Jazz Articles about Marcia Ball

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Various artists: Alligator Records: 50 Years of Genuine Houserockin’ Music

by Jim Trageser
June 18, 2021

Maybe this half-century commemoration of the Chicago-based, blues-focused label should have been titled, “The Last of the Independents." Almost alone of the mid-major labels that formerly thrived in the 1980s and '90s by specializing in non-mainstream styles of music, Alligator has managed to navigate stunning changes in the music business--from the vinyl of LPs and 45s to cassettes and CDs, and then, most recently, the virtual collapse of the retail record business and wholesale pivot to online digital ...

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Marcia Ball: Still excited about the music

by Jim Trageser
September 5, 2015

Looking back some 15 years, blues singer and pianist Marcia Ball says the old San Diego Street Scene was one of her favorite gigs on her calendar each year. Modeled after New Orleans' Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Street Scene featured jazz, blues, R&B, Cajun, Creole, zydeco, bluegrass, folk and worldbeat in a three-day stew of music and food. “I loved playing on that stage with all my friends," she remembered in a phone interview from her home ...

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Marcia Ball: Live! Down the Road

by Chris M. Slawecki
August 17, 2005

Marcia Ball showcases one great slow-rolling blues here: “Louisiana 1927, Randy Newman's dust bowl tale about a historic flood, into which she wholeheartedly dives and immerses herself. In perhaps her best singing of this entire set, she recoils from its last line as if in horror from nature's awesome devastation of person and property.

But throughout the rest of this set, this composer, pianist, and singer--and current owner of the W.C. Handy Awards for Contemporary Blues Female Artist ...