Samantha Fish - Chills & Fever (2017)

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Doctor Sam and Miss Fish

Who could believe this young woman, a real preppy daddy's girl during daylight, would turn after sunset into a hot guitar-slinger and roaring singer casting bad spells of chills and fever with her muscular blues-based blend ! Must be some voodoo working here !

Cataloged as a song-writer, Fish didn't write one single song on this album ! Considered as a blues-rocker, she turned her back to blues-rock to look toward the Motown sound, metamorphosing into a soul-rocker. Logically she went to Detroit, the Motown city, to record her fifth solo studio album with members of The Detroit Cobras band and producer Bobby Harlow.

Calvin Russell - This Is My Life : The Story Of Calvin Russell (1997)

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Scarface blues

I won't go over Russell's bio. His life started in poverty, drugs, violence and several stays in jail, as much hardship written like scars on his face, and his redemption through music are documented here. 

After five studio albums and a live released in just eight years, the bad Austin cowboy re-issued his best titles in this compilation, augmented with three new songs : his self-written “Texas Song” and his covers of Bobby Womack's “It’s All Over Now” and Bob Dylan's “Forever Young”.

Dan Treanor, Richard Ray Farrell & The Afrosippi Band - Keepin' Good Folks Joyful (2008)

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Extraordinary ! Exhilarating !

Treanor-Farrell, Farrell-Treanor ? Afrisippi, Afrissippi or Afrossippi ? Or maybe Missifrican or Missafrican ? What a headache ! In fact it doesn't matter, even if personally I would vote for the second proposition (Farell-Treanor) considering Farrell is doing all the singing, guitars and gitjo (1). On the other hand, Treanor has set up and produced the project, and brought the African sound with his khalam, diddley-bow and cane flute, both men being even on harmonica. So let it like it is . Concerning the Afrosippi Band, on this album it's been reduced to the sole rock solid rhythm section formed by Jodie Woodward on bass and the excellent Kyle Roberts on drums, congas and various percussion.

Johnny Sansone - The Lord Is Waiting And The Devil Is Too (2011)

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Johnny Sansone's dark swamp blues

Primal tribal beat, growling bear voice, powerful grunting harmonica, backing band reduced to two musicians (producer Anders Osborne on guitar and/or piano, percussion and sound effects, Stanton Moore on drums)… a very personal somber atmosphere enhanced by profound and often revolted lyrics is haunting this superb album, recorded in just a couple of days in June 2010 at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana.

The Mighty Soul Drivers - I'll Carry You Home (2022)

A special promotion by Onurblues & Blue Dragon

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Mighty groovy

The album starts, the music begins to flow, “I Can't Get Next To You" sings a soulful voice, the groove takes hold of you, you imagine you're in a club on Beale Street in Memphis or in Muscle Shoals. All wrong ! The Mighty Soul Drivers are from... Connecticut  ! And all wrong again, they really can get next to us with this very appealing album. Soul (especially Memphis sound), rhythm & blues, soul blues…, these guys aren't beginners and master their stuff like full-time professionals.

The band is tight around the beat. Bassist Tony Delisio and drummer Peter “River City Slim” Rost put out a powerful funky groove. Larry Willey, Bob Orsi and guests Paul Gabriel and Michael St. George deliver swinging rhythm guitar and great solos. Steve Donovan does a really fine job on keyboards with some churchy organ parts. John Smayda (saxes) and Neil Tint (trumpet) bring that Memphis/ Muscle Shoals sound along with a female background gospel-like choir. And the energetic Bob Orsi tops the whole pastry with his soulful vocals. What else do you need to get up and dance ?

James Brown - Live At The Apollo, 1962 (Expanded Edition, 2004) / Live At The Apollo Vol. II, 1967 (2-CD Deluxe Edition, 2001)

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Doctor Soul and Mister Funk

This review is about both “Live At the Apollo” albums, the first one recorded in 1962 and originally released in 1963, the second, Vol. II, recorded in 1967 and originally released in 1968.

