Travis "Moonchild" Haddix - I'm Afraid To Ask (2018) / Texas Toothpick (2020)

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Dangerous Haddixion

Seducing soulful husky voice or hoarse roaring vocals, elegant guitar style without any overdoing, interesting arrangements, with horns or without, rolling mid-tempos, groovy R'n'Bs or tender soul songs, “Moonchild” Haddix has everything to be a top-selling blues artist. Except probably a big label and the right manager. How to explain otherwise his underrated reputation despite about two dozens releases since his 1988 debut, several awards and great press reviews. A bluesmen's bluesman. Fortunately some blues fans' radars didn't miss the light radiating from the Moonchild. About time, the man is no child anymore, he's now 84 !

Boney Fields & The Bone's Project - Live At Jazz A Vienne (2008)

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Shakin' your bones

The pulse of the bass shakes your bones from the first note. This must be the band's secret project hidden behind its name : shaking your bones ! Halfway between funk and jazz fusion (or jazz-rock like we used to say in the 1970s), Mike Armoogum delivers a big sound and infernal beat with his rhythmic accomplice Enrico Mattioli on drums. The outstanding Hervé Samb is hammering a killing groove on his guitar strings while the horns blow hell hot riffs, and Jerry Leonide gets some vintage 1970s Herbie Hancock accents on his “synthesizered” keyboard.

From his stand, trumpet player, singer, band conductor, master of ceremony Boney Fields is putting out a show that could almost make James Brown suddenly pass for a novice. Fields heats up the audience as much as his own musicians, like when he's directing Samb to slow down then re-accelerate the tempo at the end of the 13-minute long killer “Late Comer”.

The Rolling Stones - Blue & Lonesome (2016)

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The happy accident
Who doesn't remember their famous version of Fred McDowell's “You Gotta Move” on “Sticky Fingers” in 1971 ? Long before that, on their very first album released in 1964, they had covered songs by Willie Dixon (”I Just Want To Make Love To You”), Jimmy Reed (“Honest I Do”) and Slim Harpo (“I'm A King Bee”). And Muddy Waters' “Just Can't Be Satisfied” on their second opus (1965).

From the beginning, blues was an old acquaintance of the Stones and continued to be, hidden and ready to set an ambush in most of the Jagger-Richards repertoire. In 2016, eleven years after their last studio opus, the band took the public by surprise, releasing a full album of blues covers.

The time has come..

Happy Christmas !

 to all of you and your loved ones,
with a sincere thought for those who are undergoing constant bombings and freezing cold,
and more widely for all who suffer in this damn world !

The James Solberg Band - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean (1995)

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See That My Blues Is Kept Clean

This is the story of the sideman who got close to match his mentor-leader. The leader was the late Chicago blues legend Luther Allison, the sideman is James Solberg. Both men worked closely together for a long time, first from 1975 to 1979 when Allison decided to expatriate in France, then from 1993, when Allison came back in his home country, to his death in 1997.

Not only Solberg and his group were Allison's regular touring band, but this talented guitarist also co-wrote much of the Allison's repertoire during these periods and brought his skills as arranger and producer. In the second chapter of their collaboration, both musicians released three albums considered by many as the best Chicago blues albums of the 1990s : “Soul Fixin’ Man” (1994, also released as “Bad Love), “Blue Streak” (1995), and “Reckless” (1997).

Between his two stretches of work with Allison, he played and toured with many blues musicians and bands among whom John Lee Hooker, the Legendary Blues Band, the Nighthawks, Elvin Bishop...

Veronica Sbergia & Max De Bernardi aka Veronica & The Red Wine Serenaders : Old Stories For Modern Times (2012) / The Mexican Dress (2014) / Backyard Favourites (2018)

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Roots, rag & jug
Sometimes using the name Veronica & The Red Wine Serenaders, sometimes just Max & Veronica, Veronica Sbergia & Max De Bernardi (according to a confidential source, his nickname would be Droopy !) describe their repertoire on their Web site as “an irresistible blend of rural music from the 20’s and 30’s  : country blues, ragtime, hokum, jug band, vaudeville music and hillbilly, played using strictly acoustic instruments such ukuleles, washboard, kazoo, double bass and guitars” (*). They devote themselves to “keeping this precious musical heritage alive, faithfully reproducing its original sound whilst playing it with a modern twist” (*). This is a perfect definition of the music offered by this Italian duo from Milano.

Indigo Swing - Indigo Swing (1995), All Aboard! (1998), Red Light! (1999)

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It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That (Indigo) Swing*

3 : the number of albums released by Indigo Swing, the number of founding members present on each of the 3 albums  (lead singer John “Johnny Boyd” Boydston, pianist William Beatty, saxophonist Barry "Baron Shul" Shumway), and the number of the other members featured on the last two albums (guitarist Josh Workman, Upright bassist Vance Ehlers, drummer “Big Jim” Overton).

6 : the number of guests featured on the band's albums (bassist Little David, guitarists Danny Caron & Rusty Zinn on "Indigo Swing", percussionist Robin Tolleson & trumpeter Scott Steen on “Red Light!”). 14 : the number of tracks on each album.

2 : the number of words (Swing Revival ) that describe the 1990s musical stream which originated mainly in California, inspired by the big bands of the 1930s-1940s swing era, mixing swing jazz and jump blues (influenced by artists like Louis Prima or the theatrical Cab Calloway) with elements of rockabilly, boogie-woogie, and sometimes ska. This Big Band nostalgia gave birth to bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, The Brian Setzer Orchestra, the Squirrel Nut Zippers, to cite only the most famous, and… Indigo Swing.

Special Cardell Boyette aka Louisiana “Guitar” Red - Nobody Knows… (1995) / Live At The Blues Bouquet (1997) / Down And Out Blues (2002)

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Boyette's the name
From time to time you discover a relatively obscure but excellent bluesman who released a few albums on minor labels and whose existence you didn't even know about, until a friend (thanks to “Captain” Blue DeVille, to give to Caesar) mention a name : “You should listen to this one, I'm sure you'd appreciate...” You obtain a few albums recorded by the “name” and you get a blow right in the face !

That's what happened to me recently. The name's Cardell Boyette (sometimes spelled Cordell), a patronymic exhaling the nice flavor of his native Louisiana, but he's also known as Louisiana “Guitar” Red (the “Guitar” nickname being essential to distinguish him from Louisiana Red aka Iverson Minter).

Born in Louisiana in 1928, Boyette learned to play piano in his youth before switching later to guitar and moving to Los Angeles in the early 1950s or 1960s (info sources vary). There he entered a top blues school : he played in particular behind Lowell Fulson, T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Tina Turner, J.D. Nicholson or Ray Agee… He even recorded a single as Louisiana “Guitar” Red with George "Harmonica" Smith in the late 1960s.

Lurrie Bell - Let's Talk About Love (2007)

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For whom Lurrie Bell toll

Although his life had been marked by dramatic and addictive tribulations, the survivor's character of Lurrie Bell led him to record a fine album for his comeback after years of silence : a pretty nice collection of twelve West Side Chicago blues of the tastiest kind.

The repertoire, all chosen from famous bluesmen from the Windy City like the legendary Willie Dixon, Pops Staples, J.B. Lenoir, Hip Linkchain, Andrew Brown, Little Richard…, is expressing Bell's sorrow, particularly after the untimely passing, in January 2007, of his beloved companion, photographer and artist Susan Greenberg whose caring help in Bell's recovery off his severe addictions was so essential, and just a few months later, in May 2007, of his father, the great blues harmonicist Carey Bell.

Samantha Fish - Chills & Fever (2017)

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Doctor Sam and Miss Fish

Who could believe this young woman, a real preppy daddy's girl during daylight, would turn after sunset into a hot guitar-slinger and roaring singer casting bad spells of chills and fever with her muscular blues-based blend ! Must be some voodoo working here !

Cataloged as a song-writer, Fish didn't write one single song on this album ! Considered as a blues-rocker, she turned her back to blues-rock to look toward the Motown sound, metamorphosing into a soul-rocker. Logically she went to Detroit, the Motown city, to record her fifth solo studio album with members of The Detroit Cobras band and producer Bobby Harlow.

Calvin Russell - This Is My Life : The Story Of Calvin Russell (1997)

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Scarface blues

I won't go over Russell's bio. His life started in poverty, drugs, violence and several stays in jail, as much hardship written like scars on his face, and his redemption through music are documented here. 

After five studio albums and a live released in just eight years, the bad Austin cowboy re-issued his best titles in this compilation, augmented with three new songs : his self-written “Texas Song” and his covers of Bobby Womack's “It’s All Over Now” and Bob Dylan's “Forever Young”.

