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Dan Forte
Mavis Staples – We’ll Never Turn Back
Billed as her most personal statement, this may well be Mavis Staples’ finest solo effort to date. In 2004, the powerhouse lead singer of the famed Staple Singers released the rootsy Have A Little Faith on Alligator. Here, producer/guitarist Ry Cooder places the reigning queen of gospel’s voice in an even more intimate setting, paring
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Dan Forte
Joan Osborne – Pretty Little Stranger
“Versatile” doesn’t quite do justice to Joan Osborne’s uncanny range. One minute she’s guesting with the Chieftains, the next she’s touring with the Dead. Then she utterly steals the show in the Funk Brothers documentary, Standing In The Shadows Of Motown with her stunning rendition of “What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted.” Simply put, she’s
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Dan Forte
King Earl Boogie Band – Loaded & Live
England’s Dave Peabody, this quintet’s frontman, is usually found performing acoustic solo blues or in tandem with pianist Bob Hall, but is also an excellent photographer and music journalist. But there’s nothing academic about this spirited live outing; this is music to stomp and dance and drink to. The opening “Money To Burn” is a
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Dan Forte
Joan Osborne – Breakfast in Bed
In other hands, Osborne’s penchant for jumping from genre to genre could peg her as a dilettante. But she’s just so good at everything she tackles – her 2006 Nashville CD, Pretty Little Stranger, touring with the Dead, fronting Motown’s Funk Brothers – you can’t wait to hear what she’ll do next. Here, she dips
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Dan Forte
Dolly Parton – My Tennessee Mountain Home
If the first songs that come to mind when you think of Dolly Parton are “Two Doors Down” and “9 to 5,” you need to pick up these albums – all three of them. Dolly had already recorded a stack of albums and even had her own “best of” (in addition to one by her
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Dan Forte
American Masters – Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built
Considering the uncanny accuracy of Jamie Foxx’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Ray Charles in the movie Ray, it’s criminal that writer/director Taylor Hackford chose to depict Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, and Tom Dowd (three principals of Atlantic, the company with which Charles achieved his initial success) not as the complex, talented individuals they were but as
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Dan Forte
Full-Grown Rocker Comes Full Circle
In 1986, when singer/guitarist Webb Wilder and producer/songwriter R.S. “Bobby” Field pressed up 1,500 copies of It Came From Nashville, they could have just as easily called the debut It Came To Nashville – because it was as novel for a rootsy, hard-rockin’ band to invade Music City as to call it home. The album
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Dan Forte
Johnny Bush – Kashmere Gardens Mud
Johnny Bush is a true Texas original and one of the best living examples of real honky-tonk music. Looking back on all aspects of his 50-year career, he cut much of Kashmere Gardens, appropriately, at Houston’s famed SugarHill Studios, as a companion to his autobiography, Whiskey River. SugarHill was the birthplace of hits by artists
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Dan Forte
Bobby Broom – Song and Dance
When he was 25, Bobby Broom was picked by jazz legend Kenny Burrell to be part of his Jazz Guitar Band, whose stint at New York’s Village Vanguard resulted in two albums. By then, Broom had moved from his native New York to Chicago and already logged sessions with Dizzy Gillespie, Stanley Turrentine, and Sonny
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Dan Forte
Southern Culture On the Skids – Countrypolitan Favorites
Once again, Southern Culture On The Skids proves itself the ultimate party band with the ultimate party record. In other hands, the concept behind Countrypolitan Favorites (Yep Roc) might come off as sheer novelty or gimmick, but the kitschy SCOTS makes the genre-bending collection of covers work on its own terms. There’s humor, to be
