Oracle Sisters Blue Left Hand

Recorded during a 1979 tour of England, The Dirty Dozens is a unique snapshot of two overlooked Chicago juke-joint aces. Playing something of a musical version of the African-American game of oneupsmanship in the title, Jimmy and Frank trade off on vocal duties and bounce rhythm and lead licks off of one another like so many good natured barbershop insults. The recording quality here isn't crystal clear, but its rough edges are perfectly suited to the gritty blues these two journeymen let loose with.

Although the Concertos for Piano (left hand) by Korngold, Prokofiev, Ravel and others may be better known, it was Josef Labor who marked the beginning of the genre in 1915 with his first Konzertstück for Piano (left hand) and Orchestra. It was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in Russia during the First World War, but was determined that his career should progress nonetheless. Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’ close circle of friends who, at the age of three, had lost his sight due to smallpox. Composition was a luxury for him, in that he had to rely on the help of an amanuensis to commit his works to paper. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous and, above all, melodious. These world premiere recordings represent a high-point in Capriccio's Labor-Edition, which for a number of years has been spotlighting the sensitive music of this largely forgotten composer.

Jimmy Rogers & Left Hand Frank - Dirty Dozens (2009)
Mp3 320 kbps | 56 min 56 sec | 131.04Mb
Label: Jsp Records | Genre: Blues

Jimmy Rogers (June 3, 1924 – December 19, 1997) was a blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, best known for his work as a member of Muddy Waters' band of the 1950s.

It’s good to have Richard Strauss’ fascinating, somewhat atypical concerted works for piano left hand available on a single disc, especially in well played and strongly projected readings like these. At times the slow-motion harmonic scansion and rhapsodic piano writing throughout the Paregon to the Symphonia Domestica evoke Scriabin’s misty muse. By contrast the Panathenäenzug, subtitled Symphonic Etudes in the form of a passacaglia, uses a time-honored baroque form to generate opulently scored, post-Wagnerian froth.