Rollin' 'n' Tumblin': The Reverend's Archives, Volume 2

INTRODUCTION

Inspired by writers like Lester Bangs and Dave Marsh, and mentored by gonzo rockcrit legend Rick Johnson, I began penning crude album reviews at the age of 12 and was first published while in high school, at age 15…that’s right, Cameron Crowe ain’t got nothing on me, baby!

In the almost 44 years since I was first published by my editor, Ranger Reek Johnson in the pages of Sunrise (the White Panthers’ Journal of Music & Liberation), I’ve had the good fortune to have written for over 100 publications worldwide, including Creem, High Times, Big O magazine (Singapore), Blurt magazine, and The Blues (UK). I’ve had record reviews and artist profiles published by the All Music Guide (books and website!), and I’ve published nine previous books on music.

One of the most satisfying endeavors, however, was the six and a half years I spent writing about blues music for About.com as the website’s Blues Guide. I’ve loved blues music since I was a teenager, and the opportunity to dig deeper into the genre during my tenure with About.com not only introduced me to some great talents that I wasn’t familiar with, but also allowed me to interview and correspond with artists who are deeply committed to the music.

Named for a blues song by the great Muddy Waters, Rollin’ ‘N’ Tumblin’ is a collection of over 100 of my best blues-related album and book reviews. Written between 2008 and 2014, many of these reviews appeared on the About.com Blues website, but many were also published by Blurt magazine, Blues Revue, and Blues Music magazine.

Rollin’ ‘N’ Tumblin’ is also the second volume in The Reverend’s Archives, a long-overdue follow-up to the first collection, 2010’s Trademark of Quality. Print copies of that book, as well as titles like The Other Side of Nashville and Scorched Earth: A Jason & the Scorchers Scrapbook, are available online at www.thatdevilmusic.com.

CD REVIEWS

ALAN WILSON

The Blind Owl

(Severn Records)

Formed by Alan Blind Owl Wilson and Bob The Bear Hite in 1966 in Los Angeles, Canned Heat was one of the seminal blues-rock outfits of the 1960s and ‘70s. Contemporaries of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and preceding the Allman Brothers Band by a couple of years, Canned Heat’s signature sound skewed more toward John Lee Hooker’s boogie-blues than either the Allman’s Southern soul roots or Butterfield’s rocked-up Chicago blues sound.

Canned Heat fused its founders’ love of classic Delta and Chicago blues music with the new highly-amped electric blues of the late 1960s, the band helping bring the music of the giants of the blues to an eager, enthusiastic white rock ‘n’ roll audience. Essential to Canned Heat’s early success was Alan Wilson, the band’s shy, visually-impaired singer and guitarist whose reedy, Skip James-styled vocals, vibrant harp playing, underrated fretwork, and deep knowledge of and love for the blues helped shape the band’s trademark sound. Aside from being a talented musician, Wilson was also a musical historian and fanatical record collector, his deeply-researched essays on artists like Son House and Robert Pete Williams widely acclaimed as scholarly works.

Although Canned Heat carries on today as a mere shadow of the original band, they were never really the same after the loss of Wilson in 1970 to a drug overdose at the age of 27. Alan Wilson seldom gets his due as the influential musician that he was, a talent who played alongside legends like Son House, John Lee Hooker, and Sunnyland Slim, among others. After listening to The Blind Owl, a twenty-track, two-disc career retrospective that revisits Wilson’s musical legacy, one is forced to reconsider the artist’s importance in the scheme of things. After all, this is the guy that helped House re-learn how to play his songs when the Delta bluesman was rediscovered during the early 1960s folk-blues boom, a task that earned him a place on stage alongside the equally reluctant blues legend at the Newport Folk Festival.

