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Roosevelt Dean: Touch
Somebody's Hand (Independent)
Go
to any small or mid-size city and you'll no doubt
find an active blues scene with usually one blues
veteran that the whole scene revolves around. As is
often the case most of these guys aren't all that
well known outside their respective cities; Cleveland
has the incredible Guitar Slim, Rochester has Joe
Beard and Syracuse has Roosevelt Dean. Dean has quietly
released a number of strong records but "Touch
Somebody's Hand" is his best and most ambitious
to date.
Like
his contemporaries, Guitar Slim and Joe Beard, Dean
came from the South but did not start playing blues
until he came to Syracuse, New York, in the sixties.
Dean has been flooring audiences in Syracuse for years
and has been well honored in his hometown. Despite
the honors, some good reviews in blues magazines like
Living Blues and some out of state touring Dean is
flying under the radar when it come to national recognition.
He's still issuing his own CD's including notable
ones such as 2000's "Blue Heaven" and 2003's
excellent "Somewhere 'Round Georgia." "Touch
Somebody's Hand" is Dean's finest yet and will
hopefully garner the kind of national exposure Dean
deserves.
"Touch
Somebody's Hand" is Dean's most polished effort
filled out with some punchy horns, female backup singers
and a wide variety of styles. Rosie, as his friends
call him, tackles straight up blues shuffles, soulful
R&B and even goes to the pulpit for some inspired
gospel. Backed by a rock solid band who really know
how to lay down a groove, Rosie sings his tunes (he
wrote all but four of the fifteen tracks) in a rich,
heavy yet soulful voice and steps out occasionally
for some tasty, understated guitar solos. This is
a well produced outing, more polished than his prior
records but not overproduced and provides a nice contrast
to Rosie's more down home, earthy delivery. Rosie
really knows how to tell a story in his songs, putting
them across like he's singing them directly to you
whether on the cautionary "Whiskey & Gin"
an intense blues shuffle with ominous horns and stinging
guitar or warning about those "Big Fat Woman"
on this infectious, loping blues number. There's plenty
of diversity as Rosie and the band deliver some thumping
funk on "I Been Watching You" driven by
those fine riffing horns, croons some aching R&B
on "Step Into My Heart" or goes to church
on the moving, intimate "God" with just
Rosie on piano and his band amening in the background
as he sings about Iraq, 9/11 and drugs among a few
other things on his mind. Also worth noting are fine
covers of Muddy's "Honey Bee" featuring
some blistering fret work from Nicklas Humez who's
a real standout throughout plus first rate originals
like "Blues Man" and the shuffling R&B
of "Stay Away." The disc wraps up on another
spiritual note with the uplifting "Touch Somebody's
Hand" that brings things to a rousing finish.
Like
many fine, veteran bluesmen Roosevelt Dean has been
issuing his own CD's and hustling local gigs for years.
With the blues industry in poor shape there's fewer
labels willing to take chances on lesser known artists,
even one of Dean's caliber. It comes down to the fans
to support blues like this and you could no better
than grabbing a copy of "Touch Somebody's Hand",
one of the first great blues records of 2006.
(Jeff
Harris)
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2006 Classic Blues
Artwork Calendar Vol. 3
(Blues Images) 
For
most collectors and fans of country blues the magical
period was roughly around 1926-27 - when Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Blind Blake, Blind Willie McTell, Frank
Stokes, Furry Lewis all made their first records
- up until perhaps the early 1930's. For collectors
the Paramount label set the high water mark issuing
prized 78's by Son House, Charlie Patton, Skip James
and Willie Brown among others. These "race
records", as they were called, were big business
and actively marketed to African-Americans, most
notably in the pages of the Chicago Defender, the
African-American newspaper of record in the 1920's
and 30's. Paramount was an active advertiser, creating
provocative ads that were placed in the Chicago
Defender and sent to record stores and distributors.
Record collector John Tefteller has amassed the
world's largest collection of blues advertisements,
mostly from Paramount, and has been presenting these
gorgeous ads in his "Classic Blues Artwork
Calendar" for the past few years. The quality
and reproductions of the ads are stunning, qualifying
this as a true work of art.
