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.

Whatever you call it, Western swing or Country jazz, it's a fine album that announced the future adventures of Ellis with Duke Robillard a few years later on their two "Conversation in Swing Guitar" albums.

Though it was recorded in 1992 (Ellis was 71 then) near Austin in Spicewood, the  town name unfortunately didn't push Ellis and his musicians to add a bit more spices that would have made their work taste hotter ! That's the only regret we might have about this fine but maybe too restrained album. ☻

The videos
■ Audio : "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli : https://youtu.be/mpO5xIltlyU
■ Audio : Herb Ellis & Duke Robillard : https://youtu.be/21Sdiq7dsnc
■ "Georgia (On My Mind)", Herb Ellis with Tal Farlow and Charlie Byrd : https://youtu.be/KTnIM5TlfAM
■ Jazz guitar wizards Barney Kessel, Charlie Byrd and Herb Ellis with Joe Byrd on bass and Chuch Redd on drums, North Sea Jazz Festival, The Hague (Netherlands), 1982 : https://youtu.be/qvr8hBkYEFo

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Pat Boyack & The Prowlers - Breakin' In (1994)

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Buoyant Boyack

Forty years ago, Stevie Ray Vaughan set a new standard for modern Texas blues, influencing a new generation of blues musicians, not only in Texas. Pat Boyack, from Utah, is one of them. But far for being a mere imitator, he has developed his personal energetic style, a mix of Texas blues, Delta blues with a Hill Country-like raw flavor, jump blues and swing, melted into muscular rock'n'roll.

His band, The Prowlers, is mainly a bass-drum combo delivering a solid rock beat on which guitar-slinger Boyack can lean entirely to put out some killing guitar while Jimmy Morello is doing a perfect job either in charge of the vocals or of the writing or co-writing of most of the songs, the other songwriter being bassist John Garza who signs or co-signs four titles. Boyack himself authored the great instrumental "Lover's Rhumba", one of the top tracks of the album.

If some SRV bits can be heard here and there ("Gas Station Man", "Operator"), it's Boyack's own powerful blues-rock style which dominates on energetic titles like the rock'n'rolling "She Did The Do", the hypnotic "Happy At Home", the hot swinging rockabillies "The Girl, She's Crazy" and "Sadie Drinks Whiskey", the final r'n'b "Give My Love All To You". Unfortunately the band oddly falls into a heavy metal trap with the aggressively roared "She A Devil", a track that frankly shouldn't be there…

Despite this tasteless swerve, this resolutely rocking debut album will take you off the lazy comfort of your sofa. ☻

The videos
■ Dallas, 2015 : https://youtu.be/ir0Vv3HjLxg
■ Fred's, Fort Worth, 2016 : https://youtu.be/JYTZ2yL8gTs
■ Babb's Bros BBQ, Dallas, 2017 : https://youtu.be/OBoXiHE4ypk
■ Bedford Blues Fest., Texas, 2017 : https://youtu.be/tmjfaFt0aA8

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Buckwheat Zydeco - Down Home Live! (Thanksgiving At El Sid O's) (2001)

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Buckwheat live & hot at home

“Are you ready for Zydeco ? Are you ready ?!” For his return in his native Lafayette, at the famous El Sid O's Zydeco and Blues Club, for the last Thanksgiving of the millennium, Stanley Dural aka Buckwheat Zydeco and his hot band came down with just one objective : make people dance and dance and dance. And that's exactly what they did. Dural and his men forgot to leave their energy at home  : the 11-piece combo gives all on this sacred American day. Lee Allen Zeno (bass), Kevin Menard (drums) and Sir Reginald 'Master' Dural (rubboard) deliver a hell of a funky beat while the four-piece horn section (Curtis Watson and Calvin Landry on trumpet, Gray Mayfield and Paul Wiltz on sax) blows out sparkling riffs melting with Dural's accordion, and the three guitarists (Melvin Veazie, Paul 'Lil' Buck' Sinegal and the excellent Michael Melchione) knit exciting swinging rhythms and/or stand out for fine solos.

