The Deep Roots Yuletide Baedeker 2020

Welcome back our CHRISTMAS BAEDEKER, the all-inclusive guide to the best in holiday fare, from movies to cartoons to music to stories behind the songs to Christmas poetry to...well, you name it, we got it! Buon Natale!
by David McGee
 

 
 

A Bluer Shade of Christmas

An update of our 2019 review of four essential Christmas blues anthologies: Volumes 1-3 of BLUES, BLUES CHRISTMAS and Legacy Recordings' DEATH MIGHT BE YOUR SANTA CLAUS.--a bluer shade of Christmas, if you will.
by David McGee
 

 

 

‘I Just Can’t Let Us Forget’

Continuing her 'lifetime retrospective' project, RORY BLOCK pays glorious tribute to some outstanding female blues artists of yore, some undeservedly obscure..but no longer so.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Christmas in All Hues of Blues

CHRISTMAS IN ALL HUES OF BLUES, an updated review from 2012, spotlighting four classic blues-oriented Yuletide collections: DEATH MIGHT BE YOUR SANTA CLAUS and tBLUES, BLUES CHRISTMAS, Vols. 1-3
by David McGee
 

 

 

Being About the Persistence of Love

At long last, 83-year-old MARY LANE asserts herself at the forefront of contemporary blues with TRAVELIN' WOMAN, her record of a lifetime and of hanging in and hanging on to love, body, soul and heart intact.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Thinkin’ About LIvin’, Thinkin’ About Life

EG KIGHT returns from a serious illness with the triumphant A NEW DAY and co-produces (and writes some of) LISA BIALES's BELLE OF THE BLUES. Let's think about liven', let's think about life.
by David McGee
 

 

 

Shimmying Down the Chimney

Not wanting to be the only artist on the planet without a Christmas album, MARIA MULDAUR delivers a holiday evergreen in MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS, recorded live in San Francisco.
by David McGee
 

 
 

Christmas Beyond the Blue

BLUES, BLUES CHRISTMAS VOLUME 3 leads this revised and updated review of four essential blues Christmas albums, including last year's DEATH MIGHT BE YOUR SANTA CLAUS
by David McGee
 

 

 

Long Ago, Far Away, Ever Relevant

Exploring songs associated with the great female blues and jazz vocalists of the '20s and '30s, ROBERTA DONNAY & THE PROHIBITION MOB BAND sound ever-relevant on A LITTLE SUGAR
by David McGee