The adverts in the calendars (this is the
third issued) come from a huge haul of Paramount
promotional material which was rescued from the
rubbish heap some twenty years ago by a pair of
journalists. These gentlemen had only a passing
interest in blues, and they did nothing with their
find until selling it to Mr Tefteller in 2002. The
depression essentially killed off Paramount's advertising
budget so many of these images were never sent out
and hence have not been seen by anyone since they
were first produced. Since the 2002 haul, which
also included the discovery of the long lost King
Solomon Hill 78 and the only full length photo of
Charlie Patton, Tefteller has acquired many more
blues ads including a huge cache that originally
appeared in the Chicago Defender. This will ensure
years and years of beautiful calendars and hopefully
a book. A book of course would be the ideal place
for these and Tefteller notes in the calendar's
introduction that he is "knee-deep in production
of what will be the ultimate book of original Blues
advertising material."
Many
of us have seen reproductions of those early Chicago
Defender ads, tantalizing as they are, the reproductions
left much to be desired. Where the earlier reproductions
were taken from adverts in The Chicago Defender
newspaper, these are copied from distribution posters.
They are large reproductions and they have been
beautifully reproduced with stunning clarity. There
are twelve large sized ads promoting the records
of Skip James, Charlie Patton, Willie Brown, King
Solomon Hill, Ma Rainey, Leroy Carr and others.
In addition we get two smaller ads included on each
calendar page that, despite the small size, are
just as crisp and readable as the larger images.
The usual anniversary dates for Christmas, Easter
are listed plus anniversaries for blues singers
like Son House and other luminaries such as Martin
Luther King and Frederick Douglass. Brief artist
biographies are included and there is an informative
introduction from Tefteller providing valuable background
on the included artwork. The artwork itself is provocative,
bold and anything but politically correct. The caricatures
of African-Americans will no doubt be offensive
to some but need to be viewed in the period they
were created. Robert Crumb's blurb on the front
succinctly sums up the appeal: "Some of the
most imaginative commercial graphics ever produced!
Lurid! Sensationalistic! Low Brow!" Indeed!
Just look at the advert of Skip James' "Devil
Got My Woman" where we see a woman leaping
out of bed, obviously frightened to death, as a
hovering skeleton with a snake wrapped around it's
arm is touching her while off to the side we notice
a couple of empty Gin bottles on the table, with
one even tucked under her bed! What's also interesting
is that many of the illustrations also include an
actual photo of the artist as is the case with adverts
for Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Mississippi Sheiks and Leroy
Carr. The
calendar is also enhanced with the inclusion of
a sixteen track CD, the first twelve songs matching
the artwork on each page of the calendar. Apparently
no artwork exists for the four bonus cuts.
In
short this is a gorgeous, beautifully produced collectable
that will delight blues fans with each ensuing month
and will be something you'll want to keep long after
the year's over. Tefteller has enough images to
crank these calendars out for years which is good
news but I do hope that a well produced book of
these images will become a reality. Until then I
eagerly await the 2007 calendar.
-Check
out these related links:
Blues
Images
John
Tefteller's World's Rarest Records
Index
Of Blues Ads From The Chicago Defender
(Jeff
Harris)
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Talkin' to Myself:
Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942
By Michael Taft (Routledge)
"Talkin'
to Myself: Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942" is a
slightly revised edition of Michael Taft's "Blues
Lyric Poetry: An Anthology" published in
1983. The original was intended as a companion
to "Blues
Lyric Poetry: A Concordance" published in
1984. The book is a compendium of blues lyrics
(actually "song fragments") spanning
the first twenty years of recorded blues, covering
over 2,000 songs by over 350 singers.