The rude boy saved by R'n'B
Born in an impoverished family of South Carolina, raised in Augusta, Georgia, by an aunt who ran a whorehouse, dismissed from school at the age of 12 for "insufficient clothing" (!), the young James Brown turned a bad boy in his teens. At age 16, he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to three years in jail. Paroled in 1952, he started to sing in a vocal gospel quartet and met singer Bobby Byrd. In 1954, Brown joined Byrd's vocal gospel band, The Gospel Starlighters. In 1955, the group, influenced by Little Richard, evolved into a R'n'B band, was soon renamed the Famous Flames and started to play nightclubs in Macon, Georgia.

Bob Corritore & Friends - Do The Hip-Shake Baby! (2019)

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Do the harp-shake Bob!

Bob Corritore is not only a very talented and appealing harmonicist but he must be a very nice guy judging by the incredible number of friends who accept his invitations to guest on his albums. On this one, from 2019, the list is so long that I won't give it here, it would fill up all the space allowed to me on Blue Dragon ! The main ones are featured in the track-list, and the most interested will find the whole detailed casting here

Duke Robillard & Herb Ellis - Conversations In Swing Guitar (1999) & More Conversations In Swing Guitar (2003)

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Cool, elegant and gently swinging

Very jazzy, a little less bluesy, extremely cool, gently but surely swinging, the guitar adventures of Herb Ellis and Duke Robillard were recorded during the same session at the Lakewest Studio in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, in the early months of 1999 and released on two different albums : “Conversations…” in 1999, and “More Conversations…” in 2003. But both albums would deserve to be re-released as a double CD pack.

When jazz (Ellis) meets his old cousin blues (Robillard), and when the two heroes of the meeting are both superb guitarists, the result of the encounter is necessarily appealing.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Live (2004)

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Swing, swing, swing and... swing again ! 

Lovers of Cab Calloway's mischievous big band jump and swing should love BBVD just as well, especially on this rejoicing live album. The swing revival band, co-founded by singer-guitarist Scotty Morris and drummer Kurt Sodergren in Ventura, California, in 1989, was later joined by a solid cast of horn players, completed with a bassist, a pianist and a percussionist. During their residency at the Derby nightclub in Los Angeles, they reminded the world, in the midst of the grunge era, that it was still cool to swing. Since then Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (BBVD) has performed more than 2,600 shows over 22 years with a streak of 260 consecutive sold out concerts !

The Catch-back, vol. 3 : Herb Ellis - Pat Boyack - Buckwheat Zydeco - Doug MacLeod - Eddie Kirkland - Johnny Cash - Toby Walker - Lost Bayou Ramblers - Mercy - Robert Cage - Shawn Pittman & Jay Moeller

...some that deserved to be featured here…

Herb Ellis - Texas Swings (1992)

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When Herb Ellis celebrates his native Texas

At times, when the violin and the guitar are talking together, it almost sounds like the unforgettable pair Django Reinhardt-Stéphane Grappelli. The two French gypsy jazz musicians actually used to play some of the standards featured here : "Undecided", "It Had To Be You", "Sweet Georgia Brown". But no, here it's Dallas native Herb Ellis with a group of fine Western swing-Country music instrumentists : pianist Floyd Domino, pedal steel guitar master Herb Remington, fiddlers Johnny Gimble and Bobby Bruce, and… Willie Nelson on guitar, not forgetting the two Tommys' rhythm section, Aslup on bass and Perkins on drums.

This 10-song all-instrumental album features mainly Western swing and jazz standards, with only two Ellis compositions. If the final "America the Beautiful" is a disputable choice in my view, the nine preceding tracks are cheerfully swinging without being wild. The exciting sound of Remington's pedal steel is sometimes reminding that of Buddy Emmons on Danny Gatton's two "Redneck Jazz Explosion" 1978 live albums, and the fiddles bring a vintage Country & Western sound on some tracks.