livingblues.com

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

 

CD REVIEWS - OCTOBER 2009

JOHNNY RAWLS
Ace Of Spades
Catfood Records - CFR-006

The full-bodied fatback horn fusillade that introduces Drive All Night, the opening track here, represents perhaps the most downhome deep soul sound Johnny Rawls has mustered since his chitlin’ circuit days with the likes of Little Johnny Taylor. The song itself, though, is a characteristic Rawls stylistic melange: elements of pop, ballad-rock, and soul-blues are mixed together into an effortless-sounding (but, of course, carefully tailored) whole.
One of the most notable things about this set is the depth of the vocal textures on offer. Rawls’ own raspy delivery, again melding elements of soul and pop-rock, is effectively multi-tracked in places, and it’s further seasoned by backup contributions from Jennifer and Jillian Ivey on some of the tracks, and by Rawls’ daughter Destini on others. (The title tune, a tribute to Rawls’ late friend and mentor O.V. Wright, boasts arguably the richest vocals that Johnny has yet achieved on record.) Throughout, Rawls’ guitar work is characteristically tasteful yet emotionally intense.
Even more varied than the musical and vocal flavorings here are the emotional colorings Rawls summons. He delivers bassist Bob Trenchard’s caustic social commentary American Dream with a searing meld of anguish and righteous outrage; Live For Today, funked up by a JB-like horn pattern and tough-fingered soul chopping from Rawls himself, is a party-on-the-cusp-of-disaster anthem that Rawls sends out in a leathery deep-soul rasp. He’s A Good Man, a life lesson in the great soul tradition, finds Rawls preaching the truth with focused conviction underlain with hard-won tenderness.
In almost every way, this is Johnny Rawls’s most fully realized outing yet.
—David Whiteis

 

COREY HARRIS
blu.black
Telarc - TEL-31795-02

Corey Harris continues in the pan-Africanist mode, with an emphasis on Rastafarian culture, faith, and politics, that he’s been exploring over the course of his last several CDs.  At this point, in fact, Harris inhabits his Rastaman persona so effortlessly that it’s doubtful whether an uninitiated listener would guess he was North American by birth. Conquering Lion, a tribute to Haile Selassie set to a one-drop reggae beat, features Harris’s lyrics at their most fearlessly provocative (“Remember Mussolini and the Vatican, too”); Blessed Seed likewise praises Selassie’s valor as a freedom fighter. On Backlash, Harris re-emphasizes Andrew Tosh’s insistence that “poverty [is] a crime” while prophetically admonishing black freedom fighters to keep the faith. Columbus (“Christopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar”) is structured almost like a folk ballad, but Harris delivers the goods like an avenging Rasta warrior.
Harris, though, is not merely a sloganeer. Echoing Che Guevara’s famous axiom that a true revolutionary is motivated by love, he celebrates black love with the same tender yet steely resolve with which he exhorts his listeners to fight for justice, exemplifying the phrase “One Love” in every aspect of its meaning.  Then finally, in what sounds like both a tribute to roots and a slyly signifying jab at critics who’d accuse him of somehow betraying his “authenticity” by forsaking his earlier folk-blues persona, he closes out the set with Blues, a remake of the classic “Hate to see the evening sun go down” theme delivered with sun-scorched downhome intensity.  Harris doesn’t abandon his socially conscious role here, either; he inserts timely references, both contemporary and borrowed from the folk tradition, to injustice and struggle, showing us again the cultural and thematic continuities among diverse musical strands of the African Diaspora.
—David Whiteis

 

BIG BILL MORGANFIELD
Born Lover
Black Shuck - 001

It was a full decade ago that Muddy Waters’ son, Big Bill Morganfield, made his recording debut on Blind Pig’s Rising Son (an unauthorized release of some demo tracks laid down two years earlier has also surfaced in Germany), and, after two more CDs for Blind Pig in 2001 and 2003, Morganfield has re-emerged with this maiden effort on his own Black Shuck imprint.
In contrast to the nearly all-original format of his last Blind Pig disc, the emphasis here is on well-chosen and relatively obscure covers. In addition to his dad’s title track, these include Little Walter’s Too Late Brother, Jimmy Rogers’ One Kiss, Howlin’ Wolf’s Last Affair, and Little Milton’s I Play Dirty, along with others from Buddy Guy, Lonesome Sundown, Snooky Pryor, and Filmore Slim. Of the three Morganfield originals on offer, High Gas Prices is a way-tough number with some really dirty-sounding guitar, Who’s The Fool? sounds like it could have come from a late-’50s Chess session, and X-Rated Lover employs an unusual lurching rhythm behind a lyric that’s only PG. Morganfield, whose forte seems to be playing rhythm parts with slide, is joined on guitar by co-producers Bob Margolin and Brian Bisesi, with Steve Guyger handling the crucial harmonica chores, Clark Stern on keyboards, Mookie Brill on bass, and Chuck Cotton on drums.
It’s interesting, and rewarding, to go back ten years and hear how far Morganfield has come since Rising Son—he now has the swagger and presence to bring off a program like this with aplomb, and it’s well worth a listen.
—Jim DeKoster

