampy ballad Stop Putting Me On sounds almost as if it could be an outtake from a lost Little Richard ballad session (the horn lines, based on Ray Charles’ famous charts for Guitar Slim’s Things That I Used To Do, heighten the Crescent City feel, as does Doug Rowan’s Lee Allen–like sax break); Mike delivers I’m Gone, a ragtime-tinged acoustic workout, with an un-self-conscious directness.

Plenty to recommend here, and the best news is that Mike is a relatively young artist who seems to be just kicking off his career. Expect to hear a lot more from him.

—David Whiteis

 

PAPADON WASHINGTON

Looking At You

No label – (No #)

Here is the eagerly anticipated second CD from Papadon Washington, a schoolteacher from Ogdensburg in far northern New York who was raised in the church but developed an interest in blues after hearing Buddy Guy perform in Ottawa in the early ’90s.

This is a truly self-produced effort—not only does Washington back himself on varying combinations of harmonica, guitar, piano, organ, bass, and drums, but he also wrote all of the disc’s 15 songs except the traditional gospel closer, I’ll Fly Away. He proves himself an adept lyricist, strutting on Waiting For Big Papa To Come Home and  In Town but rueful on Right On Time (“they say there’s one born every minute, and I was right on time”), lusty on Shake It and Seven Year Itch but wronged on I Peeped Through My Window and In My Home, and just plain frustrated on I’m Tired Of Trying and What More. We Made It To The White House celebrates the 2008 election, and the lone instrumental, the way uptempo Boogie For My Baby, provides a showcase for Washington’s main instrument, the piano, as does the romping Soul Food (“it’s bad for your heart, but oh so good for your soul”). His high, engaging voice can swing hard or put across a slow lament in the Charles Brown style equally well, and his “sound” is hard to pin down—perhaps somewhere between KC and LA seasoned with dashes of Chicago and Ray Charles.

Ultimately, it just may be that Washington has accomplished the almost impossible feat of being his own man musically, somehow managing to sound both fresh and familiar. If you haven’t done so already, do yourself a favor and give him a listen.

—Jim DeKoster

 

MISSISSIPPI FRED McDOWELL

Come And Found You Gone

Devil Down - CD001

Fred McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee, sometime during the first decade of the 20th century, and by 1941 had ended up in Como, Mississippi, where he lived in obscurity until he was “discovered” and recorded by Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins on their 1959 southern field trip. His first LPs under his own name, for Arhoolie and Testament, billed him as a Delta bluesman, presumably for commercial reasons, but Como is far from the Delta in the hill country of northeastern Mississippi, and McDowell’s music is more properly viewed as a link between that region’s traditional fife and drum bands and such later artists as R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and the North Mississippi Allstars. Certainly he was among the finest slide guitarists the blues has ever known.

The music on this disc was recorded by blues researcher William Ferris in the summer of 1967 at the home of one of McDowell’s friends. Half of the set’s 18 tracks are McDowell blues, including both set pieces like Big Fat Mama, John Henry, and Shake ’Em On Down and others, like the title track, that are constructed from the music’s so-called “floating verses.” The Boogie is a harmonica solo by Napoleon Strickland, McDowell backs an unidentified singer on countrified versions of Louisiana Red’s Red’s Dream (as Dream I Went To The U.N.) and Lightning Slim’s Rooster Blues (as Little Red Rooster), and there are also five gospel performances with McDowell’s wife and others joining in. The final two tracks are dialogue, two-and-a-half minutes of repartee that gives a glimpse of the session’s spontaneity, and Interview With Bill Ferris, in which Ferris recounts his memories of McDowell, followed by an unlisted snippet of John Henry.

McDowell, of course, recorded frequently before his death from cancer in 1972, but the house-party atmosphere of this one earns it a special place in his discography.

—Jim DeKoster

 

CD REVIEWS AUGUST 2010

THE ROBERT CRAY BAND

Cookin’ In Mobile

Nozzle Records/Vanguard - 78072-2

Thirty-six years on the road, with only occasional changes in personnel, have helped make the Robert Cray Band the tightest blues-based unit on the planet.  The quartet’s ability to instantly switch its dynamics from a scream to a whisper is unparalleled, and its arrangements, particularly the song endings, are marked by frequent surprise.

Cookin’ In Mobile, recorded and filmed on February 21, 2010, in the costal Alabama city’s Saenger Theater, is the combo’s fourth live CD to be issued in the past four years, the others being Authorized Bootleg: Live, Outdoor Concert, Austin, Texas, 5/22/87 (Island), Live At BBC from 1988-91 (Island/Mercury), and Live From Across The Pond from 2005 (Vanguard).  The Mobile disc is the first concert recording to feature the current band, rejuvenated by the return last year of original bassist Richard Cousins after an 18-year hiatus and the addition of drummer Tony Braunagel, formerly with Bonnie Raitt. Keyboardist Jim Pugh remains on board after 21 years.

The disc’s dozen-song program ranges from two tunes from the band’s 1986 double-platinum breakthrough Strong Persuader to three from last year’s This Time, with other songs drawn from albums in between. New to the Cray discography is the folk and blues standard Sitting On Top Of The World, rendered as a slow blues by Cray and company with typically understated passion. Rhythms vary nicely from even-eighth-note soul beats and triplet-driven grooves to the shuffle of That’s What Keeps Me Rockin’.  Cray moves effortlessly between lead and rhythm parts, his complex patterns never interrupting the flow of his sometimes cool, often fierce, always emotive vocals, and he frequently uses his tremolo bar to warp his guitar sustains. His guitar solos are consistently biting and filled with invention. On a couple of cuts, he utilizes a delay device to echo what he’s just picked, allowing him to duet with himself. Pugh, too, gets loads of solo space, on both piano and organ. On his own composition, The One In The Middle, the other musicians drop out while he plays a couple of stunning organ choruses, with only the audience’s handclaps for accompaniment. They then reenter behind Pugh with Cray playing some sparse single-note riffs that recall the sting of his early mentor, Albert Collins.

The CD comes with a DVD that contains behind-the-scenes footage and videos of two additional songs.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

PINETOP PERKINS AND WILLIE “BIG EYES” SMITH

Joined At The Hip

Telarc - Tel 31850-02

At this point in their careers, Pinetop Perkins and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith are virtually critic-proof. Perkins, of course, is the keyboard man who took over from the fabled Otis Spann when Spann left Muddy Waters in 1969; Smith was already Muddy’s drummer by then, and he’d stay in that chair until 1980, when the entire band left over a dispute with Muddy’s manager. These days, Smith concentrates mostly on harmonica (his first instrument); his harp chops are as flawlessly rooted in the postwar Chicago sound as his stickwork always was. He and Perkins are joined here by Chicago bassist Bob Stroger, along with guitarists John Primer (another Muddy alum) and Little Frank Krakowski, as well as Smith’s son Kenny on drums.

Smith’s harp, with its strong echoes of Little Walter, sets the tone: it’s impeccably vintage-sounding, yet infused with so much passion and grit that it never sounds like an exercise in nostalgia. Primer’s leads dance dexterously atop the rhythm lines laid down by Stroger and Kenny Smith; Perkins’ piano work, less propulsive than it once was but still harmonically rich, interweaves with Krakowski’s chords and occasional leads to fill out the picture. Smith takes most of the vocals, with Perkins weighing in on his own Grindin’ Man and a blues-infused version of Thomas A. Dorsey’s gospel classic Take My Hand, Precious Lord. (Nanogenarian Pinetop’s quavery vocals, although he delivers them with game determination, are unfortunately the weakest element of this set.)

The program includes a few well-known standards—Rice Miller’s Eyesight To The Blind, John Lee Williamson’s Cut That Out, the aforementioned Dorsey piece—but it’s also rich with unexpected delights: no fewer than seven outings here are originals by either Smith or Perkins, and several were written expressly for this session. The spark of creativity obviously burns in the hearts of these unbowed blues survivors, and we’re blessed to share its glow.

—David Whiteis

 

MEL WAITERS

I Ain’t Gone Do It

Waldoxy WCD-2848

Although he’s best known for his string of hits that celebrate all-night clubbing, Mel Waiters is also capable of delivering songs that tell eloquent stories without losing any of their danceable attractiveness. This time out, he gets most of his obligatory “get-your-party-on” sides out of the way early: the opener, Bar-B-Que, relates the story of a man who met his lady love at a soul-food picnic; it’s followed by Down Home People, in which the abstemious Waiters somewhat disingenuously portrays himself as a hard-partying juker. A little later, They Come Back serves up yet another slice of life from a hardscrabble backwoods hole in the wall.

Elsewhere, though, Waiters shows more depth. The title tune, set to a funky, street-tough backing, finds him summoning a more muscular, hard-edged voice as he warns his good-timing girlfriend that he can’t keep up with both her night-owl schedule and her insatiable sexual demands. Everything’s Going Up, a Frederick Knight creation set to a backing theme that strongly invokes Wilson Pickett’s Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You, is a deceptively jaunty lament from a workingman staggering under the onslaught of financial pressures; Miss Someone, with its swirling synth-string backing and subtle but insistent rhythmic pulse, combines vulnerability with a powerful undercurrent of forward-thrusting determination; Hold That Thought, another Knight offering, is shot through with erotic tension, but Waiters’ gritty-sweet delivery and the full-bodied production bespeak deep-running emotional tenderness as well.

