Ageless wonder Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater is still bristling with robust energy, as he demonstrates with typical authority on Reservation Blues. Produced by Duke Robillard, the Chief’s latest ranges from protorockers, like Dale Hawkins’ classic “Susie Q,” Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Rock and Roller” and his own signature number “I Wouldn’t Lay My Guitar Down,” to down-home bluesy originals, like “Easy Baby,” “Running Along,” “Find Yourself,” which features a fine guest appearance by harmonica ace Carey Bell, and the mournful title track. The Chief spars playfully with Robillard on the laid-back instrumental “Blues Cruise” and he takes an optimistic outlook in the face of adversity on “Everything to Gain.” Another solid and soulful offering (polished to a sheen by Robillard) from the blues vet.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading

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

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