 

CHICK WILLIS
Hit & Run Blues
Benevolent Blues - BEN 001

This set includes plenty of characteristically buoyant offerings from the irrepressible Stoop Down Man. Houdini Lover and Country Lovin’ Man, with their good-natured sexual entendres, chooging rhythms, and stripped-raw guitar leads, set the tone. Stoop Down Low revisits Willis’s trademark hit, slyly adding new levels of freakiness without ever crossing the line into cheap vulgarity. Willis tells his tale of woe in 1,2,3,4,5 Shots Of Whiskey with classic juke-joint elan, the song’s propulsive rhythms and Willis’s own tough-edged vocals implying that the fun of drowning one’s sorrows might almost make those sorrows worth having.
Willis also, however, leavens the good times with some provocative glimpses of his sensitive side. This time out, he does this primarily by appropriating standards from the Bobby “Blue” Bland songbook: he sounds appropriately soul-torn in his reading of Soul Of A Man; his take on Love To See You Smile, although compromised in places by uncharacteristically stiff phrasing, effectively combines erotic heat and playful affection; his delivery on Millionaire, backed by a brawny horn section, is smoother and more effective for it.  Recess In Heaven was criticized for its cloying imagery when Bland released it in the early ’80s, but it’s become one of his most popular latter-day standards, and here Willis reprises it with an amiable mix of uptown sophistication and downhome rawness. Willis’s own Looking For My Baby, a tale of heartbreak on the backstreets, adds a personalized touch to the proceedings.  (Unfortunately, though, a revved-up version of the country standard Today I Started Loving You Again, with its boxy cadence, clumsily inserted girl-chorus fills, and Willis’s own oddly perfunctory reading of the lyrics, falls short of its promise.)
Overall, this is yet another first-rate set from a hardworking veteran who sounds as if he still has a lot to offer the contemporary blues world.
—David Whiteis

 

TOMMY CASTRO
Hard Believer
Alligator - ALCD4931

Tommy Castro is a man comfortable in his musical skin. Castro’s Alligator Records debut, Hard Believer, opens not with some blazing guitar bombast or fiery blues-rock rave-up, but rather with the delicate, slinky, and caressed groove of the horn-laced Definition Of Insanity. It’s evident that Castro is not here to play the fast and furious guitar slinger (though he can tear the house down with one wave of his mighty Stratocaster), but to create a danceable, rhythmic landscape as bandleader—playing the role of cool cat host to this bluesy, soulful party.
Hard Believer sees Castro, who continues to be one of the most prolific artists in modern blues, bleeding pure Memphis soul. Tommy and the band are a well-oiled machine, crashing through the hard-edged shuffle of It Is What It Is and treading smoothly on the Otis Redding–sounding strains of the title track, drenched with rich, buttery Hammond B-3 flavor. Castro’s voice has never sounded more passionate; the guy manages to drip conviction while still sounding laid-back and smooth. He’s as natural as it gets.
Standouts abound on the disc, particularly the cover of Wilson Pickett’s Ninety-Nine And One Half, in which Castro seems to channel the late soul man’s spirit with sweat-inducing perfection and a burning groove that lasts for days. Also notable is a cover of Bob Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody, which Castro spins into slick, funked-up barroom swagger. Castro’s original material gleams with soul as well, as the rollicking, playful vibe on Monkey’s Paradise displays; Tommy’s become a master of the sly, good time boogie.
With Hard Believer, Tommy Castro solidifies his reputation as soulful bluesman extraordinaire—a guy who sits deep in the pocket but blows you away with just the right amount of guitar bite. His guitar tone fits well alongside the sparkling horn section (magnificently arranged by Keith Crossan and Tom Poole), atmospheric keyboards, and rock solid rhythm foundations. Castro’s Memphis meets West Coast blues is guaranteed to have ’em dancing in the aisles.
—Mark Uricheck

 

