We get a lot of blues CDs here at Green Man Review. We get singer-songwriters, and British folk, and singer-songwriters, a bunch of Americana, and some singer-songwriters, roots music, but we also get a lot of blues. Blues is a tough one to review. It’s not about the lyrics usually, or the gentle touch of fingertips on harp strings. You can’t wax poetic about the po’ man feelin’ low, because…essentially, that’s what the blues does for you. It waxes on in repetitive blank verse about feelin’ low, and what y’all can do about it. And the answer for it all is to … dig some blues. Now, to be fair, the blues has expanded in recent years and new young blues men and women are moving beyond the 12-bar structure, adding minor chords and diminisheds to the standard three chord framework, and producing stuff that Muddy and Wolf never thought about. But it’s still all about how it makes you feel. Does it touch you? Does it reach inside and grab you? Does it move your feet?
Northern Blues is one of GMR’s favourite labels, and samplers like this one will show you why!
Aptly titled The Future of the Blues this CD contains 15 tracks featuring 13 of Northern Blues’s array of artists. We’ve covered most of them before, and some of the tracks presented here come from those earlier releases. But there’s new material here too, previewing upcoming albums, and even an audio track from a soon-to-be-released DVD. This is the way samplers should be made! If Free Reed showed the world how to make a box set, then Northern Blues has the market cornered for samplers!
The album begins with Watermelon Slim’s “Blues For Howard” from his recent No Paid Holidays CD. I saw Slim live in a sweaty club, and the guy can flat out play. Master of the slide guitar and harmonica and with a voice like Howlin’ Wolf himself, he’s the real thing! The Homemade Jamz Blues Band is a family band of youngsters who have learned their lesson at a young age. The big brother is only 16! “Penny Waiting On Change” is a fine example of what they do. From there it moves to Doug Cox and Salil Bhatt covering Earl King’s “Make a Better World”. This is the title track from an album that won’t be released til next year, and this combination of Indian music with N’Orleans funk should whet your appetite for more.
I didn’t rave about Arbuckle & Moreland when I reviewed their self-titled CD (although I did say they rocked “like a melon farmer”) but it was because I was comparing them with Samuel James, and he offered up the most amazing blues album of the year. As if Robert Johnson wrote a novel! I guess I was successful reviewing Sam’s CD since he wrote to thank me for listening! “I just had to tell you that you are the first reviewer that I have read who really got what I was trying to do with this album. I’m glad that you listened.” You’ll get it too, if you just give a listen to “Baby Doll.”
Watermelon Slim appears with two more tracks. One is a preview of a forthcoming live DVD “Dumpster Blues” and the other “Blue Freightliner” an unreleased track from recent sessions. Great to have! Then there’s Carlos del Junco’s “Diddle It” one of the best cuts from his Steady Movin’ and Eddie Turner’s “Mr. Blues” the title song from his not-yet-released album Miracles & Demons. JW-Jones “Tickets on Yourself” from Bluelisted; The Twisters “Going, Goin’, Gone” from an album coming in 2009; “Chesterfield County Jail” by Mason Casey ; and more. Fifteen tracks, not a dud in ’em all.
The only problem with a sampler this good is, it makes you yearn for more. Pick this one up (at a special discounted price) and you’ll soon be back scouring the blues racks for individual albums by most of these artists.
(Northern Blues, 2008)