If Waiters’ track record is any indication, a song like They Come Back or Down Home People will probably end up being culled from this set and promoted as his next hit. It’s hard to argue with success—nonetheless, it would be wonderful if more listeners became acquainted with the deeper, more thoughtful side of this modern-day soul man’s musical personality.

—David Whiteis

 

TEENY TUCKER

Keep The Blues Alive

TeBo - (No #)

These constant exhortations to “keep the blues alive” are starting to sound more and more like self-fulfilling prophecies of doom: if something’s really healthy, why do we need to be reminded so often that we need to keep it from dying?

In fact, it’s artists like Teeny Tucker—daughter of Tommy “Hi-Heel Sneakers” Tucker—who provide plenty of proof that this music remains full of life and potential. Her voice has deepened into a truly expressive instrument, rich with soulful emotionalism yet tempered by sufficient restraint to avoid bathos. She’s also blossomed into a powerful songwriter: her vignettes from the harsh side of life (Ain’t That The Blues), noir-drenched fusions of romantic desperation and existential dread (I Wish We Could Go Back), and celebrations of womanly feist (Old Man Magnet) are so well-crafted that it’s sometimes difficult to believe that she’s not relating her personal experiences when she delivers them.

The only drawback here is reflected in the CD’s title—there are a few too many anthems on offer. Daughter To The Blues reaffirms her musical lineage yet again; both the title tune and Respect Me And The Blues cross the line from celebrating the music to pedantically lecturing us on why we “should” appreciate it. That pedantic streak also gets Tucker in trouble on her otherwise moving tribute to the late John Cephas, which she burdens with a recited list of fretboard immortals ranging from Blind Boy Fuller and Skip James through Tampa Red; you almost expect a quiz to follow. Too bad—the song itself is a tender, hymn-like paean graced by Robert Hughes’ acoustic guitar work, evocatively capturing the meld of life-affirmation and melancholy introspection that so often characterized the work of Cephas at his best.

Despite these missteps, though, there’s plenty of reason to recommend this disc—Teeny Tucker may still be a work in progress, but she’s progressing wonderfully, and at her best she packs the kind of soul-pleasing punch that only a true blues artist can deliver.

—David Whiteis

 

SOLOMON BURKE

Nothing’s Impossible

E1 Music - E1E-CD-2086

Willie Mitchell had worked over the years with some of the greatest singers in the R&B business—Bobby Bland, Al Green, and O.V. Wright, among them—but it wasn’t until late 2008 that he managed to get the awesome Solomon Burke into his Royal Studios in Memphis. The producer rounded up some of the city’s best players—old hands from the Hi and Stax days like guitarists Mabon “Teenie” Hodges and Bobby Manuel and keyboardist Lester Snell, along with such relative newcomers as bassist Dave Smith and drummer Steve Potts—for the sessions. Strings and/or horns are present on many tracks, and Lannie McMillan takes several bluesy, brilliantly sculpted tenor saxophone solos. Mitchel’s son Lawrance “Boo” worked the board as everyone got down to business to create one of the most authentic and satisfying sets of southern soul music to come along in a good while.

Burke and Mitchell penned 11 of the 12 tunes, sometimes together, other times in collaboration with songwriting associates. Ballads predominate, many allowing the singer to work his preacher-like wonders as he ad-libs.  The strongest ballad, however, is the disc’s only cover song:  Randy Goodrum’s When You Needed Me, a No. 1 pop hit for Anne Murray in 1978. Burke’s heartfelt reading of the inspirational anthem recalls some of his early recordings for Apollo, when he was under the stylistic spell of Roy Hamilton. The mid-tempo title song and the slightly faster You’re Not Alone are both treated to solid four-on-the-floor Al Green–like grooves. The set even contains two 12-bar blues: the mid-tempo Everything About Me, rendered by Burke over a rhythm pattern reminiscent of Rice Miller’s Help Me, and a slow minor blues titled The Error Of My Ways.

Nothing’s Impossible stands as testimony to Burke’s enduring power as a vocalist, as well as a tribute to the genius of Willie Mitchell, who died on January 10, 2010, at age 81.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

TAD ROBINSON

Back In Style

Severn - CD 0050

Tad Robinson’s vocal style owes obvious debts to vintage-era Al Green and other soul sophisticates, but he blows harp with the rough-hewn exuberance of a postwar Chicago juker. In theory, that should make for an uncomfortable tension, but on the two cuts here that feature his harp, he pulls off the stylistic juxtaposition with effortless-sounding ease.

That lack of self-conscious straining is Robinson’s most attractive asset. Unlike many “revivalist” blues and soul artists, he’s found a way to retain his own voice, evoking the spirits of past masters but never sounding as if he’s trying to be something he’s not. Even on an aching deep-soul ballad like You Name It I’ve Had It—the kind of take-no-prisoners vocal workout that has left many a soul man gasping for breath and grasping for respectability—he summons heart-rent passion and gospel-honed hope with unaffected ease. He incorporates stylistic elements of the fabled soul men—Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, James Carr—as he deems appropriate, but they all meld into a voice that remains distinctly his own.

Memphis legend Wayne Jackson contributes his Dixie-fried trumpet to the proceedings, and his presence seems to have inspired everyone to reach for a higher level. The horn charts drip with hot buttered soul, the background vocalists interweave flawlessly, and the rhythm section—bassist Steve Gomes, drummer Robb Stupka—keep the funk boiling throughout, even if they can’t quite recapture that indelible meld of boxy 4/4 elementalism and textural complexity that characterized the work of the Hi rhythm men in their glory days.

It may be wishful thinking to suggest that honest, from-the-heart soul music like this will ever be “back in style,” but listening to this set is enough to make even the most jaded cynic a believer, at least until the music’s over.

—David Whiteis

 

ELVIN BISHOP

Red Dog Speaks

Delta Groove - DGPCD138

Elvin Bishop is in a zone.  Coming off of 2008’s all-star blast The Blues Rolls On and last year’s retrospective collaboration with Little Smoky Smothers, Chicago Blues Buddies, Bishop gives us the slide-wailing, booty-bumpin’ Red Dog Speaks—a seriously entertaining album.

Red Dog Speaks is an homage to his sidekick, a cherry red Gibson ES345 guitar nicknamed Red Dog.  When Bishop sings in the title track, “the sound…whoo-hoo…the sound that nowhere else on in the world can it be found,” he’s dead on.  There’s just something about the tonality of that beat-up, semi-hollow-body guitar that makes it sing.  When Bishop utters the line “speak Red Dog,” his old friend bellows with a bite that harkens back decades to Bishop’s Butterfield Blues Band days, yet is still contemporary enough for fans of the current Rhythm and Blues Cruise to appreciate.

Bishop and Red Dog get tongue in cheek (one of Bishops’ most endearing calling cards) on the gritty romp of Fat And Sassy, with its wry tale of a Thanksgiving dinner for the ages, and a guest guitar spot by Kid Anderson.  Bishop lets Red Dog do all of the talking on the Hound Dog Taylor–flavored instrumental stomper Barbecue Boogie, where his core backing band of pianist Bob Welsh struts across the keys, Ruth Davies lays down a jumping bass, and June Core drums up a maniacal shuffle.  Guest vocalist John Nemeth adds a soulful flair on tracks like the uplifting Jimmy Cliff cover Many Rivers To Cross and Otis Spann’s barnburner Get Your Hand Out Of My Pocket, where R.C. Carrier provides a rhythmic clacking on the rub board that adds to the boisterous intensity of the track.

Soulful slide guitar, snappy lyrical sting, and a self-deprecating charm define Red Dog Speaks, and perhaps to a greater extent, Elvin Bishop himself.

—Mark Uricheck

 

EARL GAINES

Good To Me

Ecko ECD1124

Earl Gaines, who died last New Year’s Eve at age 74, had only two hits: It’s Love Baby (24 Hours A Day) as vocalist with Louis Brooks and His Toppers in 1954 and The Best Of Luck To You in 1966. Save for a break from music between 1975 and 1999, the Decatur, Alabama-born, Nashville-based singer recorded prolifically, particularly during the last decade of his life. He remained in strong voice until the end.

Good To Me, Gaines’ posthumously released second CD for Ecko Records, presents him mining the soul-blues territory he began staking out in the 1960s. Bobby Bland had long served as his stylistic model, and the mellow side of Bland is particularly evident on the ballads I Just Don’t Know Anymore, I’m Throwing In The Towel, and It Ain’t Easy To Tell The One You Love Goodbye. The former two songs were written by Ecko owner John Ward and his associate Raymond Moore, the latter by Ted Jarrett, whose association with Gaines dates to the singer’s very first record in 1954. Although Bland’s influence is obvious, Gaines baritone pipes also have a warm resonance reminiscent of Albert King. The title song finds Gaines in more of a Tyrone Davis bag.

A drum machine propels It Ain’t Easy To Tell The One You Love Goodbye, but producer Ward departs from his usual programmed formula for the remaining nine tracks by using keyboardist James Jackson, bassist Al Wilder, and alternating drummers Roy Cunningham and Steve Potts. As usual, Ward plays guitar himself, but his role is more pronounced than usual, prompting Gaines to comment, “Play it pretty, John,” as the producer solos over the I’ll Play The Blues For You–like groove of I Just Don’t Know Anymore.  Horns and strings are present on most selections, but for the funky mid-tempo Ward-Moore composition Good Old Country Boy, Gaines and background vocalist Sherilena Banks are treated to stripped-down, deliciously syncopated support from just guitar, bass, and drums.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

JOHN LEE HOOKER, JR.

