Grady Champion makes a strong debut with Payin’ for My Sins. The rough-voiced singer and commanding blues harpist belts with gritty authority and gospel intensity on this set of originals produced by Dennis Walker. Champion roars with raw abandon on the in-your-face opener “I’m Smiling Again” and the raucous “My Rooster Is King.” He also demonstrates a silky, soulful side on Stax-ish ballads like “You’ve Got Some Explaining to Do” and “Good As New.” He updates the traditional blues “Goin’ Down Slow” with a modern day vignette of life in the fast lane, summoning up the oratory powers of a Baptist preacher addressing the flock. Co-producer Alan Mirikitani adds some sizzling guitar licks throughout. An auspicious debut by the new blues kid on the block.
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.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro