Revelator is the long-awaited, song-oriented debut album by the husband-wife team of singer/guitarist Susan Tedeschi and guitarist Derek Trucks. Filled with smoky, blues-dipped rockers and heart-stilling ballads that show off, respectively, the gutsier and softer side of Tedeschi's vocal ability, plus a series of emotive, story-telling solos shaped by Trucks's uncanny agility on slide-guitar, Revelator also serves to introduce the couple s new, 11-piece ensemble Tedeschi Trucks Band.
A dramatic leap forward for two of the music world's most dynamic performers, Revelator is a confident yet unforced triumph offering a cohesive vision: an idyllic, musical world in which the echoes of so many great traditions Delta blues and Memphis soul, Sixties rock and Seventies funk organically flow together, blending with an entirely original, modern sensibility.
In addition to the combined weight of Tedeschi and Trucks's equally renowned abilities, Revelator benefits from an impressive circle of talent that the two brought together. Trucks co-produced the album with multi-Grammy-winning engineer Jim Scott, whose genre-bending credits include popular albums by the Dixie Chicks, Johnny Cash, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Both Tedeschi and Trucks co-wrote the album's twelve new songs with an impressive list of experienced songwriters, including Jeff Trott, John Leventhal, David Ryan Harris and Sonya Kitchell; Gary Louris and Oliver Wood of the Jayhawks and the Wood Brothers, respectively; and old friends like guitarists Doyle Bramhall II and Eric Krasno (of Soulive), and band members Mike Mattison, Kofi Burbridge and Oteil Burbridge.
Most notably, Revelator features the newly formed Tedeschi Trucks Band, an eleven-member ensemble overflowing with talent and musical familiarity. Brothers Oteil Burbridge (noted for his years as bassist with the Allman Brothers Band) and Kofi Burbridge (longtime keyboardist/flutist with The Derek Trucks Band) have joined forces with a pair of drummers J. J. Johnson and Tyler Greenwell, trumpeter Maurice Brown, tenor saxophonist Kebbi Williams, trombonist Saunders Sermons, and harmony singers Mark Rivers and Mike Mattison. (Additionally, Ryan Shaw and David Ryan Harris supplied harmony vocals to various tracks on the album, and Alam Khan adds his masterful sarod playing to "These Walls".) The fact that this aggregation includes so many musicians related by experience and blood clearly adds to the notion of Revelator as a true group album, the product of a musical family. Read more
some pop music. i don't know...J Holiday has some pimp in him, no doubt, and the late-disc track "Pimp In Me" isn't the only reason to think so: When this suavest of 2007's break-out crop of smooth R&B crooners isn't causing the ladies to swoon (check out "Bed," the radio hit that rides a vibe similar to Rihanna's echo-y "Umbrella" all the way behind closed doors and under the covers), he's establishing himself as a tough guy with a tender streak. It's a stroke-of-brilliance approach for a new artist--instead of becoming a standard-issue sweetie who ladles on the charm but can't do battle with urban music's big boys, he deftly straddles two styles on this debut. Silky, classic-sounding slow jams ("Suffocate," "Without You") suit him, but so do street cred-raising reminiscences of his gritty Washington, D.C., youth ("Ghetto," "Thug Commandments"). Holiday goes for broke, circling the broad R&B landscape, but he doesn't dilly-dally: Back of My 'Lac delivers pimp-worthy yet pretty songs that get straight to the point, the point being that this is an artist worth raising your modern-music hopes over. --Tammy La Gorce Read more
Two-time Grammy nominated vocalist Tracy Nelson makes her Delta Groove debut with a strong return to her roots on her latest effort Victim of the Blues. Although best known for her work with the blues rock group Mother Earth in the late 1960's, Nelson has always had an affinity for the real deep traditional blues art form as evidenced on her very first album, Deep Are The Roots, recorded in Chicago back in 1964. Victim of the Blues finds Nelson fully embracing her blues and gospel roots on an inspired program of material that features songs by Jimmy Reed, Otis Spann, Howlin' Wolf, and Ma Rainey, along with appearances by special guests Angela Strehli and Marcia Ball. Read more
German edition of 2002 compilation includes a bonus live disc with the following tracks 'Caldonia' (feat. Albert Collins & Albert King), 'You Don't Love Me', 'Key To Love', 'The Thrill Is Gone' (feat. BB King), 'Stormy Monday (feat. Albert King), 'Cold, Cold Feeling' (feat. Albert Collins), 'Further Up the Road' (feat. Albert Collins), 'The Stumble', 'Oh Pretty Woman', 'Walking By Myself', 'Too Tired' (feat. Albert Collins), 'Still Got The Blues', 'All Your Love' & Midnight Blues'.Like the guitarist in Spinal Tap, Gary Moore has an amp that goes up to 11, and at times during the two and half hours of The Best of the Blues, you wonder if it's stuck there. Luckily, episodes of thunder and lightning are interspersed with performances like "Still Got the Blues," "Need Your Love So Bad," and "Midnight Blues" on the first disc of this two-CD set, or "Cold, Cold Feeling" on the second--calmer passages, where the storm clouds yield to shafts of silver light. Disc 1 is a selection from four early-'90s albums, featuring guest spots by Albert King, B.B. King, and Albert Collins, plus a concert recording of "Parisienne Walkways." Disc 2 has the same guests (on different songs) and a half-dozen of the same titles, but this is all unissued concert material. Live performance only stimulates Moore's tendency to skip the foreplay, producing music that is urgent, active, and seething with testosterone. Great stuff for a night in with the boys. --Tony Russell Read more
