The Super Catch-Back, vol. 6 & 7 : Papa John Creach - L.V. Banks - Sue Foley - John Cephas & Phil Wiggins - Jimmy "Duck" Holmes - Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers - Waylon Thibodeaux - Hans Olson - Tab Benoit - Jeff Ray & Hurricane Harold - V.A.-Texas Guitar Summit

... they deserved to be featured here…

Papa John Creach - Papa Blues (with The Bernie Pearl Blues Band) (1992, reissue 2015)

One last one for the road
to the next world

I discovered Papa John Creach on Hot Tuna famous album “Burgers” back in 1972. The presence of a violinist (or fiddler) on a blues album was a surprise but a good one. Actually, if the fiddle was one of the primary instruments of Old time music (pre-bluegrass Appalachian folk, early Cajun music, country & western, jug bands…), it was also used in the early times of Blues.

Before WWII, Lonnie Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy in the first years of his career, Lonnie Chatmon of the Mississippi Sheiks, did play violin, and of course later, the great Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.

Its usage declined when amplified instruments appeared : early microphones and amps made violins sound too high-pitched, and it was only after a few decades of technical progress that the mellow tone of the violin could be properly reproduced when amplified. Creach got his first one in 1943.

He could play classical, jazz, R&B... When he joined Jefferson Airplane by the end of 1970, and Hot Tuna, he was over 50 and had already played with famous jazzmen (Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Charlie Christian, Nat King Cole...), and bluesmen (Roy Milton, Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker…) It was as if Django Reinhardt's accomplice Stéphane Grappelli had joined the Rolling Stones.

With John Lee Hooker (left) & B.B. King

“Papa Blues” was Creach last studio album and his first in over a decade. He is accompanied (playing with would me more accurate) by pianist Dwayne Smith and the excellent band led by skilled (slide) guitarist, band leader, disc jockey, songwriter, arranger and producer Bernie Pearl, a figure of the Los Angeles blues scene, who wrote four titles ("Old Fashioned Papa" and the three instrumentals "Sweet Life Blues", "Scufflin'" and "Train to Memphis"), while the other guitarist of the band, Big Terry De Rouen, signed three ("Why Don't You Let Me Be", "Tired of Crying" and "Girl, You Must Be Crazy"). Creach wrote only the title song ("Papa Blues"). There's also two Doug MacLeod covers ("I Think You're Stepping Out on Me" and "Walking My Way Back to You"), "Big Leg Baby" from one Lermon Horton, and two traditionals : "Bumble Bee Blues" and the ever classic "Baby Please Don't Go".

Without great exaggeration it's as much a Bernie Pearl Blues Band featuring Papa John Creach album as a Papa John Creach with the Bernie Pearl Blues Band one. Except that Creach, about 75 when the album was recorded, is in charge of the vocals, and nicely too. Actually he sounds like he's as much interested in singing as in fiddling : far from monopolizing the space, leaving much of it to the band's musicians, his violin still sounds as appealing and alert as ever, his warn tone marrying perfectly with Pearl and De Rouen's guitars, Smith's piano and Hollis Gilmore's sax.

The album cover a varied range of blues styles with equal talent : rhythm and blues (the outstanding “Bumble Bee Blues”, the exciting “Why Don't You Let Me Be”, “Tired Of Crying”, “I Think You're Stepping Out On Me”, “Girl, You Must Be Crazy”, swing (the excellent “Old Fashioned Papa”), mellow jazzy crooning (“Big Leg Baby”), openly jazzy (the instrumentals "Sweet Life Blues", and most of all “Scufflin'”, a nice revisit of Miles Davis “So What”), straight slow blues (the instrumental “Papa Blues”), barrel-house (“Walking My Way Back To You”), shuffle (the instrumental “Train To Memphis”), and finally country blues with the appealing version of “Baby Please Don't Go” led by Pearl's slide dobro guitar very much inspired by the sound of Fred “I-Do-Not-Play-No-Rock-&-Roll” McDowell.

