Recently in Blues Category

In the past week, your station has played "Layla" 17 times. Now I love Derek & the Dominoes (Jim Gordon is a total monster behind the kit) as much as the next schmo. But your station's programming doesn't make a lick of sense. You call yourselves the "home of rock 'n' roll," yet you've been regurgitating the same 100 tracks since 1984. Why not inject some fresh blood into your rotation? C'mon dude, live a little!

This will surely come off as uber presumptuous, but I've taken the liberty of putting together a handy-dandy playlist and song-by-song cheat sheet for you to take back to your program director. It is packed with cool young artists whose jams would sound just dynamite alongside titans like Bad Company and Floyd. For example, I’ve been cranking this tune by Susan Tedeschi called “Talking About.” This nuclear-powered sexpot howls like a cross between pre-adult contemporary Bonnie Raitt and Jeff Beck group-era Rod Stewart. Then there’s this nifty little group from Philly who go by the name Dr. Dog. Their tune “The Ark” has Elton John, Supertramp, Lennon and even old school Hall & Oates tattooed all over it.

Don't get me wrong: I love your station. You are the only folks in town who still play The Wall in its entirety, and that's totally awesome. But I just feel like it's time to hear some new rock 'n' rock from the "home of rock 'n' roll." Am I right or what?

So maybe this is what Blue Öyster Cult meant by the red and the black. Mississippi Mudsharks’ Train Rolls On and Black Diamond Heavies' A Touch of Someone Else’s Class are both beat-your-face-in albums of the belligerent he-man blues-rock persuasion, and they also both sort of look alike! Red lettering on a black background -- especially on the album back covers, each of which is a top-to-bottom list of 11 songs. The Mudsharks’ front has a locomotive and the Heavies’ a drum set, but hey, let’s not quibble, folks.

Mississippi Mudsharks are three hefty dudes from, well, San Diego, actually; their frontman Scottie Blinn calls himself “Mad Dog.” Guests help out on pedal steel (two songs) and “chain” (one). Their album-opening title track ain’t quite the “Train Kept a Rollin’” it wishes it was, and neither is the bleh ballad called “Slow Rollin’” they close with. But in between, they’ve got shuffles evolving into badass boogie (“30 Weight Shuffle”), bike-leather rockabilly (“Crimson Sky” and “Devil’s Road”), and some gratifying Black Oak Arkansas and ZZ Top tendencies, the latter most notably in “Throw It in the Hole.” Best song titles: “Lakeside Redneck Shindig,” “Zombie Whip,” “Can’t Put Down the Drink.”

Maybe it just means I’m turning into an old grump, but 2008 will go down in history as the first year in memory that I actually wound up liking two albums by bands of white people that hit Billboard’s blues chart. First there was Too Slim and the Tail Draggers, from Seattle. Then there was The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, from Indiana. Both are trios, both spend a lot of time on the road, both play guitar better than they sing, both record for small labels, both I never heard of before this year, and both like to eat.

by Chuck Eddy

Southern rock, as properly defined in pre-3 Doors Down days, still exists on the country charts (Montgomery Gentry, Kid Rock) and occasionally even rock charts (Kid Rock again), and sometimes, people now even vastly overrate it (Drive-by Truckers, My Morning Jacket, Mudcrutch). But where it mostly survives is where it always has - local roadhouses, where working men drink too much, and perhaps throw a punch or whiskey bottle or two when the mood suits them. Listening to Lucas McCain’s New Horizon and Hank Davison Band’s Hard Way, one suspects the artists in question to be familiar with such habitats.

by Chuck Eddy

Soul and blues always come in and out of country music fashion (just ask Jimmie Rodgers and Charlie Rich or Barbara Mandrell or K.T. Oslin), and over the past few years - from Brooks & Dunn to LeAnn Rimes, Jon Nicholson to Chely Wright, Kentucky Headhunters to Rissi Palmer -- they’ve been back on the upswing. “American Radio,” the not especially soulful current hit by Nashville softies Carolina Rain, even cites “Purple Rain” and Barry White as possible inspirations. But new releases by onetime teen-country hopeful Rebecca Lynn Howard and new sister trio Carter’s Chord sound like they mean it.

by Chuck Eddy

by Chuck Eddy

Bo Diddley, who died Monday at 79, inherited a beat that's been traced back through the '30s fieldworker blues chant "Chevrolet" to the millenium-old West African rhythm Kpanlogo, and he helped invent rock 'n' roll, funk, hard rock, disco, heavy metal, '80s pop, new country and rap music with it. (Via talk-rhymed first-person braggadocio in the latter case -- and "Say Man" has to count as one of the original dis records.)

Bo Diddley’s pre-language rock 'n' roll rhythm, the “Bo Diddley Beat,” was permanently embedded in the human consciousness in 1955 when Ellas Otha Bates (a.k.a. Ellas McDaniel, a.k.a. Bo Diddley) appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show playing it, instead of the Tennessee Ernie Ford song he had agreed to perform. The rest is indeed history as Diddley remains one of the three most important figures in the creation of rock 'n' roll and its subsequent offshoots. Like Chuck Berry's and Little Richard’s, Diddley’s influence was pervasive, and instrumental in the formation of the rock vocabulary -- legend has it that early Rolling Stones shows featured the band simply playing the "Bo Diddley Beat" for the entire night to a roomful of ecstatic kids.

by Chuck Eddy

Ross Johnson, unbeknownst to me before this year, is a Memphis underground legend (he’s worked with everyone from Jon Spencer to Peter Buck, Alex Chilton to Tav Falco) and also a musical laugh riot - at least if you think shuffling up drunken standup routines with crazed '60s soul-garage-punk and rockabilly is a smart mix, which you damn well better. Make It Stop! The Most of Ross Johnson is easily one of the best new albums I’ve heard in 2008.

by Chuck Eddy

Word is that Akon - already an unclassifiable man of many genres and vices and wives -- says he’s about to make a country move. He claims it will make him the first black person ever to score on the country charts. This is a gross misconception, as others have already pointed out, but it does give me an excellent excuse to recommend some notable country music by African Americans, starting with the late, great Big Al Downing.

by Chuck Eddy 

The blues and punk have been swapping spit and other infected bodily fluids since the glory days of Killdozer, if not the Gun Club, if not Motor Boys Motor, if not the Animals, if not John Lee Hooker. And more power to bands like the White Stripes to Black Keys if they can make money off the age-old miscegenation this late in the game. Something else those two acts have in common (besides the color-names and two-people stuff I mean) is that they both come from the Midwest. And they’re not alone there.

by Chris Ryan

According to the very on-top-of-their-game folks at LatinoReview.com, Adrien Brody and Jeffery Wright are being lined up to star in Cadillac Records, a chronicle of Chess Records and the Chicago blues scene of the 1950s.

As the blues starts becoming more and more of a specialty item, it was great to see that the music was still being filtered through to the mainstream in various forms. Superior blues tracks could be heard on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' priceless Raising Sand collaboration. And while John Mayer has become a star with softly rocking material, in concert he dazzles with some serious blues-guitar chops. But if you want to cut out the pop fat and head straight to the lean blues treasure trove, just listen to selections from Rhapsody's list of the Top 15 Blues Albums of 2007 here. Then, read on to discover more about the top 10 blues albums of 2007 in more detail.

Here's the Associated Press headline I saw about Ike Turner's passing: Rock, blues and soul pioneer, and the abusive ex-husband of Tina Turner, was 76.

Ouch. Imagine having that on your tombstone.

I don't think the world is going to go into mourning that Ike Turner has passed on. It's probably not going to make anybody popular to remember Ike Turner with fondness. But let's do it anyway.