Cover photo by Bob Kieser © 2015 Blues Blast Magazine
In This Issue
Blues Blast Magazine Senior Writer Terry Mullins has our feature interview with Chicago Blues diva, Holle Thee Maxwell.
We have 13 reviews for you including reviews of new music from William Purvis And The Seventh Sons, Bill Phillippe, Doug Otto and Hurricane Harold, Fabrizio Poggi & Chicken Mambo, Vance Kelly, Dana Fuchs, Lady Bianca, No Refund Band, Zoe Schwarz Blue Commotion, Brandon Santini, Tangled Eye, Breezy Rodio and Robin Banks.
We have the latest in Blues Society news from around the globe. All this and MORE! SCROLL DOWN!!!
From The Editor’s Desk
Hey Blues Fans,
Our friends at the Mississippi Valley Blues Society just announced that they are moving the date of their annual Blues festival. For the past 30 years their festivals have always been held on the 4th of July. But for 3 of the last 5 years the Mississippi River has flooded their festival site at LeClaire Park in Davenport, Iowa forcing them to move the festival to an alternate site that incurred additional coast and loss of revenue.
So they announced this week that they are permanently moving the festival date to Labor Day weekend to avoid the spring flooding in LeClaire park. For more info on this and how you can help with your financial support to continue this 30 year old festival visit www.mvbs.org
Also, these are the last few days to get one of the new Blues Blast Magazine t-shirts for as low as $12 with FREE US shipping. The sale ends on February 28. So show your support for Blues Blast Magazine and get yourself one.
We had a huge response from mentioning this last week but we still have lots of sizes and colors available, some in long sleeve, plus we also have ladies sizes to fit the stylish Blues woman in your life! Get yours now. Click Here.
Wishing you health, happiness and lots of Blues music!
Bob Kieser
Early Bird Ad Special
67% OFF – THE LOWEST PRICES FOR 2015 SEASON!!!
Blues Blast Magazine’s Early Bird Special is our lowest priced advertising of the 2015 year. It offers an affordable & effective way to get the Blues word out!
This 8-week discount ad campaign allows you to add significant impact to your Blues advertising and promotion campaign. It is a great way to kick up the visibility of your summer Blues festival, new album release, Blues event or music product all around the globe! This is perfect for a new album release, a festival advertising campaign or any new music product.
Normal 2015 Advertising rates start at $150 per issue of Blues Blast magazine. BUT, for a limited time, this special gives you eight issues of Blues Blast Magazine for only $400. (A $1200 value!)
Blues Blast Magazine is a great way to promote anything. More than 33,000 Blues fans read our magazine each week. They are located in all 50 states and in more than 90 countries. Weekly issues of Blues Blast Magazine are also posted on our popular website. We get more than 2,000,000 (That’s TWO MILLION) hits and more than 45,000 visitors a month at our website.
To get this special rate simply buy your ad space by APRIL 15th, 2015!!!! Ads can run anytime between now and December 2015.
With this special rate, your ad can be viewed more than 350,000 times by our readers who want to know about your Blues events and music! Reserve your space today! Space is limited and will be sold on a first come first served basis.
Other ad packages and options, single ads, short run ads or long term bulk rates available too! Visit www.BluesBlastMagazine.com. To get more information email info@bluesblastmagazine.com or call 309 267-4425 today for an ad plan that fits your needs.
Ads must be reserved and paid for by April 15th, 2015!!!
Featured Blues Review – 1 of 13
William Purvis And The Seventh Sons – When Tequila Does The Talking
Self Release
available at cdbaby.com
12 songs time-44:54
William Purvis And The Seventh Sons deliver a thoroughly pleasing and enjoyable musical experience. The Charlottesville, Virginia native headed to Chicago upon graduating from college. Chicago found him steeped in the blues. The move afforded him the opportunity to observe legendary bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker, James Cotton and Dave and Louis Myers of The Aces, both while at college and later in Chicago. Prior to this release his band’s sound leaned more towards blues and soul music. This time around a touch of country and western music flavors their blues approach. Purvis handles vocals, slide guitar, rhythm guitar and harmonica while Mark Wydra plays lead and rhythm guitars.