For his last recording, the man with a cap has left a solid blues violin work to be remembered for long. Thirty years after its release it remains as enjoyable as the day it came out. Maybe more… ■

With the Airplane

Videos
► With Jefferson Airplane, Fillmore East, NYC,1970 : https://youtu.be/HACoWdYWTJs
► With Hot Tuna :
→ NYC, 1973 : https://youtu.be/lyjW2AEehc4
→ San Francisco, 1988 : https://youtu.be/n6kIJnZu4IU and https://youtu.be/cKv7rFBrDWg
► With Jefferson Starship, Houston, TX, 1992 : https://youtu.be/eu1Y9AqbXH0
► Solo, Mexico, 1994 : https://youtu.be/_KMQv_sbmzY
► No detail : https://youtu.be/g2SHeQLoHIM and https://youtu.be/Iikmv_M0FRU

L.V. Banks – Ruby (2000)

South side of the blues

I discovered L.V. Banks one day through one of his albums, and immediately looked for the others, which means that I appreciated his blues. Unfortunately I found out there was only one other opus.

Like most of the Chicago blues musicians, Banks was a native of the Delta. In Chicago, he was essentially a regular South Side clubs performer for some 35 years, much appreciated by the Windy City blues club-goers. He recorded a first album in 1998 featuring John Primer on guitar. “Ruby” was released two years later.

A pleasant though rather economical guitarist inspired by the legendary innovative Magic Sam, with a pleasant voice too, and good musicians to back him, particularly Michael Thomas who delivers a great sound on second guitar and Allan Batts on barrel-house-flavored piano, Banks never intended to revolutionize the Chicago blues but just to leave on CD traces of the music he was playing in the city clubs.

The album features interesting tracks : the R'n'B “Ruby”, the rocking “Miss You Blue”, the BB King-influenced “I Love My Guitar”, the rolling mid-tempo “Pipe Layer”, and for the final, a nice lively version of the classic “Love Light”.

Banks is certainly not one of these geniuses ignored by history, but his standard Chicago blues is appealing enough to give it a good listen. If you had fallen on one of his performances in a blues lounge, you'd certainly have spent an exciting night. So I'm surprised nobody has shown interest in this album… yet. ■

Videos
► Nichols Park, Chicago, 2007 (3x15 mn) :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/HffNwBlF9d0
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/o76zup6PuRg
→ #3 : https://youtu.be/-IiSxYKedsI
► B.B. King cover with his son Tré, 2008 : https://youtu.be/QBeoYILSw-A
► Another B.B. King cover, Cool River Draught House, Homer Glen, IL, 2009 : https://youtu.be/qJE_kdfKUSo

Sue Foley - Where The Action Is (2002)

Greasy Foley

Born in 1968, Sue Foley belongs to the generation of young liberated blues(-rock) female guitar-slingers who emerged in the 1990s following the path of Bonnie Raitt or Debbie Davies : Samantha Fish, Ana Popovic, Shannon Curfman, Rory Block, Carolyn Wonderland, Joanne Shaw Taylor, or the late Deborah Coleman and Canadian Roxanne Potvin, two guitarists with whom Foley toured and recorded in 2007.

In the movie industry jargon a “foley” was the person in charge of re-creating everyday noises (footsteps, door knocks, running horses for example). The name came from Jack Foley who was the first “noise man” working at Universal Studios in the 1920s.

Well, on this album the foley didn't go in for half-measures ! The Canadian lady can really push out her teenage girl voice and her bad greasy guitar licks, never short of energy.

She signed nine of the twelve songs, mainly blues-based and often energetic, with forays in rock, country and folk music, in other word what's called “Americana” (or, in her case, Canadana maybe !). In fact, her chameleonic style isn't easy to describe.

Foley lived on several occasions in Austin, Texas, and that's clearly felt in her barn-burning rockers like “Where The Action Is”, “Love Disease” and “Gotta Keep Moving”.

She can switch to traditional rural blues (“Down The Big Road Blues”), to classic electric blues with a pounding version of “Roll with Me Henry” (a Hank Ballard-Etta James-Johnny Otis song), or to a kind of raw electric Delta blues driven to the extreme (“Vertigo Blues”).

She blends acoustic and electric guitars, blues and country, rock and ballad (“Let It Go”, “Every Hour”, “Baby Where Are You”, “Get Yourself Together”, and her version of the Rolling Stones' “Stupid Girl”).

The lady is a skillful guitar player and the result is not disagreeable but two flaws annoy me personally. First, the systematic over-use of a heavy, dirty guitar sound, as greasy as the floor of a car repair shop. The second probably explains the first : the album sounds over-produced (always according to my opinion). I'm not convinced that the unsteady pile of exuberant overdubs set up by producer Colin Linden is serving Foley's music in the best possible way. One last little thing : new is often nice, but not always for long. After listening intensively to the album a number of times, Foley's vocal tone started to get on my nerves...

