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TORONZO CANNONShut Up and Play!Alligator
Chicago Blues. Can’t live without ‘em. Toronzo Cannon was born there, grew up there, and continues to perform there. Well, he’s gone off with his much-appreciated show to many other places and has gained wide acclaim. With his hard-pressed vocals and fiery guitar, Cannon delivers quite strong. With this latest album, 12 original songs, the bluesman shouts, wails, and gets his message across loud and clear. It’s what we need to feel in this day and age. “I Hate Love” offers a rebellious look at life’s various situations. “Unlovable” eases up a bit with its loping rhythm and gentler message. Then, there’s “Got Me By the Short Hairs” and “I’m Always Wrong,” which both provide the way one feels day-to-day after being subjugated and put down. Everyone feels that from time to time, and Cannon makes sure that his audience can relate.
Working with a powerful rhythm section, Cannon shoots his title track at you with fire. He asks questions and he provides the answer. The music certainly gives you what Cannon intends, with its suspensefully taut demeanor. It’s the longest piece of the album, and Cannon makes sure that his music gets under your skin. This is one of the year’s best, and it comes through the magic of hard-charging Chicago blues. -- Jim Santella
Working with a powerful rhythm section, Cannon shoots his title track at you with fire. He asks questions and he provides the answer. The music certainly gives you what Cannon intends, with its suspensefully taut demeanor. It’s the longest piece of the album, and Cannon makes sure that his music gets under your skin. This is one of the year’s best, and it comes through the magic of hard-charging Chicago blues. -- Jim Santella
JEFF PITCHELL withnotable friends and familyBrown Eyed BluesDeguello Records
A black and white photo of a sad-eyed lady model graces the cover of Jeff Pritchell’s newest CD, Brown Eyed Blues, and it will captivate you as much as the generous 16 tracks that lie within as each has a different flavor.
Not messing around, he plays both lead and rhythm guitars backed by bass and drums making it technically a “power quartet” on the opening cut, “Now You Know.” Vocals are appealing and Jeff provides most of the guitar work on the majority of cuts, as well he should. Having won “The Best Guitarist” in Connecticut at age 15, Jeff’s playing appears to be continually improving with his latest release.
If you liked Lowell George’s slide work in Little Feat, you’ll stop in your tracks when you first listen to “Any Way You Can” with its familiar vibe of the aforementioned; only now a very capable Johnny Stachela is on slide and Duane Betts piles on the lead and rhythm guitars. I’m certain many would wish Jeff had done a CD’s worth of songs with this team in a similar style. Duane Betts eerily channels his father’s talent as he provides his singular leads as they intertwine with Jeff’s guitars on “When We Kiss,” which has a distinct Allman Brothers flavor.
“Do Right Girl,” one of the longest songs, was inspired by the love of his wife, Betsy. Jeff offers up the rhythm and lead guitars and vocals to proclaim his affection. Jeff also integrates a few previous remixes which include “Whisky River,” enhanced by the late James Cotton’s harp and background vocalists and “When It All Comes Down,” that has a truly captivating and enjoyable vibe. You may find yourself singing along to Jeff’s refrain of, “Well, when it all comes down, look for me, I’ll still be around,” due to its repetitive catchiness. The last remix has Jeff and Rick Derringer trading vocals and guitars on “Keep My Head Up.” Thank you, Jeff!
The penultimate nugget is the live version of Warren Haynes’ song, “Soulshine,” which has Greg Allman’s son, Michael, on vocals and the late Charles Neville on sympathetic sax while Jeff ratchets us his guitar talent to show why he was asked to play a song with the Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon Theatre in 2014.
This 67 minute musical excursion ends with “Welcome To The Beat,” a Samba/Santana/esque joyful tune that makes you wish there was another 67 minutes available on a second disc.
After your first listen to Brown Eyed Blues, you may be inclined to simply replay the entire CD or at least relisten to your favorite tunes as there are many you may wish to select again. --Pete Sardon
A black and white photo of a sad-eyed lady model graces the cover of Jeff Pritchell’s newest CD, Brown Eyed Blues, and it will captivate you as much as the generous 16 tracks that lie within as each has a different flavor.
