Eric Bibb: Riding high with Ridin’
RIDIN’, Eric Bibb (Stony Plain Records)– In addition to traveling the globe, Eric Bibb has done a lot of riding, metaphorically and metaphysically, in his life and times. Growing up the son of acclaimed folk artist-activist Leon Bibb, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma and whose Greenwich Village domicile was a gathering place for the reigning folk and blues legends and soon-to-be legends, Bibb was immersed in the issues of his youth, most especially those relating to the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. When he set out on his own singer-songwriter career, he embraced a duty to speak for the displaced, the disappeared and the downtrodden. His has been one of the most eloquent voices for those whose voices are too seldom heard. In Ridin’, he speaks louder than ever for those ever-striving souls, past and present. Read the full review, “Right Now, Right Here, Indispensable,” in Deep Roots.
‘People You Love,’ Eric Bobb, from Ridin’
ECHOES OF THE SOUTH, Blind Boys of Alabama (Single Lock Records)– From a live housewrecker such as the scalding album opening plea for divine guidance, a live version of “Send It On Down,” to the deep southern soul groove and earnest testifying closing the album on a thoughtful note in Stevie Wonder’s 1970 hit “Heaven Help Us All,” the Blind Boys of Alabama are fully and powerfully present in sending messages of hope, resilience, faith and love on Echoes of the South, the group’s first new album in six years and, amazingly, its first album recorded completely in Alabama. Titled after the Birmingham, AL, radio show on which the group (then known as the Happy Land Jubilee Singers and inspired by the Golden Gate Quartet) launched its legendary career some 80 years ago, the veteran lineup on this album has since undergone yet another transition, as 91-year-old Jimmy Carter (an eloquent spokesman always) retired from performing and longtime members Paul Beasley and Benjamin Moore have since passed away. So this final testimony from one of the longest serving Blind Boys lineup carries even heavier weight with the loss of three beloved members. No matter their infirmities, this configuration of Blind Boys delivered a seamless fusion of disparate styles into a southern gospel whole that moves the body and surely as it uplifts the soul. Read the full review, “In Heavy Rotation: Gospel, Soul Blues and Blazing Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in Deep Roots.
‘Friendship,’ written by Pops Staples, Blind Boys of Alabama, from Echoes of the South
UBUNTU, Jonathan Butler (Mack Avenue Music Group/Artistry Music)– In Zulu philosophy, the word Ubuntu means showing humanity to your brother. Around this idea Jonathan Butler has conceived a powerful collection of tunes speaking to his South African experience—now 61, he began performing as a seven-year-old wunderkind in Cape Town–and to the Zulu ideal alike. With Keb’ Mo’ on “When Love Comes In,” his plaintive tenor and Keb’’s gritty baritone, with sumptuous choral group backing, sing of a world where “love will lead the way” in a tune that is both folk and gospel rooted in its sentiments and rhythms. A quiet ballad, “Our Voices Matter,” finds Butler’s gently picked acoustic guitar and close-miked vocal underscoring a message urging collective dignity born of spiritual introspection. Amid the burbling percussion and triumphant horns of “Rainbow Nation,” he celebrates those who join hands in solidarity as “all of us affirmation, fountains of fire, holy survivors.” Old friend Stevie Wonder shows up on chromatic harp on Butler’s baroque cover of the second half of Stevie’s two-part 1972 lament for lost love, “Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You),” a lovely, haunting track not necessarily in keeping with Ubuntu’s animating conceit but no less compelling on an album that is compelling in the extreme. David McGee. Jonathan Butler’s Ubuntu was gospel editor Bob Marovich’s top pick in the June 2023 issue of Deep Roots.
‘When Love Comes In,’ Jonathan Butler, with Keb’ Mo, from Ubuntu
LOVIN’ OF THE GAME, Michael Cleveland (Compass Records)– The entire world is learning what the bluegrass community has always known: Michael Cleveland is a once-in-a-lifetime talent. Cleveland has long enjoyed critical acclaim inside the bluegrass circles he grew up in–he is a 10-time winner of the IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year Award–but, given this genre’s inward-facing bent, his fiery, impassioned playing has most often reached listeners and fans who are already diehard acolytes.
Now, with his sixth studio release, Lovin’ Of The Game, Cleveland’s star is objectively rising. Recent collaborations with stratospherically famous pickers like Béla Fleck and Billy Strings–both of whom appear on the new project–along with several jaw-dropping viral videos have demonstrated to the world beyond bluegrass conferences and festivals that Cleveland is worth paying attention to.
‘The Lovin’ of the Game,’ Michael Cleveland, featuring Flamekeeper, from Lovin’ of the Game
And it’s all thanks to his truly unique voice on his instrument. The American public, and roots music fans across the globe, understand rip-roaring fiddle just as well as they relate to a speedy banjo breakdown or a screaming, arena rock guitar solo. With every note Cleveland pulls from his fiddle, there’s a grit, an ease, endless emotion, and a winking sparkle that all at once conjure the aggression of Charlie Daniels and the tenderness of “Ashokan Farewell.” It’s infinitely appealing, even to uninitiated fans, and it’s a delectable gateway drug, a window into a vibrant instrumental tradition that most folks only interact with casually. Follow this link to a revealing review/interview with Michael Cleveland by Justin Hiltner in The Bluegrass Situation.