For
it's sheer number of songs Taft's work may be
the largest collection of blues lyrics compiled
but not the first or last of it's kind. Since
Taft's publication the foremost transcriber of
blues lyrics has been Bob Macleod who for several
years now, has been slowly working his way through
the Yazoo and Document albums, transcribing the
lyrics from each and every track. Perhaps
the seminal work prior to Taft's was Jeff Todd
Titon's "Downhome Blues Lyrics: An Anthology
from the Post-World War II Era" published
in 1977 and reprinted in 1990. Even prior to that
seminal work was Paul Oliver's groundbreaking
"Blues Fell This Morning" (1960) and
Paul Garon's "Blues And The Poetic Spirit"
(1975) both of which included numerous lyric transcriptions
but also a good deal of analysis which Taft's
book does not. Taft's original title, "Blues
Lyric Poetry: An Anthology", suggests that
Taft clearly sees the poetic significance of the
blues as Garon proclaimed: "That the blues
is poetry is beyond doubt..." And as Oliver
elaborated: "To appreciate the music without
appreciating the content is to do an injustice
to the blues singers and to fail to comprehend
the full value of their work. ...Their blues had
meaning for them and they had ideas to express;
it is impossible to enjoy or to understand the
blues to the full through it's musical qualities
alone." Taft, as his introduction, makes
clear is less interested in meaning and analysis
and more interested in the structure and fromula
of blues songs so we get much discussion about
patterns and structures of blues stanzas. For
instance we learn that 80% of blues songs follow
the 2AA pattern and about the "etic and emic"
reasons for defining the blues a poetry, valuable
I suppose but the structural analysis of blues
songs isn't quite as interesting as reading and
listening to the music itself. Maybe that's just
me.
The
book is arranged alphabetically by artist and
then chronologically by date of recording for
each song. There are very brief biographies of
each artist plus recording date, matrix number
and original issue number. Artists include country,
urban and vaudeville with a leaning towards country
blues performers. Since the original goal of the
project was to conduct a computerized concordance
of the song lyrics (back in the days of key-punch
cards and mainframes) the author "streamlined"
the lyrics in order to be read by the program.
"Thus, all repetitions, all refrains which
do not conform to the blues couplet structure,
and all nonblues stanza in the vaudeville songs,
as well as any spoken interjections or other extrastanzaic
elements in the songs have been left out of these
transcriptions." Quite a drawback, some of
which one would think would have been rectified
in the twenty years since the book was first published.
While this would undoubtedly require a fair bit
more work the one thing making it easier is the
fact that all these songs are available on compact
disc through the Document label, not the case
when this work was first published. My other reservation
is in the way the songs are organized. As mentioned
songs are arranged alphabetically and there is
no easy way to look up songs according to theme
or subject such as train songs or war
songs for example. Grouping the songs by
theme and then listing the artists in the index
may have been a more sensible approach. As is
there is no subject index which would be immeasurably
helpful, particularly for those doing research.
Ultimately
the book is a valuable insight not only into the
poetry of the blues but also provides a fascinating
look into the views and concerns of black America
at a time when very few outlets existed for black
expression. As Taft writes "...these pared-down
songs do highlight the poetry of the form-the
literary quality of these lyrics that make an
important part of the fabric of American traditional
literature, and indeed of American literature
as whole." Listening to these songs while
reading these lyrics is the most beneficial way
of using this book and a good way of getting a
much deeper understanding of the music as a whole.
(Jeff
Harris)
|
John Long:
Lost & Found (Delta Groove)
Country
blues is deceptively simple and while there's
many modern day practitioners, few really
capture the feel of the music as it was played
in the 1920's and 30's. On "Lost &
Found" John Long displays an uncanny
feel for the old time blues on his astonishing
and long overdue debut.
So who is John Long and how could such
an amazing talent stay hidden for so long?
As mentioned, this is Long's debut having
previously cut a lone cut on an obscure compilation,
a few appearances on other people's sessions
and a handful of demos. Long began performing
in the early 60's with his brother Claude
playing mainly rock & roll and R&B.
Like many he began to dig deeper investigating
the greats from the 1920's and 30's and receiving
first hand pointers from Big Joe Williams
and Homesick James. Opportunities were few,
as they still are, for a solo acoustic bluesman
so Long toiled at a day job and played gigs
when he could. Long's years of woodshedding
have paid off as he emerges on "Lost
& Found" fully formed, a master country
blues player who's music sounds natural and
effortless.
The
problem with many modern day country blues
performers is that the music often comes across
as too stilted or too academic as if they've
learned all the right notes from the old records
but none of the feeling. Don't get me wrong
there's a number of fine players on the scene
including the ageless John Hammond, Paul Geremia,
Corey Harris and Alvin Youngblood Hart who's
perhaps the best I've heard in recent years.