Nevertheless, among the musicians backing the Canadian and depending on the tracks, except Colin Linden on guitar and slide guitar, one sounds particularly worth pointing out : keyboards player Richard Bell, featured on seven titles where he brings his very special and imaginative style, especially on organ, for example on “Where The Action Is”, “Love Disease” or “Gotta Keep Moving”.

Musical tastes are highly volatile and vary from one listener to the other. Each one will make his/her own opinion. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not quite convinced by this particular album... ■

Videos - a few songs from the album, live :
► “Where the Action Is”, 2016 : https://youtu.be/A3x0YWMEoKE
► “Love Disease”, 2003 : https://youtu.be/mVVXlOqR2es
► “Stupid Girl”, 2003 : https://youtu.be/6shR-ap5glw
► “Baby Where Are You ?”, 2002 : https://youtu.be/ZQZpX6FZtDI
► "Roll with me Henry", 2003 : https://youtu.be/mvEWriJs_Vg

► "Down The Big Road Blues", 2019 : https://youtu.be/BZOGGU_wulo

Cephas & Wiggins - 1981-83 Sweet Bitter Blues (1994)

Keeping the Piedmont style alive

A superb incarnation of the Piedmont acoustic blues tradition (1), whose most famous exponents were musicians like Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake or Reverend Gary Davis, Cephas & Wiggins inevitably remind another renowned Piedmont blues duo, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.

John Cephas (1930-2009) and Phil Wiggins (b. 1954) play primarily Piedmont blues as on the gospel-flavored “I Saw The Light” from the great Rev. Gary Davis, and on most of their ten originals featured in this collection.

But they didn't disregard other blues styles. On this album, one of their earliest work, recorded half in studio half live from 1981 to 1983, the duo is also looking towards Delta blues with their 5-minute long “Tribute To Skip James” (sometimes titled “Sickbed Blues” on some releases), their versions of songs from Robert Johnson (“Last Fair Deal”) and from Delta native Chicago relocated Jimmy Reed through a pounding cover of “Big Boss Man” and a two-voice version of “Running and Hiding” enlightened by Wiggins hot harmonica.

Phil Wiggins today

Some of their own material is flirting with Delta although keeping its Piedmont guitar picking form : “Dog Days Of August”, “Highway 301”, “Sweet Bitter Blues”, and the best example of this blending, “Hoodoo Woman”.

John Cephas (1930-2009)

Cephas' produces a very pleasing clear acoustic guitar sound and Wiggins' harmonica can sometimes breathlessly speed up to a full steam train tempo. Cephas is generally taking the lead vocals, uttering words in a clear almost aristocratic manner contrary to many old toothless rural blues singers from the Delta. But Wiggins' voice can also be heard on their lively version of “Last Fair Deal”, and on “Roberta (A Thousand Miles From Home)” sung together by both men.

The early years

Their compositions are rather melodic, a characteristic of Piedmont blues, which doesn't mean they lack rhythm, like the rocking “Burn Your Bridges” pushing Wiggins to a great moment of harmonica getting much noisy appreciation from the audience. “Piedmont Rag” and the outstanding “Bowling Green Rag” (recorded during the 1981 Folk Blues Festival, as Cephas announces himself on stage) are two rejoicing instrumentals with a slight bluegrass touch, not far from the Doc Watson style.

They also perform two traditionals : a soulful rendition of the great classic “St. James Infirmary”, and two different versions of “Bye Bye Baby”, one sung by Cephas, the other by guest Margie Evans, which ends this nice album in a melancholic mood. ■

(1) The Piedmont region encompasses a chain of foothills running along the East side of the Appalachian Range, from Virginia to Georgia through the Carolinas. Blues is considered to have first appeared as such in this area, shaped by the sound of the banjo and by still-remembered African plucked instrumental techniques, probably reflecting an even earlier musical tradition than the Mississippi Delta blues.

