07/12/07 -
Otis Rush - Cobra Recordings and Door To Door (plus "Homework" on Duke)
Albert King - Let's Have A Natural Ball
Bobby "Blue" Bland - The 3B Blues Boy and Two Steps From The Blues
Little Richard - The Georgia Peach
Johnny Guitar Watson - The RPM Recordings
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - The Original Peacock Recordings
Ike Turner and his Kings Of Rhythm - Trailblazer
Junior Wells - Live At Club 47 1966 (boot) and Southside Blues Jam
Raphael Wressnig/Enrico Crivellaro Organ Combo - Mosquito Bite
Enrico Crivellaro - Key To My Kingdom
Nick Curran and the Nightlifes - Player and Doctor Velvet
Kirk Fletcher - Shades Of Blue
The Fabulous Thunderbirds - Girls Go Wild/What's The Word? and Painted On
Monster Mike Welch - Just Like It Is (pre-release)
I just played a festival in Gaildorf, Germany with Sugar Ray, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Enrico Crivallero were both on the bill. It made me very excited about the state of blues and blues-based guitar these days - Kirk, Nick, and Enrico are as good as guitarists can possibly get, and they're all striving to get better. I think I'll be writing a longer blog post about them soon enough if I remember to get around to it. Here's some of their music, as well as some of the music I've gone back and listened to since with that inspiration in mind.
07/28/06 -
Otis Rush - Cold Day in Hell
B.B. King - The Vintage Years and Live in Japan
Magic Sam - Live, Rockin' Wild in Chicago, Magic Touch
Junior Wells - It's My Life Baby
Lee Dorsey - Yes We Can...And Then Some
Robert Nighthawk - Black Angel Blues
XTC - Apple Venus, Wasp Star, The Dukes of Stratosphear
Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters - Peace of Mind
01/08/06 -
Various Artists- Chicago Blues Guitar Killers
Various Artists - Cool Playing Blues
Various Artists - Ain't Times Hard (box set)
Various Artists - Meat and Gravy from Bea and Baby
Otis Rush - All Your Love I Miss Loving - Live at the Wise Fools' Pub
Memphis Slim - Memphis Slim, USA
James Cotton - Mighty Long Time
Pee Wee Crayton, Billy Boy Arnold, et al - The Telephone is Ringing
Lazy Lester - Blues Stop Knockin'
Pee Wee Crayton - Early Hour Blues
Chicago Bob - Flying Too High (rough mix)
Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters - Soul Searchin'
Angela Strehli - Blonde and Blue
Denny Freeman - Blues Cruise
5/20/05 -
Sonny Boy Williamson - When the Sun Goes Down, Throw A Boogie Woogie
As much as I've studied the blues for most of my conscious life, there are still gaping blind spots in my blues knowledge. Until recently, the music of John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson was one of them - I didn't really have any decent knowledge of pre-war Chicago blues, and although I knew that Sonny Boy I was a great writer who was covered or stolen from by Jimmy Rogers, Junior Wells, Little Walter, Muddy, and the Wolf, if you mentioned the name to me, I assumed you were talking about Alec "Rice" "Sonny Boy Williamson" Miller, aka Sonny Boy II, who I loved to death. How blind I was - Sonny Boy I is now one of my favorite singer/songwriter/harpists, with a great, pleading vocal style and rhythmically powerful, cutting harp blasts that are a precursor to the rawer harp blowing of Howlin' Wolf. And the musicianship from everyone on these records is so great - you've got Big Joe Williams or Robert Nighthawk on guitars, Yank Rachell on mandolin, and fuller bands that I don't really know the lineup of - and you see that Muddy and his peers didn't create Chicago blues out of thin air; the template was already firmly in place.