Live In Istanbul Turkey

CC Entertainment / Steppin’ Stone Records - CCE 92009

Sporting black sunglasses, a purple robe and a turban, John Lee Hooker, Jr. looks like a bad mother glaring out at the crowd on the cover of his latest album Live In Istanbul Turkey. The album captures a live performance at the 19^th annual Efes Pilsen Blues Festival in the country that sits at the crossroads—no, not those crossroads—of Europe and the Middle East. It’s clear Hooker, Jr. is thrilled to be playing on the other side of the world, and why not? Life has been a rocky road for the Detroit-born bluesman. He began playing with his famous father as a teenager in the early 1970s but a laundry list of prototypical blues vices—booze, drugs and fast women—derailed a promising career until the release of his debut Blues With A Vengeance in 2004.

After a foreign language introduction Hooker, Jr. launches into the slow infidelity blues of Suspicious, the crowd loving all eight minutes of it as the horns of Mike Rinta and Frankie Bailey give the track a brass-fueled boost. People Want A Change and It’s A Shame form a pair of recession-era blues, the former taking aim at politicians and the latter waving a middle finger at Bernie Madoff. On Fed Up Hooker threatens to “move to another country and start all over again” and, given the reaction, the crowd would happily welcome him as an honorary Turk. Hooker walks the dog on the aptly—if not too creatively—named Funky Funk before dusting off the requisite covers (Boom Boom and Maudie) of his legendary namesake.

The bonus DVD features an entertaining animated video for Extramarital Affair from the Grammy-nominated All Odds Against Me where a cartoon version of drummer Mike Rogers plays the part of a philandering bandmate whose mistress does “freakish things in the room that his wife refused to do.”

—Thomas Fawcett

 

SMOKIN’ JOE KUBEK AND BNOIS KING

Have Blues Will Travel

Alligator - ALCD 4937

Has it really been 20 years since journeyman Texas guitar slinger Smokin’ Joe Kubek and Louisiana jazz/blues artisan Bnois King began their fruitful collaboration?  Their latest record, Have Blues Will Travel (their second for Alligator), serves as a striking document of Kubek and King’s talent as a unit as well as their vast individual musical glossaries.

Produced by Kubek and Alligator boss Bruce Iglauer (who also co-wrote a couple of tracks), the record is a rocking blues extravaganza.  While King’s leathery soul propels the vocals, he and Kubek trade off bristling, lightning-laced guitar squeals with the ease of the early Allmans.  The duo’s shrewd lyrical slant shows on hooks like “All I need is a woman, think I’ll call up old Sue.  You know I’ve had better, but way too few” in the easygoing, slide-heavy Payday In America.  The pair ramp it up in standouts like the slow shuffle, late-night heat of Sleep With One Eye Open and grungy, turbo boogie of the album’s closer, What A Sight To See.  The band (including bassist John Morris and Adrian Marchi on drums) is white hot yet can turn it down to a light gleam without losing an ounce of intensity.

Have Blues Will Travel is an electrifying expression of guitar braggadocio and passionate Texas-laced soul. King is particularly proud of the new record, which he says he can listen to over and over without getting tired of it.  Same here.

—Mark Uricheck

 

CD REVIEWS JUNE 2010

BETTYE LAVETTE

Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook

Anti- 87029

On Bettye LaVette’s previous Anti- CD, last year’s too-little-noticed, not-sold-in-stores Change Is Gonna Come, the Detroit-bred vocalist performed three jazz standards, two soul oldies, and one blues classic and, by taking great liberties with the melodies and even the lyrics, transformed each into something deeply personal. She does much the same on her fourth release on the Southern California label, applying the unique, emotionally intense LaVette touch to tunes associated with the Beatles, Animals, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, Who, Traffic, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Derek and the Dominoes, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, and Elton John. Only Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, a 1965 hit for the Animals, is not originally of English origin, having been penned by New York arranger Horace Ott and two songwriting partners and recorded in 1964 by Nina Simone.

Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook was the outgrowth of LaVette’s gripping reading of the Who’s Love Reign O’er Me at the 2008 Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C., which is the 13th track on the disc. Michael Stephens and Rob Mathes, that event’s producer and musical director, respectively, produced the remainder of the present CD in collaboration with the vocalist eight months later at a Hoboken, New Jersey, studio. They used many of the same players, including guitarist Shane Fontayne and bassist Zev Katz, with Mathes doubling on keyboards and guitar. Horns and background singers (Carla Thomas’s sister Vaneese, among them) were added in New York and occasional strings at London’s Abbey Road Studios, the scene of several of the original versions.

As she has grown older, LaVette’s contralto tones have become raspier and craggier, but much as Jimmy Scott has done during the rediscovery phase of his career, she uses what others might consider disadvantages to her musical advantage as she burrows deep into the emotional core of the material at hand. The instrumental and vocal support is tasteful and ideally subdued throughout, allowing the singer to stand, virtually naked, in the foreground.  “We need leaders but we get gamblers instead,” she moans over a gentle horn cushion during Jagger and Richards’ Salt Of The Earth, adding, as she alters the lyrics even further, “Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter whose empty eyes gaze at reality shows, and a steam of gray-suited grafters give you a choice of cancer, HIV, or who knows.” It’s among the many highlights of LaVette’s transcendent, at times cathartic, interpretations on what is one of the most satisfying sets of soul music in recent memory.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

MAGIC SLIM AND THE TEARDROPS

Raising The Bar

Blind Pig - BPCD 5136

 Magic Slim is a constant in a musical world of variables. Slim’s been laying down genuine, back-alley Chicago blues for nearly a half century, during which time he has seen his peers and their predecessors incorporate other sonic flavors into their blues. Slim has wanted no part of that gumbo, however, and for this we thank him. The Grenada, Mississippi, native has kept it raw, real, and raucous.

Slim’s latest, Raising The Bar, celebrates his 20-year collaboration with Blind Pig Records, which has produced such hard-nosed gems as Gravel Road and the guest-laden Midnight Blues. These may not be the “classic” Teardrops of the past lineups—like Slim’s late brother, bassist Nick Holt, or the guitar bite of the great John Primer—but current Teardrops Jon McDonald (guitar), Andre Howard (bass), and B.J. Jones (drums) provide a remarkably solid and dexterous foundation for Slim’s guttural vocal growl and six-string venom. Today’s Teardrops are no mere collection of hired guns.

Covers like Part Time Love sit alongside Slim originals like the freewheeling, up-tempo Shame—which showcases just how “in the pocket” Slim and the Teardrops can be when messing with a staunch rhythm. The band is really in its element on the deep, smoldering slow blues of Roosevelt Sykes’ Sunny Road Blues, where Slim lets his Fender Jazzmaster run wild. The production throughout is gloriously sparse; it’s hard to imagine Slim’s recording style changing much since his first recording back in 1966 for Ja-Wes.

It’s true that Slim’s sound hasn’t changed much over the years, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t progressed. With each album, he and the band have grown more authoritative and resilient in their presentation of classic, bare bones Chicago blues. Raising The Bar stands as a hip-shaking archetype of that age-old idiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

—Mark Uricheck

 

FLOYD TAYLOR

All Of Me 

CDS - 1032

Production credits go to both Simuel “Simeo” Overall and Sidney Jones, but Floyd Taylor has said that he signed with CDS because the label was willing to give him full creative control, so it’s safe to say that what’s here represents Taylor’s own preferences pretty closely.

Taylor also maintains that he wants to escape the restrictions of the “Southern Soul” stereotype while bringing what he feels is a long-lost sense of class and style to mainstream R&B.  In this light, the opening track here, Everyone Celebrate, can be taken as a manifesto as much as a smoothly produced, seductive stepper’s anthem (which it also is): the lyrics, credited to Simeo, invoke a dance floor celebration of universalist humanism where the participants “get our drink on” and party in a spirit of mutual respect and admiration (“Tonight we dedicate and celebrate everyone from every nation / It’s our obligation”). Taylor’s voice, evocative as usual of his late father, Johnnie Taylor, is rich and melodically sure, and he’s got a percussive knack of accentuating the rhythm of a song with his articulation and phrasing.

Also true to his stated purpose, Taylor has filled this set with romantic and erotic testimonials that reflect old-school soul sensibility even as their arrangements and overall sonic texture mark them as contemporary:  he exudes passion as he pleads wounded vulnerability (Baby I Love You, with its swirling vocal/backing track swashes), pledges fidelity (All of You, All of Me, a gently loping mid-tempo ballad washed with strings), begs a fed-up lover to stick by his side (Don’t Go, given added urgency by a crisply articulated interlude from rapper Hustler), and celebrates carnal desire (Wanna Make Love, another ballad, this one seasoned sharply by Taylor’s hip-hop flavored phrasing), yet he never descends to cheap-thrills pandering or double-entendre coarseness. Even when he plays the part of a girl-ogling rogue (I Like The Way), he sings lines like “I like the way she’s droppin’ that / I like the way she’s clappin’ that / I like the way she’s bouncin’ that. . . I like the way the girl’s movin’ that body”) with a suaveness that leavens any hint of predation but doesn’t diminish the sexiness of his message.

With its roomy, natural-sounding production, well-executed studio effects, and deep-soul vocal stylings, this disc is more than a musical success: it sounds like the long-awaited dawn of Floyd Taylor’s true career as a distinctly individual stylist, still tracing the vaunted footsteps of his father but blazing exciting new trails on his own.