Dan Treanor, Richard Ray Farrell & The Afrosippi Band - Keepin' Good Folks Joyful (2008)

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Extraordinary ! Exhilarating !

Treanor-Farrell, Farrell-Treanor ? Afrisippi, Afrissippi or Afrossippi ? Or maybe Missifrican or Missafrican ? What a headache ! In fact it doesn't matter, even if personally I would vote for the second proposition (Farell-Treanor) considering Farrell is doing all the singing, guitars and gitjo (1). On the other hand, Treanor has set up and produced the project, and brought the African sound with his khalam, diddley-bow and cane flute, both men being even on harmonica. So let it like it is . Concerning the Afrosippi Band, on this album it's been reduced to the sole rock solid rhythm section formed by Jodie Woodward on bass and the excellent Kyle Roberts on drums, congas and various percussion.

Johnny Sansone - The Lord Is Waiting And The Devil Is Too (2011)

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Johnny Sansone's dark swamp blues

Primal tribal beat, growling bear voice, powerful grunting harmonica, backing band reduced to two musicians (producer Anders Osborne on guitar and/or piano, percussion and sound effects, Stanton Moore on drums)… a very personal somber atmosphere enhanced by profound and often revolted lyrics is haunting this superb album, recorded in just a couple of days in June 2010 at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana.

The Mighty Soul Drivers - I'll Carry You Home (2022)

A special promotion by Onurblues & Blue Dragon

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Mighty groovy

The album starts, the music begins to flow, “I Can't Get Next To You" sings a soulful voice, the groove takes hold of you, you imagine you're in a club on Beale Street in Memphis or in Muscle Shoals. All wrong ! The Mighty Soul Drivers are from... Connecticut  ! And all wrong again, they really can get next to us with this very appealing album. Soul (especially Memphis sound), rhythm & blues, soul blues…, these guys aren't beginners and master their stuff like full-time professionals.

The band is tight around the beat. Bassist Tony Delisio and drummer Peter “River City Slim” Rost put out a powerful funky groove. Larry Willey, Bob Orsi and guests Paul Gabriel and Michael St. George deliver swinging rhythm guitar and great solos. Steve Donovan does a really fine job on keyboards with some churchy organ parts. John Smayda (saxes) and Neil Tint (trumpet) bring that Memphis/ Muscle Shoals sound along with a female background gospel-like choir. And the energetic Bob Orsi tops the whole pastry with his soulful vocals. What else do you need to get up and dance ?

James Brown - Live At The Apollo, 1962 (Expanded Edition, 2004) / Live At The Apollo Vol. II, 1967 (2-CD Deluxe Edition, 2001)

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Doctor Soul and Mister Funk

This review is about both “Live At the Apollo” albums, the first one recorded in 1962 and originally released in 1963, the second, Vol. II, recorded in 1967 and originally released in 1968.

The rude boy saved by R'n'B
Born in an impoverished family of South Carolina, raised in Augusta, Georgia, by an aunt who ran a whorehouse, dismissed from school at the age of 12 for "insufficient clothing" (!), the young James Brown turned a bad boy in his teens. At age 16, he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to three years in jail. Paroled in 1952, he started to sing in a vocal gospel quartet and met singer Bobby Byrd. In 1954, Brown joined Byrd's vocal gospel band, The Gospel Starlighters. In 1955, the group, influenced by Little Richard, evolved into a R'n'B band, was soon renamed the Famous Flames and started to play nightclubs in Macon, Georgia.

Bob Corritore & Friends - Do The Hip-Shake Baby! (2019)

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Do the harp-shake Bob!

Bob Corritore is not only a very talented and appealing harmonicist but he must be a very nice guy judging by the incredible number of friends who accept his invitations to guest on his albums. On this one, from 2019, the list is so long that I won't give it here, it would fill up all the space allowed to me on Blue Dragon ! The main ones are featured in the track-list, and the most interested will find the whole detailed casting here

Duke Robillard & Herb Ellis - Conversations In Swing Guitar (1999) & More Conversations In Swing Guitar (2003)

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Cool, elegant and gently swinging

Very jazzy, a little less bluesy, extremely cool, gently but surely swinging, the guitar adventures of Herb Ellis and Duke Robillard were recorded during the same session at the Lakewest Studio in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, in the early months of 1999 and released on two different albums : “Conversations…” in 1999, and “More Conversations…” in 2003. But both albums would deserve to be re-released as a double CD pack.