Wilson was a humble and unassuming talent that reveled in the sheer joy of music-making, finding a solace in the blues that he was unable to find in the real world. The Blind Owl draws the bulk of its material from the five Canned Heat albums recorded between 1967 and 1970, with a handful of rare singles and obscure tracks mixed in. Appropriately enough, The Blind Owl opens with On The Road Again, one of Wilson’s two biggest and best-known hits. Fueled by Wilson’s mournful vocals, squalls of harp, and choogling guitar riffs, the song’s unusual vibe and slinky groove would drive the band’s sophomore album Boogie With Canned Heat to number sixteen on the charts, the song becoming a worldwide hit and a staple of FM rock stations across the U.S.

Ditto for Wilson’s Going Up The Country, from 1968’s Living With The Blues, another Top Ten hit which became the soundtrack for the Woodstock Nation after the band’s energetic performance at the legendary festival, and their subsequent appearance in the Woodstock documentary film. With an upbeat melody borrowed from a Henry Thomas blues tune, and fresh anti-Vietnam war lyrics from Wilson, the song’s relentless boogie rhythm was punctuated by Wilson’s laid-back harp play. With the blockbuster hits out of the way, one can concentrate on the less well-known but equally magnificent (or more so) musical moments on The Blind Owl. Wilson’s An Owl Song, for instance, is a lively sort of jump-blues that features Dr. John’s raging honky-tonk piano-playing and some tasteful harpwork.

An inspired cover of Sonny Boy Williamson’s rockin’ Help Me was Wilson’s debut as a vocalist and a fine…if tentative…first turn at the microphone taken from the band’s self-titled 1967 debut, while the introspective My Mistake, Wilson’s first lyrical stab at wrestling with his own shyness and insecurity, features an emotional vocal performance matched with guitarist Henry Sunflower Vestine’s stinging, trembling fretwork. Wilson’s Get Off My Back is another personal composition, the anti-authoritarian lyrics masked by the singer’s light-hearted vocals and Vestine’s rockabilly-cum-psychedelic lightning bolts.

Taken from Wilson’s last album with the band, 1970’s Future Blues, Shake It And Break It was adapted from a Charley Patton song, the upbeat, breakneck country-blues tune dancing dangerously close to ragtime territory with its gymnastic vocals and spry fretwork courtesy new Canned Heat guitarist Harvey The Snake Mandrel. Wilson’s My Time Ain’t Long was certainly informed by Son House’s Death Letter, the songwriter addressing his own growing depression with ominous, apocalyptic lyrics and a dark-hued arrangement straight from the Delta blues playbook. The vaguely menacing London Blues offers a fine example of Wilson’s slide-guitar prowess, his serpentine licks riding hard and fast alongside Mandel’s own red-hot guitar as Dr. John delivers his best Otis Spann-inspired piano-play.

The rare 1969 single Poor Moon provides a glimpse at Wilson’s environmental concerns and activism with its intelligent lyricism, while an obscure cover of Little Walter Jacob’s Mean Old World, recorded in 1967 but unreleased until 1994 as part of a Canned Heat best of album, displays Wilson’s amazing harp skills as he builds upon Jacobs’ original instrumentation with some imaginative flourishes and engaging tones of his own. Human Condition was Wilson’s final studio recording with Canned Heat, another obscurity from the archives, a musically upbeat but lyrical downer where Wilson’s growing despondence can be heard in the cracks and strains in his voice, while the band’s relentless, endless guitar-driven boogie drones on behind his pain. The instrumental Childhood’s End focuses on Wilson’s chromatic harp playing, the song’s emotional undertones bolstered by a droning guitar line that reinforces Wilson’s smothering loneliness.

Produced by Skip Taylor (the band’s manager and 1970s-era producer) and Canned Heat drummer Adolfo De La Perra, The Blind Owl presents a fine argument for Alan Wilson’s musical legacy. Choosing songs that were written by and/or sung by Wilson and/or feature his instrumentation at the fore, they place the spotlight firmly on Wilson’s talents as a vocalist, world class harmonica master, and underrated rhythm and slide-guitar player.