A LIFE WELL LIVED, Daryl Mosley (Pinecastle Records)– It wasn’t so long ago that we last heard from Daryl Mosley: prior to the July release of A Life Well Lived, Daryl had graced the 2022 holiday season with a wonderful new Yuletide tune, “An Old-Fashioned Christmas,” selected as a 2022 Christmas Stocking Stuffer in Deep Roots. Much like that song, and very much like the turf he explored so vividly in his acclaimed 2021 album, Small Town Dreamer, Mosley’s A Life Well Lived is rooted in traditional family values and small town culture that honors hard work but also cherishes a life balance promoting good health in mind and body. In celebrating that world, Small Town Dreamer and “An Old-Fashioned Christmas” anticipate the tender-hearted meditations and reflections Mosley offers on A Life Well Lived. You might say he’s a dreamer, but he’s not the only one: what a breath of fresh air after the tumult attending the release of Jason Aldean’s reactionary, hostile—and formulaic—“Try That in a Small Town.” Well, try out Daryl Mosley’s small town, a musical Grover’s Corners, the fictional town of Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town, with Mosley as the Stage Manager introducing the local populace in each new installment, this one comprising 11 intimate, homegrown portraits drawn from daily life, love and marriage, hopes and dreams. Read the full review, “Turn the Volume Down on Living,” in Deep Roots.
‘A Life Well Lived,’ Daryl Mosley, title track from his new album. Danny Roberts on mandolin; Tony Wray on guitar and banjo; Adam Haynes on fiddle; Jaelee Roberts, Sarah Davidson, Jeanette Williams and Riley Dotson on harmony vocals.
WALKING HEART ATTACK, Johnny Rawls (Catfood Records)– As, arguably, the preeminent practitioner of soul blues, Johnny Rawls offers a short course in how it’s done right, with wit and passion, on Walking Heart Attack. The Rawls-penned title track (co-written with Bob Trenchard, founder of Catfood Records and the bassist in Rawls’s stalwart backing band, The Rays) sets the tone in kicking off the festivities with a jittery rhythmic thrust, pumping horns and a flirty female chorus (Janelle Thompson and Shakara Weston) setting the stage for Rawls’s hefty vocal describing a knockout gal he has his eyes and heart set on. Settling into a deep, driving, horn-fueled southern soul groove on “Trying to Live My Life Without You,” a tune associated with the late Otis Clay, Rawls is at his expressive best in delivering the lingering ache of a bad breakup. By the third song, Rawls’s own self-empowering soul ballad, “Free” (“Don’t need money to feel rich/don’t need a shovel to dig a ditch/don’t need a mansion just to sleep/don’t need no help to get on my feet/I thank God I’m free…”), he’s contemplating shaking loose from life’s surly bonds and materialism to “be true to myself,” a change the gravitas in his voice tells you is going to be challenging but the gospel backdrop tells you he has the heart to see it through. Read the full review, “In Heavy Rotation: Gospel, Soul Blues and Blazing Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in Deep Roots.
‘Free,’ written and performed by Johnny Rawls, from Walking Heart Attack
THE DEVIL ALWAYS COLLECTS, Brian Setzer (Surfdog Records)– Once again demonstrating his unflagging affinity for flat-out, ass-quaking, oxygen depleting, guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll, Brian Setzer arguably has never been better at it than he is on the red-hot The Devil Always Collects. From the merciless six-string fusillade unleashed on the album opening “Rock Boy Rock” (goosed along by a bevy of distaff backup singers chanting with gusto and innuendo, “Rock, boys, rock/plug it in the box and show me what you got!”) to the lusty blasts of speed-picked hollow body fury reinvigorating Del Reeves’s twangy 1965 country chart topper, “The Girl on the Billboard,” and the Stones-ish overtones of the stomping wink-and-a-nod of the horn-infused “She’s Got a Lotta…Soul,” Setzer keeps the pedal to the metal, his expressive singing perfectly complementing the multitude of white-hot riffs and multitudinous dazzling instrumental ideas he offers with unceasing grandeur. Read the full review, “In Heavy Rotation: Gospel, Soul Blues and Blazing Rock ‘n’ Roll” in Deep Roots.
