Keb’ Mo’, Taj Mahal and others lend their talents to Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Mike

Speaking of Taj Mahal–and his ongoing collaboration with Keb’ Mo’, known affectionately as TajMo–(as we were in our last post regarding Taj and his Phantom Blues Band’s recent visit to the Pittsburgh area), we should mention that both Taj and Keb’ are part of what sounds to be another terrific project scheduled for release in August, this one produced by actor and longtime blues supporter (including co-founding the Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 2001) Morgan Freeman. 

First announced on Juneteenth, accompanied by the first single from the album in Taj Mahal’s smoking take on the Son House classic “Death Letter Blues”, Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience (Decca Records) has now made available a second preview track, featuring Taj’s good friend Keb’. 

Combining rich strings, horns, keyboards and other instrumentation from the Ground Zero Blues Club Band and Europe’s mostly Black and ethnically diverse Chineke! Orchestra with stinging guitar and impassioned vocals from Keb’ , this is the most flowing, immersive version of Albert King’s “Cadillac Assembly Line” you’ve ever heard. Together with the chugging Mahal track, this song with Mo’ really has us looking forward to hearing the rest of the 12-track collection, which will also feature such well-known artists as Shemekia Copeland and Alvin Youngblood Hart, as well as Mississippi blues performers Super Chikan, Keith Johnson and Anthony “Big A” Sherrod, in addition to having been partly recorded by the legendary Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell at Memphis’ Royal Studios.  

Here’s the soaring “Cadillac Assembly Line” that features Keb’:

And here’s Taj with “Death Letter Blues”:

You can bet you’ll be hearing more from us on this collection come August!

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Taj Mahal and the Phantom Blues Band make Time for Pittsburgh on tour in support of new album

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Mike

We’ve been fortunate to see bluesman Taj Mahal perform live several times over the last dozen years or so, each time as part of a different configuration, first as an acoustic duo with Keb’Mo’ at the 2013 Crossroads Guitar Festival and then with Keb again–this time backed by a band–four years later through their TajMo collaboration. In between those shows, we also caught him fronting his trio, and then, more recently, saw him lead the Taj Mahal Quartet at the 2023 Three Rivers Arts Festival. Each of these sets, of course, was excellent, so we were particularly excited about Taj again returning to the Pittsburgh area, seeing that he’d be joined by his accomplished, Grammy Award-winning band, the Phantom Blues Band (PBB), about whom regular readers of our blog know we’ve also had plenty of good things to say over the years, including this recent review of their new album with Mahal, Time.

We learned a few days prior to Saturday night’s show that Phantom drummer Tony Braunagel wouldn’t be making this date, and then noted when the band took the stage that their usual guitarist Johnny Lee Schell and horn players also weren’t performing this night, so, although we didn’t get the full genuine Phantom Blues Band experience (which just gives us a great reason to go see them again sometime), what we did get during the hour-and-a-half or so performance was still pretty terrific with Taj swapping out between guitar, harmonica, resonator and maraca throughout the evening and the experienced stand-ins on guitar (Josh Sklair), drums (Brannen Temple) and horns, along with Tony D on percussion, keeping up nicely with PBB bassist Larry Fulcher and keyboard/organist Jim Pugh.

There were, of course, a few songs from the new album, in the flowing “Wild About My Lovin'” and rhumba-flavored “You Put the Whammy on Me” (one of the songs on which Taj played maraca), as well as others from the band’s earlier projects with Taj, including the groovy, opening “Strut” and fiery-vocaled “Blues Ain’t Nothin'” from the Dancing the Blues album and the beautiful “Queen Bee” off Senor Blues.

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John Primer and friends remember one of Chicago’s great blues venues with Tribute to Theresa’s Lounge

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Mike

Chicago’s Theresa’s Lounge has been closed for some four decades now, having shuttered back in 1985, but the club still very much lives on in the hearts and memories of those who got their starts playing there, learning from the likes of such legends as Junior Wells, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Otis Rush, and many others. After beginning his career playing for tips on Maxwell Street and then getting his first gig at Theresa’s Lounge in the 1970s, guitarist John Primer was one of those next generation bluesmen who honed his chops at the renowned establishment during its three decades operating, and, on the new Tribute to Theresa’s Lounge (Blues House Productions), has invited a few old friends who also came up in the club to join him in remembering and paying tribute to it, including such now-greats as Billy Branch, Willie Buck, and Bob Stroger, to name just a few. 

While some of those friends join Primer for just one song, with, for example, Willie Buck on vocals for just Muddy Waters’ “Champagne and Reefer” and Mary Lane–the only regular woman singer at Theresa’s–providing the sweet-vocaled yet pointed lyrics of “Mary’s Song”, many others can be heard on multiple tracks throughout the album: Billy Branch joins on vocals and harmonica for a jaunty “Sugar Sweet” and then on harmonica for three other songs, including “Champagne and Reefer,” one of seven tracks on which Bob Stroger plays bass, while Carlos Johnson and John Watkins are also each featured on lead vocals and guitar for one song in addition to each playing guitar alongside Primer on at least other four tracks. Rounding out the band, Harmonica Hinds plays on the tracks that don’t include Branch, with Twist Turner and Tony Mangiullo splitting drum duties across the album and Jeff Brinkman covering bass on the half-dozen songs without Stroger.