Not messing around, he plays both lead and rhythm guitars backed by bass and drums making it technically a “power quartet” on the opening cut, “Now You Know.” Vocals are appealing and Jeff provides most of the guitar work on the majority of cuts, as well he should. Having won “The Best Guitarist” in Connecticut at age 15, Jeff’s playing appears to be continually improving with his latest release.
If you liked Lowell George’s slide work in Little Feat, you’ll stop in your tracks when you first listen to “Any Way You Can” with its familiar vibe of the aforementioned; only now a very capable Johnny Stachela is on slide and Duane Betts piles on the lead and rhythm guitars. I’m certain many would wish Jeff had done a CD’s worth of songs with this team in a similar style. Duane Betts eerily channels his father’s talent as he provides his singular leads as they intertwine with Jeff’s guitars on “When We Kiss,” which has a distinct Allman Brothers flavor.
“Do Right Girl,” one of the longest songs, was inspired by the love of his wife, Betsy. Jeff offers up the rhythm and lead guitars and vocals to proclaim his affection. Jeff also integrates a few previous remixes which include “Whisky River,” enhanced by the late James Cotton’s harp and background vocalists and “When It All Comes Down,” that has a truly captivating and enjoyable vibe. You may find yourself singing along to Jeff’s refrain of, “Well, when it all comes down, look for me, I’ll still be around,” due to its repetitive catchiness. The last remix has Jeff and Rick Derringer trading vocals and guitars on “Keep My Head Up.” Thank you, Jeff!
The penultimate nugget is the live version of Warren Haynes’ song, “Soulshine,” which has Greg Allman’s son, Michael, on vocals and the late Charles Neville on sympathetic sax while Jeff ratchets us his guitar talent to show why he was asked to play a song with the Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon Theatre in 2014.
This 67 minute musical excursion ends with “Welcome To The Beat,” a Samba/Santana/esque joyful tune that makes you wish there was another 67 minutes available on a second disc.
After your first listen to Brown Eyed Blues, you may be inclined to simply replay the entire CD or at least relisten to your favorite tunes as there are many you may wish to select again. --Pete Sardon
- CEDAR COUNTY COBRAS
- Homesick Blues
- Self-published
- Roots music brings history back to our lives comfortably. Singing both original songs and cover songs while playing acoustic instruments, this duo does it right. What’s more, their vocals are enunciated clearly despite the rhythmic forces being let loose. Playing acoustic guitar, upright bass, foot drum, mandolin, and a few extras, both artists sing the blues with spirit. The lyriccome alive and the tempo keeps rollin’.
- From Iowa, Tom Spielbauer and April Dirks, who have been working together for nine years, capture the middle American essence of roots music. Their original songs could have easily been mistaken for timeless Mississippi Delta, Carolina Piedmont or early Chicago blues. For cover songs, the duo also interprets songs that come from Muddy Waters, Son House, Jessie Mae Hemphill and Gus Cannon.
- Their title track, an original, “Homesick Blues” turns loose the emotion that we remember from the earliest blues artists. Spielbauer and Dirks could be standing on a street corner with a guitar case full of dollar bills, and the music sure would verify that scene. But instead, they’ve had a successful career playing live concerts around towns big and small, delivering a heaping helping of soulful blues.
- --Jim Santella
SUGARAY RAYFORDhuman decencyForty Below Records
With his hands held in prayer over a microphone, three-time Blues Music Award winner Sugaray Rayford titles his latest CD human decency in all lower-case letters, perhaps showing that each letter has the same equal representation as we should all give each other.
With Gospel singing in his musical background, Sugaray’s voice possess the power, clarity and honesty that has you hanging onto his every articulate word. Having performed with other southern California bands, Aunt Kizzy’s Boys and The Mannish Boys, he has since released six recordings on his own with guest musicians while his seventh, human decency, will be released on June 14, 2024.