John Lee Hooker - That's My Story, Alone, Hooker N' Heat, The Country Blues of John Lee Hooker
John Lee was another blind spot for a lot of my youth. I always respected him and enjoyed his music when I heard it, but I didn't really fall hard for him until a couple of years ago. When I did, though, John Lee's music became all I could listen to for a while - nothing else seemed as real, honest, or deep as the great Hook. Although John Lee made plenty of great full-band records, I prefer to hear his music stripped down, either solo (as on Alone, The Country Blues of... and the first few songs of ...N' Heat) or with a very small, sensitive band (see That's My Story). I owe a debt to Charles Shaar Murray's wonderfully idiosyncratic Hooker bio for turning me on to Hooker N' Heat, nominally his collaboration with Canned Heat, but mostly solo or in duo settings with the Heat's brilliant multi-instrumentalist and musicologist Alan Wilson (the man who rediscovered Son House, and you know how much I love Son House). John Lee's guitar sound on this record is something very special; it's raw and ratty yet glistening and spatial.
Ry Cooder - Show Time, Boomer's Story, River Rescue, Music By Ry Cooder
John Hiatt - Bring the Family
Bobby King and Terry Evans - Live and Let Live!
In a remarkable case of the snake eating its own tail, I recently got on a serious Ry Cooder kick because I got a guitar that reminded me of him. It's a little more complicated than that, actually - I found an old Teisco guitar at Rock City Guitars in Somerville that had those magic gold-foil Teisco pickups (like Ry has in his main Strat), so I bought the guitar and put the pickups in a spare Strat, which got me thinking about Ry's sound, so out came the CDs, and...well, you know. I love Ry's sensitivity, taste, touch and tones, and I love the way he plays on other peoples' records where he can just be the guitar genius. I think a lot of guys are like that, playing more of their cool stuff when they're not in charge.
Buddy Guy - I Was Walking Through The Woods, A Man and the Blues, This is Buddy Guy!, Stone Crazy, DJ Play My Blues, Blues Singer
What can I really say about Buddy? I mean, other than that he's my biggest guitar influence, and my favorite singer, and you should really hear his old records... Early Buddy Guy records (before 1970 or so) are among the very best music I know. He strikes a perfect balance of terrifying frenzy and fragile beauty, both vocally and on guitar, and just does more for my soul than anybody else. Gradually during the 70's and 80's, the balance shifted towards terrifying frenzy and away from fragile beauty, and although I enjoy his power and intensity on records like Stone Crazy!, by the time you get to records like Breaking Out and Damn Right I've Got The Blues, the distortion and volume are jacked up to the point where the impact is somewhat lost, for me at least. I don't know - he's my hero and a genius, and I really have no right to criticize him, but I will always prefer the old records to the new, until you come to his most recent one. Either Buddy, his producer or his label had a flash of blinding brilliance in putting together Blues Singer, and it's one of my favorite Buddy records of all. Keeping it acoustic, with a sensitive, realistically recorded small band, and choosing great old Delta blues songs instead of, I don't know, "Mustang Sally," brings out the beauty in Buddy's music in a much deeper way than we as an audience have heard yet. The terrifying frenzy is still there, bubbling under the surface, but more importantly, all of the nuance of fingers and throat and teeth is presented in stark relief. For me, the feeling is very much like Episode III being good - I feel like the heroes and mythology of my childhood have been done justice.
Bobby Bland - Two Steps from the Blues
Just because it's perfect.