When jazz (Ellis) meets his old cousin blues (Robillard), and when the two heroes of the meeting are both superb guitarists, the result of the encounter is necessarily appealing.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Live (2004)

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Swing, swing, swing and... swing again ! 

Lovers of Cab Calloway's mischievous big band jump and swing should love BBVD just as well, especially on this rejoicing live album. The swing revival band, co-founded by singer-guitarist Scotty Morris and drummer Kurt Sodergren in Ventura, California, in 1989, was later joined by a solid cast of horn players, completed with a bassist, a pianist and a percussionist. During their residency at the Derby nightclub in Los Angeles, they reminded the world, in the midst of the grunge era, that it was still cool to swing. Since then Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (BBVD) has performed more than 2,600 shows over 22 years with a streak of 260 consecutive sold out concerts !

The Catch-back, vol. 3 : Herb Ellis - Pat Boyack - Buckwheat Zydeco - Doug MacLeod - Eddie Kirkland - Johnny Cash - Toby Walker - Lost Bayou Ramblers - Mercy - Robert Cage - Shawn Pittman & Jay Moeller

...some that deserved to be featured here…

Herb Ellis - Texas Swings (1992)

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When Herb Ellis celebrates his native Texas

At times, when the violin and the guitar are talking together, it almost sounds like the unforgettable pair Django Reinhardt-Stéphane Grappelli. The two French gypsy jazz musicians actually used to play some of the standards featured here : "Undecided", "It Had To Be You", "Sweet Georgia Brown". But no, here it's Dallas native Herb Ellis with a group of fine Western swing-Country music instrumentists : pianist Floyd Domino, pedal steel guitar master Herb Remington, fiddlers Johnny Gimble and Bobby Bruce, and… Willie Nelson on guitar, not forgetting the two Tommys' rhythm section, Aslup on bass and Perkins on drums.

This 10-song all-instrumental album features mainly Western swing and jazz standards, with only two Ellis compositions. If the final "America the Beautiful" is a disputable choice in my view, the nine preceding tracks are cheerfully swinging without being wild. The exciting sound of Remington's pedal steel is sometimes reminding that of Buddy Emmons on Danny Gatton's two "Redneck Jazz Explosion" 1978 live albums, and the fiddles bring a vintage Country & Western sound on some tracks.

Bobby Parker - Bent Out Of Shape (1993)

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The most famous unknown blues guitarist

The question is not to know if Lafayette native Robert Lee Parker was wearing a wig, it is to understand why he didn't grab his chance and never recorded any album before 1992 ! Soul singer, rhythm'n'blues musician… before all Parker is a great bluesman doubled with a great guitarist, so let's get on the “Fast Train” and see what's in the 11 cars.

First a word about the excellent backing band casting. On the keys one finds Sammy Berfect (accidentally Marva Wright's brother), a skilled musician who played for many musicians like Willy Deville, Harry Connick or Tori Amos ; Lee Allen Zeno (from Buckwheat Zydeco band at the time) on bass ; Raymond Weber (Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Solomon Burke) on drums ; and a solid and experienced horn section : renowned Austin musician, arranger & producer Mark 'Kaz' Kazanoff on sax, Rick Trolsen (Dr. John, Boz Scaggs...) on trombone, Willie Singleton (Four Tops, Rita Coolidge, Nancy Wilson, Lou Rawls...) and Hollywood film scores musician Jamil Sharif on trumpet. These four bring a strong r'n'b touch to the album. Too strong ? That's a good question...

Special Beau Jocque & The Zydeco Hi-Rollers Live - Give Him Cornbread, Live (1993, 2000) / Git It, Beau Jocque! (1995

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Fast and furious

The hottest and funkiest Zydeco you can hear ! Irresistible beat, shouts and yells (huu ! shoo ! bouge-bouge !), amazing (hard) rock-solid powerful rhythm section. These two highly rejoicing live recordings are just incredible ! The best medication against depression !

The volcanic Beau Jocque burst on the Zydeco circuit with his Hi-Rollers in 1991 and instantly became the public's favorite along with Boozoo Chavis, B.J.'s main influence and future rival. Andrus Espré aka Beau Jocque ("Big Guy” in Louisiana Creole) had listen to many successful Zydeco artists, studied every detail of their style and every reaction of the audience, and came up with a synthesis of the most efficient points he had identified, mixing varied genres, rock, blues, r&b, funk, reggae, with his strong crush for boogie. Himself not an very outstanding accordionist, he compensated with his unique energy, his gruff voice and his impressive physical stature (1,98 m, 120 kg), and with his gift as a band leader.

Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram - Kingfish (2019)

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Heavy weight talent
This debut work offers a range of styles reflecting Ingram's tastes and guitar skills. From barn-burners songs like “Outside Of This Town”, “It Ain't Right” and “If You Love Me”, that seem coming straight from Texas and immediately remind SRV or ZZ Top, to Delta blues with acoustic ballads like the innovative “Been Here Before” or the more classical “Hard Times”, through soul blues like the sorrowful “Listen” with Keb' Mo enlightened by fine arrangements around organ waves, “Before I'm Old” and “Believe These Blues”, both with a great guitar solos, “Trouble” and its Louisiana/New Orleans touch, or “That's Fine By Me” featuring nice piano by Marty Sammon. Among these are also two outstanding tracks : “Fresh Out” with Buddy Guy, and “Love Ain't My Favorite Word” mixing crossed influences from B.B. King and Hendrix in a memorable guitar hero solo.

Robert Belfour - What's Wrong With You (2000)

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The wolf from the hills

Robert “Wolfman” Belfour was 60 and had on his back 35 years of hard labor as a truck driver in the construction business when this album, his first, came out in 2000. He had learned to play guitar by himself, first observing his father, then when this one died while he was 13 and left him his guitar, by imitating artists he heard on radio  (Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker…)

Contrary to what's been often said, he repeated many times that he was never taught by his neighbor Junior Kimbrough. Is it really true ? Or was he tired to be systematically compared to his elder ? What is almost certain though is that he was rhythmically influenced by the fife & drum music of Otha Tuner and Syd Hemphill.

Lil' Buck Sinegal - Bad Situation (2002)

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Great little Buck

Lafayette native "Lil' Buck" Sinegal's real name was Paul Alton Senegal. “Sinegal” was a spelling error on his first passport delivered just before he embarked on a European tour with Clifton Chenier. He kept the name. His nickname "Lil' Buck" (for little buckwheat) was due to his short stature. Born in 1944 and raised in a French creole-speaking family, he got his first guitar as a reward from a blind uncle he used to help picking cotton during school holidays. Since then his never left it until he finally quit the blues land in 2019 at age 75.

Early he started playing for musicians like Katie Webster (his first time in a recording studio), Barbara Lynn, Carol Fran, Percy Sledge, Millie Jackson, James "Thunderbird" Davis, Lee Dorsey or Joe Tex. As a session guitarist for the Excello Records label, he worked with Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Rockin' Dopsie Sr. Altogether, Sinegal would have recorded on some 300 sessions since the late 1950s !

Eric Clapton - 1992 Unplugged (Deluxe Edition Remastered, 2013)

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Clapton's block-buster

Since he started in the mid-1960s with the Yardbirds, then with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton had never released a full acoustic album before “Unplugged”. He had of course inserted acoustic moments of his concerts on his previous live albums (Rainbow Concert in 1973, E.C. Was Here in 1975, Just One Night in 1979 and 24 Nights in 1991), but never an entire record.

In 1992, for MTV's Unplugged Series, Slow Hand left his Stratocaster at home and brought his acoustic guitars and his musicians for this unusual experience for him. So unusual that he confessed later in a radio interview that he thought an album of it wouldn't have a chance to sell. Actually “Unplugged” was rewarded by an impressive number of Grammies and became the best-selling live album of all time, a real block-buster !

Special Billy C. Farlow : I Ain't Never Had Too Much Fun (1991) / Billy C. Farlow & Bleu Jackson - Blue Highway (1995) / Billy C. Farlow featuring Mercy - Alabama Swamp Stomp (2011)

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From the Ozone to Alabama

Billy C. Farlow - I Ain't Never Had Too Much Fun (1991)

Billy C. Farlow left the original Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen when they disbanded in 1976 (and immediately re-appeared the following year as the Commander Cody band, in fact the new name used by Cody for his post-Airmen solo career). In 1991 it sounds that Farlow who had penned some of CC&HLPA best known songs ("Too Much Fun", "Seeds and Stems " and the band's theme song, "Lost in the Ozone"), was apparently still under influence. Apparently only.