Tony Wisniewski plays upright bass while Mark Fornek and Alpha Stewart (one track) share the drum chores. Brian O’Hern contributes occasional piano and keyboards. Fiddle and horns augment the band at times. The band is sure-footed at every turn. You’ll find no “grandstanding” guitar displays, just solid playing. Some tunes favor a more easy-going rock style. When they take on the blues they have a solid grasp of the genre.
Purvis’ “everyman” vocals fit nicely into every song here. The title track starts things off with an easy rollin’ country pace with harmonica and jangly guitar. This is a get happy song. It’s infectious. The country influence permeates “State Of Mind”, complete with country guitar from Mark Wydra and Brian O’Hern on piano. Rick Veras lends his fiddle playing to compliment the slide guitar on the breezy “Used Car Blues”.
Real deal blues are brought into play on “Sure To Follow”. The vocal gets gruffer and Mark plays some nifty guitar solos while William gets down on the blues harp. The blues get taken at a slower pace on the melancholy “Unlucky Whiskey”. The slide guitar here is nicely sinewy and whiny. The guys turn in a bouncy slide guitar-guitar instrumental workout with “Walk Ins Welcome”. This band can play their butts off.
They cook-up a honky-tonk weeper with “Trophy Wife”, a tale of a plan gone wrong. Mexacali horns, fiddle and pedal steel-like slide guitar create the atmosphere. “Stretch Limousine” is loads of fun, chock-full of country-ish guitars as the narrator dreams of luxury. The slow and moody harmonica-guitar instrumental “Particles” sounds like something out of Charlie Musselwhite’s songbook. It once again shows the diversity of all musicians involved. A blues torch song “Too Sad To Sing The Blues”, brings up the rear. It’s full of a night club ambiance… jazzy guitar, schmaltzy horns and cocktail piano.
When musicians are truly having fun and enjoying what they are playing it’s impossible to hide it. Being first-rate players to boot it creates a perfect package. The listening experience here is warm and friendly as if you’ve listened to this records for years. Hearing something as genuine as this makes me appreciate the rewards of being a reviewer. There are a lot of riches among the occasional coal, but every once in a while you uncover a gem such as this.
Reviewer Greg “Bluesdog” Szalony hails from the New Jersey Delta.
Featured Blues Interview – Holle Thee Maxwell
Chicago blueswomen-supreme Holle Thee Maxwell has never lacked in confidence, nor has she ever had to beg for attention.
Her immense vocals talents and the passion and energy she has stormed the stage with for well over six decades now have seen to that. Her nomination for a Lifetime Achievement Award at the upcoming Chicago Music Awards further confirms this.
But as outstanding as Maxwell’s voracious vocals continue to be, there was a time when her concert attire might have easily matched her larger-than-life personality.
“I wore an outfit that looked like (big) grapes covering my body. The material was net and was the same color as my skin, so it looked like I was naked under the grapes. I had no problem going on stage like that over in France. I was in absolute heaven like that,” Maxwell said. “My mother was a genius seamstress and a master taylor and artist. You could tell her what you wanted made and she could draw it out and then make it. Well, there was this outfit that Josephine Baker had worn, which was basically bananas all over her. She had bananas on her head, on her breasts, on her (private parts) … just all over. So that’s where my inspiration for the grape outfit that my mom made me came from.”
Public displays of fruit-wearing aside, that was just another evening on the bandstand for an amazing artist that has long been known as ‘The Black Blonde Bombshell.’ Maxwell explains where she picked up both her stage maneuvers (as well as her outrageous costumes) and her colorful handle from.
“Joyce Bryant (famous singer/actress from the ‘40s and ‘50s) and Josephine Baker (dancer/singer/entertainer who was also known for her civil rights work) are my SHE-roes. Joyce Bryant went into this nightclub in New York and saw Josephine Baker, who was known as the ‘Bronze Venus’ and ‘Black Pearl’ and was really a flamboyant performer. Well, Joyce wasn’t going to let Baker out-do her, so she went and got some silver-radiator paint and spray-painted her hair with it. She walks into the club with this see-through dress that was real-tight to the knees and then flares out to the floor. When she walked in the door, she stole the show from Josephine Baker,” Maxwell said. “Joyce Bryant was called ‘The Bronze Blonde Bombshell.’ So that’s where I got the concept from and I became the ‘Black Blonde Bombshell.’”