—David Whiteis

 

SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS

I Learned The Hard Way

Daptone – DAP 019

I Learned The Hard Way jumps off in dramatic fashion, ten seconds of cinematic flair and brass fanfare as the Dap-Kings roll out a red carpet entrance for Sharon Jones, the undisputed queen of modern soul. The fourth release (in both LP & CD formats) from the Brooklyn soul scions is Sharon’s show without a doubt, but the Dap-Kings are full of swagger on the opening triumvirate of tracks including the string-laden title track and the Memphis soul strut of Better Things. The occasional touch of strings and the addition of a trio of backup vocalists expand the band’s sound from southern funk to the Sound of Philadelphia. On the whole, however, the latest Daptone delivery is an exercise in restraint, the set of tempered hard-luck love songs veers from blues to doo-wop while clocking in at a vinyl-friendly 39 minutes. The easy pace of the record—split by a sublime instrumental interlude—allows the 53-year-old Jones to simply sing, chastising a lover with wandering eyes on the organ-kissed Window Shopping and begging and pleading on the Bobby Bland–inspired If You Call. The relentless recession blues of Money marries the economic realities of today with the funky sounds of yesterday, a sound that Daptone has championed and helped introduce to a new generation.

The Dap-Kings’ most complete and diverse album to date closes with the sparse, stripped-down gospel thump of Mama Don’t Like My Man. It’s a far cry from the rough funk of their 2002 Dap Dippin’ debut and a move that proves Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings have learned a thing or two since then. And they’ve learned it the hard way.

—Thomas Fawcett

 

THE MANNISH BOYS

Shake For Me

Delta Groove - DGCD137

Randy Chortkoff’s vision for a superstar blues revue, otherwise known as the Mannish Boys, has been evolving for five albums now, in almost as many years. Now, the band that inspired the creation of the Delta Groove Music label celebrates its musical genealogy with the release of Shake For Me. With seasoned masters like Bobby Jones and Finis Tasby trading vocals and a revolving lineup of world-class players supplying the instrumental muscle, this effort bellows with vintage-themed class.

Shake For Me continues Delta Groove boss Chortkoff’s idea of drawing attention to classic blues cuts, while aiming for the music’s wider exposure to a new generation. The band has accomplished just this, in a fashion that is both smooth and crackling with bravado. The album’s artwork says it all, through long-forgotten photos of Saturday nights at easygoing roadside hangouts—it’s a comfortable, relaxed vibe here. The band sits back, loads up, and stuns with their breezy take on 1940s/1950s–sounding blues.

Aided by spacious production courtesy of Jeff Fleenor, the guys seem to settle into their positions with casual assurance, as evidenced by Finis Tasby’s serpentine drawl and guest guitarist Nick Curran’s caustic solo on Too Tired. A shuffling take on the standard Reconsider Baby is luminous, while Number 9 Train (a 1959 Tarheel Slim cut) has a rootsy bounce. The band shows it can grab a hold of a reverberating, deep blues groove on Little Walter’s Last Night, where Rod Piazza steps in for a guest shot and lets his harp caterwaul all over the track.

The Mannish Boys’ dedication to preserving the past is matched only by their musical aptitude. This record shows how it should be done.

—Mark Uricheck

 

OTIS TAYLOR

Clovis People, Vol. 3 

Telarc  - TEL-31849-02

Not long ago, near Otis Taylor’s home in Boulder, Colorado, archeologists discovered artifacts from an ancient civilization known as the Clovis People, who lived in the area approximately 13,000 years ago. Taylor decided to appropriate that archeological reference as a title for this CD, which is the result of his own project to “dig” back into his musical history and revisit some of his earlier creations.  Unlike an archeologist, though, Taylor is not interested in preserving historical “authenticity”—he’s freely re-imagined these pieces, creating new arrangements and bringing in some new musical voices (including guitarist Gary Moore and pedal steel maestro Chuck Campbell, along with cornetist Ron Miles and Taylor’s daughter Cassie on bass) as he’s seen fit. (Two previously unreleased tracks, Little Willie and Lee And Arnez, are also included.)

Whether or not you’re familiar with the original versions, most of these tracks will be revelatory.  As always, Taylor tells stories that are both vivid in detail and oblique in meaning—the overriding theme of a vignette such as Past Times (the lament of an old man haunted by death’s approach) or Hands On Your Stomach (a throbbing, rock-accented invocation of spirits channeled through a dream) may be clear, but even in Taylor’s brief verses there are enough enigmatic sub-themes and images swirling around that virtually everything ends up open to multiple interpretations.  The aural contexts he creates both complement and challenge his lyrics’ imagery, creating hallucinatory dreamscapes in which the words seem grow, mutate, shape-shift, and acquire yet more new (and even more enigmatic) layers of meaning.

A few of the pieces here, though, are straightforward in their message. In Think I Won’t, a Black woman confronts a drug pusher in a schoolyard and vows to “knock you down where you’re standing”—it’s both a tribute to the power of African American matriarchs and a warning to fools who’d dare challenge their authority.  A serpentine, lava-toned electric violin snakes its way through the tune, melding sharply focused intensity with wild surrealism—which could serve as a metaphor for Taylor’s overall artistic approach. Little Willie, an eerily prophetic tale of a school killing, was written in the ’90s before the Columbine tragedy; Taylor has never released it until now.

In a paradox that the wily Taylor no doubt intended, this set both re-imagines his earlier material and re-establishes its permanence. In change, Taylor seems to be telling us, there’s permanence—or, perhaps, there can be no permanence without change.  After all, the Clovis people, whose tools and other personal belongings haven’t changed for thousands of years, disappeared from the face of the earth—an artist such as Taylor, as well as his creations, continues to live, breathe, and grow.

—David Whiteis

 

 KIRK FLETCHER

My Turn

Eclecto Groove – EGRCD511

 It was roughly six years ago that Randy Chortkoff launched his Delta Groove label with Kirk Fletcher’s Shades Of Blue. Like his previous solo debut on JSP, it was a straight-up, no nonsense blues record that showcased Fletcher’s masterful guitar playing—even when his fretwork was somewhat overshadowed by the high-profile vocalists (Janiva Magness, Kim Wilson) that appeared on those earlier releases. While he’s perhaps best known as an in-demand studio guitarist and for his tenure playing in the bands of Charlie Musselwhite and Wilson, with the aptly titled My Turn Fletcher has stepped back into the spotlight as a serious bandleader with a unique vision.

This album marks Fletcher’s vocal debut on the easy Jimmy Reed groove Found Love and the super-funky Let Me Have It All. It’s too bad previous producers didn’t coax Fletcher in front of a vocal mic sooner, because this dude can sing! At times he evokes the subtle intonation and smoky grit of Matt “Guitar” Murphy’s voice, another blues guitarist not known for his vocal prowess although he was a great singer in his own right. Blues For Antone is a deep slow blues instrumental written as a tribute to the late Clifford Antone. Here, even with fingers racing like lightning across the strings of his axe, Fletcher is able to convey a sense of solemnity and respect for his lost friend.

There are fun shuffles (Ain’t No Way, with Paulie Cerra on vocals and sax) and groovy original rockers (Medio Stomp) sprinkled throughout the set list, but it’s tracks like the closing Continents End that really set Fletcher apart from the current pack of up-and-coming blues guitar slingers. It’s a dreamy, stream-of-consciousness rock number complete with spoken word poetry floating beneath massive, earthy guitar tones. Fletcher describes it as “Jimi Hendrix meets Sonic Youth.” This particular tune might not please the diehard blues fans in the audience, but it’s one hell of a ride, and proof that Fletcher is ready to make a big splash on his own.

—Roger Gatchet 

 

LUCKY PETERSON

Heart Of Pain

JSP – JSP8824

In his memoir I Am The Blues, Willie Dixon speaks approvingly of a “little five-year-old boy who was playing organ” and had cut a popular R&B single titled 1-2-3-4, which Dixon also produced. “This boy and I could have been heavy in the chips,” Dixon says. “Everybody remembered him even more than the Jackson 5 at that time.”

That five-year-old, of course, was Lucky Peterson. He was practically brand new when he got his start in the blues, soaking in the music of the touring artists his father James booked at the Governor’s Inn, the club he operated in Buffalo, New York. Now 45, Peterson has honed his craft working for Little Milton and Bobby “Blue” Bland, and has recorded for Blue Thumb, Verve, and Alligator. Heart Of Pain marks his third release for JSP Records.

Replace the amplified harmonica with a three-piece horn section, and what you have here is a great Chicago blues record. It starts off with the brawny easy-loping shuffles Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire and the title track, with multi-instrumentalist Peterson handling lead vocals, lead guitar, and keyboard, as he does throughout the rest of the CD. Peterson does plenty of heavy lifting with his guitar work and shines on keyboard (check out his double-fisted piano solo Lucky’s 88), and his husky vocals sound custom made for this material, most of which was penned by Dallas, Texas–based producer Steven Washington and JSP’s John Stedman. Peterson has often explored various styles outside of the blues in previous recordings, but he rarely strays from the 12-bar, I-IV-V here (the exception is He’s The Answer, a contemporary gospel-R&B duet with sister Tamara that pops out of left field). If you like straight-up blues played from the heart—and who doesn’t—then you won’t be disappointed with Heart of Pain.