On accordion, organ and vocals Dural, just turned 53 a few days before, puts all of his usual energetic road-tested showmanship in the party, calling out the audience to dance with incessant “Hey fellers !”, “Hey toi !”, “Everybody feeling good ? !”, “Everybody feeling alright ? !” and other various callings, asking people to sing choruses with him, for example on the iconic Louisiana songs : Fats Domino's nostalgic "Walking To New Orleans”.

The band embarks for some of his most dancing Louisiana style R'n'B numbers : “What You Gonna Do?”, “Hard To Stop”, “Trouble”, “Make A Change”, “Put It In The Pocket” (with amazing hypnotic swinging rhythm guitar most likely by Paul 'Lil' Buck' Sinegal), “Out On The Town” (“get on this dance-floor and I'm gonna talk to YOU !”), all in outstanding versions. The party closes on a 13-minute long romantic soul slow number for one-day or life-long lovers, “Beast Of Burden“, a piece of choice for blazing guitarist Michael Melchione and for Dural on both keyboards and accordion.

Impossible to forget this is a live, and very lively, album. Extremely exciting !

* Note : In 2007 Tomorrow Recordings released a 100% digital re-issue of the album featuring seven tracks only : “Soul Serenade” & “Beast Of Burden” have been replaced with an almost 14-minute burning version of Hendrix' “Hey Joe”. ☻

The videos
■ The Roxy, Washington DC, 1988 : #1- https://youtu.be/_gRif5fHttg / #2- https://youtu.be/wR6d0D5N-24
■ New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, 2007 : https://youtu.be/OHlHt7Djcg0
■ Full show, Simi Valley Cajun & Blues Music Festival, Simi Valley, CA, 2011 : https://youtu.be/givxl1aEmaQ
■ Full show, Central Park, New York, NY, 2012 : https://youtu.be/HvU2__avYJE
■ "Buck's Going to Trenchtown” aka “Peace, Love and Happiness", XPoNential Music Festival, Camden, NJ, 2015 : https://youtu.be/gnsNiUTZVHU
■ “Walking to New Orleans”, Regatta Bar, Cambridge, MS, 2015 : https://youtu.be/wFVWuQNtOmY
■ "Hey Joe", Rahway, NJ, 2015 : https://youtu.be/I591sY3KX9w
■ New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, May 2016 (4 months before Dural's death) : https://youtu.be/aornZsKUPwI

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Doug MacLeod - A Little Sin (2002)

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A little sin but a big album

Another fine one from Doug. With just a guitar, an acoustic bass and percussion, he's standing right in the story-telling tradition of his illustrious country blues elders, the Robert Johnson, John Hurt, Fred McDowell and so many more… Little stories out of daily events and ordinary emotions that relate to people. Add to that the great sound he draws from his guitar, dobro or steel body, the dynamic groove of the trio, his warm soulful voice, and you start to get an idea of the very identifiable Doug MacLeod style, perfectly illustrated by this superb album.

Twelve nice songs and almost as many outstanding moments  among which the great hard-swinging opening “Big City Woman”, the superb vintage slide job and soul vocals on the title track “A Little Sin”, the shuffling “East Texas Sugar”, the melancholic “Pretty As Pretty Can Be”, the enthralling slide sound and primitive beat of the hot “Plowin' Mule”, the fast-picked guitar on the excellent “High Spending Woman”, the boogieing “If I Had Good Sense” enlightened by great flashes of solo lines on the strings...

And icing on the cake, the almost 11-minute talking-blues “The New Panama Limited”, that became a MacLeod trade-mark, belongs to the old train songs tradition bringing back images of traveling musicians and hobos, a hypnotic number with a repetitive old train tempo on MacLeod's steel resonator guitar.

