New Releases -
March 2001
Rick Fines & Friends Live At The Harvest
RAF003/Festival
The recording crews were busy at last September's Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival in Fredericton. In this case the "crew" was Alec Fraser, The Maple Blues Award- winning producer and his clients the Eastern Ontario group of friends that multiple-Maple Blues Award winner Rick Fines brought with him. The primary unit is the trio that Rick leads these days with Rob Phillips on piano and Richard Simpkins on bass. This is the group that grew out of Rick's Out Of The Living Room album, with Simpkins taking the touring bass job over from Alec Fraser. This trio has drawn excellent reviews for their recent performances and shows why here. The "Friends" are longtime ones-a Jackson Delta concert was part of the Festival and it was recorded as well with Gary Peeples and Alan Black also on hand for the Rick Fines show. More friends: Ottawa/Toronto/Saskatchewan's Suzie Vinnick and Kingston's Georgette Fry added guest vocals for this "Revue", Fraser stepped away from the controls for group vocals, Fathead's Al Lerman guests on harp; Chris Whiteley on cornet and Kim Sheppard & David Bedford help out on the gospel closer. With a lineup like this the program seems almost irrelevant but, in two parts, here goes: "Just Got Back" is a Rick original from his Arcadia album with an instantly-recognizable Chris Whiteley cornet part added; "My Mistake" is a fine new slow blues by Rick with Gary playing slide and Alan on drums; "Six Doors Down" is Rick's homage to the Matador Club, also from Arcadia; "He'll Never Know" is a slight re-working of "She'll Never Know" from Arcadia so that Suzie can take the lead vocal (with Chris on cornet) and "Little Sister's Gonna Be Alright", the one recording from the Jackson Delta show at the Festival, from their first CD. The remaining seven titles come from blues/gospel greats with "The Last Time" a traditional gospel piece often associated with the Staple Singers; "You'd Better Mind" from Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and John Lee Hooker's "I'm In The Mood", with Gary and Allan joining the trio; Robert Johnson's "Love In Vain" with just Rick and Al Lerman on harp; "Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor" sees Georgette Fry trading verses with Rick and the trio closes out the concert part with Alec helping out on Lightning Hopkins' "I Got A Leak In This Old Building". The CD closes with a house party recording of a medley on gospel tunes that fades after four minutes or so but looks to have gone on a lot longer, as it seems the week's festivities in Fredericton did! If it's not at a store near you, check www.festival.bc.ca. or call 1-800-633-8282.
Various Artists Northernblues Music Sampler Free
The official Toronto launch of Canada's newest blues label was at Blues On Bellair on Wednesday, February 21, and they would like you to know that a free, five-song sampler of the initial offerings is available at their website. The most awaited album is the new Rita Chiarelli, who performed songs from it that evening. " Never Been Loved Before", a New Orleans-flavoured original by Rita is on the sampler and the album, to be called Breakfast At Midnight, will be available in May. The JW-Jones Blues Band were on hand as well and their CD Defibrillatin', with the title song on the sampler (reviewed a few months ago), will now be distributed by Northernblues/Festival. The American star of the label is Otis Taylor, who also performed. This Denver-based multi-instrumentalist is singlehandedly supplying protest blues, a style notably absent in this music's past. His third album, white african, will be available very soon and its lead track, "My Soul's In Louisiana" is on the sampler. It will give those of you who missed his appearance here last summer a glimpse of his uncompromising performance style. Fred Litwin, Northernblues' president, has also arranged to (re)release some albums from Dark Light Music, notably The Sidemen, whose " The Woman I Love" featuring Joe Louis Walker from When The Sun Goes Down is here as well as a track from the late Washington, DC bluesman Archie Edwards. Some of you might remember that Dark Light brought Edwards up here a couple of times to the beloved Hotel Isabella. He was recorded while he was here but no album was forthcoming from this student of Mississippi John Hurt. The track here, "I Called My Baby Long Distance" is credited to The Toronto Sessions, Volume 1, I guess May is not that far away (and more than one volume at that!). His barbershop in DC is a shrine still visited by many. Not on the sampler but also signed to the label is our (barely) managing editor Brian Blain, whose Who Paid You To Give Me The Blues will be re-released at the end of May (Congratulations, Brian!). The website is www.northernblues.com or for your copy of the sampler, call toll free at 1-866-540-0003.
The Kev Cooke Progressive Blues
Experiment Mended Heavens/Broken Hearts Limited Capitol LCR-003
Kev Cooke is a veteran singer/songwriter bassman about town (you might recognize his unique bass, pictured on the cover) and his Progressive Blues Experiment were finalists in the Talent Search recently. This is a big band, with aggressive, modern charts, some of the songs remind me of the Al Kooper version of Blood Sweat And Tears and others of Santana, especially those with lots of guitarist Mark Teixeira. He's the only other listed performer on the CD but the website identifies Dave Balfour as the keyboard man, Wimpy Zankowski, Stewart Elliot and Mike Skinner on saxes, David Monis on drums and Moose Muzinski as the guest harmonica player on "Got To Stop". At least three of these are also members of the Dark Angel Blues Band which explains why this album sounds like Kev Cooke and a working band for someone whose name doesn't appear very often in our listings pages. The closing track is a new version of "I Don't Know", a song from Dark Angel's repertoire as well. Getting that bit of detective work out of the way, Cooke writes interesting arrangements to go with his original songs. Many of you have already heard one: "Heaven's Where You'll Dwell" is the opening song on Carlos del Junco's Big Boy CD and gets a rather longer workout there. Highlights are the opening "Dark Clouds", a New Orleans funk workout; "(300 Pounds of Heavenly Joy and)She's Blocking The Door" could have been sung with slightly more humour but it's a good song nonetheless; "Tried To Let You Go" has the best arrangement and vocal performance of the album, in a modern blues rock vein and "Got To Stop", an acoustic trio setting with, I think, Teixera on mandolin and Cooke on acoustic guitar. Check out www.kevcooke.dynip.com for more info and mp3 files.
