Rainy Night in Georgia

The 'Live at the Basement' DVD, filmed in Sydney, Australia, features Tony Joe White performing nine of his greatest compositions including "Undercover Agent For The Blues", "Steamy Windows", "Rainy Night In Georgia" and "Polk Salad Annie". Bonus features include an interview with Tony Joe White and other additional material.

Randy Crawford made even more noise on the urban contemporary and R&B front in 1981 with this album, one of her most successful ever from a chart and hit standpoint. The title track and the album cut "Rio De Janeiro Blue" were well-received. She continued smartly blending jazzy pop, slick ballads, and earnest, anguished numbers like her cover of "Rainy Night In Georgia."

This recording session was not released until five years after it was done. One can imagine the tapes practically smoldering in their cases, the music is so hot. Sorry, there is nothing "wrong" about this blues album at all. Otis Rush was a great blues expander, a man whose guitar playing was in every molecule pure blues. On his solos on this album he strips the idea of the blues down to very simple gestures (i.e., a bent string, but bent in such a subtle way that the seasoned blues listener will be surprised). As a performer he opens up the blues form with his chord progressions and use of horn sections, the latter instrumentation again added in a wonderfully spare manner, bringing to mind a master painter working certain parts of a canvas in order to bring in more light.

With her mix of blues, soul, and rock, plus the just tangible presence of her native Mississippi gospel background, Zora Young can be a powerful performer when the material is there. On the best cuts from Tore Up from the Floor Up, her third album and second for Delmark, she shows a kind of hard-earned wisdom and an assurance in her vocals that rises well above mere shouting, and tracks like the moody, dynamic "Toxic" and the romping title tune (both of which are Young originals) show her to be a solid songwriter as well. She also turns in fine readings on a pair of covers, turning atmospheric on Muddy Waters' "Two Trains Running" and giving B.B. King's "I'm Gonna Do the Same Thing They Did to Me" a saucy, determined sheen…

For Real is another strong soul/blues cocktail served up by Little Milton, although it runs a bit heavy in the ballad department. Granted, Milton is plenty versatile enough to adopt the sentimental croon required to cover "To Love Somebody" and "A Rainy Night in Georgia," but he's really at his best when he's tearing into the blues with a guitar in his hands. Two slow blues numbers steal the show here: "Blues for Mr. C," which is a straightforward 12-bar burner, and "If That's What You Wanna Do," which rides a slicker, urban groove in the circa-'70s Albert King tradition. (These two songs are the only originals on the entire album)…

Shelby Lynne has been seeking the place inside her music where everything cracks and opens for over a decade. From her Columbia Records debut, she has been writing and singing songs that seek to get underneath themselves and communicate something of the wildness, ambiguity, and emotional depth that is in the grain of her voice. Suit Yourself is a self-produced, loose, organic set of 12 new songs, ten of them originals.