Rebirth Jazz Band - Here to Stay (1984, 1997)

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First in the second line

The album opens with a 19-minute track. It's titled “Mardi Gras Medley” so that those who wouldn't know anything about the Rebirth Brass Band understand where the group comes from and what kind of music is awaiting them.

The RBB was founded in 1983 by a bunch of school mates from the Tremé district of New Orleans lead by Phillip "Tuba Phil" Frazier, his brother bass drum player Keith Frazier and trumpeter Kermit Ruffins. As can be guessed from their name, they wanted to reanimate the New Orleans brass band tradition : the marching bands performing at funerals and “second line” parades.

Pat Thomas - His Father's Son (2009)

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“I just sing and play the blues”

His father was a gravedigger, he became one. His father was a sculptor, molding figures from clay, he became one, molding figures from clay. His father was a famous Delta blues musician, he became a Delta blues musician. His father was discovered in the 1970s through documentary films about Delta bluesmen. He appeared in the excellent documentaries "M For Mississippi” (2008), and later in “Moonshine & Mojo Hands” (see at the end). His father was nicknamed "Son", but he is simply Thomas, the son. His father, who died in 1993, was James "Son" Thomas. He is Pat Thomas, really “his father's son”.

Roy Rogers - Chops Not Chaps (1985)

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Not cheap either !

The albums starts on two wheels with the gun shot bang of a killer rock version of Robert Johnson's “32/20 Blues” with Rogers playing slide at an unbelievable speed without loosing control one half second. Hard to recognize the original from Robert Johnson but the iconic rambling Delta bluesman most have felt serious jolt in his grave, all the more serious that there's three more of his songs coming, in the same vein !

Yet if Rogers revisits Delta classics with such energetic virtuosity, this album is clearly a Delta Blues one as confirmed by the three additional Johnson's numbers  (“Judgment Day”, “Terraplane Blues” and “Kindhearted Woman”) and two from Skip James (“Devil Got My Woman”) and Elmore James (“Shake Your Moneymaker”). Rogers also included four exciting self-penned originals : “Hot To Trot/Ready To Go”, “Guilty Of Lovin' You”, “Feel So Blue” and “One More Time”.

Eric Clapton - Me And Mr Johnson (2004) / Sessions For Robert J (2004)

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He and Mr Clapton

Clapton did finally wait about 40 years before paying his “official” tribute to his hero, cursed Delta country blues pioneer Robert Johnson. During four decades, he played a load of Johnson songs, especially on stage, but here he devoted two entire albums to 18 different Johnson songs, roughly two third of the 29 songs ever recorded by the Delta musician.

A special edition of the second album, “Sessions For Robert J”, was released with a 96-minute DVD about the recording of the 18 Johnson's songs, including in one of the very places the young Delta legend recorded some himself (508 Park Avenue, Dallas. Texas). Actually the DVD includes a 19th bonus song : “Stones In My Passway”.

Buddy Guy - Live : The Real Deal (1996)

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A legend at Legends

He baptized his blues club in Chicago Legends and indeed he is himself a legend. At age 86, Buddy Guy has still got the juice and just proved it by celebrating his 66th year playing the blues with a new album ― and a good one ! ―, “The Blues Don't Lie”, released last September (2022) (link below). Before that, he had issued “Born To Play Guitar” (2015) and “The Blues Is Alive And Well” (2018), titles that summarize perfectly the legend of this Louisiana native who left for the Muddy Waters city in 1957.

In a few days (February 17th, 2023), he'll get onboard The Damn Right Farewell Tour that should take him around the world from North America to Australia, Europe and Israel over an eight-month period.

