It’s been several decades now since the great Muddy Waters was booed by blues purists for introducing an electric guitar to his live blues performance. During that time, plenty of acts have of course tried to take the blues to a whole new level of rocking, with bands like Led Zeppelin and Cream being perhaps some of the first names to jump to mind and the likes of Gov’t Mule helping to still carry on the tradition.
Here’s one we mentioned in our recent review of George Thorogood’s new roots album as another upcoming example of rockers undertaking all-blues projects. We hadn’t heard much of Black Stone Cherry‘s music before now, but have to say we really dig the sound of this six-song Black to Blues EP (Mascot Records), featuring the most unique, hardest-rocking versions of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Albert King, and Freddie King covers you’ll possibly ever hear.
This isn’t the southern rockers’ first foray into the blues, with the band having, for example, included Howlin’ Wolf’s “Evil” as a bonus track on their 2016 Kentucky album and both Son House’s “Death Letter Blues” and a “Lonely Train” that borrows its chorus from Bo Diddley’s “You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” on their Thank You/Livin’ Live album.
On the opening track of her debut album Jetlagger (Big Legal Mess Records), Brooklyn-born soulstress Bette Smith promises “I Will Feed You” and that’s exactly what she proceeds to do musically, moving from the haunting, Macy Gray-ish sound of that number and others like “Flying Sweet Angel of Joy” to such rockers as a Tina Turner-ish take on the Little Steven Van Zandt co-written “I Found Love” (Lone Justice) and heavy soul R&B of “Manchild”, one of several songs penned or co-penned by Jimbo Mathus, who also produced and provides some nice guitar, keyboard, and background vocals on the project.
Pierce didn’t write any of the songs included on his latest album You’ve Got to Feel It! (Calabama Recordings), but he did do an awfully nice job of selecting a dozen soul classics to cover here, from the “We Can Always Come Back to This”-like sway of Otis Redding’s “That’s How Strong My Love Is”, a gospelish take on James Carr’s “The Dark End of the Street”, and the slow, closing ballad “Many Rivers to Cross” (Jimmy Cliff) to the slightly more uptempo “Slip Away” (Clarence Carter) and Blues Brothers-ish grooves of “Stop” (Howard Tate) — with its powerful soul/R&B combination of horns and vocals — and swinging “Is It Something You’ve Got” (Tyrone Davis) to the tougher, Tommy Castro-like blues of “Don’t Fight It” (Wilson Pickett) from which the album’s title derives and that features background vocals from the Grateful Dead’s Donna Jean Godchaux (if this one doesn’t get you moving, we don’t know what will!) and a biting, funky take on Al Green’s “I’m a Ram”.
After a couple of albums announcing his return to the fray of the music biz from a last-hour liver transplant in the 2015 studio project 
Southern rocker Gregg Allman‘s final album Southern Blood (Rounder Records) may not be the bluesiest he’s done (which would have been a difficult undertaking following his 2011 solo studio offering 
Recently, we told you about 