The guest musicians on his latest nine songs support Sugaray’s strong voice with great skill as Rick Holmstrom provides the majority of the guitar work, Sasha Smith leads in the keyboard work with several levels of captivating sounds while Matt Tecu on drums and Tara Prodaniuk on bass provide the supporting backbeats. There’s also a half dozen other musicians who lend their skills along with four additional vocalists making this a fully dimensional enjoyable musical feast. Eric Corne recorded, mixed and wrote all the music as well as the lyrics on most of the songs. Sugaray penned the autobiographical lyrics to close out tune, “Aha” and co-wrote with Eric in the style of Muddy Waters in “Ain’t That A Man” and formed their own style in the mildly salacious “Hanky Panky Time.”
Grabbing your attention on “Failing Upwards,” the organ swells complementing the bass and drum groove sets up the perfect vibe for Sugaray to tell his tale. The horns and guitar licks slide in after a bit while the keyboard bides it time to enter later as he sings, “It’s time to pull your golden parachute …you’re failing upwards!”
“Only one thing on my mind --that’s how we get to hanky-panky time,” sets up the eighth track (“Hanky Panky Time”) as his voice and backing sounds conjure up a sense of both anticipation and urgency that you can reach out and touch.
In “Aha,” Sugaray shares some of his past trials with, “I was raised in the country, grew up in the backwoods. My life was a struggle, baby, …my mother died when I was three years old, she told me, ‘Never let them steal your soul…’“ He obviously took his mother’s advice as his soul is imprinted in sound of human decency. Sugaray Rayford has been blessed with a voice that commands listening and it’s easy to picture how he was chosen to be in the cast of the stage play, “Nothing But The Blues” years ago. This is a perfect recording for an outdoor gathering among friends and you’ll enjoy watching as they will be swaying to his music. --Pete Sardon
With his hands held in prayer over a microphone, three-time Blues Music Award winner Sugaray Rayford titles his latest CD human decency in all lower-case letters, perhaps showing that each letter has the same equal representation as we should all give each other.
With Gospel singing in his musical background, Sugaray’s voice possess the power, clarity and honesty that has you hanging onto his every articulate word. Having performed with other southern California bands, Aunt Kizzy’s Boys and The Mannish Boys, he has since released six recordings on his own with guest musicians while his seventh, human decency, will be released on June 14, 2024.
The guest musicians on his latest nine songs support Sugaray’s strong voice with great skill as Rick Holmstrom provides the majority of the guitar work, Sasha Smith leads in the keyboard work with several levels of captivating sounds while Matt Tecu on drums and Tara Prodaniuk on bass provide the supporting backbeats. There’s also a half dozen other musicians who lend their skills along with four additional vocalists making this a fully dimensional enjoyable musical feast. Eric Corne recorded, mixed and wrote all the music as well as the lyrics on most of the songs. Sugaray penned the autobiographical lyrics to close out tune, “Aha” and co-wrote with Eric in the style of Muddy Waters in “Ain’t That A Man” and formed their own style in the mildly salacious “Hanky Panky Time.”
Grabbing your attention on “Failing Upwards,” the organ swells complementing the bass and drum groove sets up the perfect vibe for Sugaray to tell his tale. The horns and guitar licks slide in after a bit while the keyboard bides it time to enter later as he sings, “It’s time to pull your golden parachute …you’re failing upwards!”
“Only one thing on my mind --that’s how we get to hanky-panky time,” sets up the eighth track (“Hanky Panky Time”) as his voice and backing sounds conjure up a sense of both anticipation and urgency that you can reach out and touch.
