Fletcher belongs to this new generation of bluesmen who do not limit themselves to one blues style but explore most of them and blend them together to forge their own personal signature. Fletcher debut album mixes jump, swing, boogie, Texas style, Chicago or Memphis sounds, infusing a rock'n'roll energy in many of the songs, and delivering long soulful guitar solos. The only kind of blues absent from the album is acoustic roots blues.
From his stand, trumpet player, singer, band conductor, master of ceremony Boney Fields is putting out a show that could almost make James Brown suddenly pass for a novice. Fields heats up the audience as much as his own musicians, like when he's directing Samb to slow down then re-accelerate the tempo at the end of the 13-minute long killer “Late Comer”.
From the beginning, blues was an old acquaintance of the Stones and continued to be, hidden and ready to set an ambush in most of the Jagger-Richards repertoire. In 2016, eleven years after their last studio opus, the band took the public by surprise, releasing a full album of blues covers.
Not only Solberg and his group were Allison's regular touring band, but this talented guitarist also co-wrote much of the Allison's repertoire during these periods and brought his skills as arranger and producer. In the second chapter of their collaboration, both musicians released three albums considered by many as the best Chicago blues albums of the 1990s : “Soul Fixin’ Man” (1994, also released as “Bad Love), “Blue Streak” (1995), and “Reckless” (1997).
Between his two stretches of work with Allison, he played and toured with many blues musicians and bands among whom John Lee Hooker, the Legendary Blues Band, the Nighthawks, Elvin Bishop...
6 : the number of guests featured on the band's albums (bassist Little David, guitarists Danny Caron & Rusty Zinn on "Indigo Swing", percussionist Robin Tolleson & trumpeter Scott Steen on “Red Light!”). 14 : the number of tracks on each album.
That's what happened to me recently. The name's Cardell Boyette (sometimes spelled Cordell), a patronymic exhaling the nice flavor of his native Louisiana, but he's also known as Louisiana “Guitar” Red (the “Guitar” nickname being essential to distinguish him from Louisiana Red aka Iverson Minter).
Born in Louisiana in 1928, Boyette learned to play piano in his youth before switching later to guitar and moving to Los Angeles in the early 1950s or 1960s (info sources vary). There he entered a top blues school : he played in particular behind Lowell Fulson, T-Bone Walker, Pee Wee Crayton, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Tina Turner, J.D. Nicholson or Ray Agee… He even recorded a single as Louisiana “Guitar” Red with George "Harmonica" Smith in the late 1960s.