June
2004
Amos Garrett Acoustic Album Stony Plain SPCD 1299/Warner
When our foremost guitar picker asks a few like-minded friends to join in on an acoustic album, it is surely time for rejoicing. Ken Whiteley and David Wilkie are those friends on their various stringed instruments with Victor Bateman or John Hyde on string bass. The songwriters range from Leadbelly to Fats Waller to Paul Geremia to Hoagy Carmichael and Chris Whiteley. Garrett's smoky baritone is not quite as deep as Mose Scarlett's but that same timeless quality is there to deliver old and new songs in a way that puts all the assembled guitar prowess to exceedingly good use. This is especially true on "Michigan Water Blues" where the notes say there are fourteen chord changes in sixteen beats - Garrett transcribed this Waller `chamber blues' for guitar, mandolin & string bass. Leadbelly's "Grasshoppers in my Pillow" has a wonderfully doomy opening on the 12-string, a perfect setting for the lyric. Wilkie plays mandocello and mandola here as well. There are fun songs here though with Garrett being first off the mark with Chris Whiteley's "Some Musician was to Blame", a song that was debuted on Whiteley's While I'm Here earlier this year. This is one you'll hear many times more, I'm sure. "Sam's Song" was a hit for Bing & Gary Crosby and Bucky Berger helps out with a tap dance routine with Garrett & Wilkie doing the repartee. The two Carmichael songs here, "Hong Kong Blues" and "Small Fry", might go some way to reminding people that he did compose more than one song. Get this one for sure and watch for local appearances this summer.
Rita Chiarelli No-One To Blame
Mad Iris MIM0002/Festival
A tribute album is the new CD from Rita. With a cast of many of our finest musicians backing her, she re-visits some familiar and some not-so-familiar songs and takes us back to the songs many of us grew up with. Her voice is richer and deeper now, no doubt helped by the old ribbon microphone featured on the early `60's jazz album cover art. All this helps give a period charm to the contemporary settings. Richard Bell co-produced, played the prominent B3 and supplied the horn charts helping create a program that, while it won't displace the originals, will sit proudly beside them. Not least for the fact that all but one of these songs are/were sung by males plus some have not been `covered' for some years. Little Milton's "Grits Ain't Groceries" provides a fine opener, setting the stage for the CD by showing how Rita & the boys can catch the spirit of the original. Ray Charles is well represented, as you might imagine, with his C&W interpretation of "You Are My Sunshine" & "Lonely Avenue". Elvis is tangentially present, with Laverne Baker's "Hey Memphis", a song you might know better as his almost identical "Little Sister". Bobby Bland gets two famous ones: "Two Steps" and "I Pity the Fool". Some more obscure songs here are Jackie Wilson's "Doggin' Around" and "I Don't Know What You Got" credited to Don Covay. I'm not sure I would have chosen "The Thrill Is Gone", but it is a good performance. Visit www.ritachiarelli.com for more info and the earlier CD's if you don't have them.
JW-Jones Band My Kind of Evil
NorthernBlues NBM0021/Festival
JW-Jones, in Ottawa, & Beau Kavanaugh in Montreal are the current contenders in the "young man blues" sweeps, both in their early 20's and both are rather unfairly, I think, compared with performers with much more experience. This 3rd CD finds JW-Jones leading a horn section and doing very well with it indeed. He came up with the charts, with his tenor man, Steve Trecarten, and they show great imagination. My Kind of Evil shows his vocals are coming along quite nicely, thank you, and his guitar work shows him to be a natural in a big band setting. The experience here is represented by Colin James, who's "What You Do to Me" points to the future for those vocals. Old friend Kim Wilson is back, as producer, and contributes a couple of vocals, on Willie Mabon's "I Don't Know" and Fats Domino's "Blue Monday". More interesting is the dead-on Excello sound on "You've Got Me (Where You Want Me)", with Colin James impersonating Lazy Lester's vocals and Wilson, his harp. The horns take another break on JW-Jones' "Aching Pain", with Wilson on amplified harp & JW-Jones doing an electric Delta/Muddy sound with panache. The opening "Shake That Mess", "Cheating Woman", and the title song are band highlights on this hour-long delight.
Kevin Mark Rolling the Dice Blue Hog BHP001
Big Mark & The Blues Express won both ends of the double header a couple of years back with a Talent Search win and a Maple Blues Award for best new artist. A slight name change and a couple of new band members later we get to enjoy another fine CD. Complete with rolling dice in the jewel case spine, the multi-talented Mr. Mark provides eleven new songs and Jack de Keyzer moves behind the console as producer for a sure-handed set of jump blues. Michael Fonfara guests on piano throughout and Laurier Gagnon of Laurier & the Drivers adds rhythm guitar. He also plays slide on one the CD's most powerful songs "You're So Mean". Linda Fraraccio sings "Let's Do It Again" and makes one want to hear more of her. As usual, though, Kevin Mark is the star of this show and his tough vocals and guitar on his songs ensure that the guests remain just that. "Cold Hearted Woman" and "Lying in the Bed I Made" are two other highlights. His "I'm So Broke" contains one of this month's best lines: `I'm so broke I can't even pay attention'. See his ad in this issue for more info and make sure you catch him at the Beaches Jazz Festival.
