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It all starts at 90 mph with a track announcing what's awaiting you on the twelve muscular or cooler following numbers. His tenor sax is switching from screaming to warm bluesy jazz tenderness as the tracks unwind and you're getting feverish after a few songs.
I remember secretly copying “My Father's Eyes”, the opening song, on my daughter's Walkman as a little message of love when she was still a teenager more into the Spice Girls and other such pop stuff. She fell in love with it and soon asked me for the whole album ! Since then, this particular song has been our little secret bond. Today she's playing guitar and writing her own songs. I dare believe that's something I transmitted to her with the help of Clapton...
Born in New York City in 1950, he first discovered blues listening to his father's old 78-rpm discs from Leadbelly, Josh White or Meade "Lux" Lewis. Later, in Tennessee, he met and learned from great finger picking guitarist Sam McGee (1894-1975) and B.B. King's supposed cousin Furry Lewis (1893 or 1899-1981).
Some characteristics make the Mardi-Gras Indians of New Orleans quite unique : strong Afro-Caribbean musical roots immediately identifiable in their rhythmic patterns (bass drum, congas, cowbell, tambourine…); incorporation of brass jazz; traditional lyrics in Creole French patois; constant call-response between the lead singer and the background vocalists; and last but not least sumptuous costumes as colorful as a party of tropical birds in the jungle.
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.