In “Aha,” Sugaray shares some of his past trials with, “I was raised in the country, grew up in the backwoods. My life was a struggle, baby, …my mother died when I was three years old, she told me, ‘Never let them steal your soul…’“ He obviously took his mother’s advice as his soul is imprinted in sound of human decency. Sugaray Rayford has been blessed with a voice that commands listening and it’s easy to picture how he was chosen to be in the cast of the stage play, “Nothing But The Blues” years ago. This is a perfect recording for an outdoor gathering among friends and you’ll enjoy watching as they will be swaying to his music. --Pete Sardon
J. P. SOARSChicago Brick by BrickLittle Village
Based in Florida, J.P. Soars holds many different flavors with his appreciation of good music. His original songs may encompass deep-roots country, exotic gypsy rambling, or spellbinding jazz. And he backs up his vocal presentations by picking up dobro, banjo, lap steel, two-string cigar box guitar, and a few others. But it’s his contemporary country presence that sits center stage. Soars sings with a laid-back, down-home presence that makes him welcome to any audience. He works with a stable band, but it’s his out-front persona that makes the greatest impression.
His “Brick by Brick” is meant to relate how he envisions his own musical maturity, and the music drives that message home. Here, his band responds clearly to each of his soliloquies and together they make sure that it fits. Later, Little Milton’s “That’s What Love Will Make Me Do” features Soars’ melodic guitar with an expressive lyric delivery. He invites tenor saxophonist Terry Hanck up front for an added solo spot that completes the scene. “Can’t Keep Her Off My Mind” features the leader’s banjo and lap-steel guitar in a fast-paced dance that includes Anne Harris on fiddle to emphasize the country flavor.
“The Moment” expresses a serious mood that demonstrates Soars’ appreciation for classical guitar. It’s delightful. “Down by the Water” delivers a Gulf Coast message that closes that album with happiness. Brick by brick, J.P. Soars has built his program with care and can consider it a great success. --Jim Santella
Based in Florida, J.P. Soars holds many different flavors with his appreciation of good music. His original songs may encompass deep-roots country, exotic gypsy rambling, or spellbinding jazz. And he backs up his vocal presentations by picking up dobro, banjo, lap steel, two-string cigar box guitar, and a few others. But it’s his contemporary country presence that sits center stage. Soars sings with a laid-back, down-home presence that makes him welcome to any audience. He works with a stable band, but it’s his out-front persona that makes the greatest impression.
His “Brick by Brick” is meant to relate how he envisions his own musical maturity, and the music drives that message home. Here, his band responds clearly to each of his soliloquies and together they make sure that it fits. Later, Little Milton’s “That’s What Love Will Make Me Do” features Soars’ melodic guitar with an expressive lyric delivery. He invites tenor saxophonist Terry Hanck up front for an added solo spot that completes the scene. “Can’t Keep Her Off My Mind” features the leader’s banjo and lap-steel guitar in a fast-paced dance that includes Anne Harris on fiddle to emphasize the country flavor.
“The Moment” expresses a serious mood that demonstrates Soars’ appreciation for classical guitar. It’s delightful. “Down by the Water” delivers a Gulf Coast message that closes that album with happiness. Brick by brick, J.P. Soars has built his program with care and can consider it a great success. --Jim Santella
EDEN BRENTGetaway BluesYellow Dog Records
Pictured at her hometown Greenville, Mississippi Train station pulling her wheeled red luggage bag while wearing a bright red dress, spiked heels and red lipstick, Eden Brent appears to either be heading home or outbound for her next musical journey. Eden is a pure-bred Mississippian with Riverboat Captains in her lineage. Her father even had his company’s towboat named the “Eden Brent” after his daughter. Opening with “Getaway Blues,” she appears to make that CD cover photo come alive with her subsequent lyrics, “Don’t plan to stay—I got the ‘Getaway Way Blues,’ I gotta get away from you...” Her facile right and left hands flesh out both the lead high notes and supporting backing rhythm as fits with her childhood discovery of the piano around the age of five and her subsequent degree in Music. Her learning catapulted with her musical association with the elder pianist, Abie “Boogaloo” Ames, who provided 16 years of piano skills sharing with Eden. He is quoted in the PBS Documentary, “Boogaloo and Eden” as saying, “She’s the only one that sounds like me, that’s why they call her ‘Little Boogaloo.’”