THE HOMEMADE JAMZ BLUES BAND
I Got Blues For You
Northernblues - NBM0055

It would be easy to write off this crew of fresh-faced kids as a novelty act, and in fact the mainstream media publicity they’ve received has probably had as much to do with their uniqueness and reassuringly clean-cut image as their musical prowess. Nonetheless, when assessed on their own terms, Homemade Jamz have a lot to offer.
Guitarist Ryan Perry has a smooth, string-bending style that’s sometimes reminiscent of Albert King; his vocals, although compromised at times by unschooled phrasing and a distracting, tremulous flutter, convey an emotional depth unusual in one so young. Little sister Kaya’s drum style is pretty atavistic, but she bashes away with winning enthusiasm; bassist Kyle, the middle child of the trio, is rhythmically confident, even if he still seems to be searching for a personalized style. Paterfamilias Renaud Perry’s squalling harp brings some welcome streetsiness to the proceedings.
Renaud, who wrote most of the songs here (and who handmade his sons’ guitars from discarded auto parts), has managed to craft lyrics that sound appropriate coming from a teenager like Ryan yet also convey adult sensibility. When Ryan sings of being misunderstood and talked about in Rumors, the words address both a universal theme and one that Ryan’s fellow adolescents can immediately relate to; likewise, the pop-tinged Heaven Lost An Angel eloquently captures the tormenting meld of ecstasy and dread that accompanies romantic infatuation, whether youthful or otherwise. Hobo Man, set to a dark, hill country–like backing, revisits the timeless blues theme of the rover who blows into town shrouded in mystery, looking for sanctuary and companionship; Roots, with its hoodoo imagery, likewise resurrects a vintage genre conceit. Neither the ghost of Little Milton nor that of Little Willie John will lose any rest over the Jamz’ reading of Grits Ain’t Groceries, but it’s fun to hear them work out on the tune, and Ryan’s guitar work shows a focus and maturity beyond his years.
Despite the hoopla they’ve received, Homemade Jamz isn’t yet a world-class act by adult standards; but given time and guidance, they have the potential to grow into one. This disc shows that they’re headed in the right direction.
—David Whiteis

 

MIKE ZITO
Pearl River
Eclecto Groove – EGR CD 508

With his vocal stylings reminiscent of Louisiana swamp-soul singer Marc Broussard, and his down-and-dirty blues rock guitar playing, one could be forgiven for mistaking Mike Zito for a native of the Pearl River country he sings about in the title track of his second album for Eclecto Groove. “Pearl River, Pearl River, if you could talk, what would you say/Would you tell how many strange fruit your dark waters washed away?” he sings with a raspy, aching sincerity. Yet one soon learns that Zito is from St. Louis, and that he penned this socially conscious blues meditation on the Pearl River’s checkered history with Cyril Neville. Be that as it may, if Mike Zito is not a literal son, he is a spiritual son—Pearl River is a testament to his firm roots in the musical traditions native to southern Louisiana and Mississippi.
As if to prove this, he takes Sonny Boy Williamson’s Eyesight To The Blind and reinvents it as a spirited slice of Big Easy funk. Zito deftly combines elements of other styles as well, proving the diversity of his influences. Big Mouth is a 12-bar blues disguised as a funky alt-rock jam; his cover of Anders Osborne’s One Step At A Time, featuring shared lead vocals, beautifully blended harmony, and lovely picked acoustic guitar courtesy of the songwriter, has a countrified flavor that provides a nice respite from the hard-driving rock that makes up the majority of the album. Another worthy guest appearance comes from Susan Cowsill on Shoes Blues; her Bonnie Raitt–inflected voice perfectly complements Zito’s husky wail. The album’s most unusual—and best—track is The Dead Of Night; a Zito original, it opens with Zito’s solo plinking on a toy piano, and swells from there into a spooky, swinging groove augmented by Jumping Johnny Sansone’s appropriately haunted accordion playing. The seaside ghost story, which puns on the double meaning inherent in the title, could have taken place on Biloxi Beach—or the banks of the Pearl River.
Ably backed by Lonnie “Popcorn” Trevino, Jr. on bass and backing vocals, Eric Bolivar on drums, Reese Wynans on keyboards, and both Randy Chortkoff and Lynwood Slim on harmonica (Born Blind, Last Night), Mike Zito’s Pearl Rivermade this listener homesick for her native south Mississippi—and that’s a good thing.
—Melanie Young

 

DENNIS JONES
Pleasure and Pain
Blue Rock - (No #)

