Heard lately #1 - Bobby Rush, Eddie Ray, Little Smokey Smothers, Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder, The Neville Brothers Live, Zac Harmon

→ Express reviews of some albums I listened recently

Bobby Rush - All My Love For You (2023)

All I knew was his name seen here and there in articles and reviews, and this album is a very, very good surprise. Horn fueled soul blues from top to bottom, with some R'n'B numbers like “One Monkey Can Stop a Show”, as Louisiana (where Rush was born in 1933 as Emmett Ellis Jr.) can produce.

A prolific songwriter, Rush signs all the tracks (including “TV Mama”, not to be mistaken with the same and often covered title from Lou Willie Turner aka Luella Brown, Big Joe Turner's wife). Two lively titles stand out , “I'm Free” and “I'm The One”, about blues music, which sound largely autobiographical.

On vocals, guitar and harmonica, Rush still has the punch of a younger man though he was almost... 90 ! I thinK I'm gonna love this guy !

► The album (audio) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_krygpDQEjIseM-OK-WFGa3KtE1WCA6R_4
► Porretta Soul Festival, Italy, 2013 : https://youtu.be/E14o8TVDR-Q
► Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, 2014 : https://youtu.be/13dQhQmrpxQ
► The Emcee has a hard time introducing a late Rush at the Community Fest., Dermott, AR, 2014 : https://youtu.be/0zrNXD-Vg8o
► Crescent City Blues & BBQ Festival, 2017 : https://youtu.be/JjDFugOJcLU
► Telling about his life with humor at "Blues at the Crossroads", Salina, KS, 2018 : https://youtu.be/TkSo0e1qYGM?t=107
► Vancouver Island Music Fest., 2019 : https://youtu.be/bG0W-WA_zJo
► With the Bobby Rush blues band feat. Mizz Lowe, 45th annual Delta Blues Fest., Greenville, MS, 2022 (almost eclipsed by his two plumpy dancers !) : https://youtu.be/xk8EJSuso1U



Eddie Ray : Blues At Midnight/A Ray In The Dark (1985)

Honestly, I didn't know Ray before and this old album is a good surprise. Although it opens and closes with two funky tracks featuring hypnotic bass lines and sax riffs (“If the Music Makes You Move” and “Midnight Shuffle”), this is a real blues album, and an excellent one even if it's mainly composed of covers.

The Louisiana-born, Oakland-based Eddie Ray Nute (his real name) was an authentic bluesman with a soulful voice and a quire  appealing fluid and cool guitar style. The album, full of melancholy, is enriched by Beverly Stovall's piano, and a flute even brings a special atmosphere to the track “Blues at Midnight”.

It was recorded live at the Eli's Mile Club in Oakland in 1982  (though no noise from the audience can be heard). I understand it is his only known recording. Unfortunately Ray's career was brutally stopped when he was murdered 1988.

Note that “Blues At Midnight” released in 1985 by the Eli's club label, Eli Mile High Records, was simultaneously published in Japan as “A Ray In The Dark” by the label Mina Records. He seems totally unknown on YT.

Little Smokey Smothers - Second Time Around (1996)

An inspiring Chicago blues opus featuring the catchy rusty soulful voice of Smothers and his seducing agile guitar style, influenced by Albert King (from whom he covers two numbers), as well as the excellent keyboard and Hammond B-3 work of Tony Z., the exciting jazzy guitar of Randall Boykins, and the amazing bass playing of Johnny Gayden (he delivers a killing bass line on the thrilling “In The Zone”, one of the stand-outs of the album). A really fine line-up for a very efficient example of Chicago blues, completed on five tracks by a horn section.

The album was recorded in three different studios in the Chicago area in the Spring of 1996. Smothers himself signs nine of the twelves songs, next to the covers of Albert King's (the rocking “I Get Evil” and the soulful “Got To Be Some Changes Made”),  Muddy Waters (the excellent “Clouds In My Heart”), Howlin' Wolf (the gripping “I Better Go Now”), and more unusual, Benny Goodman (the gently swinging “Soft Winds” lit up by the excellent jazz guitar of Boykins and the Jimmy Smith influenced B-3 of Tony Z.)

Smothers own originals stand easily the comparison with the covers, from the opening “Bluesman” and the title track “Second Time Around” featuring seducing guitar, to the riveting “In The Zone” or the outstanding funky “Let Me In”.

"Smokey" Smothers & Elvin Bishop

A really attractive opus, the kind you know from the start you're gonna play again many times, from a veteran of the Chicago scene who knows all the secrets of his trade.

► The album (audio) : https://youtu.be/AqY3O816Qx4
► A rare video of Smothers at the Chicago Blues Fest.1991 (with Elvin Bishop and wearing a red cap) :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/powjMuo-OQw
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/Khp58gPL0cw
► Moulin Blues Fest., Ospel, Netherlands, 1994 : https://youtu.be/EikmT9wccVQ


Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder - Talking Timbuktu (1994)

Wonderful example of world music. Ry Cooder's renowned slide guitar and other less familiar instruments fit perfectly in Touré's traditional folk music from Mali. Surprise... the unexpected Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown plays guitar or fiddle on a couple of tracks !

The tunes from the West-African griot carried by hypnotic calabash rhythms have the usual sorrowful flavor of African poetry. An album that reminds us from where come the historic roots of blues.

► The album (audio) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtGguolynRWQfLgLNLTephOWUfuLlSQZi
► Ry Cooder & Ali Farka Touré, New Orleans JazzFest, 1994 : https://youtu.be/zASjrtELrUI
► Ali Farka Touré, Lisbon, Portugal, 2005 :
→ #1 : https://youtu.be/VBx7_8G7e3Y
→ #2 : https://youtu.be/LXQeRxpZp3s

The Neville Brothers - Live at the Chestnut Cabaret, Philadelphia (1986)

I stumbled by chance on this bootleg presented as “recorded at the soundboard” that usually guarantees a decent sound which is globally the case here. 27 tracks from traditional icons of New Orleans musical culture like “Hey Pocky Way”, “Iko Iko” or “Big Chief” to a few new songs being tested before being possibly featured on their next album “Uptown”, like “You’re The Only One”, “I Never Needed No One”, “Money Back Guarantee”, “Midnight Key”, or “Wake Up” (that will be included on “Yellow Moon”). The setlist is close to the one recorded for their official “Live at Tipitina's, vol. II” aka “Nevillization II” released a year later.

This album confirms what I've been thinking for a long time : Cyril Neville is probably the most underestimated of the four brothers. Though he's not a funk composer as talented as Art, or doesn't have an angel voice like Aaron, he brings his incredible extroverted energy to the band, appearing as the MC of the concerts. Illustration here :

► The album (audio) : https://youtu.be/qRKLfUscBBg
► North Sea Jazz Festival 1986 : https://youtu.be/iCaLhDLJh7Y
► Live at Tipitina's, New Orleans,1991 : https://youtu.be/ICjXk8AWlHg



Zac Harmon : Mississippi BarBQ (2019)

Lots of soul, some funk and a little gospel in the blues of the man from Jackson, Mississippi. Though there isn't any really outstanding track, not even his cover of Dylan's iconic “Knocking On Heaven's Door”, as a singer and guitarist he's appealing enough to make this recent album pleasant to hear.

► The album (audio) : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k1gqc-ezvDZwVOOjeyT-eCeDXyweXYiAw
► Woodbridge, NJ, 2018 : https://youtu.be/ENu-i6OMLh8
► Denton Blues Festival, TX, 2018 : https://youtu.be/KUb6K7wtK70