09-12-2019 BLUES:MiX # 33 blues(y) songs from the BLUES circle 2011-2001

Ry Cooder

09-12-2019 BLUES:MiX # 33 blues(y) songs from the BLUES circle 2011-2001 # Ry Cooder, Buddy Guy, Davy Knowles & Back Door Slam, Julian Fauth, Tommy Castro, Snooky Pryor, Shemekia Copeland, Detroit Jr., Robert Belfour, Tom Waits, John Hammond

B L U E S    M U S I C

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BLUES_circle The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza. 

2011-2001

Virtuoso roots guitarist who was steeped in the blues, but spent his career exploring new musical worlds from Tex-Mex to Cuban bolero.
Ry Cooder
I Want My Crown (Ry Cooder) 2:37
No Banker Left Behind (Ry Cooder) 3:36
from Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down 2011
Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, issued between two national election cycles, is the most overtly political album Ry Cooder has ever released, and one of his funniest, most musically compelling ones, too. Cooder looks deeply into his musical past using his entire Americana musical arsenal: blues, folk, ragtime, norteño, rock, and country here... Those who've followed Cooder from the beginning will find much to love on Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down. Those music fans unfamiliar with his work but looking for a comrade in arms will find one here. That said, this is revolution music; worthy of dancing to, learning from, and singing along with: who says topical music has to be boring?

Contender for the title of greatest blues guitarist ever, with a fiery, screechy, super-quick technique that influenced countless followers.
Buddy Guy
74 Years Young (Tom Hambridge / Gary Nicholson) 4:34
On the Road (Richard Fleming / Tom Hambridge) 4:11
from Living Proof 2010
Living Proof was designed partially as an aural autobiography from the legendary Buddy Guy, opening up with the stark summation “74 Years Young,” then running through songs that often address some aspect of a working musician's life... Like Skin Deep before it, Living Proof is distinguished by these bold, clenched blasts of sonic fury, but here the production has just enough grit to make the entire enterprise feel feral, and that’s a greater testament to Guy's enduring vitality than any one song could ever be.

British blues-rockers Back Door Slam boast a tough, streetwise sound that recalls veteran U.K. blues players such as Eric Clapton, Peter Green, and John Mayall, though these young guitar slingers represent a new generation -- when bassist Adam Jones joined the group in 2006, guitarist and singer Davy Knowles and drummer Ross Doyle were all of 20 years old, while Jones himself was just 19. 
Davy Knowles & Back Door Slam
Coming Up for Air (Davy Knowles) 4:36
Taste of Danger (Jonatha Brooke) 4:09
Riverbed (Davy Knowles) 3:38
from Coming Up For Air 2009
Perfectly acknowledging the whirlwind that inevitably happens when you're heir apparent to a litany of great bluesmen at the not-so-tender-anymore age of 22, Davy Knowles chooses an album title that sums up what it's like to follow the frenzy with another great gust of compelling songs and exciting studio activity. It's hard to tell the Isle of Man singer/guitarist's story without dropping some classic rock names, since he and his band, Back Door Slam, have played concerts with everyone from the Who to Buddy Guy and George Thorogood and toured with Kid Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Gov't Mule. While many wanted to share stages with this powerful vocalist and brilliant axeman, one legend went a step further. Harking back to his blues-rock roots in Humble Pie, Peter Frampton makes Coming Up for Air his first foray into producing another artist's entire project...

Julian Fauth is a singer and piano player whose style is based on the tradition of pre-war barrelhouse blues and boogie woogie, with infusions of gospel and jazz. He writes his own songs in addition to re-interpreting traditional material.
Julian Fauth
Maggie Campbell (Julian Fauth) 4:52
The Man on the Box (Julian Fauth) 5:05
Cubist Blues(Julian Fauth) 3:34
from Ramblin' Son 2008
If you think Julian Fauth’s new record is a cover album, you’re likely not alone. However, Ramblin’ Son is almost all originals – it’s just so good that you can’t believe his tracks weren’t written by a weathered 50s bluesman.
Opener Maggie Campbell is a speedy piece complete with old-timey wailin and a swift guitar solo. The Man On The Box is a much slower affair but no less infectious, due to the musicians’ subtle keys and powerful pipes. Fauth’s effortless swing makes it all sound easy.
Whether because of the way it was recorded or the accessibility of the sounds, Ramblin’ Son vividly creates that familiar smoky bar vibe.

