For example I didn't know he had played pure jazz like on the four “big band” instrumentals tracks filled with saxes and trumpets that open the album : “Hot Rod”, “Blues Waltz”, the excellent mischievous mambo-flavored “In A Little Spanish Town”, or the more classic jazz piece “Sherry” where he appears a skilled jazz pianist. Lesser did I know that he also played alto sax as he does here on “Hot Rod” & “The Spirit Free”!
April 03, 2023
Ray Charles – Live 1958-1959 (1987 rel.)
March 31, 2023
¡Cubanismo! in New Orleans feat. John Boutté & The Yockamo All-Stars - Mardi Gras Mambo (2000
One of the initiators of the project, producer Joe Boyd, qualifies this musical encounter as a “collision” between two musical cultures. The other initiator was the leader of ¡Cubanismo!, Cuban trumpet blower Jesùs Alemañy.
March 29, 2023
Reverend John Wilkins - You Can't Hurry God (2010)
Mitchum in “The Night of the Hunter” |
Like his renowned father, Rev. Robert Wilkins, John Wilkins had Gospel tattooed on one hand, and Blues on the other one. And rather than opposing them, he fused Memphis soul-flavored gospel music and Delta and Hill Country blues into an appealing mix : not Love versus Hate, but Love and Hate together. “I haven't read nowhere in the Bible where the music will take you to hell”, he rightly used to say.
March 25, 2023
Lightnin' Hopkins - Texas Blues Giant (the 1946-1954 recordings, 3xCD set, 2010)
Hopkins left school and started an itinerant life, working from farm to farm, and also occasionally accompanying Jefferson on guitar at religious gatherings, Jefferson who reputedly never let anyone play with him except Hopkins. In the late 1920s he teamed up with country blues singer Alger "Texas" Alexander, who was supposedly his distant older cousin, playing for tips at street corners and gigging in some low down blues joints.
March 19, 2023
Furry Lewis & Mississippi Joe Callicott : The Complete Blue Horizon Sessions (2007)
→ Get the album at the usual place...
Both musicians were contemporary and several aspects of their lives are similar : recording debut in Chicago in 1929/1930, period of retirement from playing, re-discovery during the early 1960s folk & blues revival…
March 17, 2023
"Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks & Oscar Klein - Blues Session (1979) / Philadelphia Jerry Ricks - Deep In The Well (1997)
"Philadelphia" Jerry Ricks |
March 14, 2023
Big Jack Johnson - Daddy, When Is Mama Coming Home ? (1989) / Juke Joint Saturday Night (2008) / Big Jack Johnson & The Cornlickers - Katrina (2009)
→ Get the albums at the usual place...
Johnson was officially born in 1940 (actually in 1939), some 15 miles east of Clarksdale in Lambert, in a farming family. His father was playing fiddle, banjo and guitar in country and blues styles at occasional gatherings, and Johnson started to play with his dad in his teens, later following B.B. King's example and adopting the electric guitar.
In 1962, with harmonicist Frank Frost and drummer Sam Carr, they formed an informal on-and-off band called the Hawks later re-baptized the Jelly Roll Kings who recorded a few occasional albums over several decades.
March 12, 2023
Jay Geils, Duke Robillard, Gerry Beaudoin - New Guitar Summit (2004) & New Guitar Summit : Shivers (2008)
This time we have a trio : still basking in his recent successful “Conversations...” with Ellis, multi-style musician Duke Robillard is aboard this new adventure next to jazz guitarist Gerry Beaudoin, and the less expected atypical ex-rocker Jay Geils who converted to jazz after leaving his band, the famous J. Geils Band, in 1985 after a 15-year stretch of R'n'B-influenced blues rock and about as many studio and live albums.
March 10, 2023
Special Johnny Jones : I Was Raised On The Blues (1998) - In The House (live with Charles Walker, 2000) - Blues Is In The House (2001) - Can I Get An Amen? (live, 2007)
→ Get the albums at the usual place… (except “Blues Is In The House”)
Born in 1936 in Edes, Tennessee, John D. Jones Jr. moved to Memphis at age 13, then to Chicago in the early 1950s where he got under the influence of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, and worked regularly with Junior Wells and Freddie King (1)
March 03, 2023
Ryan Adams - Blood On The Tracks (2022)
Dylan by Adams
Many artists have covered Bob Dylan songs, some have even released a Dylan song before Dylan himself (the Byrds with “Mr Tambourine Man”), some have recorded albums gathering their favorite Dylan songs, like Bryan Ferry (“Dylanesque”, 2007), ex-Steve Miller Band Ben Sidran (“Dylan Different, 2009), Texas guitarist Denny Freeman (“Diggin' On Dylan”, 2012) or the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (“Dirt Does Dylan”, 2022), but none had covered an entire Dylan album, especially not the cult “Blood on the Tracks” (BotT). The only ones who gave it a try (a few did) are rather obscure musicians as the numerous videos I compiled for this page prove.