—Roger Gatchet

 

MIGHTY MO RODGERS

Dispatches From The Moon

Dixie Frog - DFGCD 8672 (France)

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

 

JOHN NEMETH

Name The Day!

Blind Pig - BPCD 5134

John Nemeth claims to have perfect pitch, something that’s quite evident throughout Name The Day!, his third Blind Pig CD, particularly in the way he moves between a ringing tenor and resonant baritone when executing ascending and descending octave jumps. It’s a device that’s been used effectively over the years by countless singers—Junior Parker and Aretha Franklin come immediately to mind—yet too few do it these days. The Boisie-born, Oakland-based bluesman does it to especially chilling result in the middle of the churchy, slow-dragging Why Not Me, one of ten original compositions on the 11-track disc, when he leaps an octave, and then soars even higher for two more notes without stopping to take a breath. At age 34, Nemeth is with little doubt the most accomplished male vocalist of his generation traveling the blues highway today.

Only two of the tunes—the hard-shuffling Heartbreak With A Hammer and the eighth-note-driven Funky Feelin’—are 12-bar blues. Like Parker, his most obvious stylistic model, Nemeth is both a bluesman and a soul man. The boogaloo grooves that mark such medium- and up-tempo selections as the title track, Breakin’ Free, Do You Really Want That Woman, Tuff Girl, Save A Little Love, and the Otis Blackwell/Winfield Scott–penned Solomon Burke classic Home In Your Heart suggest the influence of some of Parker’s recordings for Duke and Mercury in the 1960s, a part of his discography that blues purists have often dismissed. Drummer Nick Fishman and bassist Smokey Davis’s busily syncopated soul patterns on those numbers, along Bobby Welsh’s brittle-toned, Memphis-style guitar work, are refreshingly retro. Tempos ease up only for the ballads I Said Too Much and Why Not Me.

The rhythm section of Welsh (who also plays some piano), Davis, and Fishman is nicely augmented by keyboardists Austin deLone and Jake Smolowe and a three-man horn section playing trombonist Mike Rinta’s meaty charts.  Nemeth blows harmonica only on occasion and never ostentatiously. His solos are models of economy and musical taste—and, like his singing, deeply soulful.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

CD REVIEWS - FEBRUARY 2010

 

ANDREW JR. BOY JONES

Gettin’ Real

Electro-Fi - 3425

Dallas-based guitar master Andrew Jr. Boy Jones was born in that city in 1948 and came up playing alongside such local luminaries as Freddy King, Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Patterson, and R.L. Griffin. After spending some time on the road with Katie Webster and Charlie Musselwhite, he returned to the metroplex in 1996 and soon embarked on his own recording career with a CD on JSP. Releases for Bullseye Blues, Galexc, and 43rd Big Idea followed, and now he’s hooked up with Electro-Fi for his latest offering.

Jones himself produced the set, which was recorded in Dallas with John Street on keyboards, Tommy Tucker on bass, and Jamil Byrom on drums. The only two covers on the ten-track playlist are finely crafted instrumental versions of Wilson Pickett’s Don’t Let The Green Grass Fool You and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On.  Most notable of Jones’ own compositions are the opening Struggle, with searing guitar leads over a churning rhythm, and the instrumentally elegant but vocally anguished slow blues Hell In My House, but all are good, ranging from the relaxed mid-tempo lope of People Say I’m Crazy to a shuffling Negative Talkin’ with Cheryl Arena added on harmonica, the aching minor-key lament Lonely Times, a rock-inflected Don’t Get It Twisted, and the soulful Good Lovin’.

Jones has long since earned a place among the ranks of the blues’ finest on guitar, and his singing just keeps on getting better each time out. This album should be kept in mind when award time next arrives.

—Jim DeKoster

 

BOBBY RUSH

Blind Snake 

Deep Rush - DRD 1005

Bobby Rush’s apparently bottomless mine of trickster tales, stores of erotic [mis]adventure, and occasional meditations on serious issues of life has become one of the marvels of contemporary blues. From the sound of what’s here, it’s as rich a lode as ever.

This set is divided between offerings couched in the synth-driven funk-blues that he’s best known for, and sparser acoustic numbers of the type he’s been showcasing on some of his sets in recent years. As usual, he raids the blues canon with joyful, unrepentant larceny: Tell Me What’s Going On features some Wolfian howls and a slyly inserted lyric reference to Latimore’s Let’s Straighten It Out; Little By Little includes a few lyrics borrowed from Junior Wells’ 1960 classic (as well as one or two other sources). She Alright, She Alright, a swampy acoustic workout, is based on Muddy’s Rollin’ Stone/Still A Fool theme.  But Rush manages to make it all sound fresh through the sheer force of his enthusiasm and the witty spin he puts on even the most well-worn lyric conceits.

Rush also deals with some more serious themes. Chinkapin Huntin’ is a tribute both to his father and the folk tradition Rush so obviously reveres. It’s laced with humor, yet steeped in love. People Don’t Do bemoans the loss of old-fashioned community values and human kindness;  Swing Lo is Rush’s version of the old spiritual.

At this point, the Funk Folklorist is pretty much beyond criticism.  His admirers know what to expect; the uninitiated are urged to get a hold of this CD and dive in.

—David Whiteis

 

KEB’ MO’

Live and Mo’ 

YoLaBelle - TBI -0901

This disc includes seven tracks recorded in performance and four studio offerings. Keb’ Mo’ has expanded his roots-blues approach in favor of a more eclectic sound that incorporates elements of country folk and ’70s-ish soft-soul and pop. His lyrics remain eloquent: More Than One Way Home is a nostalgia-tinged flashback to a youthful “summertime in Compton,” richly evocative of a simpler, youthful time when anything seemed possible and dreams were for the taking; Jeff Paris’s keyboard work on this song recalls Gil Scott-Heron. Shave Yo’ Legs, another live track, is a gentle but pointed riposte to societal norms that oppress women; as the singer tells his lady, “Go ahead, be wild and free / you don’t have to shave your legs from me.”

Government Cheese, a slow-loping 12-bar blues propelled by a subtle, funk-flavored rhythm, sardonically recalls the U.S. government’s ’80s-era handout of cheese to welfare recipients; Victims Of Comfort, sweetened by guitar chording that sounds based on the classic Rainy Night In Georgia intro, assails the destruction wreaked by modern consumer-mad society.  Hole In The Bucket, a lively acoustic workout, returns Keb’ to his revivalist persona.

Throughout, Keb’ and his sidemen comport themselves with grace and eloquence, although listeners looking for pyrotechnics or displays of prowess will be disappointed—subtlety and taste are the bywords here. Less a blues album than a collection of singer-songwriter ruminations, this disc will please prog-folk aficionados and fans of intelligent, socially conscious pop; hardcore blues aficionados, though, may prefer Keb’s earlier, rootsier material.

—David Whiteis

 

ERIC BIBB

Booker’s Guitar

Telarc – TEL-31756-02

Some years ago during a UK tour, folk-blues troubadour Eric Bibb had a fortuitous encounter with a fan in England who happened to be the owner of a talismanic piece of Delta history that B. B. King has described as a “holy relic.” Bibb was given the chance to record with the instrument, and sings about it on the title track of his new album: “The guitar owned and played/By the great Booker White/Found its way, by grace, into my arms.” It’s simply a beautiful song, and Bibb’s relaxed, mostly spoken delivery as he plucks diamonds from the guitar’s strings sets the overall tone and pace for the album. He sounds so genuine, in fact, that one can’t help but be convinced early on when Bibb reveals that playing it “thrilled my soul to the core.”

With Booker’s Guitar, his fourth release on Telarc, Bibb crafts a moving collection of songs inspired by Delta bluesman Bukka White and his experience playing White’s 1930s-era National Duolian steel guitar. The simplicity of the overall album is what makes it so compelling, and although the title track is the only song he recorded with the actual instrument, the remaining tunes—most of which are originals recorded stateside in an historic nineteenth century general store—convey a similar gentleness in feeling and mood. Those familiar with Bibb’s style won’t be surprised by anything here, but they will be moved—at times deeply—by his sincerity.

Bibb alternates between stirring solo performances and duets alongside harmonica player Grant Dermody. Dermody is an understated talent whose “less-is-more” approach provides an essential pairing on tunes like the traditional Wayfaring Stranger, a melancholy Flood Water (about Mississippi in 1927), and Nobody’s Fault But Mine, which is played as a harp-vocal duet. Tell Riley is an upbeat addition that traces the story of White’s famous little cousin, whose identity is hinted at in the title and revealed in the closing lines of the song; “Mark my words,” Bibb sings, “he’ll be be king some day.” As an added plus, the album comes with a trio of bonus tracks available for download, including an Odetta tribute and an enchanting instrumental called Dreaming In Mandinka that was inspired by Bibb’s forays into Malian music.

—Roger Gatchet

 

THE CHARLES WALKER BAND

Used And Defiant 

Ehlona - (No #)

Walker & Co. have an explicitly political agenda here, as evidenced by his liner notes (he dedicates the song One to “our former President, George Bush, for all the lies”) and the American flag–themed artwork that graces the cover. Whether on a rock-infused version of Robert Johnson’s Stones In My Passway or a wafting 3/4 blues ballad like the wronged woman’s lament Stomped All Over, the band lays down sounds that invoke steely resolve to fight against mistreatment—both personal and political—and strive for a better day.

