Here’s one to add to your blues playlist as you’re grilling, entertaining family or friends, or just kicking back and relaxing this Independence Day, a little gem from one-time Jelly Roll Kings singer and guitarist Big Jack Johnson compliments of M.C. Records.
Released in 1996, “It’s the 4th of July” first appeared on Johnson’s We Got to Stop This Killin’, one of four albums he recorded for M.C. Records in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Have a great holiday!
We know we’ve been a little quiet here on The BluesPowR Blog lately, but hopefully this latest edition of our BluesPowR Radio Hour will help make up for that, featuring music from Magic Sam, Johnny Rawls, Mac Arnold & Plate Full O’ Blues, Eric Bibb, and Joyann Parker & Sweet Tea, plus a double-shot from Jake Chisholm, a real live one from the Nick Moss Band, and more!
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Playlist
Joyann Parker & Sweet Tea – Hit Me Like a Train (On the Rocks)
Magic Sam – Same Old Blues (alternate) (Black Magic deluxe edition)
Eric Bibb & North Country Far, Danny Thompson – The Happiest Man in the World (The Happiest Man in the World)
The Jordan Patterson Band – If You’d Help Me Please – Revisited (The Back on Track Recording Project)
Jake Chisholm – No More Sorrow (No More Sorrow)
Jake Chisholm – Just Because You Want To (No More Sorrow)
Johnny Rawls – Born to the Blues (Tiger in a Cage)
Kalo – Treat Me Bad (Dear John)
Nick Moss Band – Try To Treat You Right (Live and Luscious)
Mac Arnold and Plate Full O’ Blues – Give It Away (Give It Away)
For all of us aspiring guitarists who have long dreamt of playing with – or even like – Grammy and Blues Music Award-winning guitarist and the reigning king of the blues Buddy Guy, a new book of tabs from Hal Leonard publishers may be the closest many of us will ever get to fulfilling that dream. The latest in the music publisher’s Guitar Play-Along series (this is volume 183, joining others ranging from the likes of Clapton, Hendrix, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, T-Bone Walker, Albert King and ZZ Top to David Lee Roth, Duane Allman, AC/DC, Taylor Swift, and Iron Maiden), the Buddy Guy – Guitar Play-Along allows guitarists to see the tab, hear clips of the music – including the ability to slow the audio down, set loop points, and change keys, among other functions – and then play along to eight of Guy’s most popular tracks, from the brazen swagger of “Damn Right, I’ve Got the Blues” and “Man of Many Words” to the softer, more refined “Feels Like Rain” and “What Kind of Woman Is This”, along with “Someone Else is Steppin’ In”, “Midnight Train”, “Stone Crazy”, and “Hoodoo Man Blues”.
The book may not win you quite the awards Guy has received, but it will make it easier to impress your friends with some of Guy’s most killer riffs!
Here’s the latest installment of our BluesPowR Radio Hour, featuring music from recent Blues Music Award (BMA) winners Walter Trout and Duke Robillard, as well as a double-shot from quadruple BMA nominee Anthony Geraci, plus tracks from Tasha Taylor and Samantha Fish, Steve Hill, and more. Enjoy!
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Playlist
The Blues Never Sleeps – Anthony Geraci & The Boston Blues All-Stars (Fifty Shades of Blue)
Blues for David Maxwell – Anthony Geraci & The Boston Blues All-Stars (Fifty Shades of Blue)
Put Me Back – Amy Hart (Live at the Mayne Stage)
John the Revelator – Lewis Hamilton (Shipwrecked)
Rollin & Tumblin / Stop Breaking Down – Steve Hill (Solo Recordings Vol. 3)
Slender Man Blues – Billy the Kid & the Regulators (I Can’t Change)
Leave That Dog Alone- Tasha Taylor w/ Samantha Fish (Honey for the Biscuit)
I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water – Duke Robillard (The Acoustic Blues & Roots of Duke Robillard)
Cold Cold Ground – Walter Trout (Battle Scars)
You may have seen in our last post that among the multiple award recipients at last week’s annual Blues Music Awards was the late soul-blues crooner Otis Clay, whose wins in the soul male artist and soul blues album (for his collaboration with Billy Price on This Time for Real) categories were, believe it or not, his first Blues Music Awards in a long and distinguished musical career that, in addition to blues, R&B, and soul, was also largely rooted in gospel, an influence to which Clay returned often throughout the decades.
