Texas Piano Blues

This CD Album, featuring the vocals of James “J.B.Blues” Broussard, contains 18 original Texas-Louisiana Blues songs in a one-hour recording.In the words of J.B.’s friend, John “