A truly unique individual with a sound all his own, Freddie Roulette breaks out his eight-string lap steel to wacky effect on Back In Chicago (Hi Horse 4044; 52:07). Backed by Chicago bar band veterans Willie Kent & The Gents, the ex-Chicagoan (and longtime resident of California) pushes the envelope on the blues with some dizzying technique and insanely inspired improvisations. He talks through his instrument on “Need Your Lovin'” while his work on the funky title track is purely hallucinatory. Imagine attending a Hawaiian luau on the South Side of Chicago…on acid. He puts his own original slant on Howlin’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor,” B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” and the Albert King signatures, “Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven” and “Laundrymat Blues.” His take on “Sleepwalk” is far more imaginative (and mind-warping) than Musselwhite’s version, and he kicks in a faithful (though slightly twisted) rendition of “Soul Serenade” to boot. It is safe to say that Freddie Roulette has no peers. No one on the planet-not even pedal and lap steelmeisters Hop Wilson or Sonny Rhodes-plays quite like this. Freddie really belongs in the hallowed ranks of such oddball geniuses as Skip James, Joseph Spence and Bongo Joe. For something truly and incredibly different, grab this CD.
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