Such is the case with this track, for which Clay’s vocals were actually recorded during the sessions for his 2014 Soul Brothers collaboration with friend and fellow soulman Johnny Rawls. The plan was to include the song – one of Clay’s favorites – on his next solo album, a project that unfortunately never came to fruition before the legend’s passing this January at age 73.
Not wanting to see such a good thing go to waste, Catfood Records’ Bob Trenchard enlisted Rawls and a few others to help complete the track, with Trenchard on bass, Johnny McGhee on guitar, and Rawls producing as well as providing both percussion and background vocals along with neo-soul artist Janelle Thompson. The result was a fittingly beautiful and fulfilling note by which to remember Clay, a gospel song with a raw blues edge that embodies both the spirit and career of this Mississippi boy.
We weren’t able to catch Clay when he visited Pittsburgh to perform with Price at the Rex Theater last fall, but here’s a great medley from that show that also starts on a bit of a spiritual note:
The winners of the 37th Blues Music Awards were announced last night in Memphis, with Buddy Guy, Walter Trout, Otis Clay, Cedric Burnside, and Victor Wainwright each taking home a pair of awards in a five-way tie for the event’s big winner.
Guy received awards for album and contemporary album of the year for his Born to Play Guitar; Trout took home the gold for both rock blues album (Battle Scars) and song (“Gonna Live Again”); and the late Clay won in the soul male artist and soul blue album categories for his collaboration with Pittsburgh’s Billy Price on This Time for Real. Burnside was honored for traditional blues album (Descendants of Hill Country) and his work on drums, while Wainwright got the nods for band and B.B. King Entertainer of the year.
Among the night’s other winners were Joe Louis Walker for contemporary male artist, Shemekia Copeland for contemporary female artist, John Primer for traditional male artist, Ruthie Foster for traditional female artist (Koko Taylor Award), Doug MacLeod for acoustic artist, Sonny Landreth on guitar, Kim Wilson on harmonica, and the late Allen Toussaint for Pinetop Perkins Piano Player. You can view the full list of winners on the American Blues Scene site.
Congratulations to all of last night’s winners and all of this year’s nominees.
Every time we hear a new album from John Mayall, like last year’s Find a Way to Care, we think The Godfather of British Blues just may be sounding better musically than ever. But then we hear something like this, the second in a series of previously unreleased live recordings of his band The Bluesbreakers culled from a handful of London shows from the spring of 1967, and we’re reminded that Mayall has really always been pretty brilliant, especially when backed, as he is here, by the likes of guitarist Peter Green, drummer Mick Fleetwood, and bassist John McVie, a line-up that didn’t stick around long enough to ever join Mayall in the studio, choosing instead to go their own way and form a band called Fleetwood Mac.
You may recall us hoping for a second volume of music from these shows during our review of the first set last spring, and we’re pleased to report that only three of the songs on John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers Live in 1967 – Volume Two (Forty Below Records) are repeats of tracks that appeared on volume one, not that we mind at all hearing some different interpretations from these guys on classics like “Stormy Monday”, “So Many Roads”, and “Double Trouble”. But that’s only once you’re able to get past the opening track, the slow blues of a “Tears in My Eyes” that features some stinging playing from Green and that you’re going to want to play over and over again.
As on the first volume, pretty much everything here is spectacular, with the biggest highlights (once you’re able to move on from that opener) including the grooving instrumental “Greeny”, a slow, patient take on B.B. King’s “Sweet Little Angel” that captures the band deep in the zone, and a cover of Sonny Boy Williamson II’s “Bye Bye Bird” that also has Mayall blowing away on harmonica.
In between, you’ll also hear a shuffling, slightly accelerated take on Williamson II’s “Your Funeral and My Trial”, the “Spoonful”-like original “Please Don’t Tell”, covers of J.B. Lenoir’s “Talk to Your Daughter” and Eddie Taylor’s “Bad Boy”, and another instrumental original in “Chicago Line” that includes a terrific bass solo from McVie, many of which again feature Mayall on harmonica in addition to vocals and/or keyboards.
Derived from a fan’s bootleg recordings of shows at four different London clubs, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise (especially to those who heard Volume 1) that the sound here can be a bit muffled and uneven at times, even with the great work from producers Mayall and Forty Below’s Eric Corne in cleaning things up. But that really is a small and insignificant price to pay to be able to hear such an important and intriguing piece of blues history. Along with its predecessor, Live in 1967 – Volume 2 is a must-have.
