Johnny Copeland - Further On Up the Road aka Live in Australia (1990)

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The Texas Bluesman in the bush

Johnny Copeland, known as The Texas Bluesman, actually lived in the Lone Star State less than half of his life. If his name is well known from blues aficionados, his life is probably less familiar to many of them. So here is a little reminder.

Born in Haynesville, in the north of Louisiana, in 1937, the son of sharecroppers who divorced six months after his birth, he then moved with his mother across the state line some 30 km north to Magnolia, Arkansas, where he grew up. The family relocated to Houston when he was 13, and he started to discover blues through musicians like Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Lowell Fulson, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and above all T-Bone Walker who became his inspiring model.

In Houston, he soon met Joe "Guitar" Hughes who became his life-long friend and guitar "teacher". Both formed the band Dukes of Rhythm, which became quite popular locally. In 1958, Copeland started to record singles for small local labels during the next decade, also working as a tour sideman for R'n'B and Soul artists such as Otis Redding and Eddie Floyd.

Special Tommy Bankhead : Please Mr. Foreman (1983) / Message To St. Louis (2000) / Please Accept My Love (2002)

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Special Tommy Bankhead : St. Louis blues

Is it true that Albert King once said  about Tommy Bankhead :  "He was already a star in St. Louis when I first got up there" ? If it is, it's a perfect portrait of the late Tommy Bankhead. A voice forged by a long adventurous musical life that started in his teens, a plain, simple but efficient rootsy guitar style, often swinging, sometimes jazzy or funky, some nicely written songs and an energetic blending of Delta Country blues and Memphis sound, such was Tommy Bankhead.

From his mid-teens, he played with such blues legends as Woodrow Adams, Howlin' Wolf, Joe Willie Wilkins and Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller) who used to say he was his son because he was too young to enter bars and juke-joints, with his cousin Elmore James, Joe Hill Louis, Henry Townsend, Little Milton, Ike Turner, Albert King, Robert Nighthawk and many other bluesmen… He could also play bass, drums and harmonica.

Otis Rush - All Your Love I Miss Lovin: Live At The Wise Fools Pub Chicago (1976/2005)

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Otis Rush : bad mojo but great blues

It is unbelievable that this live recording from 1976 remained nearly thirty years in a closet at Delmark Records ! Thirty years ! Why ? The explanation has never been given as far as I know…

Just another episode of Rush's "cursed artist" chaotic  career. Bad luck, probably resulting from his tormented and pessimistic personality and by his whimsical refusal to make any musical compromise, led him to wrong personal choices. Some would say a bad mojo was on him. After his first label Cobra went bankrupt in 1959, he never found a record company really willing to support him seriously, passing from one to the other, often not for the better (Duke, Vanguard, Chess, Sonet, Capitol, Bullfrog, Delmark, Universal...) while appearing on a multitude of multi-artists compilations, far many more than his own albums.

Steve James - Two Track Mind (1993) / Nathan James - I Don't Know It (2009)

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Double King James version
Here are two master guitar finger-pickers, both bearing the same name : the elder Steve, born in 1950 in New York, and the younger Nathan, born on the West Coast in the late 1970s near San Diego. Both not only share the same name but also the same passion for "old" acoustic blues and other kinds of roots music.

Mississippi John Hurt - The Man From Avalon (2008) (The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings)

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The lonesome songster from Avalon

The songs on this album were released in numerous editions since 1971 under various titles like "The Original 1928 Recordings" (1971), "Mississippi John Hurt 1928 : Stack O' Lee Blues" and "1928 - His First Recordings" (1972), "The 1928 Sessions" (1979, 1988), "Avalon Blues : The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings" (1996), "Candy Man Blues : The Complete 1928 Sessions" (2004), "The Best of Mississippi John Hurt : Columbia Original Masters" (2008), "Blessed Be The Name : The Complete OKeh Recordings" (2010), "Spike Driver Blues - The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings" (2016), "American Epic : The Best of Mississippi John Hurt" (2017) and "The Rough Guide To Mississippi John Hurt" (2019).

Needless to say that Delta blues amateurs almost know these great classics inside out. But this 2008 edition, "The Man From Avalon", stands out : it makes them sound almost like you never heard them before.

James Armstrong - Dark Night (1998)

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Dark night of a dark day

This is Armstrong second album, recorded over a year after being severely stabbed in his left shoulder by a man who broke in his California house in April 1997 (1). It bears many traces of this frightening day and of the ensuing psychological trauma and long months of rehabilitation to slowly recover his ability to play guitar, his left arm having suffered serious nerve damages. With such a name, he couldn't but fight hard to get his arm strong and fit again. Friends Joe Louis Walker and Doug MacLeod offered their support by guesting on two tracks each, and the final result is a neat collection of blues by a man who learned his trade by backing such blues giants as Albert Collins, Big Joe Turner and Smokey Wilson.

Kenny Neal - A Tribute To Slim Harpo & Raful Neal (2005)

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The Neal clan's great homage

Kenny Neal is a family bluesman. On this album originally planned as a tribute to his "uncle" Slim Harpo, a close friend of his father Raful Neal and a legendary swamp blues harp player, he plays with another legend, his own father Raful on vocals and harmonica, and with his brothers Frederick Neal on keyboards, Darnell Neal on bass, and his nephew Tyree Neal on drums. Raful eventually passed away during the making of the album, but fortunately after recording most of the vocals and harmonica parts. The tribute then extended to Raful too.

Special Chicago Blues Unplugged : John Primer & Chicago Bob Nelson

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John Primer: Almost unplugged

Unusual to hear John Primer, a Chicago electric blues fixture, play acoustic (only the last four "bonus" tracks feature electric numbers with a local blues band). Ten unplugged songs which remind a reality often ignored : the Chicago electric style is directly derived from Delta country blues.

Precisely Primer was born in Mississippi just like the blues greats he played with in the 1970s-80s : Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Magic Slim… Born in 1945, he moved up north to Chicago in 1963 at age 18. His childhood dream came true in 1980 when Waters formed a new band, the Legendary Blues Band, and called him to fill the second guitar and bandleader position.
more to read →

 

Chicago Bob Nelson: Totally unplugged

Chicago Bob Nelson ain't superstitious : he sings about going down to Louisiana to get himself a mojo hand, but he doesn't mind having 13 songs on his album ! More seriously, Louisiana born Robert Lee Nelson was mentored by Slim Harpo and Lazy Lester, two friends of his father, during his teens. He moved to Chicago in the early 1960s and performed with musicians like Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Earl Hooker and Muddy Waters who gave him his "Chicago Bob" nickname. 

In 1965 he went to Boston and teamed up with Luther "Snake Boy" Johnson until Johnson's death in 1976. In 1980, he joined Tinsley Ellis' band The Heartfixers, played with a Memphis band named The Shadows in the late 1980s, and later in John Lee Hooker’s Coast to Coast Blues Band for the last years of Hooker’s life. CBN died in 2013 after a little dozen albums under his name.

Bill Deraime - Bouge Encore (2008)

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Blues with a French touch

Bill Deraime is the godfather of French blues, often imitated, rarely equaled. Today 75 and officially retired from music, he's been striving to establish a blues scene in France for more than fifty years with some twenty-five albums, numerous performances and tours, despite a chronic manic depression.
Scorching voice, meaningful lyrics and roots soul sound, he never hesitated to borrow from other genres, particularly reggae, but also African music, gospel, funk..., to enrich his basic blues foundations. Far from the syrupy stuff delivered by many contemporary French "pop" artists, and from the spotlights, Deraime once said that blues is "the music of the soul". The statement is quite evident but at least, it deserves to be reminded from time to time.

Seth Walker - Seth Walker (2006)

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A walk with Seth

North Carolina born, long time resident of Austin where this album was recorded, and now based in Nashville, 50 years old Seth Walker is a rather unique artist in the contemporary musical landscape : basically a bluesman, he's exploring the roots of modern American music. In this 2006 album, his third one, he extends his down-home southern gritty blues to "old" soul and R'n'B, western swing and country…

Rather than Americana, I would call it "Nostalgiana". And to make it clear that this personal conception of modern soul blues is his real musical identity, he simply titled the album "Seth Walker". The man is on a similar path to artists like Tom Waits and the likes, and even Bob Dylan whose last albums have a definite throw-back color.