Videos
► "Roberta", Brass Monkey Blues Festival, 1984 : https://youtu.be/8HNGNJS8Bcw
► Dog Days of August", Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Washington D.C., 2003 : https://youtu.be/Mc2BWs8Ilzw
► “Burn Your Bridges”, Great Lakes Folk Festival, 2008 : https://youtu.be/vcsWhOmR-5A

Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes - Ain't It Lonesome (2009)

Don't skip “Duck”

Those who already know “Duck” won't be disappointed. Those who don't have a chance to discover here a very engaging bluesman, the last true player and preserver of a special form of Mississippi blues : the Bentonia blues, so named because he was developed around the small rural community of Bentonia, on the southern edge of the Delta, and whose most famous native was Skip James.

In front of his famous Blue Front Cafe

Recorded in 2008, “Ain't It Lonesome” is his fourth opus, released in 2009. Except a version of Jimmy Rogers' “That's Alright” and of the traditional “Someday Baby”, “Duck” wrote all the material. The words are simple, the voice sounds roots enough, and his guitar technique (acoustic or electric) is more complex than it appears at first. Bentonia blues uses special minor key open guitar tuning, and rhythmic patterns often similar to the Hill Country repetitive form, while the work on the high strings is close to the Piedmont style. This blend produces quite a nice often melancholic result. The country blues played by “Duck” is not something to be missed ! ■

► If you want to learn more about “Duck” Holmes, his now legendary Blue Front Cafe juke-joint, the singularities of the Bentonia blues style, and watch him play live, I invite you to visit this page.

Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers - True Stories (2003)

Dancin' with the Thack

His name reminds the famous 19th Century English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), who wrote in particular “The Luck of Barry Lyndon”, which was adapted by movie director Stanley Kubrick in 1975, but the resemblance stops right there. Washington D.C. based Jimmy Thackery (born in 1953) is before all a guitar man who writes stories, true ones, with a guitar.

Jimmy Thackery

He co-founded the Nighthawks in 1972 with Mark Wenner, but left in 1987 after some 20 albums, then formed a six-piece R&B band (featuring Tom Principato). They recorded three albums as Jimmy Thackery & The Assassins until they split in 1991. The next year, Thackery put together a small band called Jimmy Thackery & The Drivers, who is still alive and kicking though the line-up has known changes through the years.

The band has released more than 15 albums. “True Stories” is number eight on the list. In addition, Thackery himself recorded about as much side projects albums, solo or with other artists like Tab Benoit (two albums together), David Raitt (Bonnie Raitt's brother), John Mooney or former band mate Tom Principato...

“True Stories” is an excellent album, featuring some stand-outs : “Dancin' With The Dawg” with its exciting groove (not far for being my favorite track), and in a totally different style, the impressive cover of Roy Buchanan's superb “The Messiah Will Come” … If only for these two songs this album is worth its weight in gold ! But most of the other tracks are nearly as appealing.

Thackery has worked on his amps and pedals switches to design great sharp tones for his cutting guitar. Technically, he's faultless, constantly mixing rhythm guitar and lead. Behind him, Ken Faltinson (bass, B3 organ) and Mark Stutso (drums, great on “Dancin' With The Dawg”) ensure a tight support, while Jimmy Carpenter's saxophone brings a warm jazzy R'n'B and soul side to most of the tracks. Thackery wrote all but two songs, alone or with Sally Thackery, most likely his wife. The particularity of his song-writing is that the lyrics are generally short, leaving most of the space for his guitar.

There's classic urban electric blues like the opening “Got It Going On”, “Blues Man On A Saturday Night” with Carpenter's sax adding a nice touch between the guitar parts. There's also the country blues “Snakes In My Mailbox” played on acoustic guitar and featuring a retro jazzy baritone sax, which transports you somewhere between Mississippi and Louisiana, and the excellent sax-soaked swinging cover of Buddy Johnson's jump blues appropriately titled “Crazy 'Bout A Saxophone”.

There's the excellent muscular “Too Tired” with R'n'B-flavored sax riffs in the background and flaming guitar by the boss (my third preferred track), and lively tracks like “Being Alone” or “Puttin' Out Fires”. Thackery and his boys also roll through the nice soul “Baby's Got The Blues”, or the less appealing (in my opinion) country-flavored “I Think I Hear The Rain” in spite of its nice intro.