Three Blues Music Awards and five CDs later as well as being a fixture at the piano bar on many Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruises, Eden traveled to London to record Getaway Blues. The nine songs written by Eden and her husband Bob were recorded live with Eden on vocals and various keyboards, Bob McDowell on bass, Rob Updegraff on guitar and Pat Levett on Drums.
One stand-out track is “You On My Mind” with its perfect confluence of passionate vocals, slow and poignant guitar work, light stick work on the drum rims and dreamy keyboard enhancements. “Everything is easy with you on my mind,” purrs Eden. If you’re a guitarist, Rob’s craft on this tune is inspirational.
“Rust” contains the clever sultry opening line, “My man don’t ever leave me. He sticks to me just like rust.” In her innuendo filled lines, she and the band create suggestive background sounds that emphasize the following lyrics, “Rust can stop a freight train rolling down the track. It goes into my depot and I go ooh-oh-ooh-oh-ooh and say, ‘my daddy’s back’...He drinks that lowdown whisky from a highball glass. It’s rust that makes him frisky and rust that makes him last.” Whew!
Closing out with “Gas Pumping Man,” Eden serves up a second bawdy tune regarding the more than platonic relationship she has with the subject of the song.
You and your other Blues loving friends would be wise to obtain Eden’s Getaway Blues CD and help yourself to the ride and atmosphere of the enjoyable nine tunes within. This ‘Little Boogaloo’ is one of a kind and rightly so. --Pete Sardon
Pictured at her hometown Greenville, Mississippi Train station pulling her wheeled red luggage bag while wearing a bright red dress, spiked heels and red lipstick, Eden Brent appears to either be heading home or outbound for her next musical journey. Eden is a pure-bred Mississippian with Riverboat Captains in her lineage. Her father even had his company’s towboat named the “Eden Brent” after his daughter. Opening with “Getaway Blues,” she appears to make that CD cover photo come alive with her subsequent lyrics, “Don’t plan to stay—I got the ‘Getaway Way Blues,’ I gotta get away from you...” Her facile right and left hands flesh out both the lead high notes and supporting backing rhythm as fits with her childhood discovery of the piano around the age of five and her subsequent degree in Music. Her learning catapulted with her musical association with the elder pianist, Abie “Boogaloo” Ames, who provided 16 years of piano skills sharing with Eden. He is quoted in the PBS Documentary, “Boogaloo and Eden” as saying, “She’s the only one that sounds like me, that’s why they call her ‘Little Boogaloo.’”
Three Blues Music Awards and five CDs later as well as being a fixture at the piano bar on many Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruises, Eden traveled to London to record Getaway Blues. The nine songs written by Eden and her husband Bob were recorded live with Eden on vocals and various keyboards, Bob McDowell on bass, Rob Updegraff on guitar and Pat Levett on Drums.
One stand-out track is “You On My Mind” with its perfect confluence of passionate vocals, slow and poignant guitar work, light stick work on the drum rims and dreamy keyboard enhancements. “Everything is easy with you on my mind,” purrs Eden. If you’re a guitarist, Rob’s craft on this tune is inspirational.
“Rust” contains the clever sultry opening line, “My man don’t ever leave me. He sticks to me just like rust.” In her innuendo filled lines, she and the band create suggestive background sounds that emphasize the following lyrics, “Rust can stop a freight train rolling down the track. It goes into my depot and I go ooh-oh-ooh-oh-ooh and say, ‘my daddy’s back’...He drinks that lowdown whisky from a highball glass. It’s rust that makes him frisky and rust that makes him last.” Whew!
Closing out with “Gas Pumping Man,” Eden serves up a second bawdy tune regarding the more than platonic relationship she has with the subject of the song.
You and your other Blues loving friends would be wise to obtain Eden’s Getaway Blues CD and help yourself to the ride and atmosphere of the enjoyable nine tunes within. This ‘Little Boogaloo’ is one of a kind and rightly so. --Pete Sardon