If it’s hard to exactly nail down what makes Maxwell such a distinctive vocalist, it’s because the well that she draws her powers from is such a deep and mighty one. Jazz, blues, R&B, country, pop, soul and even opera all provides the foundation on which Maxwell’s impressive vocals are built on. In the United Kingdom, where Maxwell is as big a star today as she ever was, her style has been tagged ‘Northern Soul.’
“I think all those styles do link together in my vocals. I’m so complicated, I can’t even explain me sometimes,” she laughed. “I’m lost for words sometimes (in how to explain her vocal style), but there’s something in my voice where you can hear the classical training; you can hear the R&B feeling; the words can be like the blues and then, the phrasing can be country, hip-hop and jazz. This is the truth – in the ‘60s and ‘70s, record companies could not label me. They didn’t know what to do with me, which is why I never had a major hit … they didn’t know how to market me, being a black artist coming from an opera background with so many vocal styles. They were baffled with me.”
Plans are currently underway for Maxwell to work on a country CD later this year, with a late 2015 or early 2016 tentative release date slated.
Though she may not have had any major hits, Maxell did have a number of the songs she recorded for Star, Smit-Whit, Constellation and Curtom Records – tunes like “Philly Barracuda,” “Only When You’re Lonely,” “Suffer,” “One Thin Dime” and “No One Else” (written by Curtis Mayfield and with The Impressions back-grounding) – which turned into regional smashes that spoke volumes about Maxwell’s talent.
With so many weapons in her armory to choose from, it would probably make sense for Maxwell to have one that she prefers over the others. Turns out, that’s really not the case.
“I really don’t (have one style she prefers singing over the rest). For me, it’s the words of the song, the feeling of the song, the rhythm of the song, that most interests me. I mean, I love Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me,” but when I did it, I did it more in a church mode. I did it with another rhythm; that’s just how I do things like that. I take a song and make it completely mine; that’s what I do, I just can’t help it.”
With degrees from both the Chicago Musical College at Roosevelt University and The Julliard School in NYC under her belt, it’s no wonder that Maxwell, who sang her first song professionally at the age of 5 and has studied classical voice and piano since she was 9, is so well-rounded musically and socially. But in addition to her schooling, the emotional foundation that has turned out to be one of Maxwell’s greatest strengths was also honed razor-sharp at an early age, although it may have been anything but an easy part of the process, as one traumatic evening when she was just 12-years-old proves.
“Well, my mother married the wrong man and on May 18, 1958 she shot and killed my step-father. That was on a Saturday night and the next day – Sunday afternoon – I was being presented at the (Chicago) Civic Opera House. So my mother was handcuffed and standing behind the (stage) curtains, because they let her come and see the concert,” Maxwell said. “I was on the stage singing German, French and Italian opera and I finished that concert with tears in my eyes. I cried through the whole thing. There was (a contingency of) Europeans there that was going to take me back with them to study (overseas). But they didn’t understand why I was crying, so by me crying on stage, that blew my opportunity to go over there and study … they just didn’t understand.”
The act of violence committed by Maxwell’s mother was in retaliation for her husband sexually-abusing her daughter. That whole turn of events ended up changing Maxwell’s life in more ways than just one.
“Somewhere in my head, I never wanted to sing opera again. That whole thing … the rape and everything traumatized me and shook my head,” she said. “I started slippin’ around listening to other music and I started to sing R&B and some of the other music of the day.”
There’s really no way to describe just how essential Maxwell’s mother – Eula – was to what has turned out to be seven decades of playing music and entertaining audiences all over the globe.
“My mother was the heaviest influence on my life for positivity and for my musical background. Sometimes she wouldn’t have the money for us to get on the bus to go down to Roosevelt University and we might have to walk from 71st and Wabash all the way downtown, but she did have the money for those lessons when we got there,” Maxwell said. “That’s how devoted my mother was to me becoming something.”
Maxwell started hanging out at a club on 39th Street called Peyton Place and it was there that she quickly fell under the spell of R&B.
“Oh, man! I saw Otis Clay and Little Johnny Williams and they were stompin’ and singing and it looked like smoke was coming up from the floor,” she laughed. “And I wanted to do that but I couldn’t. It was like I was empty or something was missing from me inside. Later on, I realized that it was all my classical training that had taken that raw soul out of me. But even though, I still went for it. The music just got to me.”
In her early 20s – again at Peyton Place – Maxwell indeed ‘went for it.’ And the results bordered on disastrous.