According to all the press and hype and hoopla for a time during the 1990s, Tommy Castro was pegged as the next big star of the blues. Long a favorite among Bay Area music fans, Castro -- in the space of two album releases -- took his music around the world and back again with a sheaf of praise from critics and old-time blues musicians alike. His music was a combination of soul-inflected rockers with the occasional slow blues or shuffle thrown into the mix to keep it honest.
Tommy Castro
Love Don't Care (Kevin Bowe / Tommy Castro) 3:47
Painkiller (Tommy Castro / Gary Nicholson) 3:49
Lonesome and Then Some (Tommy Castro / Jeff Silbar) 4:44
from Painkiller 2007
Tommy Castro's sixth release for the Blind Pig label, Painkiller, picks up where his 2003 set, Soul Shaker, left off. This time around, producer John Porter -- who has worked with Santana, Taj Mahal, B.B. King, and Buddy Guy -- positions Castro's Delbert McClinton/Southside Johnny vocal grit in front of a punchy horn section and rounds out the date with a few guest artists. Unlike many similar modern blues projects of good intentions but lackluster performances, the combinations on Painkiller never sound forced...

This harmoinca player's records were harbingers of the amplified, down-home sound of post-war Chicago blues. Only recently has Snooky Pryor finally begun to receive full credit for the mammoth role he played in shaping the amplified Chicago blues harp sound during the postwar era. He's long claimed he was the first harpist to run his sound through a public address system around the Windy City -- and since nobody's around to refute the claim at this point, we'll have to accept it! James Edward Pryor was playing harmonica at the age of eight in Mississippi.
Snooky Pryor 
Snooky and Moody's Boogie 2:20
Telephone Blues 2:46
Cryin' Shame 2:54
from An Introduction To Snooky Pryor 2006
His great sides for the small J.O.B label out of Chicago. This set includes several previously unissued sides. Original Chicago style blues at its best!

A powerful blues singer and daughter of blues guitarist Johnny Copeland whose award-winning recordings run the gamut from electric blues to soul and Americana.

Shemekia Copeland 

Breakin' Out 3:33

Poor, Poor Excuse 3:02

Something Heavy 3:16

from The Soul Truth 2005

Shemekia Copeland can sing the heck out of the blues, but she isn't necessarily a blues singer, and on The Soul Truth she makes what would seem like a sure-fire move into Memphis soul territory, even working with Stax great Steve Cropper, who produced the album and adds his trademark guitar economics to most of the tracks...

Emery Williams Jr. is a living link to the great Chicago blues piano players of the 1940s and 1950s. Born on October 26, 1931, in Haynes, AR, Williams was given the name Detroit Junior when be began recording on his own in the 1960s...

Detroit Jr. 

Call My Job (Emery Williams, Jr.) 4:26

Rockin' After Midnight (Lowell Fulson) 3:34

Blues on the Internet (Emery Williams, Jr.) 6:53

from Blues On The Internet 2004

Veteran blues pianist (and longtime Howlin' Wolf sideman) Emery Williams Jr. -- known professionally as Detroit Junior -- has had a renaissance of sorts in the past decade, releasing three albums on Blue Suit Records, and now this one, Blues on the Internet, on Delmark Records. Williams is a throwback to the classic Chicago blues piano style, and his warm, expressive vocals fall somewhere between a hoarse Ray Charles and a latter-day Bob Dylan, while his songwriting, although hardly innovative, is solid and workmanlike, avoiding most of the obvious blues clichés. His intent isn't to move blues into the 21st century so much as preserve the way it was played in Chicago in the 1950s (where Williams played alongside the likes of Jimmy Reed, Eddie Boyd, Eddie Taylor, and Little Mack Simmons)...  Fans of vintage Chicago blues piano will find this collection a delight...

Robert 'Wolfman' Belfour is a little-known but very powerful blues guitarist and singer based in Memphis, Tennessee. Born to sharecropper parents on a farm in Holly Springs, Mississippi, he began playing guitar in the late '40s after the death of his father who left the instrument to him. He learned by emulating the sounds of such greats as John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and his idol, Howlin Wolf, as they were being broadcast on his mother's battery-operated radio. He was also influenced to some extent by his neighbor, Junior Kimbrough. Belfour's style is deeply-rooted in the sounds of his North Mississippi birthplace. It is a highly rhythmic and riff-oriented type of playing that can also be heard in the work of other players from the region, like Jessie Mae Hemphill, R.L. Burnside, and the late Fred Mcdowell.