Recently, we told you about the latest album from real-life blues brother Benny Turner, which you may recall featured a restored version of a song Turner recorded with piano great Charles Brown just before Brown’s death and that had for some time been feared lost in Hurricane Katrina. Today, we’re pleased to bring you a track from another long-lost project, this time from gifted Alabama soul/bluesman Sam Frazier Jr., who recorded this tune and the 15 others on his “new” Take Me Back (Music Maker Relief Foundation) album during a three-year period in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The gravelly, Taj Mahal-like vocals here on “Drippin’ Honey” are a sharp contrast to the smoothness you’ll hear on such other songs as the horn-laced “I Don’t Want Another Love” and choir-backed pop-soul of “Black and White Love” (with its both harmonious sounds and messages, including such lyrics as “If you need an answer, simply stop and realize/ I only see the color of your eyes”) that bookend the track, as well as the classy soul of numbers like “Why Do People Play With Feelings”, “Don’t Spread Your Love Around”, and a gospelish “Love, Fish and Bread”, one of the few songs on which Frazier can also be heard on harmonica, something he learned from Sonny Boy Williamson.
In a world filled with blues-rock trios and quartets, Canadian bluesman Steve Hill stands alone – literally – himself providing all the drums, hi-hats, and harmonica needed to accompany his primary instruments of guitar and vocals. We first told you about Hill shortly after he captured four honors in the 2015 Maple Blues Awards, for entertainer, guitarist, electric act, and recording of the year for his Solo Recordings Vol. 2. Now Hill is back with Vol. 3 in that series, and it’s every bit as good as – if not even better than – his last.
Once again, Hill delivers a smoking set of mostly original tracks, ranging from folksy acoustic numbers like “Troubled Times”, the harmonica-laced “Slowly Slipping Away”, and the breezy, Buddy Holly-ish ode “Emily”, to rockers such as the shuffling “Can’t Take It With You” and a hard-driving, groove-soaked “Rhythm All Over” that rivals some of the best from The Black Keys.
Truth be told, you know this is going to be another damned fine offering from Hill pretty much from the start, kicking off as it does on the raw and gritty “Damned” with such biting lyrics as “when things are right, I make them wrong/ I never know where I belong/ I screw it up and then I’m gone”. That’s followed by the slightly more radio-friendly, Bad Company-with-a-punch “Dangerous” before Hill turns up the heat on the first of several blues classics with “Still a Fool & a Rollin Stone”. A fierce “Rollin & Tumblin/Stop Breaking Down” comes later in the program, after which the one man band offers an equally fine, albeit much quieter, cover of the traditional “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad”.
If you didn’t take our advice and check Hill out after our last review, you’re going to want to do yourself a favor and get on that now. And be sure to tell a friend about him too, for these Solo Recordings are far too terrific for anyone to keep to themselves!
We’ve spent quite a bit of time talking here about the numerous second generation blues men and women helping to carry on their fathers’ musical legacies, including such artists as Shemekia Copeland, Bernard Allison, Lurrie Bell, Mud and Big Bill Morganfield, and Zakiya Hooker, to name just a few. Sometimes, we may not need to wait for the next generation to pick up the torch, if, for instance, there happens to be a sibling who also sings or plays – Austin’s Jimmie Vaughan being a pretty good example, along with this fellow Texan, who, by name, may not be instantly recognizable as a relative of blues royalty, but has certainly paid his dues in the biz, having played for his late brother’s band for a decade and then served as a musician and bandleader for the “Blues Queen of New Orleans” Marva Wright for more than 20 years before finally assuming center stage as the leader of his own band just six years back, also supporting the likes of Chicago bluesman Mighty Joe Young and the famous gospel group The Soul Stirrers (of Sam Cooke fame) throughout his more than 50-year career.
Even with those background details revealed, many still may not recognize the name of electric bassist Benny Turner, the younger brother of and a longtime player with the late blues great and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Freddie King (who left this earth nearly four decades ago now). But we suspect that the veteran bluesman’s newest album, When She’s Gone (Nola Blue, Inc.), will go a long way in helping Turner to make a name for himself and gaining the attention he deserves as both a musician and singer.
