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This month, I'd like to recommend a handful of CDs from a few established bluesmakers in the spirit of a fall blues harvest. I'll also continue your blues education, a Blues 101 if you will, and introduce some blues history courtesy of the new Telarc Blues tribute to Charley Patton. That said, let's get to pickin'.
Ronnie Earl, Welcome Back to the Blues!
Boston's Ronnie Earl has returned to his blues roots by releasing his first all- blues -- and nearly all vocal -- CD in a decade, Ronnie Earl and Friends on Telarc Blues, scheduled for a September 25th release. Ronnie's guest list reads like a "who's who in the blues" and it includes Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, James Cotton, Irma Thomas, and Levon Helm. Yes, the same Levon Helm that powered The Band.
Ronnie took over the guitar reins of Roomful of Blues from Duke Robillard in the early 1980's. He left the Roomful in 1987 to launch a solo career with Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters. Earl's one of the more accomplished blues guitarists playing today, and his style is all over the blues map. While many of his recordings are instrumentals, Ronnie Earl and Friends features some fine vocals from Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson on "All Your Love" and Irma Thomas on "I'll Take Care of You/Lonely Avenue."
Earl's picked up quite a few W.C. Handy awards along the way, too. A late bloomer, picking up the six-string in his twenties, he's more than made up for lost time. In 1997 and 1999, he won the Handy for Blues Instrumentalist, and has landed on the nominations list among such greats as Luther Allison, The B.B. King Orchestra, Coco Montoya, and Joe Louis Walker.
While his solo records or his work with Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters are first-rate introductions to one of the best guitar players around, I'm particularly interested in his side projects or contributions to compilations that are often hard to pigeonhole in the record bins.
Earl's five year old side project Eye to Eye remains one of my favorite blues CDs. Legendary Blues Band members Willie "Big Eyes" Smith, Calvin "Fuzz" Jones and Pinetop Perkins join Ronnie on some of the best electric postwar blues ever recorded by these long-time Muddy Waters sidemen. Ronnie also has contributed to emerging blues artists: he helped on Paul Rishell and Annie Raines' Tone Cool disc, I Want You To Know, and sat in with Hollywood Fats and Junior Watson, the late, great harpman, on William Clarke's 1986 release, Tip of the Top. Thankfully, Earl's work made it to the outstanding CD version of that record, which was released last year on King Ace records.
According to his liner notes, Ronnie Earl suffers from manic depression. If there was something that I could say or do to keep Ronnie's demons at bay, you know I'd shout it out if I knew it would help. Ronnie's website catalogues his 20+ year career as a guitarist as well as a visiting artist at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, www.ronnieearl.com.
A Classic in the Making From Craig Horton Craig Horton's first solo record, In My Spirit, harkens back to the late 1950's Chicago blues scene when he was with Little Walter and toured with the Dells, one of the best soul ballad bands from the golden ear of Chess Records. Even though he's moved to the San Francisco-Bay area, Craig's still plays the same great Chicago sound.
Horton was the opening act for Count Basie and Duke Ellington in landmark Chicago clubs like the Golden Dolphin, and went on to perform with the likes of Chuck Berry, Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, and Buddy Guy, among many others. In the 1980's, Craig toured Europe as lead guitarist for Sam Myers and The Mississippi Delta Blues Band and performed on the band's 1982 album, San Francisco Blues.
My favorites on In My Spirit include two cuts he originally recorded in 1962, "Ridin' In My Jaguar" and "Midnight Shuffle." Horton's bandmates on In My Spirit include special guests Franck Goldwasser, otherwise known as Paris Slim in the Bay Area, keyboard player Jim Pugh, and bassist Henry Oden. For more information on Craig, check out www.baddaddy.com.
A Hot Release from Barbara Lynn The cover of Barbara Lynn's new Antone's CD, Hot Night Tonight, says it all. Just Barbara Lynn sitting all alone across the table from her white Ibanez guitar. That's all I need for truly a hot night of the blues on this comeback record that's been nearly 40 years in the making. Hot Night Tonight is one of my favorite recent blues releases because it features some of the best original blues from a woman's unique perspective.
Lynn's musical career began in the early 1960's, when she wrote the hit "You'll Lose A Good Thing" and later "Oh Baby (We've Got a Good Thing Goin')" which was covered by a five-piece blues band that dabbled in rock and roll, the Rolling Stones. She was even invited twice to Dick Clark's American Bandstand, the pop arbiter of style and airplay of that era. In the sixties, Lynn toured with Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, and B.B. King, prior to settling down and raising a family. She began to get her blues groove back in the 1980's with a live LP recorded in Japan, followed up by her 1994 Bullseye release, So Good.
While the opening cut "You're the Man," with her son, Bachelor Wise, might cause some blues purists to hit fast-forward due to its flat-out rap style, 11 of the 12 gems on Hot Night Tonight are tried and true blues. The sultry "I Love to Make Love" and the upbeat title cut showcase Barbara Lynn's abilities as a songwriter and her ability to play out-front with that Ibanez staring across from her on the CD cover. Barbara's a rare talent -- a southpaw guitar slinger who can play as well as she can write. To learn more about this talented blueswoman, go to http://www.antones.com/bios/bl_bio.html.
A Long Overdue Tribute In the late 1920's and 1930's, singer-songwriter Charley Patton was arguably the first star of the Delta blues. His recordings on Paramount and Vocalion were played not only in his native Mississippi; these sides made their way up the river to Chicago and East to New York as he was one of the most popular blues entertainers of his day. In his all-too-brief recording career that began in 1929 and ended with his death five years later from a heart ailment, Charley Patton recorded about 60 songs, give-or-take. To put Patton's legacy in some perspective, Robert Johnson was just getting started and Muddy Waters was likewise just beginning his blues career playing late-night fish fries along the Delta. Patton's approach to the blues influenced many great bluesmen including Son House, Bukka White, and Howlin' Wolf.
Down The Dirt Road - The Songs of Charley Patton features a dozen tracks from Patton's songbook done by some of the best blues singers around. This long overdue tribute features such blues luminaries as Snooky Pryor, Charlie Musselwhite, Joe Louis Walker, and Guy Davis, and also roots interpretations from Graham Parker, Dave Van Ronk, and newcomer Colleen Sexton. My favorites include Snooky's rousing take on Patton's biggest hit, "Pony Blues," Parker's searing up-tempo "Poor Me," and Guy Davis' right-on period piece complete with T-Bone Wolk on banjo and mandolin and Mark Murphy on upright bass, "Some of These Days." Down the Dirt Road is a fitting musical salute honoring Charley Patton's achievements as one of the earliest blues stars. For more information on this outstanding blues collection, go to www.telarc.com/Blues/.
Until next month, let's get down and dig into this year's fall blues harvest.