We’ve talked here before about the Music Maker Relief Foundation (MMRF) and its good works in helping Southern musicians in need. 2019 is shaping up to be a particularly exciting year for the organization, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary with several new projects, including a graphic novel; a book and museum exhibit of tintype photography by MMRF president Tim Duffy; and a companion compilation CD all scheduled for release during the first half of the year.
Here’s a little preview from the CD, a cover by longtime MMRF supporter Taj Mahal of a Mississippi John Hurt tune called “Spike Driver Blues” that can also be heard on Mahal’s 2016 Labor of Love album:
Bonfanti and Milner share primary vocals, with Milner’s smooth, often jazzy delivery nicely balancing Bonfanti’s gruff voice to create the aural equivalent of the chocolate and peanut butter combination of a Reese’s peanut butter cup.
Even though a few of the songs on Parker’s Spoonful of Gold are ones also covered on the earlier tributes from Bonamassa or the Big Head Blues Club (including, for example, “Evil”, “Spoonful”, “My Love Will Never Die”, and “The Seventh Son”), with Parker’s vocals at times even sounding pretty close to those of Big Head’s Todd Park Mohr while at other points evoking Davy Knowles (Back Door Slam), Parker delivers it all in an ambitious, engaging fashion. While the Big Head Blues Club relied in part on its guest performers to help provide some diversity in sound, you really have to give Parker credit for undertaking the effort alone with his band, who very much rise to the occasion and help create an impressive and memorable offering. Even if a few of these interpretations sound somewhat like stuff we’ve heard before, everything here is solid, with Parker & co. delivering perfectly commendable renditions of more familiar Dixon tracks like the opening gritty, rocking “Evil”; a “I Just Want to Make Love to You” that starts on some muted Led Zeppelin-ish licks and is then filled with subdued wah riffs; a creeping, eight-and-a-half minute “My Love Will Never Die” that includes pleading falsetto vocals from Parker; and the closing “Spoonful”.
Stepping back to the center of the stage for his fourth solo studio album Hold On, Fletcher is even more superb, delivering not only the magnificent playing you would expect but some tough, seriously impressive vocals that put Fletcher in the same league as the likes of Larry McCray and the late Michael Burks.
But a few things do help separate this album from that of a Bluetones recording: all 13 of the tracks here were written by Geraci, and, although prominently featured, his former and current Bluetones bandmates actually make up less than half of the guests on this project, with other appearances including singers Sugaray Rayford, Willie J. Laws and Michelle “Evil Gal” Willson, horn players “Sax” Gordon Beadle and Doug Woolverton, and drummer Marty Richards, as well as singer Brian Templeton, guitarist Kid Ramos, bass player Willie J. Campbell and drummer Jimi Bott, the four of whom Geraci recently teamed with under the name of The Proven Ones (the 
From there, it didn’t take long for us to realize that Bramhall also wrote two of the tracks (“I Wanna Be” and “Marry You”) covered by Clapton and B.B. King on the previous year’s Grammy Award-winning collaboration Riding with the King, in addition to playing on most of that album as well. That project would, in fact, be the start of a long and productive relationship that would find Bramhall joining the legendary guitarist in the studio and/or on tour for much of the next decade and a half, with Bramhall even helping to produce the Clapton and Old Sock albums.
Everything here is solid, although we probably would have appreciated more of a straight-up blues take on the title track, a cover of a Koko Taylor tune on which Blue is joined by rapper Al Kapone. While we have to give Blue props for taking such a creative approach to the song, and it certainly works, there’s a part of us that really would have loved to hear Blue belting this one out just as Koko did (and as Blue herself does on other tracks like the tough driving rocker “Accidental Theft” that features former Gregg Allman Band guitarist Scott Sharrard and a New Orleansy “Wild Women” with horns, piano and female backing vocals), especially with so much of the project tending toward the swaying side.