Here at The BluesPowR Blog, we frequently receive albums that either incorporate elements of or cross more fully into such other genres as rock, jazz, soul, or country. But it’s not often that we encounter an artist who attempts to interweave the blues with classical music, aside perhaps from legendary Chicago harmonica player Corky Siegel (The Siegel-Schwall Band), who’s been doing it now for several decades with his Chamber Blues Band, due to release their fourth album Different Voices in April.
While Siegel employs very much of a team approach to his music, surrounding himself with a classical string quartet and numerous other musicians and vocalists, young UK pianist Tom Bell takes on the blues-classical challenge a bit more single- (well, actually, double-) handedly on his solo debut album Face to Face, an instrumental project that, although we don’t purport to be either the biggest fan of or expert on classical music, all sounds pretty great to us.
After starting on the bright, bubbly “Bell’s Boogie”, the twenty-something Bell moves into the more cultured stylings of Chopin, testing the waters on the serene, light tinkling of “Etude Op. 10 No. 1 ‘Waterfall'” and then venturing a bit deeper in with “Etude Op. 25 No. 12 ‘Ocean'”, with Bell never sounding the least bit in over his head.
For a bigger taste of what you’re missing at this annual blues blowout, there’s a great new collection of songs from the 32nd edition of the competition that took place in 2016. Compiled by The Blues Foundation and 2014 Keeping the Blues Alive award-winning publicist Frank Roszak, International Blues Challenge #32 features nine mostly original tracks from among the 16 finalists (out of more than 250 acts) in last year’s challenge, ranging from such rockers as the shuffling, guitar-driven opener “I’m Your Man” from the Paul Deslauriers Band (Montreal Blues Society) and the Chuck Berry-ish riffs of the “Hound Dog” (not the one you know from Elvis or Big Mama Thornton, but a spunky original with a chorus of “The day you left the door, my hound dog cried all night” and other lyrics that include “He howl, he bark, he moan, he wail/ he don’t eat his food, he don’t wag his tail/ he fuss, he fume, he weep, he sigh/I e’en saw a tear fall from his eye”) that immediately follows from blind duo InnerVision (Columbus Blues Alliance) to the creeping, acoustic “You Make All My Blues Come True” featuring the gritty vocals and biting slide guitar of the Cincy Blues Society’s Sonny Moorman and slow, haunting “Black Sheep Moan” that closes the album from solo/duo winners Ben Hunter and Joe Seamons (Washington Blues Society), with its Chris Thomas King/Alvin Youngblood Hart-like pleading vocals and wailing harp.
Driven by some fine playing on drums from Sam and tough, clean vocals and accomplished guitar work from Lee, the band delivers their own funky takes on other classics that include “Hound Dog”, “Hootchie Cootchie Man”, “Close to You” and “Tore Down”. On “Hootchie Cootchie Man”, the brothers seem to be following Lee’s own advice of “Take your time, baby”, toning the song down in both tempo and swagger with a patient, more R&B-style approach that’s less gruff vocally than most versions you’ll have heard but nicely demonstrates – along with, for example, Lee’s repeated “I feel like this” on the closing “Tore Down” – their ability to stretch out a song, developed through decades of experience performing live.
In addition to songs like the soulful, horn-infused rocker “Find Ourselves” and breezy, acoustic “Live from the Heart” that show the more laid-back southern rock influence of his father, Devon also proves capable of delivering an impressive range of other sounds, from swaying ballads like the regret-laden “Vancouver” and the beautiful, strings-laced “Butterfly Girl” that reminds us of a band we heard a lot in college by the name of The Badlees to hard-rocking numbers like the opening “Say Your Prayers” – with its gritty, almost spitting vocals that come right out on “a bad storm’s comin’, better say your prayers/ you can tell right away, there’s trouble in the air”, and subsequent foreshadowing of the lighter, airier sounds and positive messages you’ll hear later in the album with a chorus that starts on “the sunshine’ll be comin’ back/ well, don’t you go and worry ’bout that” – and the tough, groove-filled “Galaxies” from which the album’s title derives, with its crushing guitar and screaming vocals building to a wild cacophony of sound.