Jump Blues

Flattop Tom & his Jump Cats, is a versatile, energetic group of talented musicians dedicated to keeping Blues and Swing alive. This eight-piece band plays Blues, West Coast Jump Blues, Big Band Swing, Jump Jive, Boogie Woogie, Rockabilly, and 40s & 50s Rhythm & Blues. The band has been in existence since 1992. Flattop Tom is also a professional swing dancer and prides himself in keeping tempos right for dancers, but they're fun to watch and listen to, as well.Tom is known as one of the best harmonica players on the West Coast and has been sponsored by Hohner Harmonica since 1994……

The Blues Masters series, much to Rhino`s credit, adopts an expansive definition of blues, allowing the likes of Count Basie, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Muddy Waters and even Louis Prima admission. There is none of the purist`s quibbling over strict 12-bar form or the relative significance of prewar and postwar styles.
What Rhino delivers instead is the blues in all its myriad guises. This music is old and new, black and white, acoustic and electric, folksy and jazzy, performed by women and men, and yet it is all still blues at its core.

Soloing styles, techniques and essential insights Many a guitar legend has cut their teeth and left their mark on the jazz-influenced blues style known as "West Coast Blues" (aka "jump" blues): Charlie Christian, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Albert Collins, Johnny Guitar Watson, Duke Robillard, Hollywood Fats, Little Charlie Baty are just a few. But T-Bone Walker is likely the genre's definitive guitarist.

Since joining the Stony Plain roster in 1993, Duke Robillard has released an average of one album per year with the Canadian roots and blues label, and his sixteenth is a little bit of a departure: where his previous efforts have focused mainly on jazz and blues, this one is a celebration of the jump blues and R&B of the '40s and '50s, and Robillard sounds just as natural and is clearly having just as good a time with this repertoire as he always has on his previous projects. Highlights include a wonderful jump blues instrumental arrangement of the traditional song "Frankie and Johnny," an equally great vocal duet between Robillard and Sunny Crownover on "I Wanna Hug You, Kiss You, Squeeze You" and an absolutely brilliant rendition of the Ike Turner R&B classic "Tore Up."

Long before his 1990s re-emergence as a fright wig wearing blues star, Robert "H-Bomb" Ferguson had recorded a series of Wynonie Harris-styled jump blues singles in the '40s and '50s for a variety of labels and under various names, including several as the Cobra Kid. Although he was so close to Harris' delivery and repertoire on these sides that most critics dismissed him as an outright clone, Ferguson's booming, wink-and-a-smile voice was obviously something special. Ferguson first recorded under the moniker H-Bomb in 1951 when he signed with Savoy Records, and the name stuck. This generous 31-track collection from Rev-Ola Records includes Ferguson's Savoy tracks, as well as sides he cut for the Atlas, Prestige and Esquire labels between 1951 and 1954, and features such gems as "Rock H-Bomb Rock," "On My Way," "Preachin' the Blues"….