MacLeod has a gift to make you travel through time and bring you almost a century back in the Delta. A great piece of blues from an authentic bluesman who never overplays. If you still believe acoustic country blues is rather boring, just listen to this and you'll change your mind ! ☻

The videos
■ Check the YT links featured on : https://onurblues.blogspot.com/2022/05/doug-macleod-utrecht-sessions-2008.html

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Eddie Kirkland - Pick Up The Pieces (1980)

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The gypsy of the blues

I've had this album for quite some time. It's solid Detroit blues of the best kind. Kirkland is great both on guitar and harmonica, is a soulful singer and has an appealing sound of his own. The titles on this 2011 CD release (including three extra unreleased and an alternate version of the title track) are as energetic as Kirkland's voice is powerful. A superb piece of Motor City soulful electric blues with a nice touch of funk at times.

His early life, looking like coming out of a Dickens' novel, deserves a few lines. He was born in 1923 in Kingston, Jamaica. His mother was 11 years old ( !) at his birth and he was raised believing she was his sister until she revealed the truth to him in his early twenties. He and his sister/mother soon migrated to the US in Alabama. At age 12, he left home by hiding in a truck belonging to a Medicine Show. He stayed with the show for about a year, singing along Mary McClain (who wasn't yet dubbed "Diamond Teeth"). That's probably why he was himself dubbed the Gypsy of the Blues. Unless it came from his wearing bandanas over his head…

He joined the US Army during World War II but was discharged in 1943 and headed to Detroit where he met and started to play with John Lee Hooker as second guitarist a few years later. From 1953 he started to record singles under his own name or as Eddie Kirk while still working as Hooker's road manager. In 1962 when Hooker went to tour overseas without him, Kirkland was in Macon, Georgia, where he met Otis Redding. He began performing with Redding as his guitarist and show opener.

Discouraged by the flop of his last single (“The Hawg”, released in 1963 as Eddie Kirk) and by the music industry in general, he left music for a few years, working as a car mechanic to support his growing family. Until 1970 when ethnomusicologist and record producer Peter B. Lowry persuaded him to come back to music and recording. This time his career was definitely launched and he recorded a good dozen studio albums and toured extensively in the US and abroad for the next 40 years.

In 2011, at 87, the morning after a performance near Tampa, Florida, Kirkland was killed in a car accident, hit by a Greyhound bus. ☻

The videos
■ The Roxy, Washington DC, circa 1988 (Kirkland jumps on stage at 11 :35) : https://youtu.be/dTsmCu3UUS0
■ Sometime in the 1990s : https://youtu.be/axTv3ZwAtn8
■ With the Energy Band, Hartford, CT, 1999 : https://youtu.be/Q2NFQQn2WOU
■ Blues Special Club, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2000 : https://youtu.be/4yVfsd17yK8
■ Banana Peel blues club, Ruiselede, Belgium (with Wentus blues band from Finland), 2008 : https://youtu.be/qyq3tbitIvc
■ "Done Somebody Wrong" (with Barry Darnell and the Mobile Slim Band), Macon, GA, 2009 : https://youtu.be/HDqOB8-jUmg
■ Blues Béjar Festival, Spain, 2009 : - #1 : https://youtu.be/zN7ooCub-2I - #2 : https://youtu.be/sM2BvFRHbEk - #3 : https://youtu.be/qzdyWZ1CA-k
■ “Democrat Blues”, Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, OH, 2010 : https://youtu.be/nL-PShQLKvk

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Johnny Cash - Man In Black: The Very Best Of Johnny Cash (2002)

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The rebel lonesome cowboy

This beautiful compilation exhales a diffuse feeling of sorrow, that of a man torn between his addictions (alcohol, pills) and his Christian faith and empathy for the outcast, the mistreated-by-life, all those born on the wrong side of the track (the poor, the prisoners, the spoliated Native Americans…),  as he sings in “Man In Black” (his own “Sermon on the Mount”), that of a social rebel with a bad boy look, enhanced by his black clothes, his somber baritone voice and his (unjustified) jailbird reputation, and for whom singing was a vital attempt to redemption.

Though he was a country musician, Cash (1932-2003) was a bluesman in spirit. The 40 tracks of this double CD offer an almost complete musical portrait of the poor lonesome outlaw singing cowboy (“(Ghost) Riders In The Sky”) who wrote over a thousand songs and released dozens of albums.

All the facets of the Cash diamond are here : his typical train shuffle cowboy songs like “Don't Take Your Guns To Town”, “Five Feet High And Rising”, “The Rebel-Johnny Yuma“, “Tennessee Flat-Top Box”, the excellent Tex-Mex “Ring Of Fire” or “A Boy Named Sue”; his duet with his wife June Carter (“Jackson”“If I Were A Carpenter”), with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson (the superb “Highwayman”), with Bob Dylan (their magnificent version of “Girl From The North Country”), with U2 (“The Wanderer”); his gospel titles (“Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)”; his pro-Indians songs (“The Ballad Of Ira Hayes”); his jail performances (“Folsom Prison Blues”). This compilation also includes the famous “I Walk The Line”, the rocking “Get Rhythm”, and other classics...

A talented story-teller, Cash embodied the eternal rebel side of the freedom-seeking pioneer, which explains the long successful career of the Man in Black. ☻

The videos
To illustrate this, because a short video is better than a long speech, I picked up some moments of his musical life : his first years with some 1950s TV appearances  [https://youtu.be/ZGI9z090m80] and a 1959 performance on the Town Hall Party TV program [https://youtu.be/sz-rcTuTUb4]. His famous concerts for the prisoners are featured in two videos : at the San Quentin prison in 1969  [https://youtu.be/PSLsfwTbo4Q] and at the Soledad prison in 1980 [https://youtu.be/-MBvhMjVg28]. I also chose a performance in Los Angeles in 1973 [https://youtu.be/w17li94ZlAY], the 1980 “25 years concert” with many guests [https://youtu.be/NW0JLgrZ1Vo], his appearances at the International Festival of Country Music in Germany in 1985  [https://youtu.be/Dzou4tarhsY] and at the Montreux Jazz & Blues festival in 1994 [https://youtu.be/mmSObDRLIfs].
His last years are illustrated by a concert in Germany (Düsseldorf) in 1997  [#1 : https://youtu.be/rPbdunPp2vQ & #2 : https://youtu.be/Rzrt-HfyU30], the 1999 “Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash Farewell Concert” in New York [https://youtu.be/13cAmU7xXkc], and finally a deeply moving document : his final live appearance, two months before his death in 2003 [https://youtu.be/kZumCv5xgQ8].
I also think this documentary from Thom Zimny would be interesting. It's titled “The Gift : The Journey of Johnny Cash” : https://youtu.be/YRIrVmATsXQ
To finish, Johnny Cash acted in numerous TV films and series episodes but in two movies only. Here he is playing a rough criminal named Johnny Cabot in “Five Minutes to Live” directed by one Bill Karn in 1961 (re-titled “Door-to-Door Maniac” for a re-release in 1966) : https://youtu.be/lhhOLscStew or https://youtu.be/bpzxgXUZIDQ

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Little Toby Walker - Cool Hand (2002)

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Give me that on line walker

The speedy “It's Tough” opens this 15-track album like an acoustic rock with astonishing technique, powerful raw vocals and humorous lyrics. Walker's fingers are running as fast on the neck as the Chevrolet he's singing about while his right hand knits a unique finger-picking. It drives you to dance right away. Walker is a kind of acoustic guitar-slinger doubled with a stand-up comedy man on some songs !

On the next equally humorous title, “Sleeping Alone”, he's gives a demonstration of his slide ability in a more classic Delta style that he learned straight from the source from old Mississippi guitar pickers like Eugene Powell, Jack Owen, James “Son” Thomas or Wade Walton. With guitarists Turner Foddrell (Virginia) or Etta Baker (North Carolina), he also studied the complex Piedmont finger-style that he transmits nicely in the following ragtime instrumental “Swing Bean”, and further in the album in “Blind Man's Bluff”, a mix of Blind Blake's and Blind Lemon Jefferson's styles.