Walker either wrote or co-wrote everything here except the Johnson song, and he’s adept at melding tough-minded righteousness with non-didactic lyric flair.  The title song, an autobiographical vignette of a ghetto child who came up the hard way, both laments hard times and praises the human resiliency it takes to overcome them; the lyrics of the aforementioned One [Nation Under U.S.] portray a society in which fear, violence, and despair threaten both the social order and the human soul.

But there are good times on offer, as well. Bump It is a rocked-out barnburner that features vocalist Shanna Jackson at her strongest, as she shouts out admonitions to “Shake it, rock it, move it, groove it, let it roll” with unfettered abandon. On Exquisite Soul, a burbling uptempo ballad, she entreats, “I’m beautiful down in my heart / why don’t you come on and be beautiful, too?” over a crisp, timbale-and-bass propelled backing.

The only potential drawback of this set is Jackson’s difficulty with some of Walker’s rhyme schemes and melodies, which occasionally sound labored. If you can acclimate yourself to her vagaries of pitch and the sometimes odd, off-beat syllabic curlicues of Walker’s lyrics, this disc provides a satisfying blast of high-energy modern blues with a funk-rock edge, as well as a bracing message of resistance and hope.

—David Whiteis

 

SOUTH MEMPHIS STRING BAND

Home Sweet Home

Memphis International DOT 0224

The memory of the Mississippi Sheiks had largely faded until resurfacing in recent years through the contemporary old-time sounds of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Geoff and Maria Muldaur, and others. Now, Luther Dickinson, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Jimbo Mathus explore the type of acoustic music popularized by the short-lived Sheiks during the early years of the Great Depression, along with related rural styles, in a more informal manner than the aforementioned artists. The South Memphis String Band’s approach is rather ragged as they trade lead vocals, harmonize casually, and swap instruments: guitar, banjo, mandolin, and occasional harmonica, kazoo, and fife.

Neither the booklet notes by the CD’s producer, Luther Dickinson’s late father Jim, nor the credits bother to say who sings lead and plays what on the various tracks, seemingly vital information that the Chocolate Drops would be careful to indicate. And there few credits and no commentary on the origins of many songs, leaving consumers interested in such matters to do research on their own.

For the record, the program consists of Things ’Bout Comin’ My Way and Bootlegger’s Blues, both associated with the Mississippi Sheiks; Jesse James, first recorded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1924 and later by Woody Guthrie and others; the traditional folk song Deep Blue Sea; the Appalachian fiddle and banjo tune Old Hen; the Jimbo Mathus–Shorty Brown composition Worry ’Bout Your Own Backyard; Blind Willie Johnson’s Let You Light Shine On Me; The Carrier Line, recorded by Sid Hemphill for Alan Lomax in 1942; Bloody Bill Anderson, a ballad about an infamous Confederate guerrilla in Missouri that’s credited to one G.E. Hart; Eighteen Hammers, a chain gang song recorded for Lomax in 1960 by Johnny Lee Moore and the Mississippi Penitentiary Prisoners;  the Carter Family’s Dixie Darling; and the 19^th-century pop song Home, Sweet Home.

These songs are of both white and black vintage and in long-ago times were probably performed by musicians of both races. That the interracial South Memphis Sting Band doesn’t delve into such concerns suggests the folk process by which musicians transmitted songs and styles in olden days, as opposed to scholarly methods imposed by folklorists.  Luther, Alvin, and Jimbo sound like three old friends swapping songs on a porch and having a grand time doing it.

If the CD has an underlying theme, it’s suggested by the title. By including numbers about James and Anderson, two notorious supporters of the Confederacy, and concluding the set with Home, Sweet Home, a favorite of both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War, the three musicians perhaps intended a message of healing, much as Mickey Newbury did when he juxtaposed Dixie, The Battle Hymn Of The Republic, and All My Trials in An American Trilogy.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

MEMPHIS LINDA JANE

The Soul Of A Woman

No label, (No #)

There’s little to distinguish Memphis Linda Jane from a legion of bar-band vocalists other than the excellent choice of songs on her debut CD and the superb musicians she surrounds herself with. Her enunciation is consistently precise and her effusive personality frequently shines through, yet her clear alto tones and straightforward phrasing seem better suited to pop than to blues.

The repertoire is nicely varied and includes such numbers of R&B vintage as Little Johnny Taylor’s If You Love Me Like You Say, Willie Dixon’s oft-recorded Too Many Cooks, Big Maybelle’s I’m Getting’ ’Long Alright (to which Linda Jane cleverly adds “my cable man is an able man” to the song’s original list of ice, wood, and meat men), Denise LaSalle’s Your Husband Is Cheating On Us, and Jay McShann and Priscilla Bowman’s Hands Off.  K.T. Oslin’s 1988 country smash Do Ya is given a winning New Orleans R&B treatment. Rounding out the set are Grana’ Louise’s Somebody Done Told Me, Keb Mo’s Love Blues, Tim Gearan’s Pay Check, John Hahn and Joe Hudson’s I Always Get My Man, and Forecast Blues and Toolbox Blues, both by Sandy Carroll.

Producer Rich Wenzel, who alternates between piano, organ, and accordion, hired some of Southern California’s finest session musicians for the project. James Gadson, one of the most versatile and solid drummers on the planet, is present on all tracks. Three different guitarists—Kirk Fletcher, Todd Robinson, and Barry Levenson—are featured, with Fletcher getting the lion’s share of the solo space and obbligatos for his incisive Albert King–inspired attack. A crisp three-man horn section contributes to some selections, as does a group of backup singers that includes L.A. studio vet Clydene Jackson.

—Lee Hildebrand

 

BOBBY “SLIM” JAMES

Brand New Man 

Annie Gee  - (No #)

Veteran Chicago journeyman Bobby “Slim” James holds forth here with a set of material written mostly by co-producers Bob Jones and Robert Newsome. Although the overall ambience is fuller and more aggressive than what James and his band normally summon in live performance, this set highlights the basics of his usual sound: supple, emotionally resonant guitar work (despite his instrument’s oddly tinny tone) and grits-and-gravy blues-soul singing.

James is at his best when he’s working with lyrics that tell a meaningful story.  It’s Only That They’re Lonely is an eloquent exegesis on emotional vulnerability and how it can corrupt people’s best intentions in relationships. James intones it with the gritty assurance of an unbowed soul survivor. Real Story could have benefited from a fuller sound and a more aggressive beat, but James’ vocal blend of toughness and sorrow brings poignancy to Newsome’s autobiographical-sounding tale of a country-bred man facing down tragedy in the big city. James summons a harsher edge on streetsier outings like Workin’ On It (despite a somewhat tepidly mixed backing track), Tell Me What It Is, and How Much More Love, an effective aural blend of aggressive tonalities and solid musicianship overlaid by James’ desperation-tinged vocals.  The title song showcases James at his string-bending, bluesy best, singing in a coarse voice  somewhat reminiscent of Vernon Garrett.

Straddling the border between straightforward contemporary blues and southern soul-blues, this is an admirable set from a Chicago veteran who continues to have a lot to offer to discerning listeners.

—David Whiteis

 

SMILIN’ BOBBY & HIDDEN CHARMS

Big Legged Woman

Wolf - 120.821 CD

Smilin’ Bobby (Smith) was born in Helena, Arkansas, in 1939, came to Chicago as a teenager, and began playing guitar professionally in 1958, associating with the likes of Magic Sam and Byther Smith as well as playing on Maxwell Street. Apart from some homemade CDs, this appears to be his first recording.

The ten tracks on offer are equally divided between Smith’s own songs, two of which are instrumentals, and covers of Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, T-Bone Walker, and Willie Cobbs in addition to the Israel Tolbert title track. These tend to be a mite chaotic at times—Wells’ Little By Little in particular could have benefited from another take—but Smith and his cohorts  (guitarist Brian Reed, bassist Warren Lethan and drummer Myron Katz) make up in energy what they lack in finesse. Bobby’s own I Got To Leave This Woman, They Call Me A Dog, and You Are The One are all the sort of meat-and-potatos blues that would sound at home on a Magic Slim or Willie Kent album.

By no means one of the music’s innovators or virtuosos, Smilin’ Bobby is nonetheless of interest as one of the blues’ foot soldiers, working hard to keep the music that he loves alive at the corner tavern level.

—Jim DeKoster

 

MIKE CALHOUN

The One 

Wann Sonn Records, (No #)

Former Dazz Band fretman Mike Calhoun here offers up a full set of gospel-themed material. But if you’re looking for feel-good spiritual reassurance or paeans to easily won salvation, look elsewhere. This music, strongly influenced by hip-hop and contemporary R&B, is gospel for the fallen as well as for the saved, a Final Days prophecy that throws down a gauntlet to faith as much as it celebrates it.

At times Calhoun seems to draw a parallel between worldly social change and spiritual salvation; other times, he proclaims his faith more conventionally (“Christ the King is comin’ back, it ain’t nothing you can do about that”). Either way, though, he sees the believer’s burden of responsibility as daunting. Some of these tracks, such as the nightmarishly pounding Holla, sound like nothing less than aural dispatches from hell, and the lyrics (“Their eyes all bloodshot red / the smoke fries from the ashes / the masses are led to the slaughter”) intensify that feel. Ghetto Preacher is a wracked testimonial from a would-be backslider (“I don’t wanna live in hell”) tantalized by the lure of “hangin’, bangin’, slangin’ in the ‘hood” in an apocalypse-haunted world where “the game just keeps on callin’” and “righteousness seems worthless.” The song makes it clear that the preacher of the title holds the lives and souls of struggling young men such as this in his hands—and woe unto him if he fails this calling.

