Sensitive and enigmatic singer-songwriter Bill Morrisey explores the gentle side of a Delta icon on Songs of Mississippi John Hurt (Philo/Rounder 11671-1216-2: 45:53). Recorded in New Orleans with some of the Crescent City’s finest, including drummer Johnny Vidacovich, bassist James Singleton, pianist David Torkanowsky, and trumpeter Jamil Sharif, these highly personal interpretations are surprisingly affecting. Highlights include a real N’awlins flavored groove on “Big Leg Blues,” a poignant take on “Avalon Blues,” as well as bouncy versions of “First Shot Missed Him,” “I’m Satisfied,” and “Coffee Blues.” Along with being an idiosyncratic vocalist, Morrisey is also a serious guitar picker. He attributes his mean right hand technique to the subject of this tribute.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
Nate Chinen makes the argument that Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time