Reviews
Eddie Tigner - Slippin' In
There's something about Barrelhouse Blues music that gets under your skin and won't leave you alone. Perhaps it's the beat, the inflection of the singer's voice, or maybe it's just the easy swing that sets your hips to moving and your toes to tapping. Yet, a real good Barrelhouse player can also take you down a sentimental road full of tears and heartbreak without once making it taste like too much sugar in your coffee.(more)
Blues Sweet Blues
If Robert Palmer had lived to produce a follow-up to his documentary film Deep Blues, he would have found inspiration and ample source material in the artists that make up the Music Maker Foundation’s roster. Since it was founded by Tim and Denise Duffy in 1994, the non-profit organization has provided studio time to under-recorded practitioners of southern roots and blues music. Their extensive discography, which encompasses bluegrass, country, folk, and especially blues, has become an archival treasure trove that documents the artistic contributions of regional players, most of whom are unknown on the national level. (more)
Dom Flemons: Dance Tunes, Ballads, and Blues
Dom Flemons, usually heard on banjo, guitar, and harmonica with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, here steps out on his own. As usual, the emphasis is on vintage acoustic stylings, some of which derive from the pre-blues era and borrow equally from the overlapping African American and Anglo-European folk traditions. But it’s obvious that for Flemons, this music is contemporary and relevant. (more)
John Dee Holeman and the Waifs
You and the rest of your band have just traveled half way around the world to tour across the United States. You count yourself lucky because you've been given the use of a studio for the week you want to rehearse before heading out on tour. What you'd really like to do is play some Blues music, but no matter how hard you try, what arrangements you work up, it just isn't coming together.(more)
Bishop Dready Maning: Gospel Train
Over the years we've often heard of the African-American musician who got their start singing in the church choir. Aretha Franklin started off by singing in the church choir doing gospel music as did half or more of the recording stars who became big in the blues, funk and rhythm and blues genres in the sixties and seventies.(more)
Drink House to Churchouse Vol. 1 & 2
There are fewer and fewer living connections to our musical past still alive today. Of those that are many are living lives of quiet desperation, struggling to hang on with meagre social security pensions and no medical insurance. Some months that might mean having to choose between having their electricity shut off and eating. (more)
Christmas with Cootie
I think if I wander into another store and here some pop star, with a trembling voice they think makes them sound sincere, singing a Christmas song, I might vomit. Not only do they sound awful, they always pick some of the worst excuses for Christmas music that exists. Why people must associate the sickly sentimental with Christmas I don't know, but they do.(more)
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind
Another great discovery this year was the Carolina Chocolate Drops. These three young African-American musicians, based in Raleigh/Durham,NC, joined up with 80-year old string band veteran Joe Thompson as their mentor and have produced some if the finest black string band music in years. Dona Got a Ramblin’ Mind is their current release.(more)
Pura Fé: Hold the Rain
When Hiawatha brought his message of peace to the original five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, it was with an eye to the future. He knew that if they wanted any chance of surviving in the days after the arrival of the Europeans, they would have to stop fighting among themselves and unite. (He is widely credited with being the first person in North America to use the bundle of sticks being harder to break then each stick individually allegory).(more)
Albert White: Soul of the Blues
Albert White is one of those musicians who have been around forever but remain virtually unknown even to the cognoscenti. Most notably, the Atlanta-based guitarist became leader of his uncle Piano Red’s band Dr. Feelgood and the Interns back in 1962, at age 19. (more)
Alabama Slim and Little Freddie King: The Mighty Flood
When Hurricane Katrina struck, Milton "Alabama Slim" Frazier and his cousin Little Freddie King made it out of New Orleans with their lives but not much else. The story of their encounter with the storm is related in the two versions of the Mighty Flood that bookend this disc's dozen selections and give it its name. (more)
James Davis: Georgia Drumbeat
"Drumbeat" is what the folks around Perry, Georgia, called the music that James Daivs used to make at a local juke called the Turning Point until he was sidelined by a stroke in 1998. In consisted only of Davis' guitar and the unembellished, steady-rocking accompaniment of a drummer. (more)
Guitar Gabriel: Toot Blues Music Maker
