L'iniziazione (1999)

How many Jamaican-born bluesmen recorded with John Lee Hooker and toured with Otis Redding? It's a safe bet there was only one: Eddie Kirkland, who engaged in some astonishing on-stage acrobatics over the decades (like standing on his head while playing guitar on TV's Don Kirshner's Rock Concert). But you would never find any ersatz reggae grooves cluttering Kirkland's work. He was brought up around Dothan, Alabama before heading north to Detroit in 1943. There he hooked up with Hooker five years later, recording with him for several labels as well as under his own name for RPM in 1952, King in 1953, and Fortune in 1959. Tru-Sound Records, a Prestige subsidiary, invited Kirkland to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey in 1961-1962 to wax his first album, It's the Blues Man….

At the time of this recording, John Primer had already established himself on the who’s who list of Chicago blues. He had finished a long stint with Muddy Waters and was in the middle of a 14 year stay as guitarist for Magic Slim and the Teardrops. This CD is John's fourth for Wolf Records and his very first full-length live album.
After the Wolf Records manager listened to the Zoo Bar recordings he got the idea to make a CD just with John Primer, because he always opened every set at the Zoo Bar and it was great! So the musicians here are just Nick Holt on bass, Michael Scott on drums and John himself! The three had a great sound and played songs like "Gambler's Blues", "Easy Baby" and "Walkin' through the Park"! Great!

Stanley Turrentine still has a sweeter sound than any other saxophonist, even at the age of 65. It's a joy to hear him play, even when the material is a little faceless and the sound is a little too smooth, as it is on Do You Have Any Sugar? Since Turrentine is a fine musician, there are moments to cherish scattered throughout the record - the spare, soulful ballad "Far Too Little Love" or the R&B groove of "Back in the Day" or the bluesy "2 RBs," for instance - but it often veers too close to smooth jazz territory, especially when vocalist Niki Harris takes the center stage; she is a fine vocalist, but the style of the music becomes too close to crossover jazz whenever she's on the scene…

With "Sequel", Rainbow Serpent have turned in another immaculately produced, widely varied and epic synthesizer set. Some of the tracks (as ever) are too close for comfort to the very recognisable styles of other artists, but there's much to enjoy here.

Seemingly coming from nowhere, Mighty Mo Rodgers packs a massive punch that makes you ask, where in hell he came from? A brief stint in music (his was the organ solo on the '67 hit, "Gimme Some Kind Of Sign," and he acted as producer for Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee) ended in disillusionment with the industry. A retreat into a Masters degree (with a focus on "Blues as A Metaphysical Music"), he has returned to make music with "something to say." His brand of "spiritual" blues is for the people and of the real world. This is no revivalist camp, however, but a richly musical charge that recalls the work of the late Curtis Mayfield. Rodgers' deep, warm vocals embrace gospel and R&B, and his voice alternates between a powerful growl and a gentle caress across arrangements designed around solid hooks that first seduce the listener before driving home their message…

Riff Raff, co-led by Brit keyboard boss Tommy Eyre and bassist Roger Sutton, grew out of the Mark-Almond Band. Before meeting Jon Mark, Eyre had played with Joe Cocker's Grease Band. The pair decided to form solo projects while with Mark-Almond, and recruited vocalist Alan Marshall, drummer Kenny Slade, and guitarist Martin Ball. This lineup was never formalized, though they had recorded demos and even finished some tracks for a debut album for Richard Branson. The amalgam of jazz, rock, and soul was intoxicating and was a fine emotional alternative to the Canterbury bands, which were much more concerned with complexity than groove. The music included here features all seven of those original finished tracks as well as the first four recordings of the final band lineup after Marshall and Slade left.

Recorded 1996. This is Eddie's third CD for Wolf Records. His band includes Vaan Shaw and Johnny B. Moore on guitars, Shorty Gilbert on bass and Tim Taylor on drums. The highlights are "Built for Comfort" by Howling Wolf and "Goin' Back to Greenville". Eddie is one of the best - he sings and plays saxophone & harp!

Had this been released in 1982, it would have been the third album for the Bugs Henderson Group. It was not released at that time, however, due to differing thoughts on its style. In 1998 the tapes were resurrected and the vocals were re-cut. Most of Backbop is good old-fashioned rock & roll. The strongest cuts are "Help Me," which blends sounds as diverse as '70s rock and Chet Atkins; "Love Junkie," which comes the closest to blues with some nice jazzy riffs that are lessened only by too much repetition; and "Thief of the Night," which sees Henderson at his fiercest, rocking out with all the speed and bends his fans cherish.

An ECM New Series debut for a Danish composer of great originality. "Sørensen’s music is dreamscapes without boundaries," Nordic Sounds has written. "Down to the last detail of its structure it wishes to accommodate itself to the lyrical leaps and irregular rhythms of consciousness." On "Birds and Bells" Sørensen plays continually with spatial depth in the music, inviting the listener to experience it from unusual and changing perspectives as glissandi sweep through the ensemble sound and composed "echoes" reverberate. The music is well served by an exceptional pan-Scandinavian cast under the direction of Christian Eggen.