August 05, 2023

"Turn, turn, turn (To Everything There Is A Season)"...

Dedicated to Marcus aka Blue deVille

Chorus :
 

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

Pete Seeger
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
[Chorus]

August 03, 2023

Requiem for a friend

Marcus famous avatar
R.I.P. Marcus...
His real name was Marcus. He was from Belgium. In 2015, he created a rich music blog where he always posted excellent albums, often impossible to find elsewhere.
“Blues, Rock, Country & Bluegrass, Cajun & Zydeco, Soul…”, announced the header.
A real Ali BaBa's cave !

August 02, 2023

Mitch Woods - A Tip Of The Hat To Fats, Live From The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival 2018 (2019)

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Jumpin' the boogie !
T
hings are not always what they seem to be : on the seventeen tracks of this live homage to Fats Domino, only nine are music, the other eight are usual live patter and banter. But the real surprise is elsewhere : this tribute doesn't feature any song written by Domino ! Not a single one !

The album includes only titles “covered” by Domino, some previously sung by Wynonie Harris or Jackie Brenston, as well as two Woods originals with a Domino mood (though one is rather an adaptation). In fact more than a tribute to Fats, it's a tribute to Nawlins piano and pianists by a pianist who's not from the Crescent City. But of course this tribute couldn't take place anywhere else but in New Orleans, Domino's home town, at the prestigious Jazz & Heritage Festival 2018 which took place only five months after Domino's passing.

July 30, 2023

Chris “BadNews” Barnes (with Steve Guyger & Gary Hoey) – Live on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise #32 (2019)

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Soft hokum but great showmanship
C
omic actor, stand-up comedian and TV comedy sketches writer, Chris “BadNews” Barnes is also a blues singer and harmonica player, renowned for being one of the few contemporary devotee to hokum blues (read below). Here, live on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise, in February 2019 in the Eastern Caribbean, he works in a softer mode, though. A restraint imposed by the LRBC artistic management ?

Except his original “Hungry & Horny”, with a really funny introduction, most of his repertoire on this Live is made of efficient less explicit covers specially designed to make the cruisers dance.

July 26, 2023

Albert Cummings - Blues Make Me Feel So Good : The Blind Pig Years (3-CD Box) (2015)

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Big boss man

A scorching guitar in the hands of a clean cut building contractor ! That could be a hasty portrait of Albert Cummings illustrating the saying : don't judge a book by its cover. Or an album as it happens. The fact is that he was not really destined to become a guitar hero, but a businessman in the construction industry.

Born in 1967, in Williamstown (Massachusetts), 56 today, Albert Cummings was raised in a musical family (his dad played guitar and fiddle in local bands). At 12, unable to wrap his hand around a guitar's neck, he took up the banjo and would have become at best a talented bluegrass player, but life has some funny tricks in stock.

July 23, 2023

Monster Mike Welch - These Blues Are Mine (1996), MMW & Mike Ledbetter - Right Place, Right Time (feat. Laura Chavez) (2017), MMW - Nothing But Time (2023)

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Six-string wizard teenager
O
n his debut album
“These Blues Are Mine” (1996), Welch had just turned… 16 ! Already the chops of a veteran guitar-slinger and the voice of an adult. Hardly believable !

When SRV died in the crash of his helicopter in August 1990, the boy, born in 1979, had celebrated his 11th birthday two months earlier and was already honing his skills at local blues jams in his native Boston. Yes, Boston… though when you hear his guitar you'd rather think of Dallas or Austin ! At these blues jams he had the lucky opportunity to play and learn from such experienced elders as Ronnie Earl, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Matt Murphy or Paul Rishell.

July 19, 2023

Dom Flemons - Black Cowboys (2018) / Prospect Hill-The American Songster Omnibus (2014, 2-CD reissue 2020)

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Journey through the past

Dom Flemons is a unique musician. Self-baptized “the American Songster” since his eponymous 2009 solo album featuring early American roots music styles (blues, folk, cowboy songs, old-time banjo, jug band, fife and drum...) while he was still a member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops band (1), he extended his musical approach to ethno-musicology and history of music on his next ambitious projects : "Prospect Hill" (2014) and "Black Cowboys" (2018). "Prospect Hill" was extended to a 2-CD set featuring new material in 2020.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops : l. to r., Dom
Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson

Half Afro-American, half of Mexican descent, Flemons was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He studied English at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, where he met Súle Greg Wilson, a local percussionist, banjo player and folklorist who became a mentor to him.

In the end of 2005, Flemons and Wilson, with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson formed the old-time string band, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, based in Durham, North Carolina. While active in the band, Flemons was leading a parallel solo career, but in the end of 2013 he left the group to pursue his "Prospect Hill" project.

July 17, 2023

Levon Helm - Levon Helm and The RCO All-Stars (1977, re-issue 1996)

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The Band ? No, Levon Helm
(but it's nearly the same...)
T
he cover looks like one of those kitsch Christmas postcards ― a pretty wooden house in an immaculate snowy landscape ― and from the very first notes of the opening track, “Washer Woman”, one immediately thinks of the legendary group The Band whose first album was also showing a big house, a pink one, on the rear cover.

Not surprising, because Mark Lavon Helm (1940-2012) was one of the singers and the drummer of the Canadian group whose very first name was… Levon and The Hawks ! He was also the only American in the group and, as most of his Band mates, a multi-instrumentalist who could also play harmonica, mandolin, guitar and bass.

July 12, 2023

Chicano Rock & Folk : Los Lobos - Disconnected In New York City (Live) (2013) / Los Cenzontles & Andre Thierry (feat. David Hidalgo) - Shades Of Brown (2015)

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The wolves and the mockingbirds

One is from East Los Angeles ― Los Lobos (The Wolves) ―, the other, from the East shore of the San Francisco Bay area. Los Lobos were formed in 1973 and have so far released about 25 studio and live albums, while the fluctuating lineup band Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds) sprung up in 1989 as the musical showcase of the Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center in San Pablo, and recorded a dozen albums so far. Both are Chicano (*) bands, perfect examples of America's musical melting pot, but their approach is somewhat different.

July 07, 2023

Eric Clapton & Guests - Crossroads Revisited (Selections From The Crossroads Guitar Festivals) (2016)

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The miracles of “God”
Without any exaggeration, this 3-CD, 40-track compilation covering the 2004, 2007, 2010 and 2013 editions of the Crossroads Guitar Festival (CGF) is an absolute kick! Not one track that you'd want to drop down. Not even one single bit of a track ! And the content will appeal as much to pop/rock fans as to blues lovers.