N'dambi Little Lost Girls Blues

Norwegian duo Lost Girls, artist and writer Jenny Hval and multi-instrumentalist Håvard Volden, release their first album after collaborating for more than ten years. Volden has been playing regularly in Hval's live band for more than a decade, and their duo project goes back to an acoustic collaborative album from 2012, using the moniker Nude on Sand.

After collaborating together for more than a decade, Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden released their first album under the Lost Girls moniker in 2021: Menneskekollektivet. The record received rave reviews, including a Best New Music mark at Pitchfork. Now the duo release their second album Selvutsletter.

This two-disc set includes live tracks by Little Milton, Mighty Sam McClain, and Reverend Raven & His Chain-Smoking Altar Boys recorded at the Kalamazoo Blues Fest in Kalamazoo, MI, in 2001 (McClain) and 2003 (Milton and Raven). The first disc features Little Milton and his country and gospel-infused brand of guitar blues, highlighted by the nearly 20-minute "Slow Blues Medley." Milton is a fine player, and the warm, full guitar tone he gets makes each cut in his set a delight. The second disc collects six-song sets from both McClain and Reverend Raven.

There are 13 singers on these tracks, which are culled from a dozen albums representing blues and R&B in a variety of urban styles. It's swingin', sophisticated stuff!

Little Milton has not been playing much guitar in the '80s and '90s; his Malaco albums are mostly confessional and country soul numbers, geared to attract fans of romantic dialogues and misadventures. So this recently reissued Evidence CD of an '82 date originally done for Isabel is blessed relief for people who would like less yarn spinning and more string bending. They get plenty; Milton does not spare the flashy, jagged guitar lines. At the same time there was soul aplenty in his singing; it was assertive, raw and animated.

The Little Red Rooster Blues Band has been perhaps the Philly area’s most prized blues band for three decades now. This CD, which is their seventh, marks their 30th year as a band. It’s essentially a miracle that band leader Kevin McCann was able to make this recording. In 2015, as the band was finishing up their sixth CD, Hijinx & Tomfoolery, MCann woke up with a tingling sensation in both hands. Soon he as diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. After a four month hospital stay and rehab, McCann stayed committed, first playing in a wheelchair, then a walker, then a cane. He played guitar with a makeshift sling on a mic stand but over the course of two years McCann fully recovered, chalking it up to his love for the blues that kept him alive.

The legendary Vocalion label had a chequered history. Formed by the Aeolian Piano Company in 1916, it took the name from their Vocalion Organ Company subsidiary. It was bought by Brunswick in 1925, but when that label was swallowed up by Warner Bros five years later it was licensed, along with Vocalion, to the American Record Corporation. Our selection here from the legendary Vocalion label spans the period from 1926 to 1940, the year before the United States went to war. Though this includes the period of the Great Depression, significant numbers of blues records were sold and Vocalion showcased a piano-based style the music business dubbed 'urban blues', distinguishing it from the Mississippi Delta country blues. With gems from the likes of Leroy Carr, Robert Johnson and Memphis Minnie, there's no doubt the classic Vocalion repertoire on this compilation was, and still is, the cream of the blues crop.