Duke Robillard Band Blue Mood Stony Plain SPCD 1300/Warner
Robillard has long been one of the foremost current exponents of T-Bone Walker's work, even to the extent of contributing an article on his guitar playing to Helen Oakley Dance's essential 1987 biography. It has also informed his stage show since he left Roomful and while the liner notes say it felt like it was time to do an entire album of T-Bone songs, others might say it's well past time! But this isn't simply a run through of Walker's greatest hits, Robillard has attempted to re-create the style of playing and the enthusiasm for playing that jumps out of those old records. Sax Gordon painstakingly wrote out some of Maxwell Davis' arrangements from the records and then Robillard added a couple of jazz players to his well-trained unit. The recordings used these charts as starting points and I often found myself listening to this wonderful horn section instead of to Duke. Some songs are double the length of the originals but aren't simply padded out with solos. Bringing these timeless lyrics up to date is Robillard's edgier vocals - he is not the smooth singer T-Bone was and more's the better, we can get that sound from the re-issues. If you have no T-Bone in your collection, this is the place to start. You'll be acquiring his collected works very soon.
Ronnie Earl Now My Soul Stony Plain SPCD 1298/Warner
Mr. Earl continues to build on his trademark jazz-influenced solos, recording albums that include more songs than the all-instrumental efforts of a few years ago. But he does come up with material that allows lots of room for soloing. Kim Wilson and Greg Piccolo do the singing and they add harp and sax respectively to the sound where necessary. The Silver Leaf Gospel Singers return from I Feel Like Goin' On as well. An early highlight of the CD is Otis Rush's "Double Trouble" with impassioned Earl solos that take the song to over ten minutes without faltering. Wilson's vocal doesn't quite match Otis at his best but it works here. "Abandoned", an Earl original about his efforts at sobriety is less successful, with Wilson unable to salvage much from its long, rambling lyric. A much better song with the same sentiment is A.C. Reed's "My Buddy, Buddy Friends" which gets a fine treatment from Wilson who then gets a very nice showcase in "Walter Through Kim". "The Magic of Sam" is a tremendous closer in memory of Magic Sam with Ronnie Earl at the top of his game.
Hound Dog Taylor Release The
Hound Alligator ALCD 4896/Fusion
By popular demand, more Hound Dog! Saved from technical oblivion by Engineer Dan Stout, this collection of outtakes, board recordings and a song from a TV show demonstrates the enduring strength of Hound Dog's art. For some Hound Dog Taylor IS the blues and he proves it again here. Just listen for a few bars to "It Hurts Me Too" or "Walking the Ceiling" for confirmation. Some of the songs here are repeats from earlier albums but the performances are new and there new songs here as well but all that really doesn't matter as long as that cheap guitar/amp are cranked up and Brewer Phillips keeps that parallel track going.
Byther Smith Hold That Train Delmark DE-774/Festival
This is Byther Smith's first album, from 1983. It was originally on the Grits label, with outtakes and more songs on a Mina LP. The best fifteen are here and I do mean best and it's about time they were available on CD. This is West Side Chicago at it's finest: just Byther, with rhythm guitar, bass & drums and that stinging guitar and those impassioned vocals. He has kept most of these songs in his set list over the years and deservedly so.
Charles Wilson If Heartaches Were Nickels Delmark DE-771/Festival
Wilson is a remarkable and under-appreciated soul singer, whose CD's have, for me, been marred by the electronic sounds that John Ward and his Ecko record company felt were necessary for a hit in the contemporary R&B market. Here, in the presence of live musicians of excellent calibre and a program of soul blues, he truly gets to shine. His high tenor is very effective on Ricky Allen's "Cut You A-Loose" and on "Cadillac Assembly Line", Mack Rice's hit for Albert King and many others. On "Ain't No Hoochie Coochie Man" he manages to invoke all the voodoo charms all the while protesting he isn't like Muddy but getting what he wants anyway.
John's Blues Picks is now on radio, on Let The Good Times Roll with Ian Angus! Tune in every second Thursday at 4pm eastern time, to CIUT 89.5-FM in Toronto, Channel 826 on Star Choice satellite, or www.ciut.fm on the Internet. (This month, hear John's Blues Picks on June 3 and June 20.)
- John Valenteyn, jvalenteyn8724@rogers.com
Toronto Blues Society Copyright _ 2004