Mathieu Chedid Mama Sam

To call West Side Soul one of the great blues albums, one of the key albums (if not the key album) of modern electric blues is all true, but it tends to diminish and academicize Magic Sam's debut album. This is the inevitable side effect of time, when an album that is decades old enters the history books, but this isn't an album that should be preserved in amber, seen only as an important record. Because this is a record that is exploding with life, a record with so much energy, it doesn't sound old. Of course, part of the reason it sounds so modern is because this is the template for most modern blues, whether it comes from Chicago or elsewhere. Magic Sam may not have been the first to blend uptown soul and urban blues, but he was the first to capture not just the passion of soul, but also its subtle elegance, while retaining the firepower of an after-hours blues joint…

Veteran Chicago drummer Sam Lay is a famous behind-the-scenes blues and rock character - he played with the great Howlin' Wolf in the '60s, backed Bob Dylan when he "went electric" at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and was an early member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He isn't famous for singing, however, and that's the main problem with the latest of his many collaborations with guitarist Fred James. The band's rhythm section is as strong as you'd expect, with Lay and acoustic bassist Bob Kommersmith locking into confident, slightly laid-back grooves on "Baby How Long" and the closing instrumental "Midnight Drag." But despite Lay's deep, funny charisma on "I Like Women" and "I Got Two Women," he was better at backing the Wolf than he is replacing him.

French chanteuse Mireille Mathieu is classically known for her illustrious French crooning during the '60s and '70s. In the early '60s, French pop vocalist Johnny Hallyday's manager Johnny Stark noticed Mathieu's enchanting vocalic beauty and later built her into her own star with the classic urchin hairdo and loud, vibrant costumes. She was quickly hailed as the next Edith Piaf and her 1965 performance run at the Paris Olympia sparked her recording relationship with Barclay Records. Singles such as "Mon Credo," "C'est Ton Nom," and "Qu'elle Est Belle" made Mathieu an international star in Europe while achieving mild success in the Americas, but her cover of Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz" was an impressive French interpretation that made her impact charts in Britain.

French chanteuse Mireille Mathieu is classically known for her illustrious French crooning during the '60s and '70s. In the early '60s, French pop vocalist Johnny Hallyday's manager Johnny Stark noticed Mathieu's enchanting vocalic beauty and later built her into her own star with the classic urchin hairdo and loud, vibrant costumes. She was quickly hailed as the next Edith Piaf and her 1965 performance run at the Paris Olympia sparked her recording relationship with Barclay Records. Singles such as "Mon Credo," "C'est Ton Nom," and "Qu'elle Est Belle" made Mathieu an international star in Europe while achieving mild success in the Americas, but her cover of Englebert Humperdinck's "The Last Waltz" was an impressive French interpretation that made her impact charts in Britain.