Guitar Gabriel, born Robert Lewis Jones in Georgia on October 12, 1925, grew up the son of a legendary bluesman. After WWII, he criss-crossed the country performing in old-time medicine shows, Dixieland bands, and for burlesque acts. (more)
Guitar Gabriel & the Brothers in the Kitchen Toot Blues
The Music Maker Relief Foundation is one of the more impressive blues preservation groups around. This re-issue of a 1991 cassette is Music Maker's first "official" release--though it has been selling CDs and tapes for years. (more)
Carolina Chocolate Drops: Dona Got a Ramblin' Mind
When you talk about what we'd call hillbilly music -- fiddle, jug, banjo, and other like instruments the immediate association one makes is with the hardscrabble farmers of the Appalachians in Tennessee. You think of poor white people singing the old Irish and Scottish folk tunes they changed to suit their environment and temperament. The furthest thing from your mind is going to be young black musicians. (more)
Etta Baker with Taj Mahal
Etta Baker is the grand old lady of the blues and I'm sure she won't mind me saying that she is 91 years of age. She has influenced many a guitarist and Taj Mahal has said that she is the greatest single influence on his guitar style. This album of songs recorded between 1956 and 1998 shows that she is a force to be reckoned with. (more)
Pura Fe: Follow Your Heart's Desire
This is blues with a Pura Fé twist and is almost acoustic rock. I haven't spoken much about her guitar playing but she is more than able. She returns to her roots for Going Home/Stomp Dance which starts out with a spoken blues history lesson before going into a Native American chant and dance. The closing track, Sweet Willie, is a pleasant finish and overall the album shows her to be challenging Bonnie Raitt and outshining Joss Stone. (more)
Lee Gates And The Alabama Cotton Kings
Like clock work the Music Maker Foundation steadily continues to release fine, if unheralded, recordings by deserving artists both well known and obscure. Among the latest batch are a pair by two fifty year blues veterans including the latest by the legendary Jerry McCain and the overdue debut by sizzling guitarist Lee Gates.
Jerry "Boogie" McCain: Boogie Is My Name
"Boogie Is My Name" is McCain's third for the label following on
the heels of a fine acoustic outing and 2000's stellar "This Stuff
Just Kills Me" which was easily one of his best. McCain's new release
marks a remarkable 50 years in the business having cut his first
record way back in 1953 for the famous Trumpet label when he billed
himself as Jerry "Boogie" McCain, His Harmonica & Orchestra. (more)
Various Artists: Sisters of the South
The spotlight of this release is on the female artists and the wide variety and amazing performances are breathtaking. (more)
Cora Mae Bryant: Born With The Blues
Cora Mae Bryant makes her home in Oxford, Georgia and is the daughter of the great bluesman Curley Weaver known in his day as "the Georgia Guitar Wizard." Born in 1926, Bryant not only carries on her father's memory but is also a torchbearer for the Georgia blues tradition. At the time of her birth Georgia,and particularly Atlanta, was teeming with great bluesman like Blind Willie McTell, Barbecue Bob, Buddy Moss and many others.
George Higgs: Tarboro Blues
The Music Maker Relief Foundation has been releasing records for the past few years and have been quietly building one of the best catalogs of traditional blues of any current blues label. Music Maker is not simply a blues label, however, and have a unique mission proudly stated within every record: "Giving back to the forgotten heroes & pioneers of Southern musical traditions..." Cora Mae Bryant and George Higgs are certainly worthy beneficiaries and both of these CD's deserve wide exposure. (more)
Jeff Harris reviews Little Pink Anderson: Carolina Bluesman and Blues Came to Georgia
The songs are drawn almost exclusively from his dad's repertoire which includes mainly traditional folk and blues tunes but played with so much good natured charisma and passion that he makes these songs totally his own.
Little Pink Anderson: Carolina Bluesman
Big Boy Henry: "Beaufort Blues"
Richard "Big Boy" Henry was born in Beaufort, North Carolina in 1921 and has been called the patriarch of Carolina Blues. At 81 Henry remains a fine blues singer and wonderful storyteller making "Beaufort Blues" a charming, beautiful set of country blues. (more)
From: Time Out New York - April 3-10, 2003
If the Recording Industry of America truly gave a damn about making sure musicians profit fairly from their work, it would worry less about file-sharing and more about Southern roots and blues musicians, most of whom, having built the foundations of modern American music, received little to no payment for their work and now live in grinding poverty.
Lightnin' Wells: Ragged but Right
Lightnin' Wells has been performing his Piedmont-tinged variety of American roots music for 35 years. His vibrant, good-natured vocals and melody-rich guitar playing recall the sounds of 1930's and '40's string bands and barrelhouse bluesmen. Songs like "Rainbor" and "Lost Lover Blues" just seem to float in the air.
