Jim Allison Nobel

Blues musician Bernard Allison began his musical career in the early 1990s and since then he been leading the blue scene as one of the best blues guitarists. He is especially thankful for the other members playing on this album because their collaboration give Allison great hope for the future of the blues all over the world. “We made the decision to not flood the album with keyboards or horns, to go back to the true basic rhythm section sound – and to show more mature songwriting” – Bernard Allison

Bassist Jim Ferguson does something on Deep Summer Music and his 1999 debut, Not Just Another Pretty Bass, that few on his instrument can muster. And it's so simple, so dynamic. He sings. Well, he not only sings, but he offers up a pliable voice that can wrap around a lyric like a hug (try the lovely title tune here), and then morph into a playful, sardonic, jab-rich vehicle that shows off how much style he has. A most important follow-up to Ferguson's auspicious debut.

Last October, when Bernard Allison returned to his old haunt of Bessie Blue Studios, Tennessee, to be greeted by fabled producer and career-long collaborator Jim Gaines, it felt like coming home. And when Allison fired up the amps, counted in the band and embarked upon his latest studio album, Highs & Lows, everything felt right with the world.

There's nothing like the sound of a world-class bluesman getting back to business. Last October, when Bernard Allison returned to his old haunt of Bessie Blue Studios, Tennessee, to be greeted by fabled producer and career-long collaborator Jim Gaines, it felt like coming home. And when Allison fired up the amps, counted in the band and embarked upon his latest studio album, Highs And Lows, everything felt right with the world. "Just to be able to create music again after the pandemic," he says of that long-awaited rebirth, "was incredible."

As the title and cover art suggests, Triple Fret is a player's album. Although Bernard Allison gets star billing (and does all the vocals), this is a trio record, with fellow electric blues guitarists Larry McCray and Carl Weathersby contributing as much guitar firepower as Allison. Even better, second-generation Hammond organ legend Lucky Peterson guests, adding some welcome musical variety to the otherwise fret-heavy selection…

The great Chicago bluesman Luther Allison lived by a simple philosophy that he was happy to share ("Leave your ego, play the music, love the people"). Now, twenty-three years after Luther's passing, the great man would surely be thrilled to hear Bernard Allison's Songs From The Road, and proud to find that his ferociously talented son is sworn to the same mission, bringing soul-soaked, all-guns-blazing blues to audiences who need it more than ever.

James Thurston Nabors was an American actor, singer, and comedian. "The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings" combines Jim Nabors' two holiday albums for Columbia – 1967's Jim Nabors' Christmas Album and 1972's Merry Christmas – adding a couple of seasonal religious tunes from 1968's The Lord's Prayer & Other Sacred Songs and 1971's How Great Thou Art for good measure (as it happens, these bonus cuts include two different versions of "Ave Maria." Of the two albums, the 1967 set is slightly stuffier – there's a reliance on old-fashioned carols and the string arrangements are a bit stiff – but 1971 conjures just a bit of the spirit of Hollywood holiday specials, its strings feeling slightly snazzy, not starchy. His sensibility belongs in an era that was bypassed when these records were recorded, so this release functions as dual nostalgia: pining for pining for days of Christmas past.

Eleven Complete Mose Allison Albums Over Five Discs Born just outside Tippo, Mississippi on his grandfather's farm (known as The Island because Tippo Bayou encircles it , Mose Allison was already taking piano lessons by the age of five. He picked cotton at home, played piano in grammar school and trumpet in high school, and wrote his first song at age thirteen. He went to college at the University of Mississippi for a semester, then enlisted in the U.S. Army for two years. Shortly after mustering out, he enrolled at Louisiana State University, from which he graduated in 1952 with a BA in English with a minor in Philosophy.

This six-disc set from Strawberry Records collects 12 of the great Mississippi-born musician's best-known albums from two important stages in his long career. Mose Allison's work for Atlantic with producers Nesuhi Ertegun and later Joel Dorn defined him as a downright virtuoso pianist in his own songs – as well as the many he covered – showcasing a signature style that perfectly wed blues, bop, and swing. His songs were delivered in a laconic Southern drawl; the originals offered hip, poetic, humorous, sometimes biting lyrics in insightful, often ironic commentaries on modern life, economics, and relationships, earning him the nickname "the Sage of Tippo." The first five discs contain two albums each, in chronological order: I Don't Worry About a Thing and Swingin' Machine (both 1962); The Word from Mose (1964); Wild Man on the Loose and Mose Alive! (1966); I've Been Doin' Some Thinkin' (1968); Hello There, Universe (1970); Western Man (1971); Mose in Your Ear and Your Mind Is on Vacation (1972). The final disc features his two outings for Bruce Lundvall's short-lived but important Elektra Musician label, 1982's Middle Class White Boy and 1983's live Lessons in Living. There are 104 tracks in all. Some of Allison's sidemen during the Atlantic/Elektra eras included now legendary jazz talent such as drummers Frankie Dunlop, Paul Motian, and Billy Cobham; saxophonists Pepper Adams, Seldon Powell, and Lou Donaldson; and bassists Red Mitchell, Bob Cranshaw, and Chuck Rainey.