And, most of all, there's the two stand-outs I already mentioned : the boogie-like “Dancin' With The Dawg” has a hell of a groove that I (and my feet) find totally irresistible with the particular beat of the drums and the great guitar lines; and the magnificent nine and a half minutes long instrumental “The Messiah Will Come”, halfway between funeral hymn and total broken-heart despair, on which Thackery delivers a consuming performance, making his scorching guitar really cry. The kind of music that touches you right in the heart and draws tears from your eyes. ■

Videos
► “The Messiah Will Come”, the original by Roy Buchanan, Rockpalast, Germany, 2007 : https://youtu.be/On5372UztI0
► New Morning Club, Paris, 1997 : https://youtu.be/qKtP-_ZzxYA
► With Tab Benoit, Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, 2006 : https://youtu.be/IILatgpqTg0
► Whiskey Store Tour, Bamboo Room, Lake Worth, FL, 2006 : https://youtu.be/LUXTnMscr7A
► Festival International de Blues, Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, 2009 (with guest Joe Louis Walker in the second part) : https://youtu.be/wu4OwsTKf4g
► Bethlehem, PA, 2015 : https://youtu.be/GoovvbvBB3Y
► Stanhope House, Stanhope, NJ, 2017 : https://youtu.be/0-M2Yg13jMU

Waylon Thibodeaux - Cajun Festival Live From The Bayou (1993)

Thibodeaux gumbo

There was a time before the 1960s when the main instrument in Cajun music was the fiddle not the accordion. That was the time of legendary fiddlers Leo Soileau, Sady Courville, Canray Fontenot (who was not a Cajun actually but a Creole), Dewey Balfa… Then came the late Rufus Thibodeaux (not related to Waylon) and Michael Doucet, and more recently Waylon Thibodeaux, a young prodigy who started performing in the Bourbon Street district clubs public at… 13,  and was crowned Fiddling Champion of Louisiana at 16 !

Thibodeaux was born in the bayou country in Houma, just like Tab Benoit, his accomplice in the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars (along with the late Dr. John, Cyril Neville, Johnny Sansone, George Porter Jr., Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Anders Osborne and Johnny Vidacovich). His name couldn't sound more Cajun and actually 25 km north of Houma is a little town named… Thibodaux, a variant whose “e” has been lost through history.

With Zydeco accordionist Chubby Carrier

Cajun fiddler Thibodeaux is also a passionate of Louisiana cuisine. His succulent gumbo is famous though he has no written recipe : “Start with a chocolate-colored roux, throw in the onions, peppers, sausage…” His music is like his gumbo, it's good if the ingredients are good are added in good order. “It’s a mixture : it’s Cajun, but not too traditional, it’s Zydeco with a pinch of New Orleans’ sound, a small pinch of South Louisiana 'swamp pop', a taste of country and a little rock'n'roll to get you on your feet and dance”, he explains.

With Jo-El Sonnier

What he forgets to mention is his deep respect for his Cajun cultural heritage : in this album (as well as in many others) he sings exclusively in Cajun French, a language so exotically appealing to the people of France even if they have a hard time understanding most of it. Through his participation to the VoW All-Stars, he also contributes to alert on the necessity to preserve the fragile eco-system of his native bayou land.

“Cajun Festival - Live From The Bayou” follows his gumbo recipe, from covers of the King of Zydeco Clifton Chenier (the iconic “Big Mamou”, the melancholic “Tante Na Na”) or D.L. Menard's dancing “The Back Door” (sung in French despite its English title) to the emblematic traditional “Les Haricots Sont Pas Sales”. In between Thibodeaux is going through energy-spiced numbers mixing Cajun and Zydeco like “Like A Real Cajun” (also sung in French), the rocking “Blues De Toc Toc”, “Bayou Pon Pon”, “Lacassine Special” and the rejoicing “Josephine Est Pas Ma Femme”, or more traditional Cajun ballads like “La Valse De Tout Le Monde” or “Ti Maurice”.

