Music
Kermit Ruffins, Swing This! (Basin Street Records)
Swing this? Well, bam!, like that celebrity chef from the Crescent City likes to say, let’s kick it up a notch, which is exactly what Kermit Ruffins has done here. […]
Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band, The Mountain (E-Squared)
In 1995, after serving a sixty day sentence for heroin possession in Nashville’s Criminal Justice Center, Steve Earle walked out of jail and embarked upon one of the music industry’s […]
Tab Benoit, Debbie Davies and Kenny Neal, Homesick for the Road (Telarc)
Cross the talents of two veterans of the Louisiana blues scene with a former featured guitarist for the late Albert Collins and – in this case anyway – you’ve got […]
Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock (Kill Rock Stars)
Almost by definition, punk music takes risks, and when Carin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney sings, “Bless me with Athene/there’s no meaner, she’s the best,” she invites the charge of pretentiousness, but […]
Tim Hagans, Animation Imagination (Blue Note), Russell Gunn, Ethnomusicology Volume 1 (Atlantic)
“There’s no point in making the same kind of record that Roy Hargrove, Nicholas Payton or Wallace Roney makes,” says trumpeter Tim Hagans. But electronic rhythm machines, reprogrammed backing tracks, […]
Louis Jordan, The Anthology 1938-1953 (MCA/Decca)
It’s not just the creation of the small-scale jump band or the development of jazz nuance married to a shuffle beat, not even the unprecedented use of electric guitar, blues […]
Various Artists, Men Are Like Street Cars…Women Blues Singers 1928-1969 (MCA)
Women and the blues make “an odd coupling,” says Mary Katherine Aldin, a well-established researcher who is the guiding force behind this historically comprehensive, musically compelling 2-CD collection. It’s the […]
The Creole Zydeco Farmers, …On the Road (Maison de Soul)
If the snap bean is the essence of zydeco, then somebody’s gotta grow it. At least that’s been the creed of the Creole Zydeco Farmers who’ve been harvesting their homegrown, […]
Mem Shannon, Spend Some Time with Me (Shanachie)
Those not in the tribal circle of blues enthusiasts tend to think of the genre as being all about pain: She Left Me, he done me wrong, I got no […]
Various Artists, The Best of Spinett (Night Train)
The Spinett label, which operated in New Orleans around 1959, was somewhat of a semi-serious hobby for Frankie Ford and his manager Joe Caronna. This informality would lead to some […]
