Monday 14 March 2011

STAR BLUES on 13th March 2011 at 22:00

Other than a senior moment regarding Otis Rush's work for Duke (vs his earlier classics on Cobra), last night's STAR BLUES had the usual mix of new releases, white upper-body garments, mayhem, tomfoolery,gospel,piano and a couple of links.

Marcia Ball is a consummate pianist, singer-songwriter who always surrounds herself with the finest musicians. Her new album has been eagerly anticipated and its been well worth the wait. I'm pretty sure our play of her "Sugar Boogie" was a UK exclusive? There's also a 3-cd set looking at the Singles output from Ted Jarrett's Champion label. The survey has been put together by Fred James who does more for Nashville music that anyone I know. The hard part was not devoting the whole show to the cd set, just settled for Don Q, The Fairfield Four (a lovely gospel vocal performance).

Carl Sonny Leyland is a Brit who now lives in New Orleans, he brought a tribute to Albert Ammons for some more boogie in the piano blues spot - the perfect fit to Ms. Ball's outing. Both Bo Diddley and Robert Cray were in the Jools Holland segment of the BBC4 British blues night on Friday - both deserving of a place in yesterday's STAR BLUES. Marshall Lawrence earned his with a good review in the new issue of Living Blues magazine (there are others). The mag also has a tasty feature on Bobby Bland's work for Malaco and I was surprised to learn how rarely he's been interviewed (strange given his stature in the worlds of blues, soul and crossover to the mainstream (viz: Hucknall and Van Morrison)).

The top end link was Jeff Healey's version of "Hideaway" and as he was in the film Roadhouse we went to its soundtrack for the closing link: Mustang Sally by Wilson Pickett. Find out the next link on Sunday at 10pm (GMT) until then take care of yourselves and take care of those that take care of you

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