Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » JJ Grey & Mofro: Country Ghetto

288

JJ Grey & Mofro: Country Ghetto

JJ Grey & Mofro: Country Ghetto
It's rather promising for a band's debut to remind you of the Faces on the fast numbers and of Otis Redding on the slow ones, but these legends provide solid points of reference for JJ Grey & Mofro's Country Ghetto.

Country Ghetto is swampy, funky, bluesy, and above all genuine, straight from JJ Grey's backwoods home in the swamps outside Jacksonville, Florida. Grey composed and arranged every tune, sings lead, and plays keyboards as well as acoustic, electric and twelve-string guitars. Daryl Hance on guitar and slide guitar, Adam Scone on organ and keyboard bass, and George Sluppick on drums help Grey cook, stir, and boil up this scalding pot of country boogie as MOFRO, named in honor of a lumber company for whom Grey once worked.

Here's where Grey comes from: "I was brought up to earn it and not waste it, to respect and protect womanhood and promote manhood, and to be thankful for what you got. By today's standard, we ourselves and most of the folks we knew, lived below the so-called 'poverty line.' We were land and culture rich and dollar poor but I wouldn't trade my upbringing for any other," Grey reflects in the liner notes. "My culture, my life, my love is here in this country ghetto."

Country Ghetto's title track thumps up from under that poverty line to chase the ghost of Tony Joe White's classic "Polk Salad Annie," slide guitar and harmonica howling in the background like an approaching twister. Grey's vocal in the deliberate two-step stomp "Tragic" is gnarled and strong and deep, like the roots of a hundreds-year-old cypress tree. "Mississippi" pulls in the sound of southern Stax Records soul, with its organ groove and horn blasts shining like Booker T. & The MGs and the Memphis Horns, and the dual guitars channeling the legendary Steve Cropper. "Good things are going on, here in Mississippi," indeed.

"Circles" is a slow-burning blues about how what comes around goes around, though not always in the way that you might think. Grey delivers lines like, "Please forgive me for what some other man did to you before I came along," with resignation and power that sounds authentically full of hurt.

Finally, "Footsteps" busting into "Turpentine" is not only the best thing on this record, which is really saying something, it's probably the best combined five minutes of southern rock boogie that I've heard since...well, probably ever. Drums slam out its fat 4/4 beat straight and true as organ and harmonica howl and moan and slide guitar screams out the electric agony and ecstasy, the rough-hewn and sweating-booze sound, of the blues.

Put it all together, and it's how Creedence Clearwater Revival might have sounded had they come along after grunge instead of before: Hand-stitched, unpretentious, honest blues. It's as simple—and simply awesome—as the beauty in Grey's opening lines to "Mississippi": "Well, I dearly love my home/But it's never looked so good to me/Blue skies and dragon flies/Muddy creek, Lord, set me free..."

Track Listing

War; Circles; Country Ghetto; Tragic; By My Side; On Palestine; Footsteps; Turpentine; A Woman; Mississippi; The Sun is Shining Down; Goodbye.

Personnel

JJ Grey & Mofro
band / ensemble / orchestra

JJ Grey: vocals, keyboards, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, twelve-string guitar, harmonica, bass; Daryl Hance: guitar, slide guitar; Adam Scone: organ, organ bass; George Sluppick: drums; Ian Hendrickson-Smith: baritone and tenor saxophone; Cochemea Gastleum: tenor saxophone; Dave Guy: trumpet; Batya MacAdam-Somer: violin; David Medine: violin; Hayley Neher: viola; Jessie Marino: cello; Liza Oxnard: background vocals; Hazel Miller: background vocals; Linda Lewellyn Harley: background vocals; Shirley Higginbotham: background vocals; Elena Higginbotham: background vocals.

Album information

Title: Country Ghetto | Year Released: 2007 | Record Label: Alligator Records

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.