At this point, no one really needs to be reminded that Cosimo Matassa engineered thousands of recordings in the succession of New Orleans studios he owned over a three-decade period. He got his start in the late 1940’s in the back room of the North Rampart Street J&M Music shop which he co-owned with his [...]
I submit that if you can listen to this CD from beginning-to-end and not get a chill down your spine, or misty eyed, you’re an extremely cold fish, or you should consider a career with the U.S. Navy SEALs. Outside of maybe O.V. Wright or Big O. Buy on AmazonBuy on iTunes This collection recycles [...]
Robert “Bobby” Lonero, a Louisiana Hall of Fame musician and long-popular New Orleans bandleader, died February 17, 2013. According to fellow New Orleans recording artist Frankie Ford, Lonero’s given surname was Popina, and his parents owned a bar on St. Claude Avenue near Elysian Fields Avenue. Lonero got interested in music, and the guitar, as [...]
A chittlin’ circuit trailblazer, unlike contemporaries like Bobby Bland, Latimore, Little Milton and Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Rush’s career has thrived for more than five decades without the aid of a bona fide hit—well, “Chicken Heads” charted briefly in 1970. Rush has managed this via his energetic and “colorful” shows as well as a steady string [...]
While Pierre Part’s Don Rich is often touted as a modern day swamp pop super star, truth be told, this CD should be filed under “Blue Eyed Soul.” His first release in some time, Kinda Sorta contains a profusion of ’60s classic soul covers and leans way more towards Memphis and Muscle Shoals, than say [...]
After 56 years in business, Louisiana’s longest tenured “record shop” will shutter its doors at the end of the year. Located on East Main Street in Ville Platte, Louisiana, Floyd’s Record Shop made the tiny town a destination for decades for music fans around the world in search of Cajun, zydeco and swamp pop grooves. [...]
Baby Boomers were raised on AM radio. Back in the day, AM radio had personality largely via the colorful DJs that spun the 45s we loved. That has obviously changed in the last two decades. Today AM radio is a cluster of talk radio shows dedicated to partisan politics and sports. However, come Sunday morning, New [...]
As part of the Concord Music Group’s initiative to reissue the seminal Stax catalog comes the 50th anniversary release of Booker T. & the M.G.s’ classic album. Along with “Honky Tonk” and “Hide-A-Way,” “Green Onions” was among the most popular R&B instrumentals of its era. Buy on AmazonBuy on iTunesYou know the tune, thanks to [...]
This one’s a bit of a surprise. A cornerstone in the great Fats Domino band for decades, saxophonist Herb Hardesty only had a handful of solo 45s in the early ’60s (reissued here), but Ace also unearthed an entire unissued LP recorded in 1958, making this a CD of definite interest for R&B buffs. Buy [...]
Besides being a human blues jukebox, Chicago’s Magic Slim has made himself into a guitar-playing cottage industry when it comes to releasing music. Certainly no other blues artist in the last four decades has recorded more than Magic Slim (ten previous CDs on Blind Pig alone). Most discs follow a patented formula: two or three [...]