This unique book/CD pack breaks down six Clapton songs into manageable sections to help you learn each by heart, with a special pull-out "Riff Route Maps" section that shows you how to link them all together. It includes chord boxes and symbols linked to the song lyrics, a full demo and backing tracks on the CD, and detailed playing notes for each riff. Songs: Bad Love * Badge * Cocaine * Layla * Strange Brew * Sunshine of Your Love. Also includes lots of photos and quotes from Eric Clapton. Read more
Shipping sixtysomething blues icon Howlin' Wolf to England in May 1970, accompanied by his guitarist Hubert Sumlin, was a crapshoot. Wolf’s health was poor and he hadn’t recorded outside of Chicago since 1954. Not surprisingly, Wolf’s London excursion remains a mixed bag. Certainly, the participants’ hearts were in their music--with the notable exception perhaps of Wolf's--but the result never quite gelled. When the Brit rockers such as Eric Clapton the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts dug into his songs, they collided with the ornery bluesman. Producer Norman Dayron later overdubbed Steve Winwood and Lafayette Leake’s keyboards (along with horns on a few tracks) to salvage the sessions. Of all the classic Chess albums, this is an odd choice to expand with a second disc of outtakes, none of which are particularly revelatory. Still, Clapton is fiery throughout, and Wolf, although not in prime form, is never less than convincing. Though often criticized, most notably by Clapton himself, Howlin' Wolf's London Sessions offers a worthy--though not essential--snapshot of the legend in his waning years. -Hal Horowitz Read more
Atlantic Records: The House that Ahmet Built follows Ertegun's remarkable career and its impact on the evolution of the world's most popular musical genre while offering an insider's look at the recording industry. Featuring rare and private clips, performances, and studio sessions from Atlantic recording artists, this DVD is a music fan's paradise. Read more
Deep Blues explores the archetypal journey of the human psyche through an examination of the blues as a musical genre. The genesis, history, and thematic patterns of the blues are examined from an archetypal perspective and various analytic theories. Mythological and shamanistic parallels are used to provide a deeper understanding of the role of the bluesman, the blues performance, and the innate healing potential of the blues. Universal aspects of human experience and transcendence are revealed through the creative medium of the blues. The atmosphere of Deep Blues is enhanced by the black and white photographs of Tom Smith which capture striking blues performances in the Maxwell Street section of Chicago. Jungian analysts, therapists and psychoanalytic practitioners with an interest in the interaction between creative expression and human experience should find Deep Blues satisfying. Deep Blues should also appeal to enthusiasts of music, ethnomusicology, and the blues. Read more
Cadillac Records chronicles the rise of Leonard Chess' (Adrien Brody) Chess Records and its recording artists including Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), Little Walter (Columbus Short), Chuck Berry (Mos Def), Willie Dixon (Cedric The Entertainer) and the great Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). In this tale of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in Chicago of the 1950s and 60s, the film follows the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's greatest musical legends.An energized and passionate, if selective, telling of the story of Chess Records, Cadillac Records is a worthy entry in the niche genre of movies about rock and roll roots. Adrien Brody plays Leonard Chess, who started Chess Records in Chicago in 1947 and turned the label into an important force for blues, rhythm and blues, gospel and, in time, early rock and roll. Cadillac Records focuses on Chess' relationship with his first significant artist, Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright), and the label's rise and expansion with the addition of such talents as Little Walter (Columbus Short), Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), Howlin' Wolf (Eamonn Walker), Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and Etta James (Beyonce Knowles). Written and directed by Darnell Martin, Cadillac Records captures the scrappy beginnings of an enterprise, and a sound, inventing itself as it goes along. Particularly fun are scenes set in clubs or at Chess' recording facility, where electrified blues never stop pushing the envelope of creative possibility. All the while, danger lurks in shadows or in rivalries between artists; also in the self-destructive streaks of Walter and James, and the sexual fetishes of Berry. But the drama largely centers on the potent connections between all these people, who don't always know where their contribution to a cultural phenomenon is going. One of the film's delights is the way Chess and Waters don't really see rock coming until Berry steps through the door, fusing country music with blues. The film skips over a lot of facts: there's no sign of Leonard Chess' brother, Phil, who co-owned the company, nor is there much hint of Chess' expansion into a lot of other areas of music. None of that is any big deal. But what Cadillac Records is missing is more of a unifying point of view. The story is told as a recollection by Willie Dixon, but in a scattershot way that doesn't tell us who Leonard Chess or Waters really are. Aside from that, the film is well worth seeing. --Tom Keogh
Stills from Cadillac Records (click for larger image)
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