Steve Phillips "Steel-Rail Blues"
Unamerican Activities/1989/EU
Unamerican Activities/1989/EU
If you aren't adverse to CD's, try to find a copy of Up The Line by The Gary Smith Blues Band. Gary is very well known in the San Francisco Bay Area Blues scene, and has the best harp tone I've ever heard, bar none. His mentor was Charlie Mussellwhite, and Gary's role model is The Master---Little Walter. Gary is the first harp player I played with, way back in 1969! He had just switched from drums, so we had that in common. Gary's Facebook posts are usually about the latest tubes he has tried in his tube amps. He is VERY serious about the tone he creates, the mark of a superior musician (along with phrasing, and musicality). The album also features great musical accompaniment from the best Blues players in the Bay Area (known locally as the Blues Mafia ;-). I've seen and heard him and they live, and if you live in the area, so should you. |
Zuzu Bollin ZUZU BOLLIN TEXAS BLUESMAN A cast of thousands, including Duke Robillard and David "Fathead" Newman. Antones Records & Tapes 1991 Notes: "An important chapter of Zuzu Bollin's history must be written in Austin. After hearing Zuzu in Dallas one night in 1988 Clifford Antone, owner of Antones's nightclub, befriended him and invited him to begin performing at his club....Antone made plans to record him, and you can hear the results on this record. Zuzu's story has a bittersweet ending. He died in 1990. That Zuzu did not live to complete the Antone's sessions is a great loss to us all, but thankfully we still have these wonderful recordings. Fans of Texas Blues owe a debt of gratitude to Chuck Nevitt and Clifford Antone for caring enough to capture Zuzu just the way he would have liked: Texas Style." ANTONES is / was a well known blues club in Austin, Texas. He also owns / owned a record store that sold / sells blues CDs, LPs, Tapes and associated stuff. I spent many a dollar there. My routine was, Waterloo records, then walk a block to Tower Records, then walk a block to Antone's Blues record store. Those were the days. Why Don't You Eat Where You Slept Last Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFv0FOCsI9M Zuzu Bollin – Zu's Blues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB7gvpI2KxE Rebecca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYyizQvlGG0 Kidney Stew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBchUpap0lo Blues in the Dark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dqiLUQIkoU Cheers |
James Booker RESURRECTION OF THE BAYOU MAHARAJAH Rounder Records 1993 Notes: "For Booker fans, then, this album and its companion (Spiders on the Keys, Rounder 2119) are cause for celebration. Here is James Booker as his New Orleans fans knew him--passionate and dazzling; alternately extroverted or painfully lost in his own world. For if James Carroll Booker lll was one of the greatest pianists of the century, he was also plagued by what many of his friends considered to be mental illness, and by a lifelong battle with drugs and alcohol (a problem Booker traced to his prescription after being hit by an ambulance when he was a boy)." Real New Orleans music. You can hear the wooden floors. Medley: Slow Down / Bony Maronie / Knock On Wood / I Heard It Through The Grapevine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zya7-ekMXw Medley: Tico Tico / Papa Was A Rascal (Live At The Maple Leaf Bar, New Orleans, LA / 1977-1982) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA5Aoq32N4g St. James Infirmary (Live At The Maple Leaf Bar, New Orleans, LA / 1977-1982) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFRKcW_s6YQ Medley: Life / Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee / It Should Have Been Me (Live At The Maple Leaf Bar, New... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa7w0yYjXNs Cheers |