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Harrell Davenport may be young, but he’s sure got a keen ear for the blues, as evidenced on debut album Young Rell

Posted on May 28, 2026 by Mike

The annual Blues Music Awards just took place earlier this month but we’re pretty sure we’ve already heard next year’s winner in the Best Emerging Artist Album category (captured this year by Sean McDonald for his Have Mercy!) in the soon-to-be released debut recording from rising Mississippi marvel Harrell “Young Rell” Davenport. We don’t want to get ahead of things, being that there’s still a long way–and, we’re sure, plenty of other great releases from emerging artists–to go until the next awards, but we’re just sayin’ that, for anything to eclipse Young Rell (Little Village), it’s going to need to be pretty darn special.

While we thought we’d seen and heard enough of Davenport in recent years on social media and in videos to have a pretty good sense of what to expect from the now 19-year-old on his debut, we don’t know that anyone could have guessed just how impressive this first outing from him would be, offering at various times throughout the album the sound of much more established and classic bluesmen including the likes of Bobby Rush, Johnny Rawls, T-Bone Walker, Magic Sam, and James Cotton, among others, even if his voice isn’t yet quite as seasoned. In addition to demonstrating some serious talent on vocals, guitar, and harmonica across a superb variety of tracks, Rell also proves here to be quite a songwriter, having penned all but two of the dozen tracks himself.

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Taj Mahal and Phantom Blues Band have voodoo working again on first album together in two decades

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Mike

There are few acts from whom we’ve enjoyed hearing more in the past decades than 1) the great Taj Mahal and 2) The Phantom Blues Band, a group with which Mahal is very familiar, having in fact assembled them as his own band in 1993. After making three records and a concert DVD with Taj–including two Grammy Award winners in Señor Blues and Shoutin’ in Key–along with various of its members also being featured on one or two other albums from Taj’s catalog, The Phantom Blues Band continued on and have recorded some pretty terrific albums of their own since their last offering with Taj in the early 2000s, occasionally reuniting with Taj during those years to record a single or two for other projects.

It may have taken two decades for Taj and the band to record another full album together, but this latest pairing of Mahal with the Phantom Blues Band–Time (on Taj’s own Resonatin’ Records label in conjunction with Thirty Tigers)–seems to pick right back up where these old friends left off and is every bit as entertaining as what we heard from them back around the turn of the millennium. 

In the album’s liner notes, Ruthie Foster observes: “This band doesn’t ‘back’ anybody. They lift you up, carry you, and dare you to rise higher.” Indeed, even with Taj Mahal now recognized among the musical wonders of the world, it’s clear that the musicians around him are very much his equals when the tape is rolling, with each allowed ample room to stretch out and add their own special touches, only helping to make Mahal sound that much better.

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Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis and Corey Harris fight on for, and with, acoustic blues on long-hoped-for second volume of True Blues

Posted on May 2, 2026 by Mike

It’s been more than a dozen years now since we told you about the first True Blues album, featuring solo and joint performances from such blues greats as Taj Mahal, Corey Harris, Guy Davis, Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and harmonica ace Phil Wiggins, and then, shortly after that, our pleasure in catching three of those artists–Davis, Harris and Hart–during their tour in support of the album, with each of the bluesmen playing solo before joining for a short set together to end the night. 

Although this long-awaited follow-up to that project doesn’t include any joint performances like the first album and concert did, Fight On! True Blues Vol. 2 (Yellow Dog Records) sees those same three bluesmen reunited at least in spirit, rotating through nine solo acoustic tracks that include traditional blues numbers associated with Charley Patton, Rev. Gary Davis, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, along with several originals much in the same vein, about which Davis commented: “The fight we are waging is to keep this precious music form alive. To us, there is not so much difference between our arrangements of blues classics and our newly created work. It’s all connected to the ancestral spirit.”

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Fess up! by adding this Record Store Day Exclusive from the great Professor Longhair to your collection

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Mike

It’s hard to believe it’s already that time of year, but Record Store Day 2026 (RSD) is this Saturday, April 18. Here’s the last of several titles we’re highly recommending you seek out at your local vinyl store (and be sure to read our earlier reviews of others from Freddie King and Terry Callier).

Professor Longhair – Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge (Rhino Records)

Fresh off his re-discovery and comeback performance at the second annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1971, the much-adored Professor Longhair returned to the studio for the first time in September of that year to record one of two sessions that would make up this album. Both that session (recorded in Baton Rouge, hence the album’s title) and the June 1972 follow-up session in Memphis featured, among others, fellow New Orleans legend Snooks Eaglin on guitar, with Zigaboo Modeliste of The Meters joining Fess on drums in Memphis. The album sat unreleased for two decades until 1991, with this 2-LP (one purple, one green — it is, after all, Mardi Gras!) RSD Exclusive marking the title’s first appearance on vinyl. 

Whether you call Fess’ style of music blues, rhythm & blues, or “rhumba boogie” as described in the album’s liner notes, there’s no denying that it’s entertaining as hell, regardless of whether it was Fess playing solo, backed by a small band such as on the tracks here from the Baton Rouge session (with Fess and Eaglin joined only by Will Harvey Jr. on bass and Shiba on drums), or along with a fuller band that included horns, as during the Memphis session. Of course there are plenty of Longhair originals and similar New Orleans type of numbers here such as the opening, whistle-driven “Mardi Gras in New Orleans”, “Tipitina”, “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”,”She Ain’t Got No Hair”, “Rum and Coca-Cola” and “Sick and Tired”, along with several other Fats Domino songs, but the set also includes impressive takes from Fess on some blues, R&B and soul tracks including T-Bone Walker’s “Mean Old World”, Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me”, Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” and Big Jay McNeely’s “There Is Something On Your Mind”.

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Another Record Store Day First gem: check out this live acoustic set from Chicago jazz/soul/folk singer and guitarist Terry Callier

Posted on April 10, 2026 by Mike

It’s hard to believe it’s already that time of year, but Record Store Day 2026 (RSD) is right around the corner (Saturday, April 18). Here’s the second of several titles we’re highly recommending you seek out at your local vinyl store (you can read about the first one here).

Terry Callier at the Earl of Old Town (Time Traveler Recordings)

We don’t know that we ever heard Chicago guitarist and singer Terry Callier before this recently unearthed recording came our way, even with Callier having spent a portion of his musical career on the Cadet Records subsidiary of the same Chess Records label on which such blues greats as Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, and others all recorded, and with Callier also having been childhood friends with the likes of soul greats Curtis Mayfield and Jerry Butler (The Impressions) and jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis. 

In all fairness to us, most descriptions of Callier refer to him as a jazz, soul and/or folk artist so he wouldn’t necessarily have been someone who would have caught our largely blues-focused attention, although he did release more than a dozen albums in the decades before his death in 2012.

While tracks like “Blues”/”You Goin’ Miss Your Candyman” and “Hangman”/”Gallow’s Pole” off those albums certainly would have been enough to catch our ear had we ever heard them from Callier, we have to say that none of the other Callier albums to which we’ve listened after being amazed by this one come anywhere close to what you hear on this raw, previously unreleased live solo double LP recorded at Chicago’s Earl of Old Town folk club in 1967, just one year before the release of his debut album The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier (which was actually recorded three years prior to this performance but not released until 1968).

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Triple LP from blues legend Freddie King will have you Feeling Alright this Record Store Day

Posted on April 6, 2026 by Mike

It’s hard to believe it’s already that time of year, but Record Store Day 2026 is right around the corner (Saturday, April 18). Here’s the first of several titles we’re highly recommending you seek out at your local vinyl store.

Freddie King – Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Pulsations Concert (Elemental Music)

Just seeing that this is a previously unreleased 3-LP live recording from blues slinger Freddie King issued in cooperation with King’s estate is, frankly, enough for us to say go ahead and grab a copy of this limited edition while you can. Perusing the 16-song tracklist will only draw you further in, with plenty of familiar titles both from Freddie’s own catalog and regular repertoire (“Have You Ever Loved a Woman?”, “Sen-Sa-Shun”, “Going Down”, “Mojo Boogie”) and blues standards that include “Sweet Little Angel”, “Got My Mojo Working”, “The Things I Used to Do”, “Stormy Monday Blues”, “Sweet Home Chicago”,  “That’s All Right”, and “Messin’ with the Kid”.

For those needing a bit more convincing, we can assure you that hearing this set will only help confirm that this is one you’re going to want to add to your collection, regardless of how few or many other Freddie albums you might already own.

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Posthumous Mike Finnigan album is everything we hoped it would be, and more

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Mike

We’ve already told you about the first couple of singles off Mike Finnigan‘s eponymous posthumous album (Forty Below Records)–splendid takes on Curtis Salgado’s “20 Years of B.B. King” (featuring Joe Bonamassa on guitar) and Freddie King’s “My Credit Didn’t Go Through”–so we had a feeling that the rest of this album would be pretty special too. 

We’ve internally debated for decades what kind of songs we most like to hear Finnigan sing and play: we’d hear him do a slow blues/soul number like “Hard Times”, “Your Mind is on Vacation” or “I’ve Got News for You” and be convinced that we just heard Mike at his best, only to then hear him belting out something with a bit more tempo like “Can’t Stand It” or “Bad Blood” and think we could never possibly hear anything better from him, or anyone else, for that matter. Truth is, Finnigan did it all so damn well, seeming to give all he had on each and every song, and the good news is that you can hear it all here again on Mike’s final album (not to be confused with the first eponymous album of his career, a 1976 release from Warner Brothers Records), from slow blues numbers like B.B. King’s “Don’t Answer the Door” and the creeping “It Ain’t Fair” (Aretha Franklin) to groovers like the handclap-driven “She’s Not Just Another Woman” (8th Day) and “Let That Liar Alone” (The Staple Singers/Sister Rosetta Tharpe), with Mike’s son Kelly Finnigan joining on vocals and Curtis Salgado on harmonica on the latter.

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