“I told the emcee – whose name was Hi-Fi White and he was a character unto himself – that I wanted to do a guest spot with the band. So I got up there with my arms folded in front of me and told the bandleader – James Wheeler – “Misty” in E-flat.’ He looked at me like, ‘Say what?’ I said, “Misty” in E-flat, please.’ (she starts singing) ‘Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree’ – and those people (in the audience) looked at me like they’d seen a ghost. They started throwing apples and bananas and anything else they could find at me. I ran off the stage crying … and I never will forget, out of everything Hi-Fi White told me that night, he said, ‘Baby, you can sing, but you ain’t got no soul.’”
Those cruel words and rough reception may have been enough to send others off chasing another line of work, but not Maxwell. Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and got down to ‘getting some soul,’ although that journey wasn’t completely pain-free, either.
“Well, I knew that I could sing. I mean, couldn’t nobody tell me I couldn’t sing, whether I had soul or didn’t. So I went home and stayed in the house for six months, listening to Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight. But the closest person I could relate to was Aretha, because of the musical range that I had. I told my husband (Maxwell had recently married at that time) as he came home one day, ‘Baby, I got it.! I been working on it and I got it.’ So he said, ‘OK, let me hear it.’ I said, (starts singing “Respect”) ‘What you want, baby I got it, what you need’ … and he goes, ‘Uh-uh. That ain’t gonna work at all; you ain’t got a damn thing.’ He hurt my feelings. He said, ‘Let me tell you what you got to do. You got to holler in tune.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘You’ve got to learn to holler in tune.’ I had never heard anything like that in all my musical training.”
That concept may have been foreign to the classically-reared Maxwell, but she did get the gist of what her husband was recommending her to do.
“I started re-training myself, that’s what I did. Everything I had learned through my classical, technical musical training, I reversed. I un-learned and reversed the whole process,” she said. “But like I said, I knew I could sing, so that part I already had down. My life has been such a contradiction and I guess that’s just what I thrive on.”
Not one to just sit around and watch the grass grow, Maxwell is presently hard at work on a weekly variety show – dubbed Thee Maxwell Café – that will be available to view via the internet when the show’s launch date is scheduled for later this spring.
“We’re going to have a live audience and we’re going to have a live band; it’s going to be like the female Johnny Carson Show. I’m also going to present a segment on the show called Seniors Still Got Talent,” she said. “The show will be filmed right here in Chicago.”
Maxwell’s foray into the world of television started out rather innocently, when she was a featured guest on Star Planet Television’s Straight Talk segment a couple of years ago.
“In June, 2012 I went to be interviewed by W.L. Lillard, who is the host of Straight Talk and the owner of Star Planet TV (a 24-hour, web-based television network located in Chicago). In the middle of the interview, he (Lillard) looks at me and says, ‘You’re going to be my entertainment producer.’ Well, I was on camera, and I was smiling, but I was looking at him through clinched teeth with an ‘I’m gonna kill you’ look,’” laughed Maxwell. “But that’s how that happened. I became the entertainment producer for Straight Talk. On Mondays, we called it (Maxwell’s segment) Straight Talk Presents Music and we did the shows live.”
With Lillard more interested in current political and social topics than music, it made perfect sense for him to hand the entertainment/musical reigns over to Maxwell, who basically took the ball and ran with it. Archives of Maxwell’s programs on Straight Talk can be viewed via the on-demand button at www.starplanettv.com.
Why stop with just recorded music and live television? Turns out, Maxwell is not limiting herself to just those two mediums. She’s also involved in a couple of written projects; her life story, as well as the journals of her time with a dude whose reputation has always seemed to precede him – Ike Turner. Maxwell replaced Tina in Ike’s band from 1977-1985 and then sang with Turner – one of the founding fathers of rock-n-roll – again for a spell in 1992.
“I’m in the process of finishing up a book on the time I spent in Ike Turner’s band, called Freebase Ain’t Free. This book isn’t my life story, just my time with Ike. He was not like he’s been depicted; they’ve assassinated his character and that’s why I want to put this book out. He’s gotten a dirty deal. The man was a musical genius and I would even say that he was a God-blessed man that had a lot of devils around him,” she said. Maxwell is currently scheduled to appear on the TV show Unsung this summer, discussing her time in Turner’s band.
