Grady Champion delivers some seriously Down Home Blues on Tribute to ZZ Hill

Although bluesman Grady Champion‘s soulful 2014 album debut on the Jackson, Mississippi Malaco Records label, Bootleg Whiskey, was a magnificent one, his latest recording finds Champion bringing things even closer to home for the longtime soul, blues and gospel label, which through the decades has featured such names as Bobby “Blue” Bland, Johnnie Taylor, Tyrone Davis, Dorothy Moore, and Little Milton on its roster of artists, with Champion paying homage to another of Malaco’s most successful musicians on Steppin’ In: A Tribute to ZZ Hill.

Here, Champion covers Hill’s biggest hits, from the gritty soul grooves of the opening “Down Home Blues” (George Jackson) and “Someone Else is Steppin’ In” (Denise LaSalle) to swaying numbers involving affairs of the heart like “Everybody Knows About My Good Thing” (Little Johnny Taylor) with its stinging guitar from Eddie Cotton and Jackson’s soft, slow “Cheating in the Next Room”, many of the dozen tracks accented by female backing vocals and horns (when Champion himself isn’t blowing away on harmonica, such as on the particularly gravelly-vocaled “Shade Tree Mechanic”, slow-grooved “Open House at My House” and truly grinding “Bump and Grind”).

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Three-disc compilation from late guitarist and singer Rory Gallagher offers nothing but Blues (and that’s good by us!)

If you like the music of blues-rockers such as Joe Bonamassa, Johnny Winter, George Thorogood, Walter Trout, Peter Green, and/or Jeff Healey, and aren’t familiar with the late Irish multi-instrumentalist and singer Rory Gallagher, we can think of no better introduction to his work than this fantastic new 3-CD compilation of blues numbers from throughout his two-dozen-year solo career entitled, simply and accurately, Blues (UMC). And if you’re already a Gallagher fan, the good news is that this one will also be worth adding to your collection, with a whopping 90% of the 36 tracks here being previously unreleased material from various album sessions, radio shows and sessions, and TV concerts.

The set flows seamlessly between solo and band numbers, with the first of the 3 discs devoted to electric blues selections from Gallagher, the second to acoustic blues, and the final to live numbers. While most of what’s here has Gallagher front and center either on his own or leading a three-piece or larger band, Blues also captures Gallagher as a guest player on recordings with such greats as Muddy Waters (a swinging, horns-drenched “I’m Ready” from Muddy’s 1971 London Sessions album), Albert King (an unreleased cover of B.B. King’s “You Upset Me” from Albert’s 1975 Live album, on which both Albert and Rory solo), Jack Bruce (an unreleased 1991 version of “Born Under a Bad Sign” from the German Rockpalast TV show),the Chris Barber Band (a 1989 concert taping of the grooving instrumental “Comin’ Home Baby”), and skiffle king Lonnie Donegan (“Drop Down Baby” from Donegan’s Puttin’ on the Style album).

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Steal Your Joy

This latest edition of our BluesPowR Radio Hour is loaded with helpful advice, mostly of the what-not-to-do variety, from “don’t let the devil ride” to “don’t you dare judge me” to “don’t you let people steal your joy”, with music from the likes of Rick Vito, Mindi Abair & The Boneshakers, Scott Sharrard & Taj Mahal, The Lee Boys, Tony Holiday, Bob Corritore and friends such as Sugaray Rayford and Oscar Wilson, and more! 

So, all that’s really left for us to say is “don’t miss it”!


Playlist
World on Fire – Rick Vito (Soulshaker)
Tell Me Mama – Bob Corritore & Friends w/ Oscar Wilson (Don’t Let the Devil Ride!)
Don’t Judge Me – Tim Gartland (Satisfied)
Don’t Let the Devil Ride – The Lee Boys (Live on the East Coast)
Play to Win – Mindi Abair & The Boneshakers (The EastWest Sessions)
Not That Kind of Girl – Mindi Abair & The Boneshakers (The EastWest Sessions)
Everything a Good Man Needs – Scott Sharrard w/ Taj Mahal (Saving Grace)
Sad For No Reason – Imperial Jade (On the Rise)
Coin Operated Woman – Tony Holiday (Porch Sessions)
Steal Your Joy – Bob Corritore & Friends w/ Sugaray Rayford (Don’t Let the Devil Ride!)