My only complaint about The Blind Owl is the lack of material from Wilson’s extracurricular activities – certainly a song or two from Hooker ‘n Heat, the band’s acclaimed 1971 collaboration with the legendary John Lee Hooker, would have been available as the album was released by Canned Heat’s label, or maybe something from Son House’s 1965 album The Legendary Son House: Father of the Folk Blues which featured Wilson playing alongside the Delta legend. This minor cavil aside, The Blind Owl is an amazing tribute to a bona fide blues legend in Alan Wilson, as well as a fine introduction to the often-overlooked blues-rock style of Canned Heat. (2013)

ALBERT KING

Born Under A Bad Sign

(Stax Records)

When blues guitarist Albert King signed with Stax Records in 1966, he was a known commodity on the blues circuit, but not yet a star, much less an artist with crossover potential. Based in St. Louis during the late 1950s and early ‘60s, King was a popular draw throughout the Midwest U.S. and had recorded sides for labels like King Records, Vee-Jay, Parrot Records, and others and had even released a full-length album, 1962’s The Big Blues, to little acclaim.

Working in the Stax Records studio in Memphis, Tennessee with the label’s house band, Booker T & the MG’s – keyboardist Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald Duck Dunn, and drummer Al Jackson, Jr. – along with Stax songwriter Isaac Hayes and Wayne Jackson and his Memphis Horns, King recorded a bunch of songs between March 1966 and November 1967 that would later comprise his Stax debut album, Born Under A Bad Sign. Widely considered as one of King’s career milestones, the album would bring the guitarist’s unique vision of the blues to a white rock ‘n’ roll audience and influence young musicians like Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

The album starts out big and bold, the familiar strains of the title song kicking out the jams with reckless aplomb as King’s throaty vocals and equally vocal guitar licks moan their tale of woe. King takes a familiar blues theme – that of the luckless loser, the hapless gambler, the failed ladies man – and pumps it up with his stinging notes riding high above Steve Cropper’s tasteful rhythm guitar and Booker T. Jones’ background keyboards. Crosscut Saw would be equally as audacious, the song’s jaunty rhythm bolstered by the rhythmic muscle provided by the Memphis Horns. King’s guitar playing here is just as grand as on the opening tune, if not more so, displaying more texture and a fluid grace, but the vocals are weak and sound washed out.

The frequently-covered Leiber/Stoller R&B classic Kansas City is provided an appropriately swinging arrangement, King sleep-walking his almost-spoken vocals atop a rich soundtrack dominated by the Memphis Horns and Duck Dunn’s gorgeous walking bass line. Again, whether due to problems with the original tape or the primitive recording technology, King’s voice unintentionally drops into the background at times, but his lively fretwork bursts above the mix nonetheless. King’s original Down Don’t Bother Me is an extension, of sorts, of the title track, pursuing a similar hard-luck lyrical tale, but the guitarist’s playing here is phenomenal, meshing perfectly with Perkins’ horns and Al Jackson’s sparse percussion to great effect. King’s vocals are better-balanced here, providing the right amount of emotion to match his anguished guitarplay.

King tackles the well-traveled Booker T. & the MGs’ composition The Hunter, which would later be covered by folks from Free to Koko Taylor, the guitarist adding a bit of bravado to his vocal performance. While the song’s double-and-triple-entendre lyrics are pretty frisky when left on their own, King’s deep voice and deeper blue guitar playing add gravitas to the recording. A cover of Ivory Joe Hunter’s I Almost Lost My Mind displays King’s versatility as a singer; his somber, heartbroken vocals bring a strong emotion to the words as his subtle guitar lines tell the rest of the story. Laundromat Blues is another gem in King’s catalog, a straight-forward blues-as-betrayal tune that channels the romantic woe into a fine vocal performance and tearful fretwork that sizzles with barely-contained rage and frustration.

The 2013 Stax Records reissue of Born Under A Bad Sign offers five bonus tracks in the form of previously-unreleased alternate takes and an untitled instrumental. The first (unused) take of the title track reveals a few differences but otherwise hits every mark as the take that ended up on the album; by contrast, the alternate take of Crosscut Saw includes an extra chorus tacked on the end, features a stronger King vocal performance, and all the houserockin’ guitar banging of the original. The bonus version of The Hunter also seems more muscular and self-assured, but the album-closing Untitled Instrumental is a revelation, King laying the smackdown on a fatback rhythmic groove, the soulful Memphis horns slung low beneath the guitarist’s raging leads, which run amok across the loose-knit studio jam.

