Suddenly Southern

Never underestimate the power of a woman with her back to the wall. In March 2020, as Covid blew across the planet, the shutters came down on live venues and recording studios, and the music scene fell suddenly silent, Ghalia Volt faced the same dilemma as every other artist. What now? The answer was One Woman Band. Having joined with the cream of the US roots scene for two acclaimed albums, 2017s Let The Demons Out and 2019s Mississppi Blend, Volts rebirth as a solo performer wasnt a decision made lightly.

I was born and raised in the small town of Monkton, Maryland, population 4,856. My family didn’t have much money, but we always had what we needed. Monkton was a great place for a kid to grow up. The area is known for its horse farms, sprawling countryside, and old, stately homes set back from the country roads. It’s beautiful.

I was born and raised in the small town of Monkton, Maryland, population 4,856. My family didn’t have much money, but we always had what we needed. Monkton was a great place for a kid to grow up. The area is known for its horse farms, sprawling countryside, and old, stately homes set back from the country roads. It’s beautiful.

J J Holiday has got a big greezy sound when he plays his axe. A stone soul poet of the slide guitar, he carries the Delta in his ass pocket. He's played on all kinds of modern shit, some movies etc. But his debut was as thee unknown sideman on the last known recordings made for the now defunct Paramount label's famed 13,000 race series (Paramount Records: Home of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Hokum Boys, Biddleville Quintette & The Jubilee Gospel Team). He was just about to embark on his solo career for their satellite label QRS, when all holy hell broke loose due to that big crash of 19 and 29. Paramount folded up shop right quick.

I am enthralled by You Can’t Do That! I’ve been a Beatles fan all my life and I can honestly say that I never imagined them this way. Bu oh, how well it works! Mick Kolassa and Mark Telesca are Beatles fans too, and at the 2016 International Blues Challenge in Memphis they started swapping their” bluesified” versions of Beatles songs. They sounded so good that way, they decided to make an album. Jeff Jensen joined the project to produce and add some of his remarkable guitar and they knew they had something. Then they gathered James Cunningham on drums and other percussion, Tommy Borroughs on fiddle and mandolin, Marc Franklin on trumpet and yes, flugelhorn and Eric Hughes on guitar and harmonica and with the help of all these friends, they did something nearly unbelievable.

In the years after Elvis Presley but before the Beatles, Cliff Richard was the biggest thing in British rock & roll – and in the years after the Beatles, he was never far from the top of the U.K. charts. Arriving in 1958, just a couple of years after skiffle swept Britain, Richard was the first English singer to approximate the hip-shaking rebellion of American rock & roll with his 1958 debut single "Move It." A smash hit right out of the gate, "Move It" kicked off an astonishing five decades' worth of hits (as of 2014, his last time in the U.K. Top 10 was in 2008, when "Thank You for a Lifetime" went to number three). The earliest recordings, most made with his backing band the Shadows, were his hardest-rocking and undoubtedly his most influential, making an impression on nearly the entire first generation of British rock & rollers. Like Presley, who was certainly Richard's key influence, Cliff's popularity wound up pushing him ever so gradually to the status of an all-around entertainer. He moved into movies quickly – the first came just a year after "Move It" – and the Shadows tamed their rockabilly, but the real shift into the mainstream came after the Beatles opened the flood gates for homegrown British rock & roll, banishing Richard to the status of an older generation. Cliff continued to have hits in the '60s, even after he and the Shadows disbanded in 1968, but he split his time between pop and Christian music; in the early '70s, he focused on hosting a variety show on the BBC. Toward the end of the '70s, he made a big pop comeback with 1976's "Devil Woman," which became his first Top 10 hit in the U.S., and over the next five years, he racked up several intercontinental soft rock hits, including 1979's "We Don't Talk Anymore," 1980's "Dreamin'," and the Olivia Newton-John duet "Suddenly," taken from the 1980 soundtrack to Xanadu.

Peter Green is regarded by some fans as the greatest white blues guitarist ever, Eric Clapton notwithstanding. Born Peter Greenbaum but calling himself Peter Green by age 15, he grew up in London's working-class East End. Green's early musical influences were Hank Marvin of the Shadows, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Freddie King, and traditional Jewish music. He originally played bass before being invited in 1966 by keyboardist Peter Bardens to play lead in the Peter B's, whose drummer was a lanky chap named Mick Fleetwood. The 19-year-old Green was with Bardens just three months before joining John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, whose rapidly shifting personnel included bassist John McVie and drummer Aynsley Dunbar. A keen fan of Clapton, Green badgered Mayall to give him a chance when the Bluesbreakers guitarist split for an indefinite vacation in Greece. Green sounded great and, as Mayall recalls, was not amused when Clapton returned after a handful of gigs, and Green was out.