by Something Else! Reviews Robert Cray tops this year’s class of inductees into the Blues Hall of Fame. He’s joined by acoustic bluesman John Hammond; soul-blues belter Denise LaSalle, 1950s singing star Big Maybelle, and singer/songwriters Alberta Hunter and J.B. Lenoir. Also to be recognized: Vivian Carter and Jimmy Bracken (the “Vee” and “Jay” in Vee-Jay Records), noted African-American educator [...]
by Nick DeRiso Howlin’ Wolf, posthumously inducted into the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame in 1980 and then the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, had no right to rock it like this. Not after what he had been through. By the time of his 1972 date at Chicago’s Alice’s Revisited, he had suffered numerous heart attacks. Two [...]
by Nick DeRiso You can’t fault Gregg Allman his nostalgia on Low Country Blues. Legendarily restless, he’s still a man, and the leader of a band, that’s been through a great deal. Just as importantly, this record’s hat-tips to blues, R&B, gospel and jazz only underscore how each provided uniquely American spices in the Allman Brothers Band‘s bubbling Southern-rock synthesis. [...]
By Nick DeRiso “The Guitar Hero” moves away from the tabloid side of the Jimi Hendrix myth, instead delving into the American guitarist’s sweeping impact on rock music and the instrument. That makes director Jon Brewer’s film not so much a biography, per se, as it is tone-poem love letter to Hendrix’s muse, and how it finally ignited. I think, [...]
by Nick DeRiso Led Zeppelin wasn’t always this thundering, then nimble, amalgamation. The band’s first album had, on its surface, only a copycat kind of appeal. Recorded over just 30 hours, these songs were presented in the same way Zeppelin would have done them on stage at the time — half rendition, half sweaty tribute. They were, as much as [...]
by Mark Saleski There’s no doubt that I bring up this topic too often, but sometimes I just can’t help it. Let’s talk about the future. Specifically, one in which all of the physical objects of entertainment have been replaced by their digital counterparts. This worries me, though not for the reasons you might think. It will affect me in [...]
by Nick DeRiso An honorable, if ultimately somewhat superficial, tribute to the thing that makes Robert “Jr.” Lockwood such an important element to modern blues. Lockwood was something of a stepson to Robert Johnson. The doomed Delta bluesman would stop in to stay with Lockwood’s mother in Helena, Ark., during early 1930s road trips along the chitlin’ circuit, and they [...]
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