Checking in with our thoughts on a few of tonight’s winners from the 2011 Grammy Awards, including the Black Keys – the top-rated Something Else! Reviews record from last year — as well as Buddy Guy, Neil Young, Stanley Clarke, Paul McCartney and Mavis Staples, among others. Click through the album titles for more … THE BLACK KEYS, BROTHERS (winner [...]

by Something Else Reviews Over the last few weeks, this merry band of music lovers has offered its varied take on the Year That Was. Now, we winnow it all down. First to go were the personal obsessions (Mark: Mary Halvorson; Pico: Greg Ward’s Fitted Shards), and other worthy entries that somehow didn’t gather critical mass (Tom: Field Music; Nick: [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Electric blues guitarist Melvin Taylor had been sporadically recording solo albums for 20 years when Dirty Pool arrived — and was somehow just beginning to find fame. Already a hit in Europe, it had taken a steady run of performing in Chicago’s famed blues clubs to slowly earn Taylor a well-deserved reputation as an equal talent [...]

by Nick DeRiso Mark “Pocket” Goldberg’s Off the Alleyway, a rootsy Americana recording with the flickering neon-soul of a blues joint, stays well away from the beaten path. His sound is as eclectic as the country’s rolling byways, bringing in low-country pedal steel, back-pew harmonizing, the nostalgic wheeze of an accordion, and crunchy late-night guitar growls. Rumbling this musical gumbo [...]

by Nick DeRiso News this week that Buddy Guy had been Grammy nominated for best contemporary blues album had me revisiting the scalding blisses of Living Proof. I loved it from the first solo, this sharp outburst of gnarled sexuality on “74 Years Young”: “There ain’t nothing I haven’t done,” Guy yowls, giving the finger to old age. “I’ve been [...]

By Nick DeRiso Otis Rush is the star-crossed guitar god, always in the right place at the wrong time. Close but no rock star. That despite his role as a principal architect of the modern Chicago blues-guitar vernacular, and a memorably emotional style of singing that echoes some of the genre’s most recognizable figures. He’s in his prime on “Live [...]

by Nick DeRiso Several of Muddy Waters‘ great sidemen — Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and Otis Spann — appear on the loose and funky “Southside Blues Jam,” originally issued by Chicago’s Delmark Records. Funny, for all their marquee value, Wells and Guy — Buddy was born in Lettsworth, Louisiana — are very nearly overshadowed by the intricate, intelligent playing of [...]