The first half of the album features some solid Texas and Nashville style rock'n'roll songs that would have fitted well the CC&HLPA repertoire : a Texas swing revisit of “Too Much Fun”, “Love Bandit” (which strongly reminds Dylan's famous “Isis” on his 1976 album “Desire”), “Sit On Daddy's Knee”, “Demon Lover” (starting with a very Rolling Stonian riff close to the intro of 1971 “Can't You Hear Me Knocking”).

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen - Lost In The Ozone (1971)

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”Lost In The Ozone” ?  Cult !

I remember very well when I bought this vinyl LP (at the time) in a Paris record shop a few months after it US release. I was barely twenty and had been immediately attracted by the name of the band and the fancy cover à la Freak Brothers (a famous counter-cultural comics). I ran home to play this strange object and was immediately blown up ! I still have this vinyl today, and listening to it again on CD I must say that fifty years after its release, this cult album sounds like it was recorded last week !

Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen was founded in 1967 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a renowned university town, by pianist George Frayne aka Commander Cody, and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1969. Around Cody were Billy C. Farlow (lead vocals and harmonica), Bill Kirchen (lead guitar and trombone), John Tichy (rhythm guitar), Andy Stein (fiddle and sax), Steve 'West Virginia Creeper' Davis (pedal steel guitar), 'Buffalo' Bruce Barlow (bass) and Lance Dickerson (drums), a joyful bunch of solid instrumentalists.

Doc Watson - Memories (1975/1993)

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The mountain folk master

Imagine clouds of mist hanging around the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, the autumnal russet color of the trees, and a little town called Deep Gap nested below a mountain pass. There lived a blind mid-19th century looking man whose face evokes Abraham Lincoln. He played guitar and banjo like nobody else, and sung old country-folk and bluegrass songs. The photograph of this man adorns the front cover of the album “Memories”. The man’s name is Doc Watson (1923-2012).

Country, bluegrass, folk, ragtime, blues… why bother to put a name on the kind of songs he plays as long as he plays them because they’re just a pure pleasure for the ears, the mind and the soul. His banjo and guitar picking mastery is amazing, and his voice is warm as a wood fire in an old cabin’s fireplace.

John Lee Hooker -1948-1998 King Of The Boogie (5-CD Box Set, 2017)

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The Boogie Man

Most of beginners learning to play blues guitar have started by trying to play a John Lee Hooker boogie thinking it was easy. I did it myself in my early teens when I got my first cheap guitar. Apparently simple, but easy ? Not really ! This apparent simplicity probably explains why JLH has become a symbol of blues itself. Ask any ordinary person not really into blues to give you the name of one blues musician he or she knows, there's 80% chance he/she will answer : JLH.

For blues fans, the problem is different : JLH discography is such a jungle that, unless you're a specialized musicologist, it's almost impossible to find your way between his numerous original early recordings (many of them recorded under different pseudonyms), his albums and the myriad of compilations of his work ! This is precisely the interest of this 5-CD 100-song box set which covers 50 years of JLH's endless boogie since his recording debuts in Detroit in 1948.

Big Mike Griffin - Sittin' Here With Nothing (1995)

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Big Bike Griffin's big blues

It starts with the gutsy funky "Somebody's Been Talkin'", a Little Milton number revisited with heavy bass & drums, groovy horn riffs, pulsing organ and flashes of burning guitar. It continues in the same vein with "Satisfied", another Little Milton song. The third track, Percy Strother's "Love Is Growing Cold", is a slow blues where Griffin's scorching guitar lightnings are entwined with exciting organ parts by Clayton Ivey. The same blood runs through the entire album : rhythm and blues with as much funky rhythm and soulful blues, and a bit of jazzy groove.

Chris Smither - Live As I'll Ever Be (2000)

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The folk-blues troubadour

Chris Smither is one of the talented spiritual children of the great prewar pioneers of acoustic country blues like Blind Willie McTell, Lightnin' Hopkins, Fred McDowell, Son House or Mississippi John Hurt on one hand, and of their great folk music counterparts like Doc Watson or Woody Guthrie on the other. Smither, who took part in the late period of the folk-blues revival on the New York and New England scene, made the junction between both genres. At 77, he is now one of the veterans of a long line of folk-blues revivalists like John Hammond Jr., Roy Book Binder, Steve James, Doug MacLeod or Jorma Kaukonen, which was later continued by younger artists like Toby Walker, Richard Ray Farrell, the late Kelly Joe Phelps, Fiona Boyes, Nathan James, Tom Feldman, Mike Munson...

Jimmy Johnson - Every Day Of Your Life (2019)

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Preaching the blues

I discovered Jimmy Johnson one day in the mid-1990s in a blues and jazz second-hand CD shop in the Latin Quarter of Paris. My eye got attracted by the cover where Johnson is holding a big axe (I smiled at the symbol : axe is a slang word for guitar) and by the album's title, "Johnson's Whacks", so I bought it, just knowing it was electric blues but ignoring it was one of the best recordings of this Johnson. A perfect introduction. From then on, I always liked him. I later got some of his previous and following albums and was never disappointed even if like many of his fellow bluesmen, he had his downs too. This 2019 album is certainly not gonna make me change my mind.

Kokomo Arnold - The Story Of The Blues, Blues Archives Vol.11 (recorded 1936-38, released 2004)

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The bootlegger's bottleneck

James "Kokomo" Arnold is a relatively overlooked prewar bluesman although he was an outstanding figure of the Chicago blues scene in the 1930s and had a durable influence on some of his more famous contemporary blues musicians, the most emblematic one being Robert Johnson who turned his "Old Original Kokomo Blues" into "Sweet Home Chicago", and "Milk Cow Blues" into "Milkcow's Calf Blues". The phrase "dust my broom", which Johnson used as a song title, was also introduced by Arnold in his song "Sagefield Woman Blues".

Arnold was a very innovative user of the bottleneck, probably the fastest one ever to record, developing some unique rhythmic patterns of his own. His influence was notable on slide guitar players, particularly on Elmore James. The reason why he fell back into a relative anonymity after his brief but successful ten-year career is due to his growing disinterest for music !

Johnny Nicholas - Broke Again (1988, rel. 2007)

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The lonesome rocking cowboy

He is from Rhode Island, lived in Ann Arbor (Michigan), San Francisco, Chicago before settling down in Texas, where he opened a roadside restaurant with his wife in 1981 (the Hill Top Café near Fredericksburg, about a hundred km west of Austin). He has founded bands with Duke Robillard and Ronnie Earl, been a member of Asleep at the Wheel from 1978 to 1981, made several albums with Big Walter Horton, toured and/or recorded with an impressive list of famous bluesmen : One String Sam, Eddie Taylor, Billy Boy Arnold, Houston Stackhouse, Boogie Woogie Red, Robert Pete Williams, Robert Lockwood Jr., Johnny Shines, Snooky Pryor, Roosevelt Sykes… He writes his own material. His cowboy look is a mix of Calvin Russell and Tom Waits. His name is unknown to most people. He is Johnny Nicholas and his album "Broke Again" is really a kick.

Billy Boy Arnold - "Blowin' The Blues Away" (1977, rel.1997) / Boogie 'n' Shuffle (2001)

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Billy Boy's blues dream

Once upon a time in Chicago there was a young boy named Billy who wanted to play harmonica just like his idol John Lee "Sonny Boy"  Williamson that he had heard on records. So, after discovering John Lee lived in his own neighborhood and where, he found the courage to knock on his door. Williamson welcomed the boy in and gave him a harmonica lesson. The boy came back twice for more lessons but unfortunately this mentoring was cut short when Williamson was brutally murdered one night in the street in June 1948.

The boy was Billy Boy Arnold, a pure Chicagoan born in the Windy city in 1935. Four years later, in 1952 at only seventeen, he recorded his first 78-rpm single, "Hello Stranger"/"I Ain't Got No Money", for the obscure Cool label with the Bob Carter's Orchestra. Meantime, Arnold was playing on street-corners with a guitarist friend named Ellas McDaniel.

Earl King - New Orleans Blues aka Street Parade (1972/2005)

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The Earl of New Orleans

Earl Silas Johnson aka Earl King was a legend on the rhythm'n'blues scene of his hometown of New Orleans and far beyond. Few musicians are offered a flamboyant jazz funeral parade in the streets like the one the Crescent city organized when he died in 2003.

Here is what I wrote about him in November 2021 : «His discography counts at least three or four times more compilations, collections and other "Best of" than "real" original albums. Why ? Because Earl King put out a good number of singles, and above all, because he certainly had more fun playing live than being locked in a recording studio, be it with excellent musicians.