Avant-garde guitarists Elliott Sharp, Henry Kaiser, and Glenn Phillips share a love for the blues, so when a threeway collaboration was suggested, it morphed into a tribute to Willie Dixon. To differentiate it from a mere blues collection, the trio modeled it loosely after Chess Records’ much maligned but oddly attractive late-’60s albums Electric Mud [...]
After George Harrison played the simple hook to the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” on sitar, then studied with Ravi Shankar, Indian music became all the rage, with Shankar its rock star. Harrison signed Shankar to his Dark Horse label in ’73, and the following year produced Shankar Family & Friends, mixing Indian classical musicians with jazz [...]
Junior Wells released enough mediocre product in his lifetime that it’s easy to forget what a great stylist and showman the Chicago bluesman was. This hour-plus live set, recorded at Club 47 in Cambridge in ’66, is a vivid reminder. The harmonica great cut memorable singles in the ’50s, but his long-playing debut didn’t come [...]
See an instrumental, old-school R&B band consisting of Hammond organ, drums, guitar, and (in this case, added on) bass, and it’s a safe assumption it will owe a debt to Booker T. & The MG’s. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the world might be a better place if there were more combos laying down [...]
Speaking of his work on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, Steve Ray Vaughan once admitted that he wanted to see just how many places Albert King’s licks would work. “You know, they always fit,” he smiled. And that was true whether Albert or one of his better pupils were doing the playing. A couple years prior [...]
To overlook Hendrix’ blues roots would be as misguided as to categorize him (as some do) as simply “a blues guitarist.” If that were the case, there’d no doubt be more than 11 blues tracks to compile for a Jimi “blues” album. In the DVD disc of this “Family Edition” of the ’94 release, Eric [...]
In 1981, the Thompsons recorded their last and best album together, as their marriage was crumbling. So, even though some of the material dated to a couple of years prior, during happier times, R.T. was never big on traditional love songs; thus, the tension in the lyrics only fueled the intensity of the performances. Amazingly, [...]
The Yardbirds issued only three truly distinct albums – Five Live (with Eric Clapton), The Yardbirds (a.k.a. “Roger The Engineer,” with Jeff Beck), and Little Games (featuring their final lineup of Jimmy Page, singer Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty, and Chris Dreja moving from rhythm guitar to bass). American releases For Your Love and Having [...]
Even though there are probably more instrumental surf bands active today than during the genre’s early-’60s heyday, it’s very much an underground movement, populated by indie labels, mostly younger players, and a few originators and predecessors, like Dick Dale and the surviving members of the Ventures. So what happens when former members of two established [...]
Jazz bass great Anthony Jackson (August ’11) once told Bass Player magazine, he was drawn to Jack Casady’s “big, rich, metallic sound with a full bottom and a curious, guitaristic way of playing.” When Jackson saw Casady perform live, he was “struck by his dignity and serious mien.” For about 45 years, Casady has been [...]