1/17/05 -
Magic Sam, Live, Black Magic, West Side Soul, Rockin' Wild In Chicago,
The Magic Sam Legacy
Muddy Waters, Live (At Mr. Kelly's), The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk
Blues, Complete (Disc 2)
Otis Spann, The Blues Is Where It's At, Otis Spann Is The Blues
Floyd Jones/Eddie Taylor, Masters Of Modern Blues
Howlin' Wolf, The Chess Box
Earl Hooker, Two Bugs And A Roach
Okay, so I bought an iPod...not one of the little bitty ones, either, but the full-on 40GB beast...and I've been loading it with music. What one chooses to put on something as nearly unlimited as an iPod speaks volumes about what one actually feels about music, and it turns out that I'm a ridiculous blues fan. In fact - wait for it - I might even be a blues purist. Yes, you read that right; the self proclamed iconoclastic Beatlemaniac is a blues purist deep down. Now, this doesn't stop me from loving the music of the Beatles, Elvis Costello, and D'Angelo, nor does it mean that I'm going to throw on a baggy suit (although that may be the only kind that fits these days) and a pompadour and pretend it's 1957. But when it comes to the blues, and what I like to listen to, I pretty much like the music as it came up from the Delta to West Memphis and Chicago, and from Texas and Oklahoma out to California, and I'm just not that interested in anything else. Funny, huh?
10/07/04 -
Ray Charles, Genius and Soul, The Birth Of Soul, Sweet and Sour Tears, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Live, and The Birth Of Soul
Ray Charles was as perfect a musician as one could ever hope to hear. When he was on - which was basically all the time - he embodied everything that music can be and should be, both instrumentally and vocally, both melodically and rhythmically, and both cerebrally and spiritually. The sheer inventiveness with which he combined gospel and blues (and jazz, pop, country, etc) to create modern popular music cannot be overstated. This was a man who was on intimate terms with each and every one of his influences - if you ever get a chance, listen to his version of Big Maceo's "Worried Life Blues" - and saw them as merely a platform from which to create his own persona. The slight crack in his voice, the constant cat-and-mouse game with the tempo, the sound of each and every instrument in the band - these are all direct expressions of the heart, brain and body of Ray Charles, and no influence could ever be stronger than that. For those of us in the business of leading bands, writing songs, and creating music in general, that's a big lesson to be learned. Ray Charles was never anything less than himself.
Jeff Beck, Blow By Blow and Wired
Fusion in its purest form - not a passionless display of technique, but a high-level melding of Mahavishnu, Stevie Wonder, and Buddy Guy, as produced by the man who brought you the Beatles. My favorite part of Beck's playing is the relentless vocal quality - even when the guitar isn't singing to you, it's being played in a conversational way, with speech-like rhythms and dynamics. And Jeff's touch is wide ranging enough to communicate things that the English language only rarely reaches. The tone has a beautifully crispy quality, again like early Buddy Guy, that Beck's later, more high-gain tones can't touch.
Elvis Costello, The Delivery Man
"Needle Time" is the song I've been trying to write for at least five years. Now that it's been written, I'll have to move on to something else...Seriously, The Delivery Man is Elvis' long-overdue blues-based record (well, there's a lot of country and soul in there too...), combining the deep Americanisms of King Of America with the attack of Blood and Chocolate.
Bill Frisell, With Dave Holland and Elvin Jones
Pat Christman is the real Frisell obsessive in the Monster Mike band, but I've always loved his playing as well, and when Pat turned me on to this record, I knew it would stick with me. Some sounds just resonate with you, you know? Frisell manages to be both atmospheric and earthy, and Elvin Jones is a perfect foil, with less rolling thunder than in the Coltrane quartet days, but the same panoramic approach to color and rhythm. There are very few people that I kick myself for never having a chance to work with - I wish I could have made a record produced and engineered by Tom Dowd, and I wish I could have played just once with the mighty Elvin. The Monster Mike band was actually on a bill with Elvin once, believe it or not, at the 1997 North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland. Elvin's band was playing on a different stage before we went on, and Warren Grant and I sat there absorbing everything we possibly could. It was intimidating, indeed, but also very inspiring - although our music was pretty caveman in comparison, I've never been more excited to go play caveman music.
Brian Wilson, Smile
"Our Prayer" is what I want my music to sound like. That and Junior Wells.