“A very special thanks to all the open minded blues fans around the world that allow this great music to evolve and grow.” Thus does this Baltimore-born fretman both declare his intent and throw down a gauntlet to purist-minded naysayers in his liner notes.
For all that, though, most of this set will probably sound pretty mainstream to most blues club habitues. Propulsive blues-rock anthems delivered with musical elan and good-natured machismo are interspersed with high-energy nods to the loping, upbeat-accented Texas-to-Memphis shuffle sound (Brand New Day, I’m Good); power-folk balladry (Sunday Morning Rain); and turbo-fueled highway boogie (Hot Sauce). Oddly, though, for a set by a musician who prides himself on his forward-looking eclecticism, there’s nary a nod to funk, contemporary R&B, or hip-hop to be found.
Jones handles both rhythm and lead guitar chores with unfailing precision: his chording is dexterous and imaginative, and he crafts leads that explode with rock ’n’ roll fire yet never cross the line into “blooze” histrionics. His first instrument was the drums, and this is evident in the way he seems to have built most of these songs around their rhythmic structure. Everything from his own leadwork and fills to Tony Ruiz’s hard-throbbing basswork sounds designed to both fit into the grooves and push them to new levels of intensity and drive. Jones’ vocals are appropriately testosterone-drenched yet can also convey breathy vulnerability when necessary.
Whether or not he’s the boundary-shattering iconoclast he seems to think he is, Dennis Jones is a fine musician with solid grounding in multiple styles who is already finding a way to fuse his influences into a solidly personalized sound. His music is both danceable and intelligent—a too-rare combination these days, and one that savvy listeners will do well to pick up on.
—David Whiteis

 

LONG JOHN HUNTER
Looking For A Party
Blues Express - (No #)

Long John Hunter’s first CD in six years is a departure from the kind of raucous Texas roadhouse blues for which he is famous. Producer Dennis Walker, best known for his work with the Robert Cray Band, presents him in a more subdued, musically polished setting than in the past, highlighting the sensitive side of his soulful nasal tenor voice and his clean, keenly melodic way with a guitar, at times suggesting the later work of Hunter’s early influence, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.
“You say you want a Caddy, but, baby, no can do. You’ll drive away and leave me. Tell me that ain’t true,” the Phoenix-based bluesman sings on You Say You Want A Caddy, a relaxed medium-tempo shuffle penned by Walker and rhythm guitarist Alan Mirikitani. Walker, long one of the most inventive tunesmiths in blues, had a hand in writing most of the 11 songs on Looking For A Party, some in collaboration with Hunter. Two gospel-flavored ballads—I Know A Man and You Are My World—were written by Hunter’s wife Gayle in tandem with Mirikitani and former Cray keyboardist Jim Pugh on the former and with just Pugh on the latter.
Pugh is a wonderfully versatile musician whose blues, rumba-boogie, jazz, and pop-inspired piano stylings and churchy organ chords contribute greatly to the set’s variety. Rounding out the band are original Cray bassist Richard Cousins, drummer Lee Spath, and a three-man horn section that blows crisp riffs arranged by tenor saxophonist Tom Peterson. Some of these musicians solo here and there, but they all keep the spotlight on Hunter throughout, never getting in his way and giving him olid, uncluttered, world-class support that succeeds in bringing out new aspects of the man’s music.
—Lee Hildebrand

 

CURLEY BRIDGES
Live At The Silver Dollar Room
Electro-Fi - 3412

Keyboardist/vocalist Curley Bridges has been an R&B journeyman for over five decades. As a member of the Washington, DC–based band Motley Crew (led by trumpeter Frank Motley Jr.), he recorded for various small labels in the ’50s and ’60s. In ’66, he and the band relocated to Toronto; later that year he struck out on his own. Recording activity slowed down after that, but he has continued to soldier on in clubs, mostly well under mainstream radar.
This set, consisting primarily of well-known but not overplayed standards, reveals Bridges to be a smooth-voiced vocalist with a somewhat limited range and an engagingly warm style. Some of what’s here is redolent of New Orleans, especially Bridges’ second-line-tinged version of Honey Hush, which grafts Joe Jones’ You Talk Too Much onto Big Joe Turner’s classic theme. Chris Whiteley’s magnolia-scented trumpet solo on Bridges’ cover of Ivory Joe Hunter’s Since I Met You Baby is also evocative of the Big Easy.
Bridges’ ebullient nature permeates virtually everything he touches here. He transforms Tracy Chapman’s Give Me One Reason, which has become something of a modern-day blues club standard, into a rollicking player’s anthem. He funks up Sloop John B with good-natured irreverence; he even brings some impish humor to 3 O’Clock Blues with his playfully emotive vocals and tinkling keyboard patterns, to say nothing of his use of what sounds like a Yamaha DX-7, which synthesizes human scat-singing voices. Throughout, Bridges’ keyboard work is unspectacular but richly seasoned with vintage blues and R&B lines and licks; his band—bassist Omar Tunnoch and drummer Bucky Berger, as well as Whiteley—provide him a sturdy balance of unobtrusive accompaniment and deft support.
Hardly a major “rediscovery,” Curley Bridges is nonetheless an earnest and honorable musical craftsman who deserves to be better known, and this “comeback” disc provides a welcome, and long-overdue, addition to his recorded legacy.
—David Whiteis