As if all that isn’t enough to fill up Maxwell’s still-being-completed book on her life story, another chapter of that tome might touch upon her onetime co-ownership of a club just 15 minutes outside Paris, France.
“The name of the club was called the Maxwell Street Café, which is where the inspiration for my TV show comes from. It was in Neuilly-sur-Seine, which is about 15 minutes from the center of Paris. I got a break from Gerad Vacher (who had seen Maxwell perform at the Kingston Mines in Chicago), who was the original owner of the club when it was called Quai du Blues,” said Maxwell. “I ended up moving there in ‘95, but I would come back-and-forth (between France and Chicago) to see about and take care of my mother. I was just so prolific in the nightclub scene over there and Paris was my scene. If it hadn’t been for my mom being over here (in the States), I wouldn’t have ever moved back; I’d still be living there. In my head, I went over to Paris to be Josephine Baker. The people over there just loved me so much.”
According to Maxwell, the first step that any artist has to take in order for their audience to love them, is to start with the simple act of loving themselves.
“A lot of performers won’t say this, but it needs to be said. We are in such an abusive country that people are taught not to love themselves. We’re always taught to put somebody else first. That carries over to the performers and entertainers over here; we don’t love ourselves,” she said. “Well, guess what? We don’t realize, but in order to perform, we have to be loved and we have to be adored and have to have the attention. There’s a conflict going on in us and that’s the reason why some of us make it, why some of us don’t make it, and why some of us make it but don’t last. I’ve lasted for seven decades because my mother taught me to love myself. That’s very, very important. But that meant that I couldn’t be around too many people, because I would be called selfish, you see? That’s not selfish, or being a diva, or being narcissistic or cold-blooded, that’s called being a performer and performers have to be loved … but it all starts with loving yourself, first. Nobody says this, because they don’t know the truth. Well, I know the truth, so I’m puttin’ it out there. It all boils down to the fact that we as human beings are not taught to love ourselves first. I don’t like to sugarcoat anything.”
It would probably be a bit of a misjudgment to label Maxwell as arrogant, a malcontent or even brash, because she’s none of the above. What Maxwell is, however, is an entertainer that is fathoms deep in self-confidence, along with self respect for herself and what she does, and that is a healthy quality if there ever was one. It has to be more than a mere coincidence that Maxwell’s middle name is what it is.
“I’m very happy with myself and I have learned the hard way that I can’t get too close to people, because they can’t accept the fact that I’m brutally honest and I just can’t help that,” she said. “The fact is, me and my mother are the only two people in this world that legally have ‘Thee’ in our names. Her name is Eula ‘Thee’ and I’m Holle ‘Thee.’ I always say that God put that in my name because he knew I didn’t have a clue, but that I would get the hint.”
While she was still in high school, Maxwell had a job at a shop called Danny’s Doughnuts, around 51th Street, not too far from the El. It was during her shift one morning that Maxwell decided – maybe sub-consciously – what she was going to be doing for the rest of her life.
“I went in there at 5 a.m. and worked a couple of hours before school. But at 6:30 in the morning, I don’t care what else I was doing, I would go to the jukebox and press a Billie Holiday song and would sing along to it. I did that every morning and would look around and I’d have an audience. At 6:30 in the morning, they knew there was going to be a show going on,” said Maxwell. “So one morning, Danny the owner looked at me as I was getting ready to head to the jukebox and said, ‘If you take that damn apron off, don’t come back.’ I said, ‘OK.’ So I took my apron off, went over and played the song on the jukebox and then walked out the door.”
Visit Holle’s website at https://holletheemaxwell.wordpress.com/about/
Photos by Bob Kieser © 2015 Blues Blast Magazine
Blues Blast Magazine Senior Writer Terry Mullins is a journalist, author and former record store owner whose personal taste in music is the sonic equivalent of Attention Deficit Disorder. Works by the Bee Gees, Captain Beefheart, Black Sabbath, Earth, Wind & Fire and Willie Nelson share equal space with Muddy Waters, The Staples Singers and R.L. Burnside in his compact disc collection. He’s also been known to spend time hanging out on the street corners of Clarksdale, Miss., eating copious amounts of barbecued delicacies while listening to the wonderful sounds of the blues.
