Roland Tchakounté - Nguémé & Smiling Blues (2015)

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“The DNA of the blues is African”

From the beginning of his career, and his revelation in 1999 at the Blues-sur-Seine Festival near Paris, Roland Tchakounté, the Cameroonian “griot” relocated in France, is taking the American blues to re-encounter its historical African roots. “The DNA of the blues is African”, he affirms.

Converted to blues the day he heard John Lee Hooker in his country, he did with blues what his fellow Cameroonian musician, the late jazz-funk saxophonist Manu Dibango, had done with makossa, a popular rhythmic musical style from Cameroon, that he infused with jazz.

The Meters - Good Old Funky Music (rel. in 1990)

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Good ol' funky Meters

The complicated history of the Meters. This band is a big paradox : despite their legendary reputation as musical innovators, “inventors” the New Orleans funk style (also baptized “second line funk” or “bayou funk”), and extraordinary live act, and although they recorded hit songs, they never managed to establish themselves as a mainstream group.

Formed in 1965, The Meters developed a brilliant combination of tight melodic grooves and syncopated New Orleans "second line" rhythms highly charged with the organ, guitar, bass and drums each weaving lines trading off melody and rhythm roles seamlessly.

Pinetop Perkins - Back On Top (2000)

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Top boogie legend

“Pinetop” was 86 or 87 when he recorded this superb album featuring some staples from his repertoire.
Born in July 1913 in Belzoni, Mississippi, Joseph William Perkins became the legendary pianist we know by accident : originally playing guitar, his left arm tendons were badly injured in a knife fight in Helena, Arkansas, in the 1940s. Unable to play guitar anymore, he could have given up music definitely. But Mr Perkins is an obstinate man who loved playing music so much that instead of that he switched to piano ! I don't know if he was a good guitarist or not, but his lucky star decided differently, for the best as far as we are concerned.

Lowell Fulson (updated) : The Ol' Blues Singer (1975), One More Blues (rec. 1984, rel. 1999), Them Update Blues (1995)

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Full sound !

Though Lowell Fulson might be less famous than other post-war bluesmen, especially from Chicago, he was the innovative king of West Coast blues. A man with flair : in the early 1940s he spotted two promising musicians and took them in his band : a pianist named Ray Charles and saxophonist Stanley Turrentine. He wrote and recorded famous classics like "3 O'Clock Blues" in 1946, which became B.B. King's first hit in 1951, the immortal "Every Day I Have the Blues" (adapted from Memphis Slim's "Nobody Loves Me"), "Reconsider Baby" in 1954, which became a blues standard, notably covered by Elvis Presley in 1960.
He also co-wrote "Tramp" with Jimmy McCracklin in 1967, a song covered only a few months later by the duet Otis Redding-Carla Thomas, or “Black Nights” with Fats Washington, a hit released in 1965. No need to pursue further to understand the man's importance in the blues landscape.

Special Buddy Guy : The Complete Vanguard Recordings (This Is Buddy Guy, 1968; A Man And The Blues,1968; Hold That Plane, 1972) (2000) + Buddy's Baddest : The Best Of Buddy Guy (1999)

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My buddy is a great guy

Until he signed with Silvertone Records in the early 1990s, Buddy Guy had wandered from one label to the other after he left Chess in 1967, except a few years with Vanguard during which he recorded three excellent albums which were released in the late 1960s-early 1970s. Those have been re-issued in a single box-set in 2000, a year after Silvertone released “Buddy's Baddest : The Best Of Buddy Guy”.

A few words about this blues giant in addition to the little bio featured below. First, let's say once and for all that Buddy Guy is not only a unique guitarist, he's also one of the greatest blues singers, and one shouldn't dissociate one from the other, that's what made him a legend.

Robben Ford, Paul Personne, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal & John Jorgenson - The Incredible Lost In Paris Blues Band (2016)

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Not lost for the blues

A guitarists album that will seduce guitar aficionados but also blues lovers. In November 2015, it happened that Robben Ford and Ron Thal were both in Paris. Paul Personne, one of the godfathers of French blues, then had the idea of inviting them to an unplanned session in one of the best studios in Paris. He also contacted multi-instrumentalist John Jorgenson also in town at the time, and asked singer Beverly Jo Scott to come down for some vocals from neighboring Belgium where she resides. And finally he chose two solid French session men to take charge of the rhythm section, bassist Kevin Reveyrand and drummer Francis Arnaud.

Ella Fitzgerald - 1961-62 Twelve Nights In Hollywood, Vol. 1 to 4 (2010) [update now including vol. 3 & 4]

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Ella, the jazz diva

The first words she utters are “Thank you… thank you… thank you very much ladies and gentlemen!” Generally she thanks her enthusiastically applauding audience three times with her strange juvenile voice, occasionally exchanging a few humorous words with the public before engaging into a next title. A kind of ritual.
But she's not a girl anymore on this double live album, she's a buxom 44 jazz diva almost at the peak of her career.

Willie Pooch & Cadillac Zack - The Blues Do Something To Me (2004)

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The pooch in the Cadillac

Here a nice little album by two enjoyable musicians : the veteran Willie Pooch, Columbus "Godfather of Blues", holds the mike; the younger Cadillac Zack produces and takes on the lead guitar.

Boston born Zack Slovinsky aka Cadillac Zack didn't play guitar seriously before he was 19. Two years later, he moved to Chicago to study cinema at the university. There he spent lots of nights hanging around the West and South sides blues clubs and met Magic Slim and above all John Primer who took him under his wing and became his model. He is proud to say he plays the West Side style of the legendary Magic Sam. Luck had him meeting somebody who had played with Magic Sam : Willie Pooch.

Lee Pons - Big Boogie Voodoo (2010)

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Naw'lins boogie man

The cover shows an old beaten dusty piano that takes you back to old New Orleans keyboard kings like Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe aka Jelly Roll Morton, William Thomas Duprée aka Champion Jack Dupree, Antoine Dominique Domino aka Fats Domino, Huey Pierce Smith aka Huey "Piano" Smith, Henry "Roy" Byrd aka Professor Longhair, or more recently James Carroll Booker III aka Little Booker aka James Booker and Malcolm John Rebennack aka Dr John. All from New Orleans and all playing a pivotal instrument of New Orleans blues : piano.

Lee Pons belongs to that long tradition : “It’s a tradition that came from the birth of blues, in the lumber and turpentine camps of the Delta to the parlors and juke joints. There was a time when the piano was the only instrument, besides the voice, in blues. It was king !”, he explained in an interview on American Blues Scene.

R.I.P. Tina Turner

 R.I.P. Tina

 Tina Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock on November 26th, 1939 in Nutbush, Tennessee, died today,
May 24th, 2023. She was 83.