R.s.grey

It's difficult to find a review of JJ Grey's music that doesn't use the word "swamp" to describe his blend of deep Southern soul and murky funk. So that's taken care of in the first sentence here, which leaves plenty of room to focus on his fourth album's low-key yet surging backwoods R&B. The disc's title and title track refer to Grey's home state of Florida's official flower, but there is little that is floral or sunshiny about his music. Rather, the Jacksonville-based Grey prefers to hover in the gloaming, layering horns and backing vocals over grinding, midtempo blue-eyed soul. This is the most elaborately produced of his albums, but like the chitlin' circuit blues in his blood, there is nothing slick about it…

Maybe number five is the charm? Not that JJ Grey and his ever evolving backing band Mofro care. But it's possible that Georgia Warhorse may be the record that pulls them from the glorified cult status they've enjoyed for a decade into the lights on the mainstream's fringes - but don't count on it. Grey's music is far too gritty; too poetically, sonically, and atmospherically rooted in vintage Southern soul, rock and blues traditions to translate readily into radio fodder. Georgia Warhorse (named for a tenacious and resilient species of grasshopper) contains 11 new originals, recorded at Jim DeVito's Retrophonics Studio in St. Augustine - as were all four previous albums. The music is steeped in funky, greasy, slippery Southern R&B, blues and rock…

The Old Grey Whistle Test was a music performance television series on BBC 2, and over the years the show has featured an amazing variety of artists, from Gram Parsons to Jethro Tull, including several who fell to the blues side of the pop spectrum. This set collects some of those blues tracks, including songs from R.L. Burnside ("Bad Luck City"), Roy Buchanan ("Sweet Dreams"), and Freddie King ("Going Down"), among others. There's also a track by Elmore James here, "The Sky Is Crying," which is a little confusing, since James never appeared on the program. Apparently the selector here, Bob Harris, wanted to include sides from musicians who should have or could have appeared on the program…