The question of where jazz is headed in the 90s has been around now since the mid-80s (and I expect the question of 21st-century jazz will start crossing lips before Arbor Day). Will the 90s be a decade of further consolidation? More “neoclassic” (read: recycled hard bop) bands of youngsters? Has the new-age slant lost […]
Category: Music Review
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Let him be
The Silver Beatles became the Beatles in mid-1960, as John, Paul, George, and their drummer then, the hapless Pete Best, went off to Hamburg for the first time. Almost exactly ten years later, Paul McCartney left the band via a rather churlish “interview” (he apparently wrote the questions himself) included with the English version of […]
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Keith Emerson–The Christmas Album/Anthony Newman–A Christmas Album
THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM Keith Emerson Emerson Records: Keith CD 1 One of the great annoyances of the holiday season is the large amount of horrendous Christmas music that pops up on store shelves for a few weeks. Mercifully, it all disappears after the New Year. Just about everybody has recorded some sort of Christmas album, […]
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Blues in debasement
Blues musicians aren’t born old. The 60s-era “rediscovery” of aging blues greats gave birth to an enduring image of elderly gentlemen picking guitars on rural front porches or blowing harmonica in forsaken urban gin mills, wizened by years of anonymous hard living. But the wistful melancholy of Skip James or the haunted introspection of Lightnin’ […]
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Little Charlie and the Nightcats–The Big Break
THE BIG BREAK Little Charlie and the Nightcats Alligator AL 4776 I avoided listening to this record for a long time. Call it reverse prejudice or whatever, but I’d had it up to here with white-boy blues bands and their lead singers named “Little This” or “Something Slim” posing in pseudoghetto garb–porkpie hats, secondhand leisure […]
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Genius on the side
If there’s a musician’s musician in blues, it’s Matt “Guitar” Murphy. Murphy developed his style in the churning, innovative postwar Memphis blues scene, where the rough sounds of traditionalists like Howlin’ Wolf coexisted uneasily with the slicker, more sophisticated music being developed by artists like Little Junior Parker, B.B. King, and Bobby “Blue” Bland. Murphy […]
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David “Honeyboy” Edwards–White Windows; Big Daddy Kinsey and Sons–Can’t Let Go
WHITE WINDOWS David “Honeyboy” Edwards Blue Suit 102 It’s always interesting to hear what a blues traditionalist does to keep well-worn ideas fresh. Some veteran artists adopt a museum-piece approach, rehashing famous folk themes and affecting quaint “living legend” personas. The most adept rustic survivor from a bygone era was probably Big Bill Broonzy, who […]
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Blues alive: Johnny Copeland looks forward and back
It’s popular among blues enthusiasts to classify early regional styles by stereotyping them. We talk of the intense, emotionally explosive Delta blues (Charlie Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson) and the melodic, tightly structured mid-Atlantic blues of Georgia and the Carolinas (Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Curley Weaver and Fred McMullen). Then there are the […]
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The man who knew too much
It’s sometimes forgotten that there’s a strong link between the blues, white folk music, and country and western. In the first half of the 20th century, different musical and cultural traditions coexisted uneasily throughout the south and intertwined in complex ways. The black plantation musician of the 1920s led a dual life. He played blues […]
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Style and substance: New Order confronts an old saw
Is New Order truly a case of style without substance?
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Lil’ Ed and the Blues Imperials–Chicken, Gravy & Biscuits
CHICKEN, GRAVY & BISCUITS Lil’ Ed and the Blues Imperials Alligator AL 4772 When west-side guitarist Lil’ Ed Williams burst onto the scene two years ago with the joyously rowdy Roughhousin’ LP, many hailed it as a return by Alligator Records to the kind of raw, unpretentious blues that made Chicago famous. Although his open-throttle […]
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Bob Dylan revisited
Bob Dylan is playing mostly covers these days. Unlike most rock performers, when he goes out on tour he rarely does more than one or two songs off his latest album (or three or four most recent albums). What he does instead is choose–with varying degrees of creativity from tour to tour and night to […]
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Lucky Peterson–Lucky Strikes!
LUCKY STRIKES! Lucky Peterson Alligator AL 4770 Despite the renewed mainstream popularity of the blues, aficionados still lament the dearth of the kind of deeply expressive, emotionally taut performances that distinguished the music during its heyday. The litany is familiar: style has won out over substance, spectacle over soul, technique over truth. Especially among young […]
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Band out of time: Are the Replacements too late to be rock stars?
The Replacements’ finest moment came on TV—Saturday Night Live in 1986. They were appearing to promote their fourth album, Tim, which was their first for a major label (their previous albums—Hootenanny; Stink; Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash; and Let It Be—were released on an indie label, Twin/Tone, out of their hometown, Minneapolis). […]
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Rufus Thomas–That Woman Is Poison!
THAT WOMAN IS POISON! Rufus Thomas Alligator Records AL 4769 Rufus Thomas is the patriarch of Memphis soul music. Although he’s best known to mainstream audiences as the purveyor of such novelty dance numbers as “Walkin’ the Dog” and “The Funky Chicken,” a special respect is due him for his role in keeping the blues […]