V.A. - Mistakes Were Made: Five Years Of Raw Blues, Damaged Livers & Questionable Business Decisions - A Broke & Hungry Records Retrospective (2011)

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“The soundtrack of a people”

A unique journey in the raw blues still played in the Mississippi back-country juke-joints through the recording adventures of the young and creative St-Louis-based Broke & Hungry label founded five years earlier (2006) by blues aficionado Jeff Konkel.

Jeff Konkel is the man who has also authored with his accomplice Roger Stolle three very interesting documentary films : "M For Mississippi: A Road Trip Through The Birthplace Of The Blues" (2008), “We Juke Up In Here: Mississippi's Juke Joint Culture At The Crossroads” (2012) and “Moonshine & Mojo Hands”, a 10-episode Web series released in 2014-2015 (links below). He once explained : “Blues music isn’t just the genre that has spawned rock ’n roll. It's always been the voice of a culture, the soundtrack of a people.” The soundtrack of a people... a magnificent definition !

John Mooney - Telephone King (1980, 1990)

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Don't you steal my Mooney !

John Mooney is a curious man, he's supposed to be an outstanding slide guitarist, but his instrument keeps rather discreet on this album, or at least muffled by the other instruments. For example, on the great opening track “Wibble Whim She When She Walk”, one wonders if he had forgotten his guitar at home ! The song has a very definite New Orleans sound, with a three-piece horn section led by tenor sax man Rich Lataille, and joyfully mixes second line with rock'n'roll à la Fats Domino thanks to the prominent presence of the truly excellent Bob Cooper on piano. He's by far the key musician of the ten tracks of the album behind Mooney's enthralling hot and swinging vocal style delivered by a powerful deep and throaty voice sometimes bending towards vibrato.

Rebirth Jazz Band - Here to Stay (1984, 1997)

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First in the second line

The album opens with a 19-minute track. It's titled “Mardi Gras Medley” so that those who wouldn't know anything about the Rebirth Brass Band understand where the group comes from and what kind of music is awaiting them.

The RBB was founded in 1983 by a bunch of school mates from the Tremé district of New Orleans lead by Phillip "Tuba Phil" Frazier, his brother bass drum player Keith Frazier and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins. As can be guessed from their name, they wanted to reanimate the New Orleans brass band tradition : the marching bands performing at funerals and “second line” parades.

Pat Thomas - His Father's Son (2009)

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“I just sing and play the blues”

His father was a gravedigger, he became one. His father was a sculptor, molding figures from clay, he became one, molding figures from clay. His father was a famous Delta blues musician, he became a Delta blues musician. His father was discovered in the 1970s through documentary films about Delta bluesmen. He appeared in the excellent documentaries "M For Mississippi” (2008), and later in “Moonshine & Mojo Hands” (see at the end). His father was nicknamed "Son", but he is simply Thomas, the son. His father, who died in 1993, was James "Son" Thomas. He is Pat Thomas, really “his father's son”.

Roy Rogers - Chops Not Chaps (1985)

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Not cheap either !

The albums starts on two wheels with the gun shot bang of a killer rock version of Robert Johnson's “32/20 Blues” with Rogers playing slide at an unbelievable speed without loosing control one half second. Hard to recognize the original from Robert Johnson but the iconic rambling Delta bluesman most have felt serious jolt in his grave, all the more serious that there's three more of his songs coming, in the same vein !

Yet if Rogers revisits Delta classics with such energetic virtuosity, this album is clearly a Delta Blues one as confirmed by the three additional Johnson's numbers  (“Judgment Day”, “Terraplane Blues” and “Kindhearted Woman”) and two from Skip James (“Devil Got My Woman”) and Elmore James (“Shake Your Moneymaker”). Rogers also included four exciting self-penned originals : “Hot To Trot/Ready To Go”, “Guilty Of Lovin' You”, “Feel So Blue” and “One More Time”.

Eric Clapton - Me And Mr Johnson (2004) / Sessions For Robert J (2004)

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He and Mr Clapton

Clapton did finally wait about 40 years before paying his “official” tribute to his hero, cursed Delta country blues pioneer Robert Johnson. During four decades, he played a load of Johnson songs, especially on stage, but here he devoted two entire albums to 18 different Johnson songs, roughly two third of the 29 songs ever recorded by the Delta musician.

A special edition of the second album, “Sessions For Robert J”, was released with a 96-minute DVD about the recording of the 18 Johnson's songs, including in one of the very places the young Delta legend recorded some himself (508 Park Avenue, Dallas. Texas). Actually the DVD includes a 19th bonus song : “Stones In My Passway”.

Buddy Guy - Live : The Real Deal (1996)

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A legend at Legends

He baptized his blues club in Chicago Legends and indeed he is himself a legend. At age 86, Buddy Guy has still got the juice and just proved it by celebrating his 66th year playing the blues with a new album ― and a good one ! ―, “The Blues Don't Lie”, released last September (2022) (link below). Before that, he had issued “Born To Play Guitar” (2015) and “The Blues Is Alive And Well” (2018), titles that summarize perfectly the legend of this Louisiana native who left for the Muddy Waters city in 1957.

In a few days (February 17th, 2023), he'll get onboard The Damn Right Farewell Tour that should take him around the world from North America to Australia, Europe and Israel over an eight-month period.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Will The Circle Be Unbroken, 30th Anniversary Edition (2 CD + Bonus Tracks) (1972, 2002)

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The circle is still unbroken

In 1971, the five multi-instrumentalists of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (NGDB), "a bunch of long-haired West Coast boys” as Roy Acuff described them, had gathered some of the best guitar and banjo pickers, country singers and fiddlers around (asked to participate, Bill Monroe would have refused), managing to have them coming down from their mountains or leave their Tennessee or Kentucky ranches, from Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs or Merle Travis to the “King of Bluegrass” Jimmy Martin, Mother Maybelle Carter of The Carter Family, the “King of Country Music” Roy Acuff or master fiddler Vassar Clements, for this celebration of “old time” music, namely country and bluegrass, that was engraved for posterity on this historic triple LP (later re-issued as a 2-CD set).

Earth, Wind & Fire - That’s The Way Of The World (1975)

Soul, funk & groove
Funk, Afro-beat, soul and jazzy horns melt in this rather agreeable work by EW&F. The band had at least two peculiarities : three lead singers (Maurice & Verdine White and Philip Bailey), and most members played percussion besides their own main instrument.
Little song-by-song review.

→ “Shining Star”  is most appropriately titled : it's one of the shining stars of the album indeed, a track of pure funk with an Afro-flavored bubbling guitar intro and nice lead guitar solos (Al McKay, Johnny Graham), R'n'B style horns, appealing harmony vocals by Maurice & Verdine White and Philip Bailey, a good dancing title with a chorus a little too disco though. You already notice Verdine's efficient bass, one of the backbones of EW&F's funk.

C.W. Stoneking - King Hokum (2005)

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More vintage than vintage !

The first track opens with crows cawing in the distance. Suddenly, on the front porch, an old man starts to play an antic acoustic guitar and sings a country blues with a hoarse scratching voice. But the album cover shows a rather young man holding a National Steel guitar on his lap and wearing a back hat and a black suit, with a black bow tie around a snow white shirt's neck like he's just back from the Sunday office at the local church in the 1920s or 30s'.

Is it the re-issue of an old 78-rpm recorded a long time ago by an obscure country blues musician ? No, this reincarnation of a pre-war Deep South bluesman is Mr. C.W. Stoneking, a young Australian of 31 at the time, who amazingly sounds as vintage as most of the early 20th century musicians who influenced him.