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In 1990 and 1991, Eric Clapton performed 42 nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London; 18 shows in 1990 and 24 in 1991. During the run of these shows Clapton performed with three different line-ups: a rock band, a blues band, and an orchestra. Clapton’s love of the Blues is well known, and the emotion and enjoyment of playing these songs with top-notch musicians is clear on these recordings and film.

American singer/guitarist Eric Bibb and West African singer/guitarist Habib Koité have come together for Brothers in Bamako. It is an exciting gumbo of the two artists’ influences of blues, folk, gospel and world music.
The 13 tracks on Brothers in Bamako showcase songs penned by each artist, as well as several written together, plus a fascinating cover of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and the traditional blues, “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad.” The CD represents a musical crossroads of Bibb’s blues, folk and gospel influences, blended with Koité’s contemporary West African folk/world roots into a unique mixture of voices and guitars that is both passionate and ebullient.

Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist – more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Standing midway between Clapton's stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio. This album was the culmination of a very successful year of playing with John Mayall, a fully realized blues creation, featuring sounds very close to the group's stage performances, and with no compromises.

The title track opens and immediately you realise that Eric Snelders hasn't departed from the winning formula he used in his first release. This album has intricate sequence patterns, delicate piano interludes, washes of ambiance, enjoyable melodies, and throbbing bass sequences. Especially notable is the superb sound quality. Fans of melodic synth music with plenty of sequences will certainly find much to their taste on this album.

Shuffling Ivories may not win any prizes for innovation, but it provides a tuneful hour of accomplished piano and bass playing and insights into the less visible byways of jazz piano.
The title is a play on Shuffle Along, Eubie Blake’s 1921 Broaday musical, written in partnership with Noble Sissle, and with Blake as a starting point this piano and bass album offers a wide-ranging tribute to various styles of ivory-tickling, shuffling them to some extent as it goes.
The first and title track is a traditional swinging blues with Monkish moments, written by Magris. I’ve Found a New Baby is a lively conversational treatment of the standard in which bass and piano create spontaneous counterpoint before coalescing in unadulterated swing for the end…

Youthful pianist Eric Reed, who at the time of this recording was debuting as Marcus Roberts' replacement in the Wynton Marsalis band, plays carefully and sometimes tentatively on his first release as a leader. It's a trio affair, and although Reed doesn't throw many challenges toward bassist Dwayne Burno or drummer Gregory Hutchinson, he's certainly a solid player with the potential to become a great one.

Beat Avenue is 60-year-old Eric Andersen's most ambitious album, a 90-minute tour de force that encapsulates his musical and lyrical concerns over a lifetime. The music is often-dense rock dominated by a rhythm section led by guitarist Eric Bazilian of the Hooters. Equally dense is Andersen's highly poetic versifying, which he sings in his gruff baritone. Andersen is world-weary in these songs, roaming the globe haunted by the past and fearful of the future. He confesses to a reckless youth, but acknowledges that he can no longer afford such license. "What once was Charles Bukowski," he sings in "Before Everything Changed," referring to the free-living beat poet, "is now Emily Dickinson." The ballads and love songs "Song of You and Me," "Shape of a Broken Heart," "Under the Shadows," and "Still Looking for You" are rendered tenderly, but they are also full of regret and loss, past-tense reflections that recount memories of love long gone. The first disc of Beat Avenue is complete and formidable unto itself, but there is a second CD consisting of two lengthy songs. The title track, running more than 26 minutes, is a beat poem with jazzy accompaniment by Robert Aaron in which Andersen recalls a poetry reading he attended as a 20-year-old on the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

Eric Reed celebrates the music of Black and Brown composers on his deeply personal album Black, Brown, and Blue featuring a brilliant new trio with bassist Luca Alemanno and drummer Reggie Quinerly.