What seems to be an unlikely pairing in the duo of former -- and future apparently -- Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass superstar Alison Krauss is actually one of the most effortless-sounding pairings in modern popular music. The bridge seems to be producer T-Bone Burnett and the band assembled for this outing: drummer Jay Bellerose ...
A massive media campaign comprising seven documentary films broadcast on public television and released as a DVD box set, plus accompanying soundtrack albums, a 13-part radio series, a companion book, 12 individual artist compilations, and a five-CD box set, The Blues, executive produced by filmmaker Martin Scorsese, threatened to be even more all ...
Keb' Mo's self-titled debut is an edgy, ambitious collection of gritty country blues. Keb' Mo' pushes into new directions, trying to incorporate some of the sensibilites of the slacker revolution without losing touch of the tradition that makes the blues the breathing, vital art form it is. His attempts aren't always successful, but his gutsy ...
You Don't Know My Mind brings back the familiar, friendly growl of modern-day traditionalist Guy Davis, with a pipin' hot baker's dozen of his compositions. Again, on this disc Davis has some extremely able players to help augment his songs and support his vision of them, never overplaying or getting in the way, but providing that constant base of ...
On his second album, Keb' Mo' begins to expand the borders of his Delta blues by recording with a full band on a couple of tracks and attempting more expansive, rock-based song structures. The attempts aren't entirely successful and it's ironic that he decided to try rock-oriented material after he received such praise for his traditionalist debut ...
After 35 years and the release of over 2800 contemporary blues tracks, it's safe to say that Bruce Iglauer's Alligator Records is the world's premier blues label, particularly if sheer numbers are factored in, and while the label's releases tend to sound mind-numbingly similar sometimes, this two-disc overview of Alligator's history shows how much ...
On Suitcase, his eighth studio release, Keb' Mo' (Kevin Moore) reunites with John Porter, the producer of Moore's critically lauded first album, and the result is a pleasant, midtempo suite of songs dedicated to the emotional baggage everyone carries with them as they plow through increasingly complicated lives in search of peace, love, and some ...
Otis Taylor can make people nervous. His take on the blues is defiant, angry, aggressive, and confrontational, owing as much to Peter Tosh as Charley Patton. Although he carries the dust of 1920s country blues in his mostly acoustic songs, his railings against social injustices are thoroughly contemporary. Taylor is an often pedantic songwriter, ...
Chris Smither doesn't do much here that he hasn't done throughout his long career, but there's no crime in consistent excellence. That career, launched during the Boston folk revival of the late '60s, has now encompassed a dozen albums, with a lengthy hiatus throughout most of the '70s and '80s as Smither battled the demons of alcoholism and ...
Columbia/Legacy's 2000 collection The Best of Taj Mahal is a first-rate overview of Taj Mahal's classic late-'60s/early-'70s work for Columbia. Spanning 17 tracks, including a previously unreleased cut "Sweet Mama Janisse" from 1970, this hits many of the key points from the records he released between 1967 and 1974, including "Statesboro Blues," ...
In many ways, Hot Flash is the definitive Saffire album. Racy and sassy -- and to some tastes cutesy -- the album is a fun, free-thinking update of classic female blues, performed with gusto and verve. The instrumentation is sparse -- a piano, guitar, bass, harmonica, and kazoo provide the foundation of the music -- but the focus of these songs is ...
There is plenty of fire in Saffire -- The Uppity Blues Women, a trio of feisty multiracial middle-aged acoustic blues femmes who, rather surprisingly, were one of the top sellers from Alligator's male-dominated, plugged-in roster. This generous 20-track, 75-minute compilation collects highlights from the threesome's previous seven Alligator albums ...
As passionate as dust bowl troubadour Woody Guthrie was about politics and inequality, he was even more passionate about children, particularly his own. It has been long known that Guthrie left behind a wealth of unrecorded and half completed songs while he was living in New York near the end of his life, the most famous of these appearing as ...
Since he's a limited vocalist with erratic songwriting skills, one could justifiably argue that the soundtrack medium is the best vehicle for Ry Cooder's talents, allowing him to construct eclectic, chiefly instrumental pieces drawing upon all sorts of roots music and ethnic flavors (often, but not always, employing his excellent blues and slide ...
Many tribute albums act as secret promotional tools for the individual labels to push some of their lesser-known artists on the coattails of their heavy hitters. Fortunately, nothing could be further from the truth on Lost Highway's all-star tribute to Hank Williams, Timeless. Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, and Keith Richards ...
Phelps' third album is an accomplished serving of country blues that combines the sweet and sour power of his guitar playing with the equally bittersweet charge of Phelps' wearied voice. Shine Eyed Mister Zen features a lot of singing, but most importantly it spotlights the singing of Phelps' slide guitar, which integrates a humid and natural ...
You could see this one coming. Watermelon Slim's last album, 2004's sparse and arresting Up Close & Personal, revealed a contemporary bluesman with a scholar's understanding of the genre and a truly skewed, passionate approach to performing it that hinted at even deeper possibilities. Watermelon Slim & the Workers is the payoff. The sound on this ...
Recorded in April of 2005, seven months before Chris Whitley's death from lung cancer, Dislocation Blues is a fine, perhaps even glorious, epitaph. Aussie blues guitarist Jeff Lang and Whitley, friends since the mid-'90s, hooked up as part of an Australian tour and took a couple of weeks to record these 14 songs (the final two, Robert Johnson's ...
To say that Carolina Chocolate Drops are an anomaly in the 21st century would be a huge understatement. Here are three twenty-something African-Americans playing a brand of acoustic, banjo- and fiddle-driven string band music that is nearly extinct today, and in fact peaked in the pre-WWII era. Although a number of Southern-bred black string bands ...
Otis Taylor has a knack for interesting titles; Blue-Eyed Monster and When Negros Walked the Earth are among the CDs that the Denver bluesman recorded before White African. Taylor also has a knack for very dark and sobering themes -- this 2001 release, in fact, is full of them. On White African, Taylor's subject matter ranges from lynching in the ...
By their third release it had already been noted numerous times that beautiful harmonies were a strong point for alternative folksters Po' Girl and that they could entrance with music that wasn't afraid to straddle genres while remaining organically pure. With their third release. Canada's acoustic wonders have conquered the full-length, ...
The first studio album in five years from the band finds them for the most part, having a rocking good time and placing an emphasis on the boogie-woogie end of the blues. Instrumentally and vocally they keep getting better and better, with pianist Ann Rabson a particular standout for her vibrant keyboard work. While they live up to their image of ...
A year and a half after his remarkable live album, Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind, Kelly Joe Phelps returns to the studio with his restless, searing, intimate vision and remarkable skills as both an instrumentalist and a songwriter. While Phelps employs several musicians from his past, such as guitarist Steve Dawson, fiddler Jesse Zubot, and ...
The blues has always been an enigma. A music that expresses deeply personal emotions, it does so with a well-worn collection of repeated phrases, rhymes, and floating verses that are nothing short of community property. It is also a music of constriction, with a conservative set of stock progressions and riffs that make innovations to the genre ...
Genuine Houserockin' Christmas is a 16-track compilation of newly recorded holiday tunes sampling the roster of Alligator Records. These tunes capture several Chicago blues, modern soul, and zydeco artists including Koko Taylor, Lonnie Brooks, Lil' Ed & the Blues Imperials, Coco Montoya, C.J. Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band, Saffire - The ...
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