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 S. Victor Aaron I know no one will believe it, but a couple of weeks ago I heard Muddy Waters‘ 1948 classic recording of his first hit “I Can’t Be Satisfied” for the first time in a while and decided then and there that it needed the One Track Mind treatment. Really, I was going to do it. That [...]

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 Cassandra Wilson, who consistently defies convention as this restless chanteuse, doesn’t disappoint with Silver Pony — issued today on Blue Note as the long-awaited part-in studio, part-live followup to her celebrated Loverly. She has the vocal phrasing, the dusky intellect, of Charlie Parker and the elastic intuition of Betty Carter. Yet, Wilson is no throwback. She writes [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Washington, D.C.’s Matta Gawa’s self-described “cinematic chunks of post-hardcore improvised sound” is, however else you might describe it, standing apart from the main body of whack jazz. Sounds created from more than forty guitar pedals generating loops, sample, octave altering, various synthesized noise effects created and layered all at once and rounded out by some mad [...]

by Mark Saleski I wish I had a cool story about where I learned about the blues. I never had an older brother who gave me his Howlin’ Wolf records. There was no cousin who pointed out the line that runs backwards from Jimmy Page. Despite the early appearance of my inner music nerd, I doubt that I was curious [...]

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 [...]

by Nick DeRiso All due respect to Nelson Riddle, but this didn’t seem like it would work. “Only the Lonely,” at first — even to Sinatra — felt temperamentally suited to Gordon Jenkins, the man most closely associated with much of Frank Sinatra‘s string-oriented, darker work. (See the very good CD “September of My Years,” featuring “It Was A Very [...]

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 [...]

by Nick DeRiso An updated excerpt from a multi-artist piece I had published as part of the statewide Louisiana Folklife Festival’s program book in 1995. Thomas suffered a fatal heart attack later that same year, in his hometown of Shreveport, La., ending a career that spanned seven decades: On his old records, Jesse “Baby Face” Thomas is a whispering recollection [...]