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Born in 1967, in Williamstown (Massachusetts), 56 today, Albert Cummings was raised in a musical family (his dad played guitar and fiddle in local bands). At 12, unable to wrap his hand around a guitar's neck, he took up the banjo and would have become at best a talented bluegrass player, but life has some funny tricks in stock.
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| Clean cut Cummings |
At 26, qualified in building technology, he took the head of the four-generation old family design and construction business, Cummings General Contractor Inc., and at the time, music was still a hobby. At 27 though, while attending a friend's wedding, he was pushed to sit in with the band. That impromptu performance changed his life.
Soon, while continuing to run the family company, he began to perform on the New England blues circuit with his band, Swamp Yankee. The story says the trio rented a recording studio in 1999 and taped the nine songs featured on their self-released album “The Long Way” in just a couple hours !
One night they shared the bill with the late SRV’s Double Trouble rhythm section, bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton. Impressed by Cummings style, they volunteered to produce and play on his next opus, the 2001 self-released “From the Heart”, which was recorded in Austin, Texas, and re-issued in 2003 by the Under The Radar label who ensured wide distribution.
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| Tommy Shannon |
The album drew the attention of Blind Pig Records which proposed Cummings a multi-album deal. He signed in 2004, and the three albums reviewed here followed, as well as a fourth opus, “Someone Like You”, in 2015, while meantime “No Regrets” was released in 2012 on the obscure Oarfin Hip-Hop label based in Minneapolis.
“Live At The '62 Center” was released in 2017 on Ivy Music Company, a label and management structure run by his wife Christina (listed as “Ivy Music Company Inc. c/o Albert Cummings” and domiciled at the same Williamstown address as the Cummings building company). Ivy also published his latest opus to date : “10” (2022).
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| Jim Gaines |
Meantime, “Believe” (2020) came out on the renowned Dutch label Provogue (from the Mascot Label Group) whose rich blues/blues-rock catalog features famous artists like Joe Bonamassa, Beth Hart, Walter Trout, Gov't Mule, Warren Haynes, Leslie West, Eric Johnson or The Robert Cray Band among others.
“Blues Make Me feel So Good : The Blind Pig Years”, released in 2015 by Whole Hog Inc., Blind Pig's mother company, is not a compilation in the usual sense of the term. This 3-CD box actually gathers three full albums from Cummings Blind Pig period : “True To Yourself” (2004), “Working Man” (2006), and “Feel So Good : Albert Cummings Live” (2008), all produced by the renowned Jim Gaines.
Though it is his third opus, Cummings still remains largely under the influence of the SRV style. He's also a prolific songwriter : except one track co-authored with Tommy Shannon who stayed for this new album while Chris Layton left, he wrote all the material.
His explosive wah-wah guitar of the fiery opening tracks “Man on Your Mind, “Work It Out” and “Come Up for Air”, and his fast and furious pace on the riveting “Where Did I Go Wrong” (a new version of a song already featured in Cummings very first album with his Swamp Yankee band), “Your Sweet Love” and “Separately”, immediately file Cummings in the SRV disciples category.
But Cummings also brings his personal touch, especially on the outstanding tender song “Sleep” written for his child (the long live version in the 2008 album is even more outstanding).
The whole album, also featuring the soulful slow blues “Lonely Bed” (another title from the first album), is a breathless guitar-slinging race that will of course appeal to the nostalgic SRV fans and hot guitar driven music aficionados but shouldn't displease more classic electric blues amateurs either.
This fourth album marks an evolution in Cummings music. It opens with a version of Merle Haggard “Workin' Man Blues”, the signal of his distancing from SRV towards a more personal inspiration including the music of his banjo years, with more melodic country-seasoned rocking ballads like “Feeling End”, the sad “First Day”, “Last Dance”).
The Merle Haggard opener is the only cover among the 12 tracks, The other eleven are all signed by Cummings, as prolific as ever. The production and studio work are obviously more elaborate. What the album lost in wildness it gains in cleaner sophisticated sound with a more diversified inspiration looking towards “new” styles.
The music is still clearly rocking (the Texas-styled “Party Right Here”, “Please”) but in a steadier, more controlled approach.
Hard blues-rockers might be disappointed at first, but the album reveals itself increasingly at each new listening.
“Feel So Good : Albert Cummings Live” (2008)
A live performance full of powerful vocals and torrid guitar, the perfect setting for Cummings explosive energy, judiciously opening the show with the tight rocking “Party Right Here” and closing it with a volcanic version of Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" in an outburst of shouting from the audience.
In between, every track is reworked for the stage in a scorching rock style like on the entrancing hot Texas country “Why Me”, or the excellent Muddy Waters/Little Feat boogie/swamp rock medley
“Hoochie Coochie Man”/“Dixie Chicken”.
Cummings draws exciting sounds from his guitar, a mix of Hendrix and Buddy Guy, on the heartfelt pounding “Barrelhouse Blues” and on “Your Own Way”. “Tell It Like It Is”, a hit song popularized by the unique voice of Aaron Neville, is totally unrecognizable ! And there's a very good reason at that : to tell it like it is, it's not the same song ! 😂
Cummings also delivers a galvanic version of B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby", rocking it hard accordingly to the song title… Blazing guitar too on “Together As One” and “Blues Makes Me Feel So Good” with the classic little game of calling the audience to sing the chorus.In the middle of all this powerful energy shines a 6-minute gem : the live version of the soulful Latin-spiced mid-tempo “Sleep” illuminated by a superb psychedelic guitar solo that transports you back to the acid rock period in the late 1960s.
The kind of album that will appeal to blues, blues rock and even hard rock fans alike. ■
► “No Regrets” (2012) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nELFSeXEDUti4kg_1GQUugWU7vcdKYDRoPhoto galleries
Videos
► "Early In The Morning", Big Bull Falls Blues Festival, Wausau, WI, 2011 : https://youtu.be/Pyu_2HNxt_U
► Iron Horse Music Hall, Northampton, MA, 2014 :
► “The Blues Makes Me Feel So Good"/"Make Up Your Mind", The Bull Run, Shirley, MA, 2016 : https://youtu.be/Nv15N7WK0g0
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| Warren Grant |
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| Scot Sutherland |
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| With Albert Castiglia |
► Reading, PA, 2022 :
► Flat Iron Crossroads, Gloucester, VA, 2022 :
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