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Jimmie Vaughan offers one really worth bringing home with Baby, Please Come Home

Jimmie Vaughan may never achieve quite the same level of recognition from the general public as his late, great younger brother Stevie Ray, with Jimmie’s music generally tending to gravitate more towards the laidback, traditional side of the genre, closer to a T-Bone Walker or B.B. King than the world-famous blues-rocking sibling Jimmie helped to inspire. But there’s no denying that Jimmie — a founding and longtime member of The Fabulous Thunderbirds — remains one of the most respected blues guitar players on the scene today, frequently sharing the stage with the likes of Eric Clapton (who, you may recall, joined Vaughan for a few numbers at last summer’s Project Blues fundraiser in Columbus and has invited Vaughan to participate in each of his Crossroads Guitar Festivals, in addition to having had Vaughan open for and play a few songs with him during his recent three-night run at the Royal Albert Hall), with Vaughan’s latest album Baby, Please Come Home (Last Music Co.) being a prime example of just how he came to attain  such a lofty position in the blues world.

So while they may not be the most aggressive or flashy, Vaughan’s band here is consistently good and really cooks their way through this 11-track offering of some of Vaughan’s favorite songs, from the cool, swaying croon of numbers like Huey Meaux’s “Just a Game” and T-Bone Walker’s “I’m Still in Love With You” on one side of the spectrum to the uptempo swing of Chuck Willis’ “What’s Your Name?” and groovy, almost-Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble-sounding instrumental “Hold It”, with lots more swinging and shuffling in between.

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Nobody Told Me that John Mayall would still be making such great albums at 85

When we told you about John Mayall‘s Three for the Road album last spring, you might recall our noting that Mayall’s next studio album would be one that, according to Mayall, “strongly feature(s)…guitar players who will be pretty well-known to all lovers of rock and roll”. Mayall, of course, has a long history of working with some great guitar players — Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel, Walter Trout, and Coco Montoya, among them — and, while none of these musicians makes a return appearance on Mayall’s newest album Nobody Told Me (Forty Below Records), several other well-known rock and blues guitarslingers do join the Godfather of British Blues for a track or two, from Todd Rundgren, “Little Steven” Van Zandt (E Street Band), and Alex Lifeson (Rush) to Joe Bonamassa, Larry McCray, and Mayall’s current guitarist Carolyn Wonderland. The result is one terrific song after another,  resembling the studio equivalent of one of Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festivals.

Mayall comes out swinging with a slick, horns-accented version of Magic Sam’s “What Have I Done Wrong”, one of two songs on which he’s joined by Bonamassa, who returns  a bit later on a “Delta Hurricane” that just oozes with grooves, with Mayall also throwing in a more distant and lonesomer take on Bonamassa’s “Distant Lonesome Train” than the original, Mayall’s version featuring some gritty slide work from Wonderland.

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Tony Holiday calls upon some talented friends with Porch Sessions

It’s been more than 75 years since Alan Lomax traveled to the Mississippi Delta to make his field recordings of bluesmen like Son House, Muddy Waters and David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and, while the internet and other technological advances have made it much easier to discover new music from remote corners of the world, it’s kind of neat to hear musicians still at times coming back to the field recording technique, as is the case with this latest release from singer and harmonica player Tony Holiday, who, joined by guitar player Landon Stone, traveled across the U.S. to record numbers on the front porches of such friends as Charlie Musselwhite, John Nemeth, Kid Ramos, Bob Corritore, and Kid Andersen, also inviting musicians like John Primer, James Harman, Mitch Kashmar, and others along to help make Porch Sessions (VizzTone Records) as authentic a downhome blues album as you’ll hear.

Every track here is solid, with perhaps the biggest gems including a pair of Muddy Waters-style songs — the slow blues “They Call Me John Primer” and uptempo shuffle “Tell Me Baby” — featuring John Primer on guitar and vocals and Bob Corritore on harmonica; a grungy, creeping “Woman Named Trouble” with John Nemeth and Jake Friel on harmonica and vocals that could easily be mistaken for a number off one of Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite’s collaborative albums; the soulful, closing “This Time I’m Gone for Good” with vocals from William Kidd; a somewhat jazzy “That’s Alright” that does include Musselwhite on harmonica along with Aki Kumar, who also provides vocals; a gritty, distant-vocaled “Blues Hit Big Town” (Junior Wells) with Nemeth on vocals and harmonica; a country-blues “Goin’ to Court” that includes James Harman on vocals and harmonica and Kid Ramos on guitar; and the slick, West Coast-sounding “Coin Operated Woman” that also allows us to hear Holiday on vocals, joined by Rockin’ Johnny Burgin on guitar.

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Tax Man Blues

With this coming Monday being the deadline for those in the U.S. to file their annual federal income taxes, we thought some of you might enjoy another talk-free episode of our BluesPowR Radio Hour to help put you over the finish line (or just sit back and relax to if you’ve already filed). Watermelon Slim does pay homage to the tax man on one track, but that’s as, well, taxing as it gets here, with a pair of songs each from John Fusco & the X-Road Riders, the Delta Wires, and the recent Rolling Stones-curated Confessin’ the Blues compilation, plus other music from Colin Linden & Luther Dickinson, Nick Schnebelen, and Albert Castiglia & Mike Zito.