Featured Blues Review – 2 of 13
Bill Phillippe – Ghosts
Arkansas Street Records
13 songs – 53 minutes
www.billphillippemusic.com
San Francisco singer/guitarist Bill Phillippe offers up an outstanding serving of traditional country blues in this tastefully conceived CD, which fluidly reinterprets songs in the public domain and mixes them with first-generation blues hits as well as a few originals to produce one cohesive musical package.
Phillippe settled in the Bay area about 20 years ago after a long stint in Chicago and achieved regional popularity with a band that played New Orleans-style funk. His overwhelming interest in early artists – including Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson and others — brought about a career change. About, ten years ago, he abandoned the band setting, embarking work as a solo acoustic artist, and he hasn’t looked back.
Phillippe borrows heavily from the repertoire of his personal favorite, Blind Willie Johnson, for much of this disc, but delivers all of the tunes here in his own guitar stylings and with an attack that makes each tune his own.
First up is a new take on the Robert Johnson classic, “Come On In My Kitchen.” Phillippe’s pace is deliberate and unforced as he urges his lady inside on a rainy day. His vocal delivery is strong, slightly nasally and maintains the feel of his elders. Three original tunes follow. “Father’s Lament” is a sweet song of comfort delivered from the end point of a dad’s life. “Wedded Heart” and “Broken Cup” are a pair of love songs softly delivered from different perspectives.
The singer follows with a haunting version of Blind Willie’s 1928 classic, “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed And Burning,” before two more originals — “Tightrope,” a pensive look at romance, and “Big Bill’s Dream,” a reverie about freedom delivered through the eyes of bluesman and freedom fighter Big Bill Broonzy.
Most of the remaining numbers on Ghost rely or refer to Johnson’s catalog. A version of “Motherless Children,” first recorded in 1927, precedes the Phillippe-penned “The Ballad Of Blind Willie” before versions of two more Johnson tunes, “God Don’t Never Change” and “In My Time Of Dying,” which proved to be a hit for Led Zeppelin. Reinterpretations of Son House’s “Death Letter” and Blind Willie’s 1933 recording, “You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond,” conclude the set.
Respectful to the original artists but original throughout, Ghosts should appeal to anyone who loves acoustic blues. Phillippe’s delivery is always respectful to the medium and never forced, his music powerful in its subtlety. Available through CDBaby.
Reviewer Marty Gunther has lived a blessed life. His first experience with live music came at the feet of the first generation of blues legends at the Newport Folk Festivals in the 1960s. A former member of the Chicago blues community, he’s a professional journalist and blues harmonica player who co-founded the Nucklebusters, one of the hardest working bands in South Florida.
Featured Blues Review – 3 of 13
Doug Otto and Hurricane Harold – Blues at Barkin’ Jack’s
Self Release
10 tracks / 36:53
A lot of new blues music has to be described in terms of the other genres that have influenced its sound, for example, blues-rock, country-blues, and the old standard: rhythm and blues. There is no struggle to figure this out with Doug Otto and Hurricane Harold’s new CD, Blues at Barkin’ Jacks. This release is mostly blues at its most basic level – guitar, voice, and harmonica, and all of it is played with a remarkable brilliance. No drums, bass or keyboard were needed to achieve their goals, and the effect is really cool.
Both of these gentlemen hail from the Twin Cities, and those long cold winters in the great white north have apparently given them the opportunity to hone their chops! Doug Otto provides the guitar and vocals for this project, but he also finds plenty of work with his own bands, the Getaways and North Country Bandits, as well as sitting in with the No Accounts. Hurricane Harold Tremblay is a master harmonica man (a mentor of Curtis Blake), and co-founder of Cool Disposition. He also hosts a weekly blues show on KFAI radio in Minneapolis and leads the All-Star Revue, which features some truly fine artists from Minnesota – he is a genuine renaissance man.
The album has ten tracks that are mostly covers of wonderful vintage blues tunes, along with three originals that were written by Otto. It was recorded live in the studio with no overdubs and no more than two takes for any song. Jeremy Johnson did a wonderful job of engineering and mixing the guys’ time in the studio, and the final product has a clean sound that makes it sound like these guys are playing in your living room.
After starting off the set with a slow-driving rendition of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Asked for Water,” the duo plays the first of the three originals, “Broken Thoughts.” Otto’s writing on these songs has more of a roots and country-blues theme, and all of them are well suited to his pleasant tenor vocal range (which makes him sound a bit like Eric Clapton). His songwriting is mature, with good imagery and phrasing, which can also be found on “Heart to Heart” and “My Time is Moving Slow.” The latter gives Tremblay a chance to sing harmonies, which is a cool effect as his voice lends a unique droning effect. This is the standout track in the album, without a doubt.
