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| Shemekia Copeland |
09-02-2020 > BLUES:MiX # 33 blues(y) songs from the BLUES circle 2005-1994 # Shemekia Copeland, Detroit Jr., Robert Belfour, Tom Waits, John Hammond, Alvin Youngblood Hart, B.B. King, Colin James, Taj Mahal, Joanna Connor, The Jeff Healey Band, Chris Duarte Group
B L U E S M U S I C
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2005-1994
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.
Breakin' Out 3:33
Poor, Poor Excuse 3:02
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...
Rockin' After Midnight (Lowell Fulson) 3:34
Blues on the Internet (Emery Williams, Jr.) 6:53
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.
Crazy Ways (Robert Belfour) 4:17
Breaking My Heart (Robert Belfour) 5:01
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.