Thibodeaux's fiddle mingles nicely with the accordion to deliver his rejoicing musical gumbo. Unfortunately there's no available info about who are the musicians playing him… ■

Videos
► With Tab Benoit & The VOW AllStars, White Mountain Boogie N' Blues Festival, Thornton, NH, 2011 : https://youtu.be/HDwk8ukdHS4?t=23
► The Waylon Thibodeaux Band live in 2014 : https://youtu.be/zGW-QyItj1c
► Nightfall Free Concert, Chattanooga, TN, 2021 : https://youtu.be/DfPe4V4RlkQ
► “Sac-Au-Lait Fishing”, with Tab Benoit & Johnny Sansone, Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN, 2021 : https://youtu.be/LPoQNu0JwLI
► Hallettsville (TX) Fiddle Contest, 2022 : https://youtu.be/sBlDNmPomY8

Hans Olson - Hans Olson (1992)

Western winds & desert blues

“Hans Olson - Scottsdale, Arizona - Western blues and original music”. That's the title of the home page of Olson's web site (which is probably even older than this album judging by it's awful old fashioned look !) What it doesn't say is that Olson has a powerful angry voice (reminding somebody like the late John Campbell), loves playing slide guitar and blowing his harmonica (he would be “known as one of the best 'harp-in-a-rack' players in the world”, the site also points out), wrote all but four of the songs on this album, and got the help from some renowned guests as Brownie McGhee (vocal & guitar), Mark Naftalin (piano), Chuck Hall (lead guitar), Jim Lunsford (keyboards)...

A native of San Bernardino, California, he moved to Arizona in 1969 when 17 (supposedly after the shock felt from the Manson's murders and the deadly violence at the Altamont Rolling Stones concert). In the late 1980s, he got more and more involved in setting up the Phoenix Blues Society, later the Arizona Blues Hall of Fame and the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame, and created his own label, Sun Club Records, in 2000.

To make a living, while working on his own material, he also composed music for radio and TV commercials, also doing "voice-overs” work for local companies ads. Meanwhile many of his songs were used in movies and TV series soundtracks.

This album is Olson's fifth one (his very first goes back to 1973) : nine originals and four covers (Blind Willie McTell, Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters, Brownie McGhee). His “desert blues” has a heavy sound on the tracks featuring guests (16 altogether on the album, not counting the backing vocalists).

That's the case on the first two numbers, the nasty growling “You Wish” and “Who's Trying To Run My Life?”, featuring strong bass and drums, Naftalin's piano and Olson's interesting guitar sound and harmonica on the first one, and Chuck Hall's lead guitar on the second. Jim Lunsford's organ gives a churchy atmosphere to the excellent “Radiation Blues” enlightened by Pete Doakley's sax. “Western Winds”, “Golden Rule” and “The Next Car” are what I call “country music blues”, more country than blues, not my favorite tracks but they will probably appeal to many listeners.

But Olson is also if not more attractive on the titles he recorded alone with just guitar and harmonica. He gives a superb piece of slide guitar on his original “Give Me A Nickel”. He revisits Blind Willie McTell's “Statesboro Blues” with expressive vocals over fine acoustic guitar picking and harmonica. He delivers another superb slide guitar part on the medley “Going Back To Dallas”/“Rollin' & Tumblin'” (Johnny Winter/Muddy Waters). He performs two classic acoustic guitar blues on “50 Ups & 50 Downs” and “Cold Outside”. On the final “I Feel Like Going Home”, he pays tribute to the original Delta country blues of Muddy Waters before he moved to Chicago and turned electric.

Neither totally alone nor backed by a band, Olson is leaving much space to the great Brownie McGhee (with whom Olson had toured intensively in 1983) in their duo on McGhee's delicious throw-back and double-entendre ragtime “Come On (If You're Coming)”.

To conclude, I'll point out the general atmosphere of the album : as illustrated by the cover picture, you can feel the heat and dryness of the desert where only saguaro and cholla cactuses and rattlesnakes survive. Western blues ? I'd rather call it Desert blues. ■

Videos
► The Handlebar Pub & Grill, Apache Junction, AZ, 2021 :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/w5lYR5l1VAw
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/rezu35Bbis8
► The Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, AZ, 2019 : https://youtu.be/EQaWgiag8PQ
► Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall Of Fame, Scottsdale, AZ, 2015 :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/8DGUaEbSAjM
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/zZhM2FqSmKs

Tab Benoit - Fever For The Bayou (2005)

Blues for the Wetlands

Cajun singer-guitarist and eco-activist (read about WoW below) Tab Benoit, who has the blues for his beloved native region, the coastal wetlands of Louisiana so mistreated by men and by nature, is a great blues musician who was mentored by such renowned Baton Rouge artists as Tabby Thomas, Raful Neal or Henry Gray.
On this album, this pretty inspired guitarist and scorching vocalist, navigates with equal skills between different blues styles from Louisiana, Texas, the Mississippi Delta and Chicago.