My colleague Bill Dahl sums it up best in his new liner notes for Born Under A Bad Sign, stating that King would make more great Stax albums, but he’d never top this one. King’s performances here are those of a hungry man ready to feast on the world, and they would create an artistic blueprint that the guitarist would hew closely to for the remainder of his career. Although the digital re-mastering provided this 2013 reissue hasn’t cleaned up all of the original audio issues, it has brightened the performances and added extra depth to the sound.

The songs themselves – Born Under A Bad Sign, Crosscut Saw, The Hunter, Personal Manager, and Laundromat Blues, the album’s first hit single – would become part of King’s canon, superb performances that influenced a generation of blues and blues-rock guitarists to follow. A bona fide classic of electric blues, if you don’t have a copy of King’s Born Under A Bad Sign in your collection, then you don’t have squat! (2013)

ALBERT KING

I’ll Play The Blues For You

(Stax Records)

By 1972, Stax Records had seen its glory days come and gone, but there were still a few fires burning brightly at the legendary Memphis soul label. Among the artists keeping the doors open in the early 1970s were soul giant Isaac Hayes, R&B greats the Staple Singers, and extraordinary blues guitarist Albert King. Working in the studio with members of the Bar-Kays, including producer/keyboardist Allen Jones, as well as members of the Movement, Hayes’ backing band, King recorded I’ll Play The Blues For You, a masterful collection of blues-infused contemporary soul that nearly hit #11 on the R&B chart and inched nearly half-way up the top 200 albums chart.

Back in 1972, I’ll Play The Blues For You (Parts1 & 2) was originally broken into two parts and released as the A and B sides of a 45rpm single. On album, the seven-minute performance is a smoldering, smooth-as-silk jam with plenty of King’s signature bent-string fretwork, an uncharacteristic but effective spoken-word interlude, and a slippery rhythmic groove that adds to the heat of the performance. Taken altogether, the song is like a hot, humid day in Memphis, its emotional underpinnings concealed just below the languid, steamy surface.

King recorded the Ann Peebles’ hit Breaking Up Somebody’s Home not long after the R&B diva had a massive chart hit with the song, but in the guitarist’s hands it becomes something else entirely. While Jones’ production doesn’t eschew the mournful soul roots of the original, King’s emotion-drenched vocals, his elegant fretwork, and the addition of Wayne Jackson and the Memphis Horns take the performance into heady territory. By contrast, High Cost Of Living relies more on King’s screaming guitar notes and the explosive hornplay of Jackson and Andrew Love. King’s vocals wring every bit of romantic angst out of the lyrics, but it’s his razor-sharp blues licks that drive the performance.

King’s effective cover of the early Curtis Mayfield gem I’ll Be Doggone is dominated by the Memphis Horns, the guitarist’s voice lost beneath the brass and Jones’ chiming keyboards. King gets a few punches in, though, his flamethrower solos riding loud in the mix above drummer Willie Hall’s supporting percussion. King offers a sly reference to James Brown at three minutes in, before launching into a high-flying solo. King’s original Answer To The Laundromat Blues reprises his 1966 hit Laundromat Blues with fiery blues licks, spoken-sung lyrics that would have been controversial by today’s standards, and funky horns propelled by jazzy drumbeats. Don’t Burn Down The Bridge (‘Cause You Might Wanna Come Back Across) should have been a massive R&B hit, with King’s edgy vocals and edgier fretwork, a funky rhythmic crosscurrent, and scraps of energetic brass.

This expanded reissue of I’ll Play The Blues For You includes four previously-unreleased tracks, including alternate versions of the title track (sans the spoken interlude and with different horn charts) and Don’t Burn Down The Bridge, which benefits from a leaner, meaner arrangement that places more emphasis on King’s incendiary six-string pyrotechnics than on the horns, with bassist James Alexander’s funky steel-chain bass line establishing the song’s rhythmic foundation. That I Need A Love remained unreleased until now is a mystery, the song a bluesy, up-tempo R&B romp with precise guitarplay, gritty vocals, and well-timed blasts of sax. The instrumental Albert’s Stomp is a short, sharp shock of lightning guitar licks leveled against a thunderous backdrop that revolves around second guitarist Michael Toles’ swirling, psych-drenched rhythms and Jones’ spirited keyboard riffs.

Albert King’s eight-year tenure with Stax Records brought him a modicum of stardom and several R&B chart hits, helping to extend his career well into the 1980s. With I’ll Play The Blues For You, King delivered a bona fide classic of 1970s-era blues and soul music, a collection of inspired performances that have withstood the test of time.

For fans wondering if they should upgrade to this new reissue of an otherwise comfortable album, I’d offer a quick ‘yes!’ Aside from the clear-sounding digital remastering and four bonus tracks – two of which are engaging, entertaining new songs – the disc also includes music journalist Bill Dahl’s insightful and informative new liner notes. While reissue CDs too often just slap a new coat of paint on an old album, this modernized version of I’ll Play The Blues For You tunes up the engine and adds a little nitrous for that extra punch. What more could a blues fan ask for? (2012)

ALEXIS KORNER

Bootleg Him!

(Wounded Bird Records)

Without a doubt, Alexis Korner is one of the most important and influential of British blues musicians. Although his work as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist would later be overshadowed by his many protégés, Korner’s importance lays in his recognition of talent, and his trailblazing role as the artist who helped introduce the blues to the United Kingdom. Members of Korner’s Blues Incorporated band would go on to form such groundbreaking outfits as the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Free, and Led Zeppelin, among other bands.

Korner’s Bootleg Him! compiles material from roughly the first decade of the artist’s career, ranging from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. As the story goes, his record label wished to capitalize on Korner’s status as an elder statesman of British blues by coaxing him to put together a supersession with his former band members. Korner, to his credit, refused and instead turned over a wealth of tapes covering 1961-1967 with the agreement that an album comprised of this vintage material should be accompanied by an album of more recent recordings. The result was Bootleg Him!, originally released as a two-album set…something old, something new, something borrowed, and a lot of blues, as it were…

Because the provenance of material on Bootleg Him! varies so greatly, so too does the sound quality, which ranges from fair to very good by modern standards. What doesn’t vary, however, is the uniform quality of the album’s 20 performances. A mix of Korner originals and classic blues, R&B, and jazz covers of the likes of Willie Dixon, Billy Boy Arnold, Charles Mingus, Robert Johnson, and Curtis Mayfield, among others, Korner is backed on many of the performances by a top-notch collection of British jazz musicians. The bandleader did enlist the help of some of his former band members, however, and folks like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Free’s Paul Rodgers and Andy Fraser, and Cream’s Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker drop by to jam.

Bootleg Him! offers up so many entertaining performances that it’s really hard to boil them down to a mere handful for review. A live vamp on Willie Dixon’s I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man by Blues Incorporated, circa 1962, features Cyril Davies – another important British blues figure – on vocals, backed by Korner’s imaginative fretwork, Jack Bruce’s thumping string bass, Dave Stevens’ piano pounding, and Charlie Watts’ subtle drumbeats and brushwork. If not for Davies’ slight accent, the song wouldn’t have sounded unusual booming out of a Southside Chicago blues club at the time. Korner’s original slow-blues number I Wonder Who kicks out some tasty, jazz-inflected six-string work by the bluesman, the song’s languid pace blown up by Chris Pyne and John Surman’s horn blasts.