The whole album is in the same vein. Actually this was his last one under the name “Little Toby Walker” : with this recording he won his spurs and the credibility to release his following albums as just “Toby Walker”.

Some tracks raise from the lot. The hilarious "Give Me That On Line Religion”, a sarcastic charge against on line and TV preachers and virtual churches, is an adaptation of the old traditional 1870s gospel “(Give Me That) Old-Time Religion” (first sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers) and re-popularized in the early 1970s by Hot Tuna. In the same humorous range but on a very different subject (cars again), there's also the long “Ride With You Tonight”.

Walker can also switch to a darker mood with “Pretty Polly” whose sorrowful Irish folk twist is rendered through a marvelous picking style. Or on the tribute-song to Woody Guthrie “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad”, a traditional folk traced back to 1923 as the "Lonesome Road Blues" by Appalachian singer Henry Whitter, and covered by many folk and blues artists, from old-timers like Skeeter Davis and Cliff Carlisle, to Woody Guthrie of course, Bill Monroe, Bob Dylan or Grateful Dead… It brings up to mind images of Steinbeck's novel “Grapes of Wrath” and of Henry Fonda in the John Ford movie adaptation.

Or can he switch to double-entendre on “I Like To Boogie”, or go back to fast slide on “Ride This Train”. In any compartment of acoustic folk-blues, Walker hits right in the target's center.

I've never been disappointed with any recording of Walker, and certainly not with this one. ☻

The videos

■ At the Riverhead Blues Fest., 2002 (with Mike DiGeronimo on drums) :

→ "Ride With You Tonight" : https://youtu.be/wxfTnKttUyI

→ "Baseball Blues" : https://youtu.be/FcQG16SCAtc

→ "Sleeping Alone" : https://youtu.be/jhhhDn61rVA

→ "It's Tough" : https://youtu.be/8_J96O11gwQ

→ "Swing Bean" : https://youtu.be/iEYVrELf9QY

■ At The Acoustic Brew Cafe, 2009 (?) :

→ “Ride This Train” : https://youtu.be/CYQxJyqUywc

→ “Give Me That On Line Religion” : https://youtu.be/2s-9MBiabyc

■ “Blind Man's Bluff”, Keighley Blues Club, 2010 : https://youtu.be/R1uZKmOnH-Q

■ “Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad”, Grey Horse Tavern, Bayport, NY, 2018 : https://youtu.be/V5BAMedlIds

■ “Give Me That On Line Religion”, Our Times Coffeehouse, 2019 : https://youtu.be/hxK0ccajowQ

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Lost Bayou Ramblers - Live À La Blue Moon (2007)

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Bayou pas perdu

For French speaking listeners, this album is a jubilating explosion of Cajun language and culture with most of the tracks sung in Acadian French. A cheerful rural music made for dancing and keeping an endangered community together around its original linguistic and cultural traditions. Let's precise something right away : this is NOT a Zydeco album ! No “Hey toi !” here. We're talking of Cajun music, though there are common aspects between both genres.

Fervent defenders of the original French language of Louisiana, like Zachary Richard, the Michot brothers, fiddler Louis and accordion-steel guitar player André, have founded a very lovable band almost 25 years ago. Just reading the names of the band's musicians ― Michot, LaFleur, Courville, Broussard ― takes you back in the old western provinces of the French kingdom in the 16th and 17th centuries, when people migrated to Acadia in “Nouvelle France” (eastern Canada).

This live album, recorded in Lafayette, capital city of the Cajun country, is a cheerful way to discover the LBR at work bringing back old Cajun and French Creole songs to life, whose titles are deliciously exotic (for French people I mean) like “Talle D'Erronce” (God knows what that can mean !), “Chere ToutToute”, “Dans Les Misers” or “Valse De Malchanceux”...

Musically, the band is very traditional, using amplified acoustic instruments : violin, accordion, acoustic and steel guitar, upright bass and percussion. It's only a decade later that they will develop a more contemporary approach by introducing electronic keyboards and even synthesizers in their arrangements.

For now (2007), let's savour this nice musical journey in their Cajun repertoire and taste the talent of the Michot brothers and their companions.

While listening to this live album, I bet you'll smell the scent of swarming life in the bayous, and fragrances of red beans & rice, fried “boudin”, boiled crawfish, BBQ chicken marinated in Cajun spices, and beer.

The LBR sing a song titled “Bayou perdu” (lost bayou), but this album shows Cajun culture is not. ☻

The videos
■ Festival "Un Pont vers la Louisiane", Pontchartrain, France, 2010 :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/dNOxpmLbePM
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/kca-yzohJf0
■ Tipitina's, New Orleans, 2014 : https://youtu.be/dmjNEZiyBfY

■ Louisiana Music Factory, 2015 :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/5_tJrcRQb_w
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/8tgfbGFXzQQ
■ Two hours set, Lafayette, 2017 : https://youtu.be/IlKa-knh56A?t=121
■ Live on KEXP, 2017 : https://youtu.be/g7NHJdIwaOw
■ Full 30-mn set, Oklahoma's OK Roots Music, 2021 : https://youtu.be/TLcmPDpkBk8
[0:21 : Les Jolies Filles N’en Veit Pas De Moi. 4:23 : Blues de la Bouteille. 8:46 : Hot Shoes. 11:16 : Carolina Blues. 13:55 : O Bye / Bluerunner. 22:28 : Si J’aurais Des Ailes. 25:26 : Tout Les Matins. 28:03 : Hwy 90.]
■ New Orleans, French Quarter, 2022 : https://youtu.be/ndQE7K5sc28

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Mercy - Magic (2003)

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Out from the swamps

Vintage is the word that sticks to mind throughout this album. Yet Mercy is a French band but they sound more authentic than many US blues groups. Mercy is a trio built around one musician : the exceptionally talented guitarist-singer Jean-Paul Avellaneda, a guy who undoubtedly understands the deepest foundations of blues, and certainly one of the most interesting blues guitarists in France and beyond.

Around him are the efficient bassman Bruno Quinonero and drummer Franck Marco, but Avellaneda is the heart and soul of the band. Formed in 1995 and based in the South-East of France, halfway between sea and mountains, Mercy released four albums to date, among which one with Avellaneda's friend, ex-Commander Cody Billy C. Farlow (also available on BD*).

Four in 25 years seems little but it proves the band favors quality over quantity, spending months on the preparation, working and re-working their songs like craftsmen. This pursuit of perfection can be felt on “Magic”, their second album released in 2004. It sounds as if it had been recorded last week because their music is timeless.

Jean-Paul Avellaneda

Resolutely swampy, with Avellaneda's “dirty” raw sound, often using slide and vibrato effects that are not without reminding Creedence Clearwater Revival in its early period, it is rather rocking, with a good deal of fast-tempo tracks like the two opening numbers, the vibrating “Dance” and the rock'n'rolling “More & More”, “Down On The Road” and “Maybe” both featuring aggressive slide, the outstanding “Teamster In Love”, and “Magic Train” that surges right from the bayous. Three mi-tempo tracks enlightened with dobro, “I Won't Talk To Your Daddy”, “My Little Axe” and “Last Dance”, bring some rural still swampy freshness.

The two covers are as different as they are original in their arrangements. Little Richard's “Lucille” start with an unusual intro, continues in a rocking but somewhat laid-back style and finishes with a loud “F...k !”, while Robert Johnson's “Stop Breaking Down” is treated with dobro guitar, tribal drumming and unusual vocals which give the song a unique new roots dimension.

On the 10-minute slow emotional blues, precisely titled “Emotion”, Avellaneda delivers some scorching tortured guitar, that will reminds some of the glorious late 1960s-early 1970s days of Page or Bloomfield... All along the album he reveals the diversity of his skillful playing (electric solos, slide dobro...) and his talent as an arranger. He is Mercy, no question about it !

