Never heard of Jay Owens? Doesn't matter. Owens' obscurity is something the somewhat laborious liner notes go to great lengths to establish, as if it were a badge of honor. The key, however, is the music's timeless soulfulness; after a couple of listens, you'll swear you've been listening to it all your life. For the record, Owens has made noise previously as a touring sideman for such greats as Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Aaron Neville, Etta James and Bobby Womack. But on his debut recording, he moves to center stage with the grace and poise of a veteran. What's more, the dude writes all his own songs. A generous thirteen of them are included on this album, originally released in 1993…
After four years off records and in obscurity, Lonnie Johnson launched his final comeback with this release, which has been reissued on CD. Teamed with tenor saxophonist Hal Singer, pianist Claude Hopkins, bassist Wendell Marshall and drummer Bobby Donaldson, Johnson sings and plays guitar on a variety of blues, showing that the layoff (he was working at the time as a janitor) had not hurt his abilities in the slightest.
Here is yet another Peter Green collection comprised mainly of material from 1979 through 1983, with the thoroughly enjoyable Fleetwood Mac A-side "Man of the World," from 1969, included for some inexplicable reason. The material here is culled from Green's first return to recording after a six-year hiatus for personal and mental health reasons. The Peter Green who returned to the scene on In the Skies was a leaner and meaner player. His concern was more with the atmospherics of playing blues-inflected material than with the attack of the blues themselves. The opening track from that album, "Slabo Day," with its four-chord repetitive minor-key figure and organic hand percussion, is an anomaly in the Green discography, with the possible exception of "Albatross"…