The Catch-Back, vol. 8 : Memphis Gold, Kenny Neal, Little Joe McLerran, Percy Strother, Selwyn Cooper

...they deserved to be featured here…

Memphis Gold - Pickin' In High Cotton (2011)

Memphis Gold, born Chester Chandler in 1955 in Memphis, has been an active "bluesician" for some 60 years but, oddly enough, he has only 4 albums out so far, this being the last one to date. A Vietnam veteran himself, he is also active in veterans and fellow blues musicians health help fund raising events.

His career could have stopped abruptly in 2008 though. He fell some 35 feet down from a tree and suffered a triple fracture of the back that could have left him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Fortunately his strong will plus good medical care helped him to avoid such an unfortunate fate. As a consequence, he now walks with a cane and sits most of the time during his shows, as it appears in most of the videos proposed below.

Heard lately #1 - Bobby Rush, Eddie Ray, Little Smokey Smothers, Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder, The Neville Brothers Live, Zac Harmon

→ Express reviews of some albums I listened recently

Bobby Rush - All My Love For You (2023)

All I knew was his name seen here and there in articles and reviews, and this album is a very, very good surprise. Horn fueled soul blues from top to bottom, with some R'n'B numbers like “One Monkey Can Stop a Show”, as Louisiana (where Rush was born in 1933 as Emmett Ellis Jr.) can produce.

A prolific songwriter, Rush signs all the tracks (including “TV Mama”, not to be mistaken with the same and often covered title from Lou Willie Turner aka Luella Brown, Big Joe Turner's wife). Two lively titles stand out , “I'm Free” and “I'm The One”, about blues music, which sound largely autobiographical.

Vanessa Collier - Meeting My Shadow (2017)

→ Thanks to L.C.

The lady with the saxophone

A few years ago, recalling one of his past performances, a blues giant told : “There’s a young lady came onstage with me, I forget where it was, but she’s playing an alto saxophone, and man, she was amazing !” The bluesman is Buddy Guy, the young lady is Philadelphia-based vocalist, saxophonist and songwriter Vanessa Collier, and the performance was on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise (LRBC) #29 in 2017.

Lonesome Sundown – Been Gone Too Long (1977)

→ Thanks to L. C.

The last swamp boogie

John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun" was the first song that he learned to play on guitar. He was about 20, his name was Cornelius Green III and he was living in his native town of Donaldsonville (Louisiana), some 40 kms south of Baton Rouge, on the West bank of the Mississippi river, a town famous for being the first in the US to elect an African-American mayor following the Civil War, in 1868.

Very young he was working with his family in the cane fields. At the age of 18, he moved to New Orleans where he worked in various jobs for a couple of years before returning home in 1948 when, inspired by Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, he began taking guitar lessons from a cousin.

Tomcat Courtney - Downsville Blues (2008)

→ Thanks to L. C.

The nine lives of the Tomcat

Another vintage low-down bluesman who didn't record a first album before old age. Tomcat Courtney's debut studio work and only nationally released opus, came out when he was… 79 ! Earlier, he had only self-released live recordings on cassette or CD for sell after his gigs.

“The kind of blues I’m playin’, now they call it Texas style”, he explained. “But we called it the country blues, you know… It’s the style of picking, with your fingers and all that. It wasn’t any bottle-necking, like Mississippi blues.”

Harry "Big Daddy" Hypolite - Louisiana Country Boy (2001)

→ Thanks to L. C.

The miraculous album

A really magnificent haunting blues voice for a beautiful album coming from ― and catching you by ― the guts. Despite the obvious talent of Harry Hypolite, it's totally unbelievable that this superb recording which exhales the favor of the muddy waters of the bayous is his first and only solo opus, recorded while he was 63 !

Born in April 1937 in St. Martinville, Louisiana, in a Creole French speaking family, Hypolite did not learn English until going to school at the age of 6. He had a rough youth, obliged to drop out after the fourth grade to go out and work : from about 12 years old he cut sugar cane, dug sweet potatoes or picked okra and cotton.

"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]

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 !

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

→ Thanks to my unique partners...

Jumpin' the boogie !

Things 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.

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

→ Thanks to my unique partners...

Soft hokum but great showmanship

Comic 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.