For The Best Video Links In The Blues Follow Us On Twitter!

Follow @BluesRevue

 Ten Not-Necessarily-Best CDs

For People Who Can’t Count

By Don Wilcock

I hate preparing end of the year ten-best lists. They force the journalist inside a box that looks back when I’m almost all the time wanting to see what’s around the next bend. So you will notice this list contains more than ten picks, and it doesn’t include the usual cast of characters like Charlie Musselwhite, Buddy Guy, The Holmes Brothers, Otis Taylor, Janiva Magness, and other perennials who all put out great albums this year. Rather this exercise was a chance for me to sit down in a relatively quiet time between Christmas and New Year’s and listen to some stuff that plainly gets me off.

Bettye LeVette Interpretations:The British Songbook (Anti)

Marianne Faithful, eat your heart out. LaVette’s soul scats make your scarred, crack-head deliveries of Rolling Stone classics come off as ingénue entreaties by comparison. Yes, most of these songs are covers of British invasion classics, but even her “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which was written for Nina Simone before The Animals got a hold of it, compares favorably to both earlier versions. This American soul singer has returned the volley forty-five years later and once again proves she’s the most underrated veteran in the business.

Anders Osborne American Patchwork (Alligator)

This is the premiere example of several CDs put out by Alligator Records this year that fundamentally demonstrate that Bruce Iglauer doesn’t deserve the brickbats he gets for making all Alligator releases sound the same. Psychotically sound, American Patchwork is as physical and heavy as Metallica but with spaces to breathe and a promise of redemption. Emotionally, Osborne plumbs the same depths as early Van Morrison, Leon Russell, and Bob Marley.

J.J. Grey & Mofro Georgia Warhorse (Alligator)

This is the other example that disproves the Alligator criticism. If Willie Dixon slept under a hollow log, J.J. Grey was born in the mouth of an alligator. He’s got the jungle fever and isn’t at all sure what his songs mean, but you just know he didn’t learn his art sitting in Daddy’s rec. room listening to the Allman Brothers, even if Derek Trucks does guest on this CD.

The Black Keys Brothers (Nonesuch)

They are as much reflective of John Lennon under Yoko Ono’s influence and the Stones’ Exile on Main Street as they are R. L. Burnside’s Mississippi hill country drone. What’s most fun about them is that the studio effects sculpt their instruments into an otherworldly mantra that’s akin to discovering primitive aborigines from Uranus.

R. J. Mischo Knowledge You Can’t Get in College (Greaseland Records)

He sums up his own CD when he sings, “I got a two dollar shine on a fifty cent soul” in “Two Hours from Tulsa.” This is bump and grind blues with a very upbeat rock attitude thanks in part to guitarists Kid Andersen and Rusty Zinn. Mischo plays a sweet and versatile harp that makes me wonder why I haven’t heard him before, especially since this is his tenth album.

Chris O’Leary Band Mr. Used to Be (VizzTone)

This 2011 BMA-nominated artist (“New Artist Debut”) may just be getting around to releasing his first album, but this alumnus of Levon Helm’s Barnburners and the late Bill Perry’s band is a veteran of New York’s Hudson Valley scene. His vocals sound like a young Charlie Musselwhite, and the songs have everything you love about Levon Helm: a slow-cooked, smoky retro feel that grooves.

Studebaker John’s Maxwell Street Kings That’s The Way You Do (Delmark)

Fifty-seven years after he began producing albums for his own label and forty-three years after he beat Leonard Chess at his own game of translating guttural ghetto grit into vinyl masterpieces like Magic Sam’s West Side Soul and Junior Wells’ Hoodoo Man Blues, producer and label owner Bob Koester remains unique in his ability propel that mystical magic of live under-the-trolley-tracks ambiance into a recording. Studebaker John has produced many albums for many labels, but this is the spit. He takes us back to Maxwell Street and takes no prisoners.

Nick Moss Privileged (Blue Bella)

After several albums that stuck close to classic electric Chicago blues, reflecting his collaborations with such seminal figures as Jimmy Rogers, Jimmy Dawkins, and Laurie Bell, Moss decided to let his teenaged influences marinate with his blues. Thousands of rock artists layer blues on rock, but few have brazenly started with a Muddy Waters mentality and then looked back at Paul Kossoff of Free, ZZ Top, and Led Zeppelin for a cheap thrill that works on so many levels.

John Nemeth Name The Day (Blind Pig)

He dresses like Frank Sinatra and understands the dynamics of the microphone like old Blue Eyes, but this guy is from Idaho, writes all his own music, and sings in a three-octave range making him the hottest soul/blues crooner on the blues circuit.

Cee Cee James Seriously Raw…Live at Sunbanks (Blue Skunk)

She didn’t even place at this year’s International Blues Challenge in Memphis, but she should have won. For most artists having a voice and inflections like Janis Joplin would be a great advantage. For James, it’s almost an obstacle because it takes the attention away from her originals that have as much pathos from real-life experiences as Joplin had.

Paul Thorn Pimps and Preachers (Perpetual Obscurity)

Thorn is one of the best musical storytellers since Johnny Cash and just as gritty. He held a crowd of 30,000 who were waiting to see B.B. King at the King Biscuit Blues Festival in rapt attention with his excellent Americana band and his slightly off humor and right-on candor.

Shakura S’Aida Brown Sugar (Ruf)

I saw this Canadian singer-songwriter get a standing ovation for a Sunday morning sound check in the rain in Maine at the North Atlantic Blues Festival. She speaks several languages and her eclectic blues underlines her type A personality with razor-sharp guitarist Donna Grantis as her secret weapon.

Mulebone New Morning (Red Tug)

Guitarist/singer/songwriter Hugh Pool, with former New York Capital Region wind instrument player John Ragusa, takes old blues and folk music into space as well as anyone since Led Zeppelin covered Sonny Boy Williamson. Pool does three Rev. Gary Davis songs fairly straight acoustic, but he takes Howlin’ Wolf’s “How Many More Years” into space and contributes five originals that show his experience running the tony Excello Recording Studios in Williamsburg, New York, has provided him some impressive tricks.

Foghat Last Train Home (Foghat)

My guilty pleasure pick. Conventional wisdom says that Foghat gave up what little blues cache they had when guitarist Dave Peverett died decades ago. And the idea that Eddie Kirkland sat in with them after getting up early to change the brake shoes and alternator on his car before playing with them doesn’t necessarily give them a laminate to the BMAs. Yup, this has all the excesses and bombast that piss off blues purists. Maybe that’s why I like it.

Eddie Turner Miracles and Demons (NorthernBlues)

Both guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Turner and pianist/bass player and co-producer Kenny Passarelli played significant roles in the first Otis Taylor solo albums. While Taylor has gone in a more primal direction, these guys push the spacey envelope in the same way Roxy Music did three decades ago with British rock. Before you say it isn’t blues, just remember the definition of the genre is constantly expanding.

Don Wilcock is editor in chief of BluesWax. He’s out of the office right now, but he might just answer your comment below.