The daughter of the late bluesman Johnny Copeland steps up to the plate with this, her debut album for the Alligator imprint. Although only 19 at the time of this recording, Copeland comes to this album with a mature style and vast amounts of assuredness. While comparisons to Koko Taylor and Etta James will be plentiful, Shemekia has enough tricks up her sleeve to make this a disc well worth checking out. Eight of the 14 tunes aboard are co-written by producer John Hahn and strong musical support is summoned up from guitarist Jimmy Vivino, with guest turns from Joe Louis Walker and "Monster" Mike Welch, while the Uptown Horns show up on three tunes, including the title track. Highlights are numerous on this disc, but special attention should be paid to Copeland's "Ghetto Child," a nice cover of Don Covay's "Have Mercy"; Walker's "Your Mama's Talking"; and the strutting "I Always Get My Man." This is one very impressive debut.

UK two CD set featuring 41 tracks from such artists as Queen, Rainbow, Deep Purple, Status Quo, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Joe Walsh, The Allman Brothers Band, Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore, Santana and many others.
This is a brilliant, eclectic mix of guitar based songs. OK they are not all legends and OK there are some standards not included but that is the beauty of it. Don't read the track list and just play it and you will be continually suprised and delighted at what you hear. Robert Cray followed by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates. Howlin' Wolf followed by Steppenwolf, Bonnie Raitt by Mayall.

With 1986's Strong Persuader, guitarist and vocalist Robert Cray stepped to the front of the line as a smooth and intelligent practitioner of the blues genre. Strong Persuader almost worked as well as a greatest hits set, with the brilliant Willie Mitchell-influenced "I Guess I Showed Her" being best of a perfect ten. With that standard being set, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is marred by it's lack of potent material and a tired-sounding band and Cray. The title is a steamy track punctuated by the Memphis Horns. The edgy and methodical "Don't You Even Care" finds Cray again on the losing end of a relationship. Although the relationship blues are stinging here, this album's best effort strays far from the formula. The oddly humorous "Night Patrol" has Cray playing armchair therapist wondering what went wrong with a drunk, and a 17-year-old girl on the corner…

Jimmy Dawkins is the lead singer and blues guitar extraordinaire on 5 of these 10 blues songs recorded in Reykjavik, Iceland! The 10 songs were chosen from 3 performances recorded April 18-20 1991 with all songs including backup band of Icelandic blues musicians that includes an 18 year old prodigy named Gudmunder Petursson.
All three guitarists ("Blue Ice" Bragason the other) get a chance to solo and shine as does Chicago Beau who is lead singer on 4 songs while adding harmonica, also! Chicago Beau is very good!
There is good version of Tin Pan Alley (Steve Ray Vaughn version probably better…), a Sonny Boy Williamson tune, and an 8 minute blues version of Willie Nelson’s Nightlife. Two songs (Welfare Line; Feel So Bad) Dawkins performed previously on his own Blisterstring album with his early Delmark label (Chicago)…

Out May 3, ‘Funeral For Justice’ is the new album by Mdou Moctar. Recorded at the close of two years spent touring the globe following the release of 2021 breakout ‘Afrique Victime,’ it captures the Nigerien quartet in ferocious form. The music is louder, faster, and more wild. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political. Nothing is held back or toned down.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and his band Double Trouble formed the most impressive blues act of the 1980s, which made Vaughan's death in a helicopter crash at the start of the '90s all the more tragic. He grew up in Dallas, the younger brother of Jimmie Vaughan (cofounder of the Fabulous Thunderbirds). Stevie began playing in clubs at 12, and by 17 had dropped out of high school and moved to Austin. There followed years of struggling until April 23, 1982, when Vaughan and his group, Double Trouble, played a private audition for the Rolling Stones in New York. The gig led to an invitation to appear at the Montreux Jazz Festival, at which Vaughan was seen by David Bowie, who hired him to play guitar on his Let's Dance album, and Jackson Browne, who offered the free use of his recording studio. Vaughan took up that offer after being signed by legendary talent scout John Hammond to Epic, recording his debut album, Texas Flood, in the fall of 1982. ..

On Real Gone, Tom Waits walks a fraying tightrope. By utterly eliminating one of the cornerstone elements of his sound - keyboards - he has also removed his safety net. With songwriting and production partner Kathleen Brennan, he strips away almost everything conventional from these songs, taking them down to the essences of skeletal rhythms, blasted and guttural blues, razor-cut rural folk music, and the rusty-edge poetry and craft of songwriting itself. His cast includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Harry Cody, bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, bassist Les Claypool, and percussionists Brain and Casey Waits (Tom's son), the latter of whom also doubles on turntables. This does present problems, such as on the confrontational opener, "Top of the Hill." Waits uses his growling, grunting vocal atop Ribot's monotonously funky single-line riff and Casey's turntables to become a human beatbox offering ridiculously nonsensical lyrics…

Much can be said about the late Amy Winehouse, one of the U.K.'s flagship vocalists during the 2000s. The British press and tabloids seemed to focus on her rowdy behavior, heavy consumption of alcohol, and tragic end, but fans and critics alike embraced her rugged charm, brash sense of humor, and distinctively soulful and jazzy vocals. Her platinum-selling breakthrough album, Frank (2003), elicited comparisons ranging from Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan to Macy Gray and Lauryn Hill. Interestingly enough, despite her strong accent and vernacular, one can often hear aspects of each of those singers' vocal repertoires in Winehouse's own voice. Nonetheless, her allure had always been her songwriting – almost always deeply personal but best known for its profanity and brutal candor.

During the last quarter of the 20th century, and thanks largely to Eric Clapton's remarkable devotion to his memory, Robert Leroy Johnson posthumously became the most celebrated Delta blues musician of the pre-WWII era. Among numerous editions of his complete works and various anthologies that combine his recordings with those of his contemporaries and followers, J.S.P.'s The Road to Robert Johnson and Beyond combines many of his essential performances with those by dozens of other blues artists from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Henry Thomas to Muddy Waters and Elmore James. 105 tracks fill four CDs with several decades' worth of strongly steeped blues that trace the African American migration from the deep south on up into Chicago. This is a fine way to savor the recorded evidence, as primary examples from Blind Blake, Charley Patton, Son House, Charlie McCoy, Walter Vincson, Skip James, Ma Rainey, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold, Scrapper Blackwell, Leroy Carr, Lonnie Johnson, and Peetie Wheatstraw lead directly to early modern masters like Big Joe Williams, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Johnny Temple, Leroy Foster, Johnny Shines, Homesick James Williamson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Snooky Pryor, Little Walter, and David Honeyboy Edwards, among many others.