Swamp blues or swamp rock, it's really a very good album making of Mercy and Avellaneda heavy-weights of the French blues scene. If you appreciate good swamp music, I highly advise you to listen to this... ☻

* See third part of the post on : https://onurblues.blogspot.com/2022/09/special-billy-c-farlow-i-aint-never-had.html

The videos
■ Check this page on Mercy web site : https://www.mercy-band.com/medias/videos/
■ Or go directly to their YT channel (you'll also find audio files of their other albums) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsCWG_Lpib3R6hZLl5XXjKg/videos

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Robert Cage - Can See What You're Doing (1998)

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Cage's cackling blues

Born in New Orleans in 1937, Robert Cage spent most of his life in Percy Creek, a small remote village in the south-west corner of Mississippi, about 15 km west of Woodville and 10 km north of the Louisiana state line. His parents operated a small grocery shop that transformed into a juke-joint on week-end nights. It was there that still in is early teens Cage heard a local blues musician named Scott Dunbar. His mother Carrie had offered him a new guitar from Sears & Roebuck and the boy started to try and reproduce Dunbar style (actually he is performing three Dunbar songs on this album).

After discovering John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, he went electric too and formed his first band at 18 with his cousins Ray Trass and Little Miller, and a drummer beating on a beer box. Because of local alcohol prohibitions they performed mostly in clubs in nearby Louisiana like the State Line Club, where they were the house band. When the State Line burned, Cage and his band moved to the Black Cat.

He later led a band called the Blues Boys, later renamed the Impalas, featuring saxophone and trumpet and playing a wide variety of popular music, including Chuck Berry style rock. But for little money in exchange of harassing tours of the area's clubs so that soon Cage called it quit. He turned back to his original liking for the Dunbar style, playing solo at occasional events.

From the late ‘80s until 2001 he often played at the Hilltop club just south of the Louisiana border with a band that featured his son Vincent “Buck” Cage on bass, and one C.L. Ward on drums.

Meanwhile Cage had got married in 1970 and started to work as a mechanic for trucks and tractors, repairing them in his yard in Percy Creek (an indescribable scrapyard, from the photos !), a life-earning occupation he kept for decades.

In 1997 Fat Possum's Bruce Watson and Matthew Johnson met Cage while trying to locate Scott Dunbar around Woodville. But Dunbar had died three years earlier, and they were addressed to Cage. After hearing him play, they decided to record him and this album, the only one he ever recorded, was released the following year, bringing Cage enough recognition to tour in the US, France and Japan, particularly with the Fat Possum Juke Joint Caravan, and retire from his mechanic job. In his last years, he teamed up with Natchez drummer-harmonicist Hezekiah Early and both performed at the 2008 Deep Blues Festival in Minnesota and at occasional events in the Mississippi-Louisiana area. Cage passed away in the summer of 2012.

The nine songs of his unique album have a very raw unfiltered sharp sound and though Percy Creek is quite distant from the North Hills of Mississippi, they have the same kind of hypnotic and low-down sound as the early Hill Country blues of Burnside and Kimbrough. It is for example the case of the opening track “Get Outta Here”, and most of all of the repetitive electric “Instrumental #5” only punctuated by some “Teet teet teet”. This unique singing twitch also appears in the funny acoustic “Little Eddie Blues” where Cage is cackling like a hen, and again in “Bundle Up And Go”.

Cage also incorporates melodic lines belonging more to folk than blues, a peculiarity most likely inherited from Dunbar from whom, as said earlier, he sings three titles : the melancholic “Liza Jane”, and the two singular melodies of “Easy Rider” and “Who Been Fooling You”.

“How Do You Get Your Rolling Done” where Gage doubles his voice with his guitar has this same Hills Country blues twist, while Cage gives a very personal version of the classic “Goodnight Irene” to close this album. Cage's blues doesn't quite sound like most of the country blues you've heard before. ☻

The videos
■ Robert Cage and Hezekiah Early, Deep Blues Festival, Lake Elmo, MN, 2008 :
→ “Bundle Up And Go” : https://youtu.be/QgunjI5zTuY
→ “Someday Baby” : https://youtu.be/c5ZL67hitz0
→ “Goodnight Irene” : https://youtu.be/N1clRYpH5QI
→ Unidentified song : https://youtu.be/4JQV_cx5Jfg
■ Buffalo, NY, 1998 : https://youtu.be/0_fzYrnblKk

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Shawn Pittman & Jay Moeller - Everybody Wants To Know (2018)

► Get the album at the usual place...

The Okie & the two Dallas cowboys

Pittman and the Moeller brothers are long-time pals. These guys do it the Texas way : hard rocking guitar-slinger blues with nasty saturated greasy guitars. "Can't Get Along With You" opens the party in a country mood, then serious things start with the heavy cover of J.B. Lenoir's “Everybody Wants To Know” and its psychedelic intro which reminds Gratetul Dead's experiments on their early albums. The track is sung by Jay, in my opinion a better singer than Pittman.

The venomous guitar of Johnny Moeller (present lead guitarist of the Fabulous Thunderbirds) comes in on the instrumental "Rattlesnakes". Next are the two solid barn-burning highlights of the album : the cover of Juke Boy Bonner's "It Don't Take Too Much" and the truly excellent version of Luther "Snakeboy" Johnson's "Woman Don't Lie", undoubtedly the best track of the album for me.

The hardly recognizable cover of Percy Mayfield's "Hit The Road Jack", popularized by Ray Charles, is a short instrumental interlude  before Jay Moeller's original "Things You Stole" (somewhere the name of mafioso Lucky Luciano is mentioned). Pittman is on lead guitar and keeps it going on two powerful titles collectively written : "Smarten Up” sung by himself, and the classic heavy blues instrumental “The Set Up".

Johnny Moeller

Sung by Jay, "Dangerous Woman", a Don Robey's song, continues with the same heavy and greasy sound, with Pittman's guitar processed through a synthesizer to deliver an organ-like sound, followed by a muscular cover of Frankie Lee Sims' “My Talk Didn't Do Any Good”. The next short instrumental “Blue Diamond” is followed by "I'll Forget About You", a piece written by "Junior" Parker with Johnny Moeller back on lead guitar. The closing version on Eddie Taylor's "Stroll Out West" stands out with the unusual sound of Pittman's guitar.

Nothing really new in this hard rocking blues album except the nasty sound of the guitars, and Johnny Moeller's baritone guitar which gives a special color to the whole. Quite pleasing to listen though. ☻

The videos
■ Shawn Pittman (with Preston Hubbard, bass & Mark Hays, drums), Antone's, Austin, TX, 2003 : https://youtu.be/gSduwHD4_vg
■ Shawn Pittman (with Drew Allain, bass & Kevin Schermerhorn, drums), Poor David's pub, Dallas, TX, 2019 : https://youtu.be/nBSdHCgIZxw
■ Shawn Pittman & The Moeller Bros., Moulin Blues Fest., Ospel, Netherlands, 2011 :
→ https://youtu.be/p_CPexdCA3g
→ https://youtu.be/Ja0rLsNAxkU

■ Shawn Pittman-Jason Moeller Band, CD release party (with Jason Crisp on bass), Six Springs Tavern, Richardson, TX, 2018 :
→ https://youtu.be/X1evhBAOqmc
→ https://youtu.be/G4TLsqB4pyI
■ The Moeller Bros., Pearl's, Dallas, TX, 2010 : https://youtu.be/zZZd71k0MY8
■ “Steppin' out”, Johnny Moeler & The Fabulous Thunderbirds, NY State Blues Fest, Syracuse, NY, 2021 : https://youtu.be/w7KZrW0DwlQ