There are some lighter moments. I Believe In You echoes Stevie Wonder, both in Calhoun’s crooned vocals and the song’s message of uplift; By Your Side portrays a man conveying lessons of struggle and redemption to his grandson.  But even when he’s optimistic, Calhoun can deliver a punch: “Every day,” he sings in Highly Favored, “I wake up, I give thanks that I’m in my right mind.”

This testimony of faith and responsibility is also a warning to believers and non-believers alike.  For both, it’s essential listening.

—David Whiteis

 

CD REVIEWS - DECEMBER 2009

JOE LOUIS WALKER

Between A Rock And The Blues

Stony Plain - SPCD1345

Between A Rock And The Blues is the estimable Joe Louis Walker’s second album for Stony Plain and 20th (!) overall. As the title implies, it represents an attempt to move Walker’s music in what many LB readers would regard as the wrong direction, but not to worry—Walker has long shown rock influences, and this set is as thoroughly grounded in the blues as any of his other recent work.

That being said, it must be admitted that the program starts off a mite inconspicuously as the otherwise agreeable upbeat rocker I’m Tide (as in “sick and tide of being sick and tide of you”) is marred by a multi-tracked vocal. It, like most of the set, finds Walker backed by labelmate Duke Robillard’s able band as he acknowledges some of his influences by swinging like Gatemouth Brown on Travis Phillips’ Eyes Like A Cat, covering Ray Charles on Blackjack, and almost covering Otis Rush on Prisoner Of Misery, a close relative of Three Times A Fool. Big Fine Woman, credited to Roy Gaines and Leon Haywood, bears a remarkable resemblance to Israel Tolbert’s 1970 Warren hit Big Leg Woman (With A Short Short Mini Skirt), but Black Widow Spider is a Walker strut that’s not to be confused with similarly titled songs by Lavelle White and Lowell Fulson. Way Too Expensive, from Larry Coryell’s son Murali, is another Texas-tinged jumper, Robillard’s Tell Me Why has some of Walker’s finest slide work along with a spot for the composer, and Hallways is an atmospheric minor-key lament of a kind that Walker does too seldom, with stellar support from Bruce Katz on piano. The two tracks with Jay Leno guitarist Kevin Eubanks and longtime Walker bassist Henry Oden are both a bit more amped-up, but the set closes with an almost obligatory acoustic number, Send You Back, with harp from Sugar Ray Norcia.

Joe Louis Walker’s been so good for so long that it’s easy to take him for granted, but this new album, chock full of intensity and invention, provides ample proof that he still has plenty to offer.

—Jim DeKoster

 

ARTHUR ADAMS

Stomp The Floor

Delta Groove - DGPCD135

Arthur Adams grew up in a small town near Jackson, Tennessee, and started his musical career 50 years ago when, while attending Tennessee State University in Nashville, he caught on as guitarist in Johnny Beck’s band. While in Nashville, he cut the splendid minor-key slow blues The Same Thing for Valdot, but would soon relocate to Dallas after being stranded there when Beck and company were on the road behind Gene Allison. By the mid-’60s, Adams had made it west to L.A., where a spot in NFL lineman Rosey Grier’s house band gained him entry to the thriving Hollywood studio scene. The ’70s found him cutting TV and movie soundtracks, recording with the likes of the Crusaders, and releasing his own funkified LPs on Blue Thumb and Fantasy. When hard times hit the music business in the ’80s, Adams found his way back to the blues, writing for both Albert and B.B. King, getting his own touring group together, and eventually recording a comeback CD for Blind Pig in 1999. Another disc came out on PMRC in 2003, and now Adams is back with this new release on Delta Groove.

Like Adams’ two previous CDs, this one finds him backed by a band that includes A-list session men Hense Powell, Reggie McBride, and James Gaston. The dozen titles are all Adams originals and include three instrumental showcases for his considerable guitar talents, with easygoing Cali funk on Around The Sun and You Got That Right and a harder edge on the closing Blue Roots. Adams takes a bow to his friend B.B. on the slow blues Don’t Let The Door Hit You and sings of bad luck and hard times on You Can’t Win For Losing, I Know What You Mean, Callin’ Heaven and Nature Of The Beast. The outlook turns sunnier on So Sweet and Thrive On Your Vibe, but the two party songs, the title track and You Are Invited, take on an oddly melancholy mood from being cast in minor keys, with the latter somewhat reminiscent of Albert King’s I’ll Play The Blues For You.

Even though Adams is getting up in years, his voice remains light and supple, at times bringing to mind Chicago bluesman Jimmy Johnson, and his guitar work is as clean and inventive as ever. While Stomp The Floor may not really be floor stompin’ music, it has much to offer to to those who like their blues with a touch of class and sophistication.

—Jim DeKoster

 

DARRELL NULISCH

Just For You 

Severn - CD 0047

There’s a brawny band on hand for this session (a full-bodied horn section, along with a crew of four background vocalists that includes soul ace Lou Pride), and the material, much of it penned by Nulisch himself, is uniformly first-rate.  Crafted in a style that incorporates elements of  ’60s/’70s deep soul, blue-eyed pop-soul, and funk-tinged blues modernism, it features propulsive cadences, straightforward but intricately textured melodic lines and arrangements, and lyrics that tell life stories with vivid realism and what sounds like hard-won wisdom.  An especially savory element here is this band’s masterful use of dynamics: Just For You, an overlooked Slim Harpo gem delivered here as an aching soul ballad, slowly gathers intensity until it builds to full force, and then fades out—no unnecessary bombast or self-indulgent solos, only a graceful emotional contour that invokes both deep feeling and elegant artistry (guitarist Johnny Moeller’s deep-soul chord work is masterful).

That lack of self-indulgence, in fact, is one of the most winning characteristics of this set.  Aside from some unfortunate “blackvoice” affectations in his spoken narration on J.J. Malone’s It’s A Shame, Nulisch comports himself with taste throughout; his voice, although occasionally a bit nasal, is resonant and sure of pitch.  The soloists play with crisp conciseness, and they don’t overstay their welcome. It’s refreshing to hear a modern-day soul revivalist project that’s intelligent and tasteful enough to let its emotional impact arise from the music itself, rather than try to force it on us by hammering us into submission.

—David Whiteis

 

JIMMY “DUCK” HOLMES

Ain’t It Lonesome

Broke & Hungry - BH-13007

Jimmy “Duck” Holmes is often credited as being one of the last living adherents of the so-called “Bentonia school” of blues, a “school” that in reality consists solely of the recorded legacy of Skip James and the music of a handful of acolytes, most notably the late Jack Owens.  In actuality, Holmes’ style is more a pastiche of Mississippi influences than a direct link to James. Although he includes a few Jamesian classics in his repertoire, and although his chordal constructions and languorous tempos reflect James’ influence, his harmonic conceits are simpler than James’s were, and his rough-textured vocals show little debt to James’s high-tenor mewl.

This set reflects his non-Bentonia influences as much as his debt to James.  All Night Long, which features Holmes on electric guitar supported by bass and drums, borrows themes associated with Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside; the instrumental Bentonia Boogie, despite its title, also sounds like a stripped-down version of what one might have heard at Kimbrough’s juke on a Sunday night. Nightmare, a solo acoustic number, is based on a chordal construction that echoes Muddy’s Rollin’ Stone/Still A Fool theme.

On his electrified small-group workouts, Holmes purveys an amiable if somewhat atavistic brand of juke-joint jollity—it’s easy to envision oneself drinking and dancing into the wee hours to this music. On solo acoustic, his sound ranges from endearingly primal (Someday Baby, Nightmare) to dangerously sloppy (My Baby’s Gone). It’s good that he’s been documented, and it’s even better that his latter-day recordings have garnered him something approximating professional success; but on purely musical terms, extended doses of his blues may be appropriate mostly to the tastes of diehard roots lovers.

—David Whiteis

 

GEOFF MULDAUR AND THE TEXAS SHEIKS

Texas Sheiks

Tradition & Moderne  - GmbH T&M 045

Texas Sheiks, a rollicking collection of early blues and jug band tunes, had its beginnings as an informal session reuniting old friends Geoff Muldaur, Johnny Nicholas, and Stephen Bruton, though unfortunately the rationale was Bruton’s declining health. The Fort Worth native, who was the longtime guitarist for Kris Kristofferson and a collaborator with artists including Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt, died in May of 2009 at age 60, just months before this CD was issued.

The trio of friends, who all play multiple stringed instruments here, were joined by fellow Sheiks Suzy Thompson on fiddle, Cindy Cashdollar on slide guitar and dobro, and Bruce Hughes on bass. Guests here including Jim Kweskin, in whose influential jug band Muldaur was a member, and pianist Floyd Domino.

The band’s name appears to be a tip of the hat to the Mississippi Sheiks, as they open the CD with a cover of the group’s plaintive World Gone Wrong, driven by Thompson’s fiddle and featuring Muldaur’s rich and world-weary vocals. Muldaur, who plays six-string banjo on many of the tracks here also takes the vocals on the Mississippi Sheiks’ Please, Baby, two songs by Frank Stokes (who recorded as part of the “Beale Street Sheiks”), Sweet To Mama and Right Now Blues, and sensitive covers of the standard Poor Boy Blues and Henry Spaulding’s Cairo Blues.