Add John Long to that rarified list, who's
debut compares favorably to Alvin Youngblood
Hart's classic debut, "Big Momma's Door"
(1995) which set the benchmark for modern
day country blues records. Like Hart, John
Long is the total package, an exceptional,
percussive guitarist and an outstanding vocalist.
In fact if it wasn't for the lack of clicks
and pops you could almost mistake these sides
for a cache of newly discovered pristine 78's.
In addition Long is a first rate songwriter,
having penned all twelve tracks filled with
plenty of sly humor and heartache. Long also
plays some fine harmonica and is joined on
a few tracks by pianist Fred Kaplan, former
frontman with The Hollywood Fats Band and
currently leader of The Hollywood Blue Flames.
Working with a backlog of some 40 years worth
of songs, it's not surprising that there's
not a bum track in the bunch. The disc opens
with driving, percussive "Hokum Town"
as Long pointedly sings: "With you and
your father I just can't win/You hate people
'cuz the color of their skin/I'm packin' up/Leaving
on this bus outside." Among the many
highlights include the infectious, humorous
"Pressure Cooker ('Bout To Blow)",
sings about that "screaming" "Hell
Cat" featuring rolling barrelhouse piano
from Kaplan, blows some sweet harmonica on
"Stranglevine" backed again by Kaplan's
tasteful playing and gives us two fine versions
of the poignant "Leavin' St. Louis"
with a solo and piano version to wrap up a
tour-de-force performance. Long has fully
integrated his influences into a unique voice
but under the surface one can hear the echoes
of greats like Big Joe Williams, Tommy Johnson
and Robert Johnson who so clearly inspired
him.
"Lost
& Found" is hands down one of the
best acoustic debuts in some time and should
finally get the word out about John Long who's
be waiting in the wings far too long.
-Check
out these related links:
Delta
Groove Website
(Jeff
Harris)
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Mac Arnold &
Platefull O' Blues: Nothin' To Prove
(Plantation)
Mac
Arnold is anything but a household name but
he's played with a who's who of blues greats
and is now fronting his own band. "Nothin'
To Prove" is welcome comeback as
Mac and his Plateful O' Blues band serve up
a strong blast of old school traditional blues.
Mac came to Chicago in 1965 to make his
mark and hooked up with saxophonist
A. C. Reed. In 1966 he joined Muddy Water's
band playing bass with him for a year. During
this period he also played on two well regarded
Bluesway recordings: John Lee Hooker's "Live
at the Cafe' Au Go-Go" and Otis Spann's
"The Blues Is Where It's At." After
his stint with Muddy, Mac formed The Soul Invaders
which backed up many artists, including The
Temptations and B. B. King. In the early 70's,
he moved to Los Angeles to work at ABC Television
and Laff Records (Red Foxx). This led to working
on the set of Soul Train from 1971 to 1975 and
then working with Bill Withers before moving
back to his hometown of South Carolina in the
80's.
"Nothin'
To Prove" finds Mac in fine form
delivering an impeccable set of traditional
blues clearly inspired by Mac's days gigging
in the Windy City. Mac handles all the vocals
chores in his gravelly, soulful voice that's
bit reminiscent of Muddy Waters and at times
of Albert King. Plate Full O' Blues provides
superb backing featuring guitarist Austin Brashier,
bassist Mark McMakin, drummer Mike Whitt, and
multi-instrumentalist Max Hightower, who contributes
biting slide, harp, and piano. There's nothing
too fancy here, just a uniformly fine set of
old school blues as Mac and the band crank out
first rate originals like the anthem like "Blues
For You" a close kin of Little Milton's
"Hey, Hey, the Blues Is Alright",
the shuffling "Call Mac Arnold" featuring
rollicking piano, the funky "Ghetto Blues"
an autobiographical number vividly recalling
Mac's Chicago days and the slinky slow burner
"She's So Mean To Me". Also notable
is the earthy down home blues of "Back
To The County" backed by just piano and
harmonica and a live version featuring some
blistering Muddy like slide.
We
received Mac's
"Nothin' To Prove" a number
of months back and somehow this fine record
slipped under the radar. For fans of deep traditional
blues this one's well worth hunting down. Welcome
back Mac!
-Check
out these related links:
Mac
Arnold Website
(Jeff
Harris)
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