So don’t put this one off; give it a listen today!

Playlist
Little Baby – Howlin’ Wolf (Confessin’ the Blues)
I Don’t Care – Delta Wires (Born In Oakland)
In The Middle – Delta Wires (Born In Oakland)
Don’t Let Go – Colin Linden & Luther Dickinson w/ the Tennessee Valentines (Amour)
It Ain’t Me – Nick Schnebelen (Crazy All By Myself)
Worried Life Blues – Big Maceo Merriweather (Confessin’ the Blues)
A Stone’s Throw – John Fusco & the X-Road Riders (John Fusco & the X-Road Riders)
Crossroad Blues – John Fusco & the X-Road Riders (featuring Luther Dickinson & Al Kapone) (John Fusco & the X-Road Riders)
Tax Man Blues – Watermelon Slim (Church of the Blues)
You Got Me to That Place – Albert Castiglia w/ Mike Zito (Up All Night)

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Veteran bluesman Willie Buck still showing how it’s done on Willie Buck Way

Willie Buck may not have been born in Chicago, but he certainly sounds a lot like Chicago, at least the one made famous by the likes of fellow Mississippi natives such as Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and Howlin’ Wolf. While there are plenty of Chicago musicians who continue to help to preserve and move the genre in new directions, you can probably count on one or two hands those who still deliver the music true to the sound and style that Muddy and the other giants did, with the likes of Pinetop Perkins and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, for example, having moved on to the big blues gig in the sky in recent years.

Regardless of what other living bluesmen one might choose to include on such a short list (John Primer, Billy Branch, and real-life sons of the blues such as Lurrie Bell and Mud Morganfield being perhaps some of the most obvious selections), octogenarian Willie Buck also deserves a spot, still going strong some 50 years after he first began fronting his own bands on the Windy City scene.

With a smooth, straightahead Chicago blues approach, Buck is one of those guys we could easily listen to all night, every night. But for those of us for whom moving to Chicago probably isn’t much of a reality, it’s a real treat to be able to get to hear Buck on recordings such as this most recent, titled after a Chicago street named in Buck’s honor, Willie Buck Way (Delmark Records).

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Guitarist Joe Louis Walker, harp ace Giles Robson and piano man Bruce Katz team for Journeys to the Heart of the Blues

We’ve liked an awful lot of what we’ve heard from guitarist and singer Joe Louis Walker in recent years, but we’re not sure we’ve heard him sounding any better than on his latest project Journeys to the Heart of the Blues (Alligator Records/Munich Records), an all-acoustic collaboration that pairs the Blues Hall of Famer with UK harmonica player Giles Robson and piano master Bruce Katz, who’s spent many years playing with the likes of Ronnie Earl & his Broadcasters, Gregg Allman, the Allman Brothers Band, and Delbert McClinton.

Having first met and jammed with Robson at the Amstelveen Blues Festival in the Netherlands in late 2016, Walker gladly accepted Robson’s idea of recording together, also bringing his longtime friend Katz into the mix. Together, they expertly plow through 11 classic blues numbers and one instrumental original that sound like they’ve been playing together for decades, barrelling in like a, well, mean, bad train with some strong blowing and sturdy vocals on Papa Lightfoot’s “Mean Old Train” before hitting on an assortment of tracks that ranges from boogie-woogie — such as Washboard Sam’s “You Got to Run Me Down” (Jazz Gillum) and the instrumental “Chicago Breakdown” (Big Maceo Merriweather) — to slow blues selections like Sonny Boy Williamson’s “I’m a Lonely Man” with its wailing harmonica, the plaintive-vocaled “Murderer’s Home” (Blind Willie McTell), and Son Bonds’ “Hard Pill to Swallow”.

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Tune into the Weekend: Nat Myers offers sweet, old-time sound with Honey Bunny Blues

Here’s a neat, vintage-sounding track to help ease you into the weekend, a little treasure from a young Kentucky bluesman named Nat Myers, who describes himself as “the son of a revenue man” and a self-taught guitarist and singer who “reinvents and preserves the pre-war styles he was raised on and loves”.

Cut on a Presto lathe recorder to give it that crackling sound, “Honey Bunny Blues” is one of two tracks off Myers’ Field Recordings EP, and was inspired by “that almost too-sweet kind of love (where) you love so much, you can barely look at it straight, ’cause it embarrasses you with how embarrassing it makes you be–you start thinking sweet nothings in public, thinking pet names that you wouldn’t even name your dog, saying things that make those on the outside roll their eyes. If you been there, ‘Honey Bunny’ is about saying ‘damn those eyes’.”

If you like what you hear, check out this video of a January performance from Myers at Brooklyn’s Jalopy Theatre and/or his bandcamp page, where you can hear more of his traditional playing, including another EP called bleus.

And stay tuned for more sure-to-be great stuff from Myers!

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