‘The Girl on the Billboard,’ a #1 country single for Del Reeves in 1965, revived by Brian Setzer on The Devil Always Collects
ARTWORK, Jack Jones (BFD)– It would be wrong to characterize Jack Jones, the great pop-jazz crooner whose recording career began in 1959 and has addressed virtually every trend in the ensuing decades while staying firmly rooted in big band swing and lush romanticism, as sounding younger than his 86 years on this stunning masterpiece he titles ArtWork. Precisely because his voice—heavier, weathered but remarkably affecting–is now shaped by a lifetime of experience, Jones keeps a listener riveted throughout. Indeed, herein he turns songs by Leon Russell, Stephen Sondheim, Leiber and Stoller, Jacques Brel, Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Michel Legrand, Lionel Richie, Don McLean, et al., into vocal chamber music gems of the highest artistic order. With subtle, understated support by the late multi-instrumentalist master Joey DeFrancesco, primarily on Hammond B3, and composer-conductor-arranger-bassist John Clayton directing a full orchestra, Jones simply and confidently brings new perspectives to a sublime repertoire, thanks to an understated singing-speaking approach that plumbs the shadows at which the lyrics hint for trenchant pronouncements on the human condition—never cynical, but rather wry, bemused, intimately knowing, unapologetically vulnerable at points (“This Is All I Ask”), still searching for answers at others (“If Love Is Overrated”). Read the full review, “‘ArtWork’: Work of Art,” in Deep Roots.
‘Is That All There Is,’ Jack Jones, from ArtWork
SEVEN PSALMS, Paul Simon (Owl Records/Legacy Recordings)— It may be apocryphal, but it’s still a good story. Two great songwriters were sitting around discussing their craft when the subject of religion came up, and it was noted that one of them seemed to reference Jesus Christ quite a bit in his works. Which led a confused Paul McCartney to ask Paul Simon, “Aren’t you Jewish?”
The Seven Psalms trailer
He is, of course, and so that’s a pretty interesting question to consider–especially since Simon’s latest release, Seven Psalms, has arrived five years after his 2018 self-announced “final” tour as a live performer and some related statements to the effect that his on-the-record composing days were over. On one level, this brief (33 minute) collection of seven interwoven tracks all reflecting on matters of faith, spirituality and death would seem to be just the latest in a series of recent albums by long term artists such as Leonard Cohen and David Bowie reflecting on their own mortality due to terminal illnesses. Yet the 81-year-old Simon has taken pains in interviews for the run-up to Seven Psalms’ release to dispel any notions that its creation was driven by health issues or even just a conscious eye on the proverbial life clock. Read the full review by Billy Altman, “Here He Is,” in Deep Roots.
AT THE END OF THE DAY, Sylvia Tyson (Stony Plain)– “You can’t take on the whole wicked world/you can only do your best.” So sings Sylvia Tyson on the stunning “Generous Heart,” one of many stunning songs on what she has announced as her final album, culminating a much-honored career and taking the measure of the imprint on her heart left by lovers, friends and family at… well, at the end of the day. As willing as she is to love again (“Sweet Agony,” a telling title), experience has taught her that “love’s a dance in the dark at best” (“Cynical Love Song”), and it’s from that vantagepoint that the songs (all written or co-written by Ms. Tyson) chronicle her efforts to do her best with the hands she’s been dealt. There’s humor to be found in the wry what-aboutism informing the jaunty “Now Tell Me That You’ve Got the Blues” and the deepest sort of reflection is inspired by the familial gifts enumerated so poignantly in the heartfelt autobiography of “Long Chain of Love.” Read the full review, “Time to Settle the Old Account,” in Deep Roots.
‘Long Chain of Love,’ Sylvia Tyson, from At the End of the Day
DREAMLAND, Libby York (Origin Records)– With four critically acclaimed albums behind her, elegant chanteuse Libby York made sure her fifth would be equally memorable. In her liner notes, Ms. York says the oft-covered Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen beauty, “Hit the Road to Dreamland” (written by Mercer and Arlen for the 1942 musical film Star Spangled Rhythm and first recorded by Mercer and the Mellowaires accompanied by the Freddie Slack Orchestra for what became a #16 single on the U.S. charts), “kind of evokes my state of mind during the two years of the pandemic lockdown and the thrill of coming out of it.” She may have understated the case. Dreamland, as a whole, seems like one long exhale, an understandable response to the strictures of pandemic, in being mellow, straightforwardly romantic, and very much contained within its own world, musically as fashioned by a virtuosic trio of seasoned jazz players who play completely within themselves on guitar, bass and drums, lyrically according to the wit and literacy of some towering songwriters whose legends loom large in the Great American Songbook. To these attributes Ms. Libby adds the je ne sais quoi of great interpretive singing: immersing herself so thoroughly in each moment as to transform the songs into her own personal statements. And seeming to do so without breaking a sweat. Her voice, falling somewhere on the scale between Peggy Lee’s breathy suggestiveness and June Christy’s vivacity (Ms. York includes a stark, emotional reading [vocal-and-guitar] of “Something Cool,” the title track from Christy’s1955 Capitol album featuring her backed by Pete Rugolo’s orchestra), engages the narratives as familiar texts she understands in her marrow and simply has to tell their stories, which may be hers. She engages in no vocal pyrotechnics beyond impressing with her imperturbable cool. Read the full review, included in “In Heavy Rotation: Ladies Sing the Blues (and More),” in Deep Roots.
‘Throw It Away,’ written by Abbey Lincoln, performed by Libby York, from Dreamland
Follow this link to the Deep Roots Elite Half-Hundred, 2023
