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.

John Hammond - Found True Love (1995)

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The preserver

I already heard mean minded persons insinuate that John Hammond Jr. wouldn't have become a name on the blues scene if he hadn't been the son of his father, i.e. John Hammond Sr., legendary talent discoverer and producer at Columbia Records. This is not only unfair and untrue but, worse, stupid. Do they also insinuate Jane Fonda's only talent is to be Henry's daughter ?!

From his father though, Hammond Jr. undoubtedly inherited a gift for getting acquainted with still unknown but promising musicians with whom he performed and recorded. Among many others : Hendrix , Clapton, Tom Waits, Mike Bloomfield, Duane Allman or Levon Helm (future member of The Band, the group Hammond recommended to Dylan)...

U.P. Wilson, chapter one - Whirlwind: 20th Anniversary Reissue (remastered+7 bonus tracks) (2016)

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One hell of a Texas blues album !

Born in 1934 around Shreveport, Louisiana, Huary Perry Wilson and his family soon moved to Dallas. In the late 1970s he relocated to Fort Worth and performed in local clubs and blues bars with musicians like drummer-singer Robert Ealey in a band called "Boogie Chillun" that became the main attraction of the New Bluebird club. Inspired by guitarists like ZuZu Bollin, Lightnin' Hopkins' cousin Frankie Lee Sims and Cornell Dupree, Wilson slowly built a solid guitar-slinger reputation on stage even while he hadn't recorded any album yet ! He had to wait 1987 to be given the possibility to do so and his debut record, "On My Way" came out in 1988, four years after SRV debut "Texas Flood".

There are similarities between both men, starting by their sound signature and amazing technical virtuosity, but we won't enter the endless quarrel about which one influenced the other, though the truth might just be found in their age difference (Wilson being born twenty years earlier).

Last Chance Jug Band - Shake That Thing ! (1997)

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The jug, the kazoo and the early blues

An ethnomusicologist and a professor at the University of Memphis and the University of Mississippi, and the author of several books about early country blues, Dr David Evans has followed the path of researchers like Alan Lomax, making numerous field recordings of roots music, blues and related genres. But he also practices what he teaches and writes about : in 1989, he founded the Last Chance Jug Band to revive a style of music very popular in the early twentieth century and first recorded in the 1920s, and the band released a first album in 1997,  the one we're reviewing here.

Steve James - American Primitive (1994)

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Back to the early roots of blues

The album's title, "American Primitive", announces what's on the menu : old times jug blues. James decided to devote a full record to a hundred years old style, when guitar had not yet totally taken advantage over banjo or to a lesser extent over mandolin. This voyage into the origins of country blues, and especially of the East-Coast Piedmont rag style famous for its complex guitar picking, is pure jubilation.

There's here a lot of things inherited from early rural folk tradition and even bluegrass. James' guitar is coupled to Danny Barnes' banjo and Rubin' stand-up bass reminds the times when a simple broomstick equiped with a single string attached to a washtub was used as a bass (remember the front cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Willy and the Poor Boys" ?). Primich' harmonica complete this 100% Texan line-up.

Update > Richard Ray Farrell - At Cambayá Club: Caleta Rock (2013) / Shoe Shoppin' Woman (2014) / Three Pints Of Gin (2020)

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The Bohemian bluesman

Richard Ray Farrell (RRF) has led quite a bohemian life. He left his native New York State in 1976 to seek fortune in Europe. After busking in the Paris subway (a real breeding-ground for future talents, at least at that time) for a few years, spending time in Spain around 1978, settling down for a few years in Stuttgart (Germany) in the mid-1980s, playing in different bands, he finally found himself backing an array of Afro-American blues musicians on their European tours in the beginning of the 1990s : Louisiana Red, Big Jack Johnson, Lazy Lester, Big Boy Henry, and more particularly Frank Frost and R.L. Burnside, who were like first-hand mentors to him. This led him to record a first album in 1992 which definitely launched his career.

Kelly Joe Phelps - Tap The Red Cane Whirlwind (2004)

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Golden fingers and tortured soul

The late Kelly Joe Phelps disappeared last may 2022 after being affected for several years by a nerve disorder in his right arm, called "ulnar neuropathy", resulting in partial or total incapacity to use his right hand and preventing him to play. Of all, this rare disease had to fall on him, one of the most brilliant acoustic guitar players ! Did this tortured man commit suicide ? The rumor has circulated since the public announce of his death didn't mention any precise cause.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - Blackjack (1977)

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Gate, the old Texas swing crocodile

If it was just for the incredible "Street Corner", this album would be a must ! But there's a whole lot of other amazing tracks which make of this record a concentrate of "Gate"'s brilliant musical wizardry and jubilating swing. His inimitable jazzy mix of Texas swing, jump blues and swampy country music sounds like nothing else in Southern music, and his agility on any instrument he touches is simply astonishing. Gate could play guitar, violin and harmonica, but also viola, mandolin and mandola ! This guy was a real phenomenon in the post-war musical landscape, a true giant. And a guy full of humor too.

This album starts with "Here Am I", a swinging title carried by horns and showing his typical unusual finger attack on the strings of his fetish 1966 Gibson Firebird guitar. The following "Tippin' In" sees Don Buzard's pedal steel guitar coming in accompanied by an unusual flute (Bobby Campo). On the blues "Song For Renee (Gate's Tune)", Gate demonstrates his skills on violin while Rod Roddy's piano rolls down, along with Campo's flute again.

Blind Lemon Jefferson - That Black Snake Moan (2008)

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Blind Lemon's moan

Only one known photography of him exists and his recording career spread over just a short four-year period, during which he cut about a hundred songs (some re-recorded several times). Like for most of the early bluesmen/women of the same period the details of his life remain obscure and legend sometimes replaces historical facts. Despite the "famous" awful quality of the 78 rpm discs produced by Paramount Records, his influence on blues music was tremendous and durable.

Born in September 1893 in a small rural community around Streetman, Texas, near Wortham, about 120 km south east of Dallas, Lemon Henry Jefferson led the classic early life of many country bluesman at that time : learning to play guitar in his teens, playing at picnics, parties and other gatherings, later busking in Dallas, where he met and played with Leadbelly (before he went to jail) in the early 1920s. Though Leadbelly was the elder, he was impressed by BLJ's virtuosity on guitar and later wrote the tribute song "Blind Lemon's Blues". It is almost certain that BLJ traveled to the Mississippi Delta and Memphis, and probably further.