Benoit is from Houma, a little town set on bayou Terrebonne, some 75 km south-west of New Orleans in the wetlands, which is both the “capital” of the Houma Indian tribe and an important Cajun community.

But it's dressed as a Texas barn-burning guitar-slinger that he opens the album with the solid boogie “Night Train” carried by a nasty guitar sound. He then immediately heads back east to the Mississippi Delta for “Little Girl Blues”, written by Cyril Neville, but his guitar still has a tough Texas touch. Next he is in Chicago with a much softer fluid guitar sound for a cover of “I Smell A Rat”, a song first recorded by Buddy Guy who, let's remind it, is also a Louisiana native.

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux

With the Zydeco original “Fever For The Bayou”, he's in the heart of his native culture but without any accordion though, while his original “Lost In Your Lovin'” is halfway between soul and R'n'B. With “Golden Crown”, featuring Mardi-Gras Indian famous Big Chief Monk Boudreaux on vocals and percussion, Benoit celebrates the festive identity of New Orleans in one of her most specific cultural aspects. On “I Can't Hold Out” from Mississippi slide guitar pioneer Elmore James, Benoit puts on his bottleneck too for a nice piece of slide, dueling with saxophonist Jimmy Carpenter.

“The Blues Is Here To Stay” (not to be mistaken with the identically titled song written and recorded by Mississippi-native-gone-to-Chicago pianist Eddie Boyd in 1959) is a long blues anthem dedicated to a wide fresco of great blues artists, quite soulfully sung by Benoit and guest and co-author (with Taj Mahal) Cyril Neville (read lyrics below), also on percussion, and punctuated by superb flashes of guitar from Benoit. An impressive track on an impressive album.

Next Benoit pays tribute to one of Baton Rouge great bluesmen, harmonica master Slim Harpo, with a cover of “Got Love If You Want It”, before going through the excellent swampy rolling “Blues So Bad”, signed by ex-Band's member Levon Helm. Finally the acoustic “My Bucket's Got A Hole In It”, a traditional from the New Orleans early jazz repertoire officially (but most likely wrongly) attributed to Clarence Williams, concludes the album. A way to remind that New Orleans, and more generally Louisiana, is not only the birthplace of jazz but also one of the main cradles where blues grew up.

A great tasty blues opus by one of the most appealing bluesmen that have emerged these last thirty years. ■

The VoW Allstars: Johnny Sansone, Tab Benoit,
Johnny Vidacovich, Cyril Neville..

Voice of the Wetlands
Besides his musical career, Tab Benoit founded in 2004 with some local environmental activists a volunteer based non-profit organization, Voice of the Wetlands (VoW), devoted to alert on the man-caused destruction of the swamps and bayous eco-system on the Louisiana coast.

VoW, whose president is Benoit, is “dedicated to creating national awareness in restoring Louisiana’s coastal wetlands and therefore saving and preserving South Louisiana’s Cajun history, culture and environment", says the presentation on VoW's site.

... Anders Osborne, Monk Boudreaux, Johnny Sansone, Waylon Thibodeaux

Tab Benoit, who actually lives in Houma, in the heart of the wetlands, began to use music to carry on the fight, and gathered around himself other fellow musicians to help get the message out : Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, George Porter Jr, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Johnny Sansone, Waylon Thibodeaux and Johnny Vidacovich. They took the name of Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars and have released two albums and occasionally tour throughout the country.

Every year, in Houma, the VoW annual festival used to celebrate the unique cultural diversity of the region through music, food, art market… The last festival took place in 2019, before the Covid pandemic, then the damages caused by hurricane Ida in August 2021, ended up in the cancellation of the next editions.

