Recently, we told you about a 100th birthday set celebrating blues singer and guitarist John Lee Hooker. While that extensive collection consisted of Hooker’s own recordings from throughout his career, this centennial tribute to blues slide guitarist extraordinaire Elmore James offers a baker’s dozen of James’ songs interpreted by contemporary musicians including Tom Jones, Bettye LaVette, Warren Haynes and Billy Gibbons, Rodney Crowell, and Keb’ Mo’, among others.
Recorded in various cities throughout the U.S., from L.A. to Nashville to New York City and Boston, Strange Angels: In Flight with Elmore James (Sylvan Songs Records) features a mostly house band (dubbed Elmore’s Latest Broomdusters) joined by a rotating line-up of guest vocalists and musicians. Although not all of the interpretations here are presented in a straight blues fashion, with Rodney Crowell and Jamey Johnson, for example, adding a country-fried flavor (through both their vocals and acoustic guitars) to songs like “Shake Your Money Maker” and “It Hurts Me Too”, respectively, and other tracks having a jazzy, Americana, soul or pop style, the end result is a diverse, intriguing set that blues fans will easily appreciate and welcome to their collections.
James’ signature slidework is of course much celebrated here, often emanating from the guitar of the Broomdusters’ designated slide man Doug Lancio, but also by others such as fellow Broomduster Larry Taylor, who contributes both slide and upright bass on Tom Jones‘ punchy “Done Somebody Wrong”; Joe McMahan; Duke Levine; longtime Saturday Night Live bandleader G.E. Smith, who appears on Bettye LaVette‘s soulful, scratchy-throated “Person to Person”; Warren Haynes, who not only backs Johnson on “It Hurts Me Too” (where you’ll also hear some terrific piano and B3 organ from Billy Earheart) but sings and is joined on slide by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons for a gritty “Mean Mistreatin’ Mama” that also features Cowboy Eddie Long on pedal steel and Mickey Raphael on harmonica; and Keb’ Mo’, who provides vocals and National guitar on a jaunty “Look on Yonder Wall”, accompanied by McMahan on electric guitar, Lancio on mandolin, and Sonny Barbato on accordion. A jazzy, brooding “Dark and Dreary” with breathy vocals from Addi McDaniel is, in fact, the only track here absent of slide, relying (quite successfully) instead on the violin of Darol Anger along with accordion from Barbato, acoustic guitar from Levine and Thomas Juliano, and bass clarinet from Bob D’Ambrosio for a nice change of pace.
A mostly live studio recording that captures everyone playing together (on largely first or second takes), The Last Shade of Blue Before Black (Severn Records) offers a variety of horn-filled tracks in the tradition of the Blues Brothers, including solid and timeless renditions of such blues classics as Jimmy Reed’s “Baby, What You Want Me to Do”, “I Got My Mojo Working” (Muddy Waters), and Willie Dixon’s “Don’t Go No Further” mixed with the modern sound and lyrics of songs like the swaying “21st Century Baby” (“she’s always bringing me the blues”) written and sung by Rob “The Honeydripper” Paparozzi, soul numbers like Dan Penn, Rick Hall and Oscar Franks’ “You Left the Water Running” and Floyd and Cropper’s “On a Saturday Night”, and funky tracks like “Itch and Scratch”, Floyd’s “Don’t Forget About James Brown”, and Brown’s “Sex Machine”, the latter song featuring Shaffer on vocals and piano.
So we were of course pleased to learn about the release of International Blues Challenge #33, a collection featuring finalists from the 2017 competition that, like the inaugural edition, does an excellent job of showing that the blues is still very much alive and well and in many diverse forms.
From the seducing sway of songs like “You Upset My Mind” (Jimmy Reed), “Same Old Blues” (Magic Sam) and “Sho Nuff I Do” (Elmore James), to swinging instrumentals like “Edgier”, “Teenage Beat” (Little Walter) and the opening “Bonus Boogie”, and breezy numbers like “From the Bottom” (Sonny Boy Williamson II) and the Sugar Ray & the Bluetones-style, horns-accented “No Love in My Heart” (Elmore James), everything here is, well, fabulous. But the tracks that stand out perhaps the most are a tough, lively “Ninety Nine” (Sonny Boy Williamson II) and two creeping numbers in a Thunderbirds-sounding “Blue and Lonesome” (Little Walter) with its gruff harmonica and a “Worried Life Blues” (Big Maceo Merriweather) featuring some cavernous vocals from Wilson and terrific playing from Barrelhouse Chuck.
The collection, for example, begins and ends with different versions of Hooker’s earliest hit “Boogie Chillen'”, the first, a crackling recording of just Hooker and his guitar from the September 1948 solo session that launched Hooker’s career and that helps establish the boogie from the set’s very start. Contrast that to the later (as in five decades later) more rocking version, which captures a much older Hooker joined by Eric Clapton, Rick Kirch, and Johnny Lee Schell all on guitar and incorporates some lively keyboards, one of only a few songs on which Hooker begins to show his age vocally. In between, there’s also a live acoustic solo version of the song from 1962, a rather low-key performance with a soft-spoken intro that, along with the other songs included here from that same San Francisco blues club (Sugar Hill) show — the much more traditional, Sonny and Brownie-like than boogeying “Bottle Up and Go” and creeping “Crawlin’ King Snake” (also representing the second version of the song) — helps remind the listener just how smooth Hooker’s voice and playing could be.