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John Mayall (selected by): Picking the Blues: Pioneers of Boogie Woogie
by Robert R. Calder
Veteran English blues performer John Mayall's “reminiscences" here aren't “of great blues figures" but of encounters, often via recordings, of the very best barrelhouse, blues and boogie woogie piano music. Barrelhouse piano combined various different proportions of blues, ragtime and dance rhythms in the hands of technically unorthodox players. Jelly Roll Morton spoke of “specialists --each with a tiny repertoire nobody else could play. Bang on! Cow Cow Davenport also recorded ragtime, but “Cow ...
read moreVarious Artists: Jazz and Blues on Edison, Volume 1
by Robert R. Calder
In some part a sampling of 1920s American popular music--sublime, quaint, occasionally ridiculous, livelier than mass market roaring Twenties pastiches--this set of unissued recordings from a quality label abandoned seventy years back includes one big footnote to jazz scholarship. That footnote's not in the stock 1920 (Vincent) Lopez performance of ragtime with military band echoes, or Genevieve Jordan's title. Ledgers say she was signed as a “negress," presumably to sing the newly fashionable blues. They'd seen her, but she sings ...
read moreLil' Son Jackson: Rockin' and Rollin' (Volume 1; 1948-49)
by Robert R. Calder
Instant nostalgia for veteran blues fans: the opening track here, “Roberta," the first ever recording by Melvin “Lil' Son" Jackson, came out on a pioneering anthology of mostly pre-war blues some forty years back. Few blues records, new or otherwise, had then been available very far from the blues' native home and birthplace. Almost exactly two years older than John Lee Hooker, Jackson seems to have been induced to do a Hooker cover on his second, 1949 ...
read moreVarious Artists: Vocal Blues & Jazz Volume Four 1938-1949
by Jim Sangrey
The 1940s were a pivotal decade for jazz. As they began, jazz was very much a popular music, with even the increasingly advanced work of Duke Ellington & Coleman Hawkins meeting with great popular approval. By 1949, the music had clearly been divided into “populist” and “art” camps. There was much audience crossover between the two, but it would prove to be a divide that would gradually widen over time, and the crossovers, for the most part, ended up on ...
read moreVarious Blues Artists: Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey
by Glenn Astarita
You have to hand it to the former bassist of the “The Rolling Stones” for immersing himself into this comprehensive and meticulously annotated project that started with a 400-page book and two-hour film documentary. Bill Wyman’s Blues Odyssey is about those who furthered early American roots music. This production features a 24-page booklet filled with photographs and Wyman’s often-insightful observations and mini-bios on a per artist basis. Needless to state, Wyman’s offering serves as an admirable payback to a genre ...
read moreSammy Price: Sammy Price and the Blues Singers: Vol. 1 (1938-1941), Vol. 2 1939-1949
by Dave Nathan
Sammy Price, who was active well into his 80's, worked both as a blues and jazz pianist, with special talents in the former genre and quite handy in the latter. This 2-CD set captures Price accompanying a variety of blues singers in his role of house pianist for Decca Records. Some singers here were better than others. One of the better was Bea Foote, who sported that strong vibrato which characterized many female blues singers of the period. Foote had ...
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