Reviews
Reviewed by Richard Marcus
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.
It’s a real trick, and not one that many people can manage; Dr. John is probably the best-known player, and I’ve heard one or two…
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Reviewed by Roger Gatchet
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.
Blues Sweet Blues compiles…
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Reviewed by David Whiteis
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. Three of the eleven songs here are originals; others creatively graft new ideas onto vintage frameworks or combine several old-time themes into fresh combinations.
In fact, it’s the rough edges in Flemons’ delivery that make his performances especially arresting.…
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Reviewed by Richard Marcus
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.
It turns out your host at the studio happens to know a bunch of old time blues musicians, they record right here in this studio all…
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Reviewed by Richard Marcus
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.
But how often have we heard it going the other way round? Okay sure there was Bob Dylan’s much publicized stint as a Born Again Christian, and other musicians might have found God after they stopped shooting another version of enlightenment into…
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Reviewed by Richard Marcus
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.
Although when you think about it, it makes sense. Advertisers learnt long ago that a message triggering a sentimental reaction would guarantee sales more effectively then anything as messy as real emotions. One of the biggest…
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Reviewed by Richard Marcus
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.
These aren’t people to whom retirement planning was a serious consideration. You show me a musician who thinks beyond their next gig even when they’re in their sixties and I’ll be surprised. It’s just not in their nature to believe they’ll ever stop playing, because they…
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Reviewed by Steve Ramm
“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. I’m even more impressed with the release they made before they met Thompson and were called the Sankofa Strings. Colored Aristocracy has them playing fiddles, guitars, banjos and a jug on such 78rpm standards as Noble Sissle’s “Viper Mad”, Clarence “Tom” Ashley’s “Little Sadie” and mentor Thompson’s…
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Reviewed by Richard Marcus
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).
The original five members of the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) were the Nundawaono – People Of The Great Hill…
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Reviewed by Jim De Koster
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. Next came lengthy stints with the Tams and Hank Ballard, and in recent years he’s reunited with one of Dr. Feelgood’s nurses, guitarist Beverly Watkins.
Given his background, it’s not surprising that White’s music reveals a broad spectrum of R & B influences. In addition to teaming up with Watkins fro a rousing revival of Dr.…
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