The rest of the songs are straight-up Maxwell Street blues material, as can be heard from Muddy Waters’ “Long Distance Call,” which uses subtle electric guitar chording with a heavy bass beat while Harold shows off his fine feel for the harp. Otto’s guitar tone is outstanding on Skip James’ haunting classic “Hard Time Killing Floor,” and he also delivers a surprisingly good falsetto vocal performance, which is a hard thing to accomplish for most singers.
The classics continue with Lonnie Johnson’s “She’s Making Whoopie (in Hell Tonight)” which would be a hard song to write today, but in 1930 there were no political correctness police to contend with. There are also a couple of well-done Robert Johnson tunes, “Hell Hound on My Trail” and “Kind Hearted Woman,” that are delivered in a wonderfully laconic style.
Despite the good craftsmanship these gentlemen showed on the cover tunes, the originals are exceptionally special, and are the highlight of this disc. A full-length album of Otto-penned originals would surely be a good listen, and hopefully this pair will have the chance to continue their work and head back to the studio to give us a bit more of this wonderful stuff.
There is a lot to like about this CD and Doug Otto and Hurricane Harold really delivered the goods. Their bare bones live sound is clear, and the selection of tunes that they assembled works well together. There is no mistaking this album for anything but the blues, and you should certainly give it a listen!
Reviewer Rex Bartholomew is a Los Angeles-based writer and musician; his blog can be found at http://rexbass.blogspot.com
Featured Blues Review – 4 of 13
Fabrizio Poggi & Chicken Mambo – Spaghetti Juke Joint
Appaloosa – 2014
www.chickenmambo.com
13 tracks; 64 minutes
Fabrizio Poggi has been playing the blues for many years in his native Italy as well as across Europe and the USA. In 2013 he worked with Guy Davis on his BMA nominated CD Juba Dance and over the years he has played with many leading American blues artists. His 18th album was recorded in Milan with his regular Italian band Chicken Mambo, a recording of mainly covers from the classic blues canon, with three tracks credited to Fabrizio. The band is Fabrizio on harp and vocals, Enrico Polverari on guitar, Tino Cappelletti on bass and B/V, Gino Carravieri on drums, with Claudio Noseda adding accordion and keyboards to some tracks, Stefano Spina singing B/V’s on one track and adding percussion to two others, Claudio Bazzari adding slide to one track and Sara Cappelletti adding B/V’s throughout and singing lead on one track. Special guest guitarists on one track each are Sonny Landreth, Ronnie Earl and Bob Margolin.
Fabrizio’s vocals are not particularly strong and he sometimes adopts more of a spoken than sung approach; his accent is discernible but does not prevent us understanding the words. That is not an issue on opener “Bye Bye Bird”, a tune by Sonny Boy Williamson II which has very limited lyrics but bombs along with some wild guitar from Enrico and convincing harp from Fabrizio. Slim Harpo’s “I’m A King Bee” finds Sonny Landreth adding some appropriately swampy slide to the mix and it’s arguably the strongest cut on the album. Claudio Noseda’s piano is added as well and the whole band plays a storm, inspired by a typical Landreth performance. The cover of Little Milton’s “The Blues Is Alright” fares less well, despite the presence of Ronnie Earl on guitar, as Fabrizio intones the familiar words (plus an additional verse of his own) in his semi-spoken mode of delivery. Ronnie’s picked guitar is in contrast to the full-on electric approach that Enrico generally adopts on the album but the track does not really spark into life.
The first original is “Devil At The Crossroad” which blends some familiar Robert Johnson lines like ‘hellhound on my trail’ and ‘devil at the crossroad’ with a typical Muddy Waters riff. Junior Parker’s “Mystery Train” (here spelt ‘Mistery’) starts well with some nice organ supporting the rapid rhythm section. Fabrizio gets some good train sounds from his harp solo and the country hoedown feel of the track is well done, including some whooping from the leader. Tom Waits’ “Way Down In The Hole” is a less obvious choice and finds Fabrizio playing in the higher register and Sara singing some strong harmony vocals against Fabrizio’s lead. The band returns to SBW II for “Checking Up On My Baby”, another frequently covered tune which swings along well, the organ again adding to the basic quartet.
Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “One Kind Favour” is less often covered than many of the songs here and the band uses a version that has additional lyrics by Guy Davis. It is very different to some we know and love like Canned Heat, played in laid-back style with some gentle rhythm guitar and warm organ. Enrico’s distorted solo seems at odds with the rest of the tune. “Mojo” is claimed as a Fabrizio original but takes so much from Muddy’s tune of a similar name that it is hard to say that it is not a cover. However, few musicians honour Muddy’s legacy better than Bob Margolin and if he was happy to add some trademark slide work to the tune it must be OK!
If there is a tune which should be protected against any further covers it must surely be “Rock Me Baby” and the version here does not add significantly to the many fine versions recorded over the years though the use of accordion is different. The traditional “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” features Sara Cappelletti whose shared lead vocal demonstrates Fabrizio’s limits as a vocalist. Enrico’s solo is wild and rocky. Fabrizio’s “I Want My Baby” uses a familiar blues riff and has very repetitive lyrics but the band plays it well with guest Claudio Bazzari adding some nice slide work.. The CD closes with a short run through of Big Joe Williams’ “Baby Please Don’t Go”.
And why the title? Fabrizio explains in the liner notes that after the abolition of slavery plantation owners were short of manual labor and recruited poor Italian agricultural workers who were often treated as badly as the slaves who had preceded them. Fabrizio imagines that one Italian might have indeed opened a juke joint and if he had, might it not have been called “Spaghetti Juke Joint”?
There is nothing startlingly new here but some solid versions of old favorites.
Reviewer John Mitchell is a blues enthusiast based in the UK who enjoys a wide variety of blues and roots music, especially anything in the ‘soul/blues’ category. Favorites include contemporary artists such as Curtis Salgado, Tad Robinson, Albert Castiglia and Doug Deming and classic artists including Bobby Bland, Howling Wolf and the three ‘Kings’. He gets over to the States as often as he can to see live blues.
Featured Blues Review – 5 of 13
Vance Kelly – Live At Kingston Mines
Wolf Records
www.facebook.com/VanceKellyTheBackStreetBluesBand
13 tracks
Vance Kelly has nine Wolf Record releases blending blues, soul and R&B. With this, his second live effort on CD, Vance lets it all hang out and puts on an energetic show with his band and with a special appearance by his daughter Vivian Vance Kelly.
Live At Kingston Mines offers up Chicago blues classics in a live performance at one of Chicago’s classic (albeit at times tourist oriented) clubs. A protégé of Buddy Scott and Little Johnny Christian, Vance has fine tuned his craft since he picked up a guitar at age seven. He entered and escaped the disco scene and became part of A.C. Reed’s band prior to venturing out on his own. His first Wolf release was recognized by Living Blues Magazine as best contemporary CD of 1994. Since releasing Call Me, Vance has given us seven more CDs prior to this one.
Vance does not blaze any new paths for us here, but offers up blues and soul classics that please the crowd at Kingston Mines. They will also please fans of the Chicago blues scene who enjoy hearing them done right. Blues like “Ain’t Gonna Worry About Tomorrow” pays tribute to his mentor Johnny Christian are the majority of cuts here while soul tunes like “Members Only” (a Malaco Records hit by Bobby Bland) provide a cool counterpoint to the blues.
Ballads like that and “I’ll Play the Blues For You,” slow blues like the stuff he does by Jimmy Reed along with big rocking tunes like “Let The Good Times Roll” and “Mustang Sally” show us his range and the diversity of styles he is comfortable with. “Clean Up Woman” features his daughter on vocals; she is an exemplary singer and performer in her own right and she does a bang up job here, too.
Anyone needing a fix of straight up Chicago blues done by a “second generation” Chicago blues artist will enjoy this set. Along with Vance and his daughter there is Jowynne Scott on bass, Tyrone Mitchell on drums, Delby Littlejohn on keys and Ethel Reed on percussion and backing vocals. While there is nothing new here, the performance is energizing and fun; it offers the listener a window into the realm of the big Northside Chicago blues clubs of today.
Reviewer Steve Jones is president of the Crossroads Blues Society and is a long standing blues lover. He is a retired Navy commander who served his entire career in nuclear submarines. In addition to working in his civilian career since 1996, he writes for and pu