Arhoolie has also issued a couple of noteworthy releases from its vaults. Downhome Urban Blues Classics (Arhoolie 102; 54:24) features classic early performances by the likes of Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Mama Thornton, Big Joe Duskin, Earl Hooker, Joe Turner & Pete Johnson, Katie Webster, Charlie Musselwhite and others. An interesting item here for guitar fiends is one track by the Charles Ford Band featuring a youthful Robben Ford ripping it up in a 12-bar context. Downhome Country Blues Classics (Arhoolie 101; 47:39) covers classic performances by Delta legends like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Bukka White and R. L. Burnside. Both of these discs could be offered as the curriculum in a college course entitled: “Blues 101.”
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