Portrait : Willie Kent (1936-2006)

A giant's journey

Willie Kent was a burly man, a stainless bassist, a real blues singer and a talented songwriter, but never an icon of the Chicago blues though he did play with almost all the Windy City renowned bluesmen. Among the best talented sidemen that contributed to make Chicago blues a legend, he deserves to be put up back where he belongs : on the front line.
Familiar to the blues aficionados but much less to the average community of blues listeners, Kent has a special asset though : he recorded a dozen albums under his name, most of them with his long time band The Gents.

Love at first note : Linwood Taylor

Blues on the rock

There's a bluesman that I want to tell you about though he's not really well-known outside the blues specialists circles.  “He has a white blues sound”, “he plays like a white”… are the first thoughts that will come up your mind. Not contemptuous thoughts, blues has only one color : blue. But the fact is that when you hear him on guitar, you think more to Jimmy Thackery than to B.B. King. Only when he starts to sing you realize this guy is an Afro-American. Not from Mississippi, not from Louisiana, not either from Chicago or Texas, but from the D.C. area. His name ? I'm tempted to let you guess… Just joking ! The man is Linwood Taylor.

Portrait : John “Juke” Logan (1946-2013)

Rockin' the blues

Three albums and a live with Doug MacLeod, that's about it, but enough to get a hell of a foot-stomping time. Three albums that rock, swing, boogie by a jack of all blues trades who unravels and revamps the blues with a rockin' heart, injecting different styles he feels like. But make it clear, it's not blues-rock.
This brilliant chameleon from South California (1) who was a real and respected blues connoisseur could put a J.J. Cale touch here, a Zydeco or New Orleans carnival beat there, a Latin feel a la Los Lobos (he was a good friend of David Hidalgo) or a bit of soul, always with a sharp sense of tasty exciting arrangements and generally a good dose of humor in his songwriting.