Junior Wells, Hoodoo Man Blues
I've been going over this record with a fine tooth comb with my band recently. There's a certain use of space and color on this record that's really unique, in the blues or elsewhere, and I want to be able to get there. I think that's a lot of what I'm going through recently - just the desire to realize the sounds in my head, which contain all of these elements of music that I love, but don't sound like any of it. What I would like to get from Hoodoo Man Blues is that space and color, as well as some of the crazy interlocking parts that Buddy Guy and Jack Myers get into.
Little Walter, The Essential Little Walter
I have real issues with some of the best blues being made today. Too often, it seems like people - incredibly talented people who border on genius in some cases - are settling for copying the masters in the name of "carrying the torch." Well, I've been listening to Little Walter recently, and I can tell you that that's not the freaking torch. The torch is what ignited in Marion Walter Jacobs' mind when he looked at the harmonica - the harmonica, for Christ's sake! - and said, "I don't see why this can't do everything that Lester Young or Louis Jordan can do." The torch is the moment when he looked at his raggedy-assed band of two guitars and a drummer and said, "Anything Ellington or Basie can do, we can top." In the process - the melding of deep blues harmonica traditions with modern jazz and pop sophistication, all filtered through a brain that obviously had to deal with new ideas at a rate of about a million per second - a truly new music was formed, one that has now become a kind of sacred text, canonized but almost never built upon. Can you imagine if someone with Walter's soulfulness, brilliance, and understanding of the blues tradition (there's a particularly Fabulous harp blower out there that leaps to mind) could make that kind of creative quantum leap today? None of us would ever be the same, and we might then and only then have some understanding of what it was like to hear Walter for the first time in Chicago in the Fifties. I'm waiting...
04/02/04 -
Eric Clapton - Me and Mr. Johnson
Aerosmith - Honkin' on Bobo
Of course, the release of two blues-oriented albums by major rock stars in the same week made me curious, especially in the case of Eric Clapton. Clapton was my first lead guitar influence, and to this day, he's one of the most powerful. When I run out of things to play, I always fall back on what I learned from him. His combination of passion and elegance has been a constant inspiration to me. His singing is an area that he gets less credit for, but he's one of my absolute favorite singers. His voice has a soulful, lived-in quality that draws me in every time.
Clapton has gotten a bit of flak for this particular release (for some reason, he seems to get a lot of that for everything he does), largely because people seem to be missing the extended, fiery guitar soloing that he really hasn't done that much of since 1968. There are solos on Mr. Johnson - and great ones, at that - but the focus is on serving the songs, which he manages to get at the heart of each time without pretense or melodrama. That's a hard thing to do when confronted with a repertoire as mired in legend and emotionally daunting as Robert Johnson's. Clapton makes each song his own, with swinging ensemble arrangements that never overstate their case. And he's singing better than ever.
Aerosmith, on the other hand, is all about overstating the case, and by concentrating on the blues, they've made one of the coolest rock and roll records in recent memory. Slamming and grooving and at times (the unlikely Aretha cover, "Never Loved A Girl (Man)") even moving. A lot of fun.
03/17/04 -
Robert Johnson - The
Complete Recordings
Various Artists - Back
to the Crossroads:The Roots of Robert Johnson
Robert Jr. Lockwood - The
Legend Live
Richard Thompson - The
Old Kit Bag
Eric Clapton - Just
One Night
John Hammond - At
the Crossroads
Notice a trend here? I've been obsessively listening to Robert Johnson, with detours into the music that influenced him and the music that he inspired. Robert Johnson's music, to me, is the perfect combination of intense cri de coeur and carefully thought-out pop song sensibilities. Too often, his music is celebrated for its "otherness," and indeed, it can seem somewhat foreign to modern ears. But to me, there's something very familiar, beautiful, and warm about his music that the classic image of the hellhound-driven soul-selling primitive doesn't capture. I would highly recommend Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues and Peter Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson in addition to listening to the 29-song, 42-track Johnson canon - both writers take brilliant but divergent paths towards demythologizing the man and his music.