With as many good CDs as we receive for review, it can be a real challenge to find the time to write about anything other than the music itself, which is why it’s taken us a bit longer than it should have to tell you about this book of musician portraits shot over the past decade by European photographer Beate Sandor.
showtime: Kings & Queens from A to Z contains images of more than 120 mostly blues artists captured during performances that took place from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Chicago, New Orleans, and Memphis, to Tampa, to Switzerland, France, and Sandor’s hometown of Vienna, Austria. Having been taken between 2004 and 2014, the book of course includes photos of many musicians who are no longer with us, including, for example, B.B. King, David Honeyboy Edwards, Koko Taylor, Etta James, Allen Toussaint, Percy Sledge, Michael Burks, James Brown, Willie Kent, Chuck Brown, Solomon Burke, Sharon Jones, and Marva Wright, which alone makes this a worthwhile volume for any true blues fan’s coffee table.
Even those of us seemingly afflicted by “Born Under a Bad Sign” syndrome (you know, where “if it wasn’t bad luck, [we] wouldn’t have no luck at all”) can experience a small stroke of good fortune every once in a while, such as our needing to be in Phoenix a few weekends back for a work meeting and discovering that guitarist John Primer and harmonica player Bob Corritore — who we would later learn first met one another back in the 1970s when Corritore went to see a Primer-supported Junior Wells play — happened to be performing at Corritore’s local blues club The Rhythm Room in conjunction with the pair’s sophomore album Ain’t Nothing You Can Do!, 
Having previously seen these two play together (along with a stageful of other greats including Bob Margolin, Bob Stroger, and the late pianist David Maxwell) during a 
While the resulting recording does see the multi-generational pair (who’ve since adopted the nickname of TajMo for their collaborative work) revisiting one of those songs — a slow, acoustic “Diving Duck Blues” (Sleepy John Estes) that’s so stripped down with just the duo’s guitars and vocals that you can sometimes hear Mahal breathing — as well as a few other bluesy tracks in the pleading opening original “Don’t Leave Me Here” and the bouncy country blues of “She Knows How to Rock Me” (Piano Red) that follows, TajMo (Concord Records) also offers up a number of very pleasant surprises. That includes terrific covers of both The Who’s “Squeeze Box” and John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change”, along with the catchy, memorable originals “All Around the World” and “Soul”.
It was here that guitarist Monster Mike Welch (Sugar Ray and the Bluetones) and vocalist and Lead Belly descendant Mike Ledbetter (Nick Moss Band) delivered their first soulful performance together in the form of Rush’s “Right Place, Wrong Time”, and for those in attendance or who have since seen the video of that song (which can you watch below), it was clear that there was a rare bit of chemistry here. Although that particular number curiously wasn’t revisited on this resulting collaboration between Welch and Ledbetter, the soundtrack to their initial encounter obviously hasn’t been forgotten, serving as the inspiration for the title of what we hope is just the first of many studio projects between the two, in Right Place, Right Time, another gem from the good folks at Delta Groove Music.
Despite the current political mood, this spring seems to be one of much collaboration in the blues music world, with new joint projects out or on the way from the likes of Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’, Charlie Musselwhite and Ben Harper, Guy Davis and Fabrizio Poggi, and Michael Ledbetter and Monster Mike Welch, to name a few. We’ll have more for you on some of those other projects in the weeks ahead, but thought we’d get things started with a reunion of two bluesmen we last heard 
When it comes to music compilations, phrases like “finest” and “the very best of” tend to leave a good deal of room for debate: no matter how great a collection may be, there are always going to be at least a few other songs some will argue should have been included, especially when you’re talking about a blues legend like John Lee Hooker. Sure enough, many of the songs you’ll hear on Whiskey & Wimmen: John Lee Hooker’s Finest (Vee-Jay Records) can be found on earlier compilations of the bluesman’s work, but we aren’t about to begin comparing its track listing with those already out there, choosing instead to appreciate this one — celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Hooker’s birth near Clarksdale, Mississippi — entirely on its own merits.
The music world lost another true father of the blues this weekend with the passing of Chicago blues guitarist Lonnie Brooks (born Lee Baker, Jr.). We had the pleasure of seeing Lonnie – whose most recognizable songs included the likes of “Don’t Take Advantage of Me”, “Two Headed Man”, “Eyeballin'”, “You Know What My Body Needs”, and “Cold Lonely Nights” along with other gems such as “Trading Post” and “I Want All My Money Back” – and his sons Ronnie and Wayne Baker Brooks at the Heritage Blues Music Fest back in 2012, where we snapped these photos, one of which may look somewhat familiar to you as the image that appears at the top of our website, capturing Brooks and his sons playing each other’s guitars.
By now, we probably don’t need to tell you how terrific the Tedeschi Trucks Band is. If you’ve heard any of the band’s three studio albums, you’re already aware of just how nicely the sounds of this now-dozen member ensemble meld, whether they’re belting out an intriguing original or a creative interpretation on such classics as Joe Cocker’s “Space Captain” or Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight”. And if you’ve heard their first live release 