► The VoW Organization : https://www.voiceofthewetlands.org/the-wetlands-explore-the-facts-and-resources/
► President of VoW Tab Benoit talks about his eco-fight : https://youtu.be/rZZhJ9q3ROA

“The Blues Is Here to Stay” : lyrics

Long before I learned how to tie my shoes / I learned that New Orleans was the home of the blues / not long ago one mornin' the sun's in the city / the blues went rollin' and tumbin' ya'll up the Mississippi / up through the Delta / up to Memphis, Tennessee / where every people struggled ya'll / struggled to be free

The blues is the music / that fanned the flame / that burned in the soul / of Little Walter and Elmore James / the blues is a music / that anyone can feel / it comes from the crowds / of the people that worked the cotton field

The blues threw out a pain, but now it can heal / and the more I sing it, ya'll, the better I feel / and nobody can give it away / nobody can take it away / nobody can throw it away / and you can't even pray it away / and the blues is a feelin' that will never die / and the blues is a feelin' to stay / what would this world be ya'll without BB King / without Bobby Blue Bland doin' his thing / without T Bone Walker and Howlin' Wolf / without Bessie and Big Mama struttin' their stuff / there'd be no Elvis no Jerry Lee / a young Eric Clapton ya'll would have never crossed the sea / without old Lightin', Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters to grow up on / hey the Beatles and the Stones they'd never have left home, no no / well well well tell it ya'll

The blues is the gospel of the common man / the story of a people in a hostile land / built on a foundation that'll never fall / thanks to Robert Cray, Stevie Ray and Taj Mahal / nobody can give it away / nobody can take it away / nobody can throw it away / and you can't even pray it away / and the blues is a feelin' that will never die / and the blues is a feelin' to stay yeah yeah...
© Cyril Neville, Taj Mahal & Norman Caesar

Jeff Ray & Hurricane Harold - Carriage House Sessions (2010)

Hot curry soaked blues

One of these albums which would go unnoticed if some smart and tasteful blues aficionados did not judge it so good and full of nice surprises that they had to share their discovery with others.

As a guitarist, Jeff Ray is a champion of finger picking and slide dobro (resonator guitar), delivering a thrilling sound. On some songs, his voice has a little something of Bob Dylan in his early acoustic period. Both men hail from Minnesota, though I'm not at all sure this could explain that. And on harmonica, his accomplice Harold Tremblay totally deserves his “hurricane” nickname. He does a tremendous work and I wonder when he takes time to breathe !

Do not imagine any monotonous acoustic blues that would put you to doze off after just a couple of tracks. Both men have a rather muscular conception of their music. Most of the songs are played with foot-stomping energy, and they sound so rich that you wonder who are the other members of the band.

The album counts four originals and six covers. In both cases Ray and Tremblay show a good dose of imaginative creativity, making it difficult to distinguish between covers and originals. Their “Sleeping Dogs” sounds as roots as their boogie version of Muddy Waters' “Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had” (with a very personal intro and driving foot work) or of Big Bill Broonzy's  “Key To The Highway” though it would seem at first impossible to bring anything new to a classic as much covered.

On the original 10-minute suite “Dead Rising…” / “Dead”, Ray has soaked his guitar in hot korma curry or garam masala, turning his slide dobro into a sitar in the first part, then keeping some oriental lines in the second. If only for these two numbers the album is worth it.

Their version of Little Hat Jones' “Bye Bye Baby Blues” brings echoes of rural Texas in the early 20th Century, while the cover of Dylan's “Buckets Of Rain” fits perfectly in the album's atmosphere.

On Robert Hunter's “Easy Wind” Ray has his Dylan's “Maggie's Farm” voice, and their version of Joe Callicot's “Laughin' To Keep From Cryin'” emphasizes the melancholy of the song. When the final “Valley” plays, you wonder whose song it is again. Don't search, it's one of their originals !

Two impressive musicians for quite an appealing album. ■

► Some live recordings of the duo are legally available for download on : https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Jeff+Ray%22

V.A. - 1997 Texas Guitar Summit (2010)

Texas dynamite

Watch out y'all ! Vintage Texas guitar slingers ahead ! This is a must-listen compilation whose editors had the brilliant idea to turn the light-spots on some muscular ambassadors of the Lone-Star State blues. Except for the excellent U.P. Wilson, relatively familiar to Texas blues fans, and maybe Andrew "Jr. Boy" Jones, the reputation of the others unfortunately didn't spread much beyond the Texas clubs walls.

Bob Kirkpatrick

Who knew the mysterious Bobby Gilmore, J.B. Wynne, Bob Kirkpatrick, or the low-down Henry Qualls ? Come on, be honest ! This superb compilation is a unique opportunity to discover these highly talented and authentic bluesmen correctly recorded in studio. The kind of album you can't help playing again and again because these guys are really worth it. A guaranteed blow in the face ! ■