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Will The Circle Be Unbroken, 30th Anniversary Edition (2 CD + Bonus Tracks) (1972, 2002)

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The circle is still unbroken

In 1971, the five multi-instrumentalists of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (NGDB), "a bunch of long-haired West Coast boys” as Roy Acuff described them, had gathered some of the best guitar and banjo pickers, country singers and fiddlers around (asked to participate, Bill Monroe would have refused), managing to have them coming down from their mountains or leave their Tennessee or Kentucky ranches, from Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs or Merle Travis to the “King of Bluegrass” Jimmy Martin, Mother Maybelle Carter of The Carter Family, the “King of Country Music” Roy Acuff or master fiddler Vassar Clements, for this celebration of “old time” music, namely country and bluegrass, that was engraved for posterity on this historic triple LP (later re-issued as a 2-CD set).

Earth, Wind & Fire - That’s The Way Of The World (1975)

Soul, funk & groove
Funk, Afro-beat, soul and jazzy horns melt in this rather agreeable work by EW&F. The band had at least two peculiarities : three lead singers (Maurice & Verdine White and Philip Bailey), and most members played percussion besides their own main instrument.
Little song-by-song review.

→ “Shining Star”  is most appropriately titled : it's one of the shining stars of the album indeed, a track of pure funk with an Afro-flavored bubbling guitar intro and nice lead guitar solos (Al McKay, Johnny Graham), R'n'B style horns, appealing harmony vocals by Maurice & Verdine White and Philip Bailey, a good dancing title with a chorus a little too disco though. You already notice Verdine's efficient bass, one of the backbones of EW&F's funk.

C.W. Stoneking - King Hokum (2005)

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More vintage than vintage !

The first track opens with crows cawing in the distance. Suddenly, on the front porch, an old man starts to play an antic acoustic guitar and sings a country blues with a hoarse scratching voice. But the album cover shows a rather young man holding a National Steel guitar on his lap and wearing a back hat and a black suit, with a black bow tie around a snow white shirt's neck like he's just back from the Sunday office at the local church in the 1920s or 30s'.

Is it the re-issue of an old 78-rpm recorded a long time ago by an obscure country blues musician ? No, this reincarnation of a pre-war Deep South bluesman is Mr. C.W. Stoneking, a young Australian of 31 at the time, who amazingly sounds as vintage as most of the early 20th century musicians who influenced him.

Phil Alvin - Un “Sung Stories” (1986) / County Fair 2000 (1994)

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Searching for the roots
Blasters' co-leader solo adventures are musically exhilarating, vocally unique and full of exulting humor. Be it with jazz or brass bands (The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Sun Ra's Arkestra, The Faultline Syncopators), accompanied by his Blasters, or by a tasty choice of guests (Billy Boy Arnold, James Intveld, Jerome Bowman, Mary Franklin, Top Jimmy, Fayard Nicholas, Eddie Baytos, Ike "Diz" Williams, Jerry Angel…), or alone on guitar, Phil Alvin's journey through the roots American music is absolutely rejoicing.

Phil musical career started in his native California in 1979 when he and younger brother Dave formed the cult roots rock revival band The Blasters. Although receiving largely positive reviews and developing a devoted fan base, mainstream commercial success didn't follow. When Dave left in 1985, Alvin returned to California State University to complete a master's degree in mathematics and artificial intelligence (he would have got a Ph.D. later) while working on his first solo project, “Un 'Sung Stories'”, which was released the following year (1986). Meanwhile he had reformed the Blasters without Dave and through various line-ups in time. A second solo album, “County Fair 2000”, appeared in 1994, featuring, among others, the “new” Blasters and members of his side project, The Faultline Syncopators.

Otis Grand-Anson Funderburgh-Debbie Davies - Grand Union (1998)

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Guitar XXXL
Three XL guitar slingers together in a studio do not necessarily deliver a XXXL album. At least for non guitar-junkies. For guitar addicts, “Grand Union” is probably an album to have in their records collection.

Fortunately for the first ones, the one-time trio had the good taste not to record pure instrumentals and to call in three good vocalists, Sugar Ray Norcia on six tracks (also on harmonica on two of the six), Brother Roy Oakley on two, and drummer Tony Coleman on two also, as well as some fine musicians like Ike Turner on piano for a couple of titles, or sax phenom Gordon Beadle on three numbers. Plus no less than two horn sections : the Buzz Horns and the Bee Horns.