An acute take of Charlie Mingus’s Oh Lord Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me transforms the jazz legend’s song into a horn-driven portrait of the blues, with flecks of guitar and passionate vocals accompanied by wide swaths of Pyne’s trombone, the entire affair supported by Danny Thompson’s steady bass lines. Korner’s original Rockin’ does exactly that, the song a curious mix of jump blues and rockabilly (or perhaps skiffle, the British blue suede equivalent) with a solid backbone provided by the Bruce/Baker rhythm section, augmented by Johnny Parker’s reckless honky-tonk piano and some truly swinging saxplay from Graham Bond and Dick Heckstall-Smith.

By the late 1960s, Korner had hooked up with the talented vocalist and guitarist Peter Thorup, the two artists collaborating together in a number of bands, including the memorable C.C.S. Prior to that, however, Korner and Thorup got together in 1969 for a phenomenal reading of Curtis Mayfield’s underplayed R&B gem Mighty-Mighty Spade & Whitey. With Free/Bad Company frontman Paul Rodgers joining the two on vocals, the trio’s harmonies are complimented by a soulful full horn section blowing away throughout the mix, fluid rhythms by Free bassist Andy Fraser and drummer John Marshall providing the underlying groove.

By comparison, a 1967 take on Joe Tex’s The Love You Save features Korner’s gruff, effective vocals and emotional guitar, accompanied only by Victor Brox’s Chicago blues-styled piano play. A cover of Mance Lipscomb’s Evil Hearted Woman features the trio of Korner, Thorup, and bassist Colin Hodgkinson. Korner’s growling vocals bring a bit of menace to the Texas blues song, while Thorup’s nimble fretwork is amazing.

Legend has it that Korner had been working with vocalist Robert Plant on an album before the singer was poached by Jimmie Page for Led Zeppelin. Operator is one of two tracks to surface from those 1968 sessions, and it’s a scorcher, for sure. Plant displays some of the vocal bombast he would bring to Zep, while Korner’s acoustic guitar adds a bit of Delta dirt to this powerful acoustic blues number.

A 1970 recording of Korner’s Sunrise by C.C.S. – a 20+ piece blues/jazz outfit – is every bit as remarkable, mixing psychedelic rock with free jazz and bluesy undertones to great effect. Bootleg Him! closes with an acoustic reading of Robert Johnson’s Hellhound On My Trail by Korner and Thorup, the song’s original dark hue supplanted by an almost joyful, guitar-driven performance by the duo.

Alexis Korner’s reputation as the Father of British Blues is unquestioned in the U.K. but sadly he remains a relatively unknown, behind-the-scenes figure in the United States. Bootleg Him! may be an odds and sods collection of tape ends, live performances, and radio broadcasts, but it showcases the width and breadth of Korner’s interest in blues, jazz, and blues-rock music. Thanks to the handful of Korner reissues that have trickled out through the years, stateside blues fans have been able to rediscover the importance of Korner as a bandleader, stylist, and nurturer of talent. Highly recommended… (2010)

ANDERS OSBORNE

Black Eye Galaxy

(Alligator Records)

Swedish-born guitarist Anders Osborne landed in New Orleans in 1990, and in the 20+ years since, he’s become such an integral part of the city that it’s hard to believe that he isn’t a native-born Louisianan. Osborne’s musical style – a mix of rock, blues, soul, and funk – fits New Orleans’ musical landscape like a glove, and over the course of several albums for various independent labels, culminating in his acclaimed 2010 Alligator Records debut American Patchwork, Osborne’s skills as a songwriter have matured to match his six-string talents.

With the life-affirming, cathartic screed that is Black Eye Galaxy, however, Osborne has delivered a genre-crossing masterwork that is both as subtle as a feather dancing on the wind and as devastating as a bulldozer in a china shop. At its core, Black Eye Galaxy is a deeply spiritual collection, and while it’s unlikely that you’ve ever heard gospel music with instrumentation that cuts this deep, or vocals as tortured, the Holy Spirit nevertheless runs throughout the album like a coil of barbed wire.