James Anthony Play Something You Know! Grapevine GV-2001
Cambridge, ON's veteran axe man and music shop proprietor James Anthony Peccia sent along his first album in too long a time. Although he performs regularly in the Golden Horseshoe, he's most recently known to me on recordings as the producer/guitarist/co-writer/support person for the late Kris St. Louis and a song dedicated to her is here. Working in a blues-rock style with an organ/bass/drums quartet, Play Something You Know! is a program of ten new compositions and as a bonus, five songs from 1995 that were thought to be lost. I hope this one does well enough for James to continue his writing because he has a way of writing songs that very effectively communicate problems we can all relate to, such as "Midlife Blues" or the custody battle of "Is There Nothin' I Can Do". The song for Kris, "Don't Look Down" clearly brought out his best. Now if we could only get him to come downtown more often! For ordering info, contact Eric Gale at 519-240-3549.
The Best Of Little Mack Simmons The Electro-Fi
Years Electro-Fi EFi 3368/Festival
Congratulations to Electro-Fi Records for their four W.C. Handy nominations. The accolades should go a little way towards softening the blow of Little Mack's passing last year. This CD serves as a memorial to Little Mack and Andrew Galloway's liner notes make a very nice eulogy. Twelve of the the fifteen songs here are from Mack's "Toronto" albums, with Al Lerman on harp, tenor sax and production, Teddy Leonard, Morgan Davis & Joe Yanuziello, guitars; Nick Tjelios, mandolin; Tyler Yarema, keys; Omar Tunnoch, bass and Ed White, drums. One song, "Blue Lite" by Mack's hero Little Walter, is from The PM/Simmons Collection and two previously unreleased performances, "Five Long Years" and "Mystery Train" are from a live radio broadcast with just guitar accompaniment. A very appropriate celebration of his Toronto connection. Visit www.electrofi.com.
James Cotton It Was A Very Good Year
Just A Memory JAM 9144
This is the last album in Michael Nerenberg's New Penelope Cafe recordings. He was in a position to record the shows there and was able to find and get clearances for the James Cotton Blues Band's performance in Montreal of September 28, 1967. The tape recorder was not a professional one and the intervening years had not been kind to the condition of the tapes. The usable songs from the first set appeared on Seems Like Yesterday, the second on Late Night Blues. That seemed to be the end of it until some new digital restoration techniques made the previously unusable songs available. That made this third album not only possible but a very good one, particularly for "Mystery Train" and "Midnight Creeper" There is some dropout and flutter but a very important band at the height of its powers is more completely captured. The title song is a band warmup version of the standard, led by pianist Albert Gianquinto. If you enjoyed the earlier albums, why not treat yourself to the third? Visit www.justin-time.com.
Maria Muldaur Richland Woman
Blues Stony Plain SPCD 1270/Warner Music
For the past several years, Maria Muldaur has been recording albums of mostly contemporary songs for the Telarc label. These have included enough blues to have been mentioned here but they all pale in comparison to this one. This album is a tribute to Memphis Minnie and her fellow travellers and for it, she invited some her own fellow travellers to help out. It would have been remiss of Stony Plain to have not made a big deal of the guest list, I suppose, but most of these musicians have known each other for their entire careers and clearly enjoyed getting together to record these songs in an informal, acoustic setting.
John Sebastian is on guitar behind Maria for Mississippi John Hurt's "Richland Woman Blues"; Bonnie Raitt supplies the duet vocal and slide accompaniment for a spiritual that Annie Mae & Fred McDowell had recorded, "It's A Blessing"; two songs that competing (but not related) singers, Bessie Smith and Clara Smith, recorded are here with Angela Strehli dueting on "My Man Blues" and Tracy Nelson on "Far Away Blues"; "I Got To Move", "In My Girlish Days" and "Me And My Chauffer" supply the direct Memphis Minnie connection with Alvin Youngblood Hart and Roy Rogers on guitars and Taj Mahal does an excellent Blind Willie Johnson to Maria's Angeline on "Soul Of A Man".
The artwork cleverly connects this album to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? bandwagon but for the best possible motives-if this draws your attention to the giants of the form, the way it did for Muldaur, it will have done its job. Muldaur supplies song commentaries and wonderful notes, Holger Petersen took the photos at Memphis Minnie's grave site and on Old Highway 61. There are many years of singing and playing the blues represented here in a package that deserves your attention. A keeper for this year's ten best list!
While I'm writing about Stony Plain, the Holmes Brothers album, Speaking In Tongues was listed being on Alligator/Warner Music last month but is available here through Stony Plain because of its special relationship with the band.
The artwork's the same, the music's the same. It's simply one of the best modern gospel albums you're likely to hear.
- John Valenteyn, jayvee@ican.net
Toronto Blues Society Copyright _ 2001