Robert Belfour 

Hill Stomp (Robert Belfour) 2:59

Pushin' My Luck (Robert Belfour) 4:34

Crazy Ways (Robert Belfour) 4:17

Breaking My Heart (Robert Belfour) 5:01

from Pushin' My Luck 2003

Robert Belfour's sophomore effort for Fat Possum -- at 63, he is one of the youngest artists on the roster and is by far the most "polished," if the Delta blues can ever really be called that -- proves his debut was indeed only a beginning. In stark contrast to his labelmates, Belfour strictly plays acoustic blues, but he plays them with the same dark, trancelike feel of Junior Kimbrough, haunting spookiness of Fred McDowell, rhythmic intensity of John Lee Hooker, and sprawling drawl of Lightnin' Hopkins. Ted Gainey aids Belfour on a drum kit. While the first album was all of a piece, and everything but the vocal seemed to be recorded at the same level (and even then, Belfour couldn't always be understood among the ringing guitars and shuffling drums), Pushin' My Luck is nervier, a bit more edgy. Belfour's truly nearly unbelievable singing is a bit more in the foreground, enough to add to the hypnotic repetition in his music, while the drums -- played no more elaborately than Meg White's in the White Stripes -- are mixed just a tad higher, bringing it extremely close to the punch this stuff has when played in front of a live audience... I hope this guy lives to be a 100 and makes a record every year he's on this planet. Forget everything you just read: This record is amazing; just buy it.

A neo-beatnik songwriter who grew weirder and wilder in the '80s, earning a cult following that only grew larger as the years passed.

Tom Waits 

Misery Is the River of the World (Kathleen Brennan / Tom Waits) 4:25

God's Away on Business (Kathleen Brennan / Tom Waits) 2:59

Everything Goes to Hell (Kathleen Brennan / Tom Waits) 3:45

from Blood Money 2002

Tom Waits has said: "I like a beautiful song that tells you terrible things. We all like bad news out of a pretty mouth." When it comes to the material on Blood Money, I don't know if I can call Waits' mouth pretty, but he certainly offers plenty of bad news in a very attractive, compelling way. Released simultaneously with Alice, a recording of songs written in 1990, Blood Money is a set of 13 songs written by Waits and Kathleen Brennan in collaboration with dramatist Robert Wilson. The project was a loose adaptation of the play Woyzeck, originally written by German poet Georg Buchner in 1837. The play was inspired by the true story of a German soldier who was driven mad by bizarre army medical experiments and infidelity, which led him to murder his lover -- cheery stuff, to be sure. Thematically, this work -- with its references to German cabarets and nostalgia -- echoes Waits' other Wilson collaborative project, Black Rider. Musically, however, Blood Money is a far more elegant, stylish, and nuanced work than the earlier recording. With bluesman Charlie Musselwhite, reedman Colin Stetson, bassist and guitarist Larry Taylor, marimbist Andrew Borger, and others -- Waits plays piano, organ, marimba, calliope, and guitar -- this is a theater piece that feels like a collection of songs that reflect a perverse sense of black humor and authentic wickedness in places...

John Hammond, Jr. is one of a handful of white blues musicians who was on the scene at the beginning of the first blues renaissance of the mid-'60s. That revival, brought on by renewed interest in folk music around the U.S., brought about career boosts for many of the great classic blues players, including Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis, and Skip James

John Hammond 

2:19 (Kathleen Brennan / Tom Waits) 4:42

Heartattack and Vine (Tom Waits) 4:40

Jockey Full of Bourbon (Tom Waits) 3:32

Big Black Mariah (Tom Waits) 4:09

from Wicked Grin 2001

After 35 years into a career that spans 35 albums recorded for seven labels, you'd think John Hammond might get a little complacent. Thankfully the opposite is true, as 2001's Wicked Grin is the artist's most daring musical departure and arguably greatest achievement to date. Mining the rich Tom Waits catalog for 12 of its 13 tracks (the closing is a traditional gospel tune) and bringing Waits himself along as producer has resulted in a stunning collection that stands as one of the best in Hammond's bulging catalog. Never a songwriter, the singer/guitarist/harmonica bluesman has maintained a knack for picking top-notch material from the rich blues tradition without resorting to the hoary, over-covered classics of the genre. It's that quality that transforms these tunes into Hammond songs, regardless of their origin. His history of working with exceptional session musicians is also legendary, and this album's band, which features Doug Sahm sideman Augie Meyers on keyboards, harmonica wiz Charlie Musselwhite, longtime Waits associate Larry Taylor on bass, and Waits himself poking around on various songs, is perfect for the spooky, swampy feel he effortlessly conjures here... An experiment whose success will hopefully yield another volume, this partnership of John Hammond and Tom Waits brings out the best in both artists' substantial talents.

Tom and John