Black Eye Galaxy opens with the dirge-like Send Me A Friend, a lamentation on the bleakness of addiction, Osborne’s howling vocals underlined by screaming guitars and plodding rhythms joined by bursts of percussion. In a similar vein, the introspective Mind Of A Junkie offers up jazzy fretwork alongside Osborne’s heartbreaking, pleading vocals in what is essentially a musical prayer. The powerful Black Tar is a dark performance with a hard-rock heart and a blues music soul, Osborne’s slightly-echoed vocals a cry for salvation from the depths of a deep, seemingly bottomless hole.

The title track provides the creative heartbeat of the album; ostensibly a 1990s-styled ballad, it unfolds into an eleven-minute instrumental showcase blending blues, rock, and jazz into a riveting ‘70s-era psychedelic sojourn. The final track, Higher Ground, brings peace to the album’s protagonist, the song a joyful hymn to the redemptive power of love. With Black Eye Galaxy, Osborne shares his own personal journey out of the heart of darkness, masterfully jumping from blues to rock to jazz and back again in creating a work of art that redefines the meaning of the blues. (2012)

ANDERS OSBORNE

Peace

(Alligator Records)

Blues guitarist Anders Osborne switched gears musically earlier this year with the release of the semi-acoustic six-song EP Three Free Amigos. Eschewing the hard-charging, guitar-driven blues-rock thunderstorm of his 2012 album Black Eye Galaxy, Osborne’s Three Free Amigos was like a sun-drenched morning after the rain cleared out. By contrast, the guitarist’s Peace manages to walk a fine line between the two recordings – cloudy afternoon music, as it were – Osborne delivering a highly autobiographical set of songs that build upon his trademark roots ‘n’ blues sound to incorporate elements of funk, psychedelic-rock, even scraps of reggae that evoke memories of the 1970s.

The title track opens the album with a bang, a shimmering cymbal riding low beneath oscillating guitar drone before a doom-laden dark rhythmic groove worthy of Black Sabbath kicks in. Actually, Osborne’s fuzzy, buzzy fretwork sounds a lot like Neil Young, as do his measured vocals, which float into the song on an acoustic guitar strum. The song’s biographical lyrics are delivered rather low-key but hide a deceptive edge only hinted at by the guitar, the singer’s inner turmoil as brilliantly expressed as anything penned by such similar roots-music oriented wordsmiths as Young, John Fogerty, or Lowell George. The instrumental break is mesmerizing in its complexity, blues influences hanging over the lyrics more so than the music.

The sprawling, loose-limbed 47 is similar lyrically to Peace, Osborne delivering his breathless vocals over a jaunty, reckless rhythm that drives the song forward like a perpetual motion machine, but it’s with Windows that the guitarist fulfills his rock ‘n’ roll fantasies. With a strident guitar strum and wailing vocals, Osborne blends a bluesy vibe with an exotic rock soundtrack, the confessional lyrics telling a story that mixes classical mythology with Grateful Dead references, the finality of the chorus strengthened by the haunting vibe of Jason Mingledorff’s bleating sax. Osborne’s wiry solos sting like a 90-pound wasp, rolling off his fingers with no little urgency themselves, jumping headfirst into the blustery hard rock dirge that is Five Bullets.

Osborne’s Five Bullets is both the most political song he’s ever penned, as well as one of the most emotionally powerful, the music driven by a rattletrap circular riff that pounds home the seriousness of the lyrics with the subtle grace of a runaway jackhammer. Lest readers forget, hard rock was born of the blues, and there’s plenty of blues in the unseen tears cried here, albeit lost amidst the muscular arrangement and bludgeoning soundtrack. Five Bullets leads, seamlessly, into the chaotic intro of the mostly-instrumental Brush Up Against Me, an industrial cacophony grinding along, casting a shadow across odd vocals, blasts of horn, the occasional guitar lick, and who knows what else is hidden in the mix? When Osborne’s brief folkie vocals kick in against a madcap backdrop, it’s quite jarring, but then the music devolves into territory only a demented genius like Eugene Chadbourne might explore.