Nicholas, who has recorded multiple albums under his own name and worked with artists including Big Walter Horton and Robert Lockwood, Jr., takes the vocals on a rollicking version of Big Bill Broonzy’s All By Myself that features fine piano work by Domino, and delves into traditional Mississippi blues via covers of Robert Johnsons’ Travelin’ Riverside Blues and Skip James’ Hard Time Killing Floor, on which he employs a half-falsetto style.

Jim Kweskin lends his vocals to the standard Blues In The Bottle, Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon’s Fan It, and the minstrel song Under The Chicken Tree, which was recorded by Earl McDonald’s Original Louisville Jug Band.  The remaining songs are the sprightly double entendre Don’t Sell It, Don’t Give It Away, featuring Hughes on vocals, and the W.C. Handy penned closer Yellow Dog Blues, which is done as an instrumental.

The instrumental work here is top rate, and the solos and fills by Thompson and Cashdollar in particular impart buoyancy to the ensemble sound, which has a freewheeling character. The vocals here are all top rate, but it’s Muldaur’s plaintive and expressive voice that stands out—it’s simply one of the great instruments in Ameican music. Unfortunately this is the last recording of this particular ensemble, but here’s hoping that the remaining cast return to the studio.

—Scott Barretta

 

MUD MORGANFIELD

Fall Waters Fall

No label – (No #)

Mud Morganfield, son of the fabled Muddy Waters, was born in Chicago in the mid-’50s; he looked so much like his father that he was dubbed “Poppa” as a child. It’s obvious, though, that he inherited more than just his looks. Backed by sidemen well-versed in the postwar Chicago sound, Morganfield often sounds so similar to Muddy that it’s downright eerie.  All he lacks is his father’s Delta-honed knack of using his entire singing apparatus to enhance the emotional power of his delivery—Muddy could convey worlds of feeling by altering his vocal timbre with a jowl-shake, or by shifting his jaws or curling his lips in mid-verse.

Even without those nuances, though, the younger Morganfield is a forceful vocalist. The title tune, which he wrote for his father, is less a tribute than a soul-baring (“Sometimes a young man is left to find his own way / livin’ in the world, copin’ day by day”); it seethes with emotional vulnerability and anguish.  Most of the rest of the set conveys more standard blues themes, nearly all cast in conventional twelve-bar settings, but Morganfield brings enough focus to them to make them seem contemporary.  In a few places he affects a higher, more nasal timbre, as if he’s trying to forge a sound his own. But the truth is that he’s most effective when he’s most Muddy-like: no matter how declamatory his delivery gets he never sounds mannered, and the ferocity of his passion when he’s in full Muddy mode is undeniable and often riveting.

Whether his approximation of a legendary style will be enough to catapult Mud Morganfield into blues stardom remains to be seen; as it stands, though, he’s a solid, if somewhat eccentric, talent worth checking out on his own terms.

—David Whiteis

 

QUINTUS McCORMICK BLUES BAND

Hey Jodie!

Delmark – DE 801

Motor City native Quintus McCormick’s initial forays into music were centered around playing the guitar like rock icons Jimmy Page, Carlos Santana, and Jimi Hendrix. All that changed 20 years ago, as McCormick reveals in an interview with LB’s David Whiteis included in the liner notes of his excellent Delmark debut Hey Jodie!. During a gig with J.W. Williams and the Chi-Town Hustlers around 1990, Williams called on McCormick to “play the blues!” McCormick remembers that night as an almost religious experience. “I could feel this anointing just hittin’ me. I’ll never forget it because I was just getting enlightened.” Let’s all be thankful that Williams helped him see the light. 

In Chicago, McCormick went on to play as a sideman for the likes of Otis Clay, A.C. Reed, Lefty Dizz, and James Cotton, further honing his blues chops and learning how to work a live audience before setting out on his own over a decade ago. Clearly, McCormick soaked up a variety of styles while putting in the miles as a touring professional, as he transitions effortlessly between blues, soul, and R&B originals. His band packs some heat with a tight, three-piece horn section in Kenny Anderson, Hank Ford, and Willie Henderson, whose punchy playing elevates cuts like Fifty/Fifty and You Got To Do Me Better Than That. Ted Reynolds’ harmonica playing often lacks the aggressiveness some of the material demands, but he keeps up with an understated approach that doesn’t detract.

As for McCormick, he possesses a rich, soulful voice (at times sounding like New Orleans’ Mem Shannon) and an incredible versatility on guitar. At one moment he’s laying down an edgy blues-rock intro (Get That Money), and the next he’s shifting into funk mode with confidence and swagger (You Got It). The title track showcases his vocal abilities well, and sounds readymade for the southern soul circuit (although it could do without the keyboardist’s synthesized fills). The song titles read like a survey of some of the blues’ most prominent themes (good times, back door lovers, doing right and doing wrong), but it would be interesting to hear the story behind Plano Texas Blues—that’s one city you don’t see pop up on many Chicago bluesmen’s song lists.

—Roger Gatchet

 

THE ROBERT CRAY BAND

This Time

Nozzle - 79960-2

This is Robert Cray’s 18th album and his first studio recording since 2005’s Twenty. The too-short nine-track playlist consists entirely of originals from Cray and his band, which again includes bassist Richard Cousins, whose association with Cray goes all the way back to the group’s 1980 debut release.

The set starts off at an ambling tempo with Chicken In The Kitchen, a rarity in Cray’s songbook for being a straight AAB blues with a double-entendre lyric. The jazzy shuffle That’s What Keeps Me Rockin’ with Jim Pugh on B-3 is another anomaly, Love 2009 rocks gently with shimmering tremolo guitar, To Be True has a slight Caribbean accent and Trouble & Pain features a grittier vocal over Tony Braunagel’s pounding drumbeat, but the core of the album is the quartet of reflective slow numbers—I Can’t Fail, the title track with its Magnatone-like guitar sound, Forever Goodbye, and Truce—that prove to be the best vehicles for Cray’s soulful delivery.

The photo on the back cover pretty well captures the spirit of This Time—four old friends hanging out on a back porch, the fires of youth now banked in favor of an increasingly mature musical approach that’s more likely to grow on you than grab your attention on the first listen.

—Jim DeKoster

 

L.C. ULMER

Long Ways From Home

Hill Country Records – (No#)

L.C. Ulmer is a guitarist from Ellisville, Mississippi, who impressed mightily in the closing scene of the acclaimed documentary DVD M For Mississippi, both with his engaging personality and with musical skills that belied his 80 years. The recordings on this disc actually predate Ulmer’s DVD appearance, having been captured live in 2007 at a festival in Parma, Italy—a long way from home, indeed.

The disc’s first five selections find Ulmer in the company of guitarist Eric Deaton, bassist Justin Showah, and drummer Wallace Lester, serving to inject something of a hill country jam band feel to the music—it sometimes seems as if Ulmer is being carried along by the groove rather than setting it. While these performances surely must have succeeded in getting the crowd up and moving, the balance of the disc provides a better view of Ulmer’s own musical personality. Of these six cuts, the first three find Ulmer plugged in and solo, while drummer Lester returns for the last three tracks. Like the DVD titles, they show Ulmer to be a distinctive stylist, combining a forceful rhythmic pulse with a more melodic approach than most Mississippi bluesman, original lyrics, and a tendency toward eccentric breaks that cause the tracks with Lester to occasionally alternate between amazing synchronicity and sheer chaos. Regrettably, there is none of the delicate slide work that graced the DVD track When I Was In Trouble.

After the initial exposure to Ulmer on M For Mississippi, it’s great to finally have a full-length album available. Now let’s hope that someone can get him into a studio before it’s too late.

—Jim DeKoster

 

SEAN CHAMBERS

Ten ’Til Midnight

Blue Heat - BHR 101

The artwork on Sean Chambers’ latest disc Ten ’Til Midnight proves that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Front and back covers, as well as the inlay, are adorned with modest photos of guitars, amps, and equipment tucked away in a dimly lit music room, a place that you just know has had the paint peeled off the walls courtesy of some wicked jam sessions. Chambers’ brand of blues parallels the images—his music is a no-frills blend of Chicago, Texas, and Delta styles, played with an understated sense of ferocity. Sean came to wail, and he does so with a transparent sense of devotion and scholarship to the music he plays so well.

Chambers’ guitar tone contains echoes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, but whispers of other masters creep in as well. Johnny Winter figures into the mix, both tone-wise and in the irreverent, free-spirited delivery of Chambers’ vocal style. Sean has just the right amount of whisky-soaked inflection in his voice and electricity flowing through his fingers to nail the stubborn groove of Luther Allison’s All The King’s Horses and pummel ZZ Top’s Brown Sugar.

The covers are the dessert, but the main course of Chambers’ original material also satisfies. He’s able to spill his soul all over the floor with tracks like minor-key shredfest In The Winter Time, never overstepping the boundaries of the power trio with which he performs. The ambitious slide work on the breakneck shuffle You’re Gonna Miss Me is the perfect balance between Muddy Waters and George Thorogood, while the acoustic, foot-stomping Delta drone of I Don’t Know Why conjures visuals of a sweltering Mississippi afternoon. Chambers’ strengths in both electric, Hendrix-inspired fret fury and nimble, rural-flavored acoustic material show both his versatility and traditional approach to his music.

Sean Chambers plays with an inner fire that seems to only burn hotter the deeper you get into the disc. Ten ’Til Midnight is bound to perk up some ears.

—Mark Uricheck