A collection of Nine Below Zero‘s best blues tracks recorded over the last two decades, you say? Entitled Blues Power Volume 1? Ok, that’s probably something we here at The BluesPowR Blog are going to need to tell you about…
Featuring a dozen tracks not previously available on vinyl, Blues Power Volume 1 combines unreleased material and some of the band’s finest blues performances, as selected, remixed and remastered by Wayne Proctor (who first caught our ear as a drummer with the Oli Brown Band and King King, among others, and has since held our ear as a producer/engineer, including having worked some nice magic mastering Nine Below’s long lost first studio album Back in the Day some four decades after its recording) at his House of Tone studio, making this another must-own collection from the long-running blues outfit.
With its soulful seasoned vocals and rich grooves, the breezy lead-off track, Little Milton’s “That’s What Love Will Make You Do”, alone is probably enough to justify the purchase of this first-ever blues compilation from the band, but you’re still going to want to take the time to listen to the rest of the album because there’s plenty more great stuff to be heard–with lots of tasty licks from founding members Dennis Greaves on guitar and Mark Feltham on harmonica–including, most notably, a catchy shuffling “Blues is Here to Stay” (Eddie Boyd), driving “I Wanna Be Loved” (Muddy Waters), and slinking, harmonica-driven instrumental “The Toddle” (Little Walter).
Blues fans will of course easily recognize and appreciate the band’s takes on such other blues classics as the, here, jazzy rocking “Every Day I Have the Blues” (B.B. King), gritty “I’m Ready” (Muddy Waters), blazing “Talk to Me Baby” (Elmore James), and swaying, Big Band-style “Baby”, a.k.a. “Don’t You Want a Man Like Me” (Little Richard), but the band’s classic-sounding original “Austerity Blues” is also well worth a listen in these particularly challenging times of rising inflation, increased debt and a prolonged government shutdown for those of us here in the U.S., with its lyrics tackling such issues as minimum wage, homelessness, and class disparity, among others.
Don’t let those economic setbacks stop you from picking up a copy of this collection though: these are exactly the kind of blues that can help power us through the tough times while also providing hope for the future, with the “Volume 1” part of the album’s title suggesting that there just could be another compilation of all-blues tracks in store for us from this terrific band!