Just as Five Bullets drops wordlessly into the tone poem that is Brush Up Against Me, so does the latter song roll unexpectedly into the pastoral Sentimental Times. At a certain age, mortality creeps up on all of us and nostalgia is often used as a weapon to ward off the evil spirits, and Osborne’s Sentimental Times is a wistful, almost melancholy reminder of the passing years. The singer’s vocals have seldom been more expressive, his subdued guitar playing never more elegant, the song hitting the ears like a cross between early Moody Blues and 1960s-era psych-pop tunesmiths like Emmitt Rhodes or Michael Fennelly. The life-affirming defiance of I’m Ready matches a bluesy undercurrent (especially in Osborne’s guitarplay) with Dylanesque, word-heavy lyrics and pitch-perfect vocals whereas My Son is a loving ode to the next generation, a lilting, peaceful acceptance of, and nod to the future.

In more ways than one, Peace is Anders Osborne’s classic rock album, the artist feeling, perhaps, like a man out of time. The late 1960s and early ‘70s were an era where blues music casually informed rock songwriting, with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf as big an influence on young rockers as Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan. There’s little here that the traditionalist would consider even remotely bluesy and yet blues music imbues every performance on Peace, hanging around in the corner of the studio like the ghost of a favored ancestor.

And make no mistake, the songs on Peace are haunted by a lot of ghosts, not only those of the long-dead bluesmen and women that placed Osborne on his life’s path, but also by his addictions and renewal, his triumphs and his failures. Peace stamps paid to Osborne’s past, the album a work of staggering lyrical and musical genius that creeps into your consciousness and forces you to pay attention. (2013)

B.B. KING

One Kind Favor

(Geffen Records)

Even among music fans that know little-or-nothing about blues music, B.B. King is a legend. A skilled vocalist and phenomenal guitarist, King has earned more than a dozen Grammy awards, received more honors than any musician that comes to mind, including doctorates from a handful of universities, and has been inducted into both the Blues and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

King began his recording career in 1949, and in interviews he has acknowledged the evolution in his singing, his guitar playing, and in his choice of material over the course of almost 60 years and over 40 albums. For One Kind Favor, King and producer T-Bone Burnett decided to go forward into the past, the artist revisiting The B.B. King That Was, recording songs that he originally performed at the beginning of his career, or were influential on his development as a blues artist and performer.

One Kind Favor is more than just another covers album, however. Before venturing into the studio, Burnett handed King a list of some 200 songs, from which they chose the 12 tunes represented on the album. The tracklist of One Kind Favor reads like a veritable who’s who of influential early-era blues music. From Blind Lemon Jefferson’s See That My Grave Is Kept Clean and T-Bone Walker’s Get These Blues Off Me, One Kind Favor also includes songs by Howlin’ Wolf, Lonnie Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Big Bill Broonzy, and others.

To further ensure the proper atmosphere for King’s performances, Burnett put together a veteran band that includes Dr. John on piano, journeyman rock drummer Jim Keltner, and even an acoustic bass player to record the songs live under studio conditions similar to those experienced by King in the early 1950s. The proof is in the grooves, because both the sound and the feel of One Kind Favor harkens back to an earlier, and simpler blues era.

Kicking off the album with Jefferson’s See That My Grave Is Kept Clean – One Kind Favor takes its name from a line in the song – the band delivers a syncopated rhythm behind King’s low-key vocals and elegant guitar lines. Although the sound of King’s version of the song varies greatly from Blind Lemon’s original, the heart and soul of Jefferson’s intent remains intact.

Walker’s Get These Blues Off Me is written here as a sultry, slow-burning ember, with a muted horn section and distinctive piano notes playing off of King’s torch-style solos. King’s angular vocals stand in contrast to the softly-swaying background, punching through the darkness with passion and anguish. Chicago blues giant Howlin’ Wolf’s How Many More Years is probably the closest that King comes to his traditional jazz-blues sound, the song supported by an undercurrent of swinging horns and boogie piano breaks, complemented by King’s fluid fretboard tones.

One of three Lonnie Johnson songs included on One Kind Favor, My Love Is Down benefits from Dr. John’s New Orleans-flavored ivory bashing