It’s voting day today, and that probably makes it a pretty good one to “elect” to listen to some blues, at least for voters in some races (as if anyone here needs an excuse!) Here’s the latest edition of our BluesPowR Radio Hour to help get you started, featuring music from one-time Pittsburgh, PA, voter, now Reigning Queen of Beale Street, Barbara Blue; John Mayall; Albert Castiglia; Doyle Bramhall II; Blind Lemon Pledge and more, proving once again that, no matter your political leanings, the blues is a party we can all rally around!
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Playlist
Hoodoo On Me – Albert Castiglia (Up All Night)
The Sum of Something – John Mayall (Three For the Road)
My Heart Belongs to the Blues – Barbara Blue (Fish in Dirty H2O)
Dr Jesus – Barbara Blue (Fish in Dirty H2O)
All Mine – Dan McKinnon (The Cleaner)
Buley’s Farm – Blind Lemon Pledge (Evangeline)
One More Glass of Wine – Eight O’Five Jive (Swing Set)
Live Forever – Doyle Bramhall II w/ the Greyhounds (Shades)
Devil in Me – Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat (Live at the Kessler)
Just Lucky I Guess – Delta Moon (Cabbagetown)
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.
This includes one more track for their father from Lurrie and his brothers (accompanied again by Eddie Taylor Jr. on guitar), who display every bit the fire here on “One Day You’re Gonna Get Lucky” as throughout their own recording, with other real gems coming from the likes of Omar Coleman (a funky take on Junior Wells‘ “Train I Ride” that gets the album off to a great start), Jimmy Johnson and Dave Specter (an “Out of Bad Luck” that honors Magic Sam), Linsey Alexander and Billy Flynn (a soulful, swaying tribute to Jimmy Dawkins in “All for Business”), and Lil’ Ed and Dave Weld (who present a stinging “Speak My Mind” in memory of Ed’s uncle J.B. Hutto).