Blues in Elsewhere
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Interviews, overviews and reviews of classic and contemporary blues musicians and music.
Hugh Laurie: Didn't It Rain (Warners)
Musicians can get very territorial when actors are perceived to be moving into their turf. People like Juliette Lewis, Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron have hardly been welcomed (sometimes with good reason) and so Hugh Laurie was met with some scepticism when he released his Let Them Talk (nice title!) a couple of years back. Clearly Laurie -- who sings and plays piano -- loved and... more >>
Added: 13 May 2013
Watermelon Slim: Up Close & Personal (Southern/Yellow Eye)
Not only does white bluesman Watermelon Slim sound like the blackest 1940s blues player that ever was, but he's also has had an extraordinary life. Believable if you read it in a novel, but all true. Check out his backstory in this archival interview at Elsewhere and also have a look here for his music, then close your eyes as he transports to to Southern juke-joints or -- as on this... more >>
Added: 17 Apr 2013 
1 Comment
Ben Harper, Charlie Musselwhite: Get Up! (Stax)
To be honest, the first couple of times I saw Ben Harper I walked out being bored witless by a man I jokingly came to refer to as "Taj Marley" because he simply seemed to weld together the most crowd pleasing aspects of Taj Mahal and Bob Marley. I faithfully listened to his many albums down the years but only rarely found them genuinely interesting (and Eric Bibb was doing much... more >>
Added: 4 Feb 2013 1 Comment
Dani Wilde/Victoria Smith/Samantha Fish: Girls with Guitars Live (Ruf/Yellow Eye)
As mentioned about a previous album of this concept of gals with guitars, there's nothing like giving 'em what it says on the box. And yep, these three are blues-rock women with guitars and that Girls With Guitars label is a flexible membership (currently Cassie Taylor out, Victoria Smith in). This CD/DVD set is blues-based but this time the version of the Stones' Bitch which opens the CD... more >>
Added: 14 Dec 2012
Joanne Shaw Taylor: Almost Always Never (Ruf/Yellow Eye)
Until you are told otherwise, just on listening to this tough, sassy and earthy blues singer and fiery guitarist you'd assume she was black American, probably forged in the fires of Chicago clubs and constant touring down South. Almost right. She's blonde, British-born and now lives in Detroit. As noted about her earlier and excellent Diamonds in the Dirt, the States is her natural home... more >>
Added: 10 Dec 2012 1 Comment
Billy TK Jnr and the Groove Shakers: Blues Benediction (Southbound)
You might think being the guitarist son of Billy TK -- whose name is usually preceded by the phrase "the legendary Maori guitarist" -- might be a serious hindrance to a career under your own name, but Billy TK Jnr long ago lit out on his own directions. While his dad drew favourable comparisons with Hendrix back in the late Sixties/early Seventies (in Human Instinct, later Ticket... more >>
Added: 5 Nov 2012 1 Comment
Joe Louis Walker: Hellfire (Alligator)
From the opening title track this often incendiary album is a conflagration fed by tough blues, psychedelic guitar playing and Walker's frequently soulful voice. He reaches to the fist-tight Chicago style (I Won't Do That) but also invites in Elvis' backing group the Jordanaires for the raw testifying of Soldier for Jesus ("on the frontline fightin' the devil all the time") and... more >>
Added: 19 Sep 2012
Oli Brown: Here I Am (Ruf)
On the back of his 2010 album Heads I Win Tails You Lose, Elsewhere noted that while this young, hard-edged blues guitarist came up a little short in the originality stakes he was certainly one to watch because he delivered more than enough to be impressive. Still only in his early 20s, Englishman Brown of course has ample room to grow but this is yet another step up in his playing (and his... more >>
Added: 3 Sep 2012
Lil' Ed and the Blues Imperials: Jump Start (Alligator)
When Bruce Iglauer founded Alligator Records in Chicago 40 years ago it was to release albums by the likes of Hound Dog Taylor and Albert Collins who were burning up local clubs with their incendiary and tough minded playing. In 1986 singer-guitarist Lil' Ed and his band were invited to record a song but, treating the studio like stage, they stormed through a whole set which became... more >>
Added: 16 Jul 2012
Joe Bonamassa: Driving Towards the Daylight (J&R Adventures)
Gutsy, earthy and steeped in the blues, singer-guitarist Bonamassa seems an unstoppable force. He fires off albums under his own name (this his third in two years) and with Black Country Communion (two albums and double live in Europe in the same period). He also puts himself about as a guest player, and his album with leather larynxed Beth Hart, Don't Explain, got a favourable notice... more >>
Added: 25 Jun 2012
Ash Grunwald: Trouble's Door (Grunwald/Border)
Australian Grunwald is a one-man dreadlocked folk, rock and boilied-up blues singer-guitarist, and live he certainly delivered well received sets at the recent Womad. But, as with so many Womad acts, he captures you in the moment but it doesn't quite translate on repeat encounters. I saw both of his sets and was blown away by the first and watched quite dispassionately at a repeat showing... more >>
Added: 10 Jun 2012
Luther Allison: Songs From the Road (Ruf/Yellow Eye)
It's a peculiar thing, but the music which gave the world rock'n'roll and rock as we know it -- the blues, in case you missed the connection -- seems utterly marginalised in the media. Even more odd is that when the best blues musicians -- and even some fairly indifferent ones, or legends passing into a belated retirement -- play a concert that people turn out in their hundreds in... more >>
Added: 6 Jun 2012
Michael Bloomfield: Blues at the Fillmore 1968-69 (Raven/EMI)
For those who weren't there at the time, some small explanation may be necesary. In the late Sixties it seemed obligatory that every student dive or flat would have a copy of an album featuring guitarist Mike Bloomfield and/or keyboard player Al Kooper. They had impeccable pedigree: Bloomfield a gifted slide player who had been in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, had played with early... more >>
Added: 31 May 2012 1 Comment
Otis Taylor: Otis Taylor's Contra Band (Telarc)
Singer-guitarist Taylor is nominally posted here under Blues in Elsewhere, but -- as always, see previous reviews here -- he doesn't easily fit into the prescription, broad though it might be. Here, for example, he leans towards African sounds on Yell Your Name (just him, drums and cornet on a chant-like song) and sometimes has a djembe player alongside pedal steel, organ and fiddle.... more >>
Added: 21 May 2012
BIG DADDY WILSON INTERVIEWED (2012): Blues sprechen here
Wilson Blount – aka Big Daddy Wilson – is certainly a bluesman with a point of difference. He may have been a Southern black kid and born in North Carolina, but he's honest enough to admit he didn't even hear the blues until he was in his Thirties and living in Germany where he'd gone to serve time in the military. And as he tells us in this candid interview, the first... more >>
Added: 11 Apr 2012
Louisiana Red and Little Victor's Juke Joint: Memphis Mojo (Ruf/Yellow Eye)
Almost an octogenerian, Louisiana Red (aka Iverson Minter) has understandably become a fixture on blues circuits. Born in Alabama and his father lynched by the Klan, he once recorded for Chess in 1949 before doing military service, and after that just kept playing the blues. It wasn't until more recent times however that he became better known, but you'd have to say that might be for... more >>
Added: 8 Feb 2012
CHAMPION JACK DUPREE REMEMBERED: Seconds out of the ring . . .
Blues pianist Champion Jack Dupree could always upset a few expectations. While his few remaining colleagues in the old blues game disavowed alcohol, Dupree told me in 1988 -- when he was approximately 80, his birth date seemed flexible – he still fancied a taste, but with a couple of crucial exceptions. "I drink cognac and beer," he said cheerily, "but I never... more >>
Added: 31 Jan 2012 1 Comment
Savoy Brown: Voodoo Moon (Ruf/Yellow Eye)
Many years ago Pete Frame would produce books of meticulously drawn family trees of rock bands. His Sabbath Bloody Sabbath tree filled two tightly written gatefold A5 pages and traced Black Sabbath back to bands that Ronnie Dio and Bill Ward were in around '64. I don't recall ever seeing a Frame family tree for the British blues band Savoy Brown (although they did get a passing reference in... more >>
Added: 30 Jan 2012 3 Comments
Omar and the Howlers: Essential Collection (Ruf/Yellow Eye)
Out of Mississippi by way of the Lone Star State, Omar Kent Dykes is one of the tough Texas blues guitar players whose no nonsense style is perfectly complemented by his various line-ups (usually small) around his core band. This non-chronological double disc collection -- which opens with a head-down 1991 live version of his Magic Man which owes a debt to that clenched-fist macho strut of... more >>
Added: 17 Jan 2012
HOWLIN' WOLF IN LONDON, 1970: When worlds collide
One of the most beloved blues albums of the early Seventies was a super-session recorded when Howlin' Wolf went to London to work with the Stones' rhythm section of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, guitarist Eric Clapton, and others including Stones' pianoman Ian Stewart. And an uncredited Ringo Starr on I Ain't Superstitious. The subsequent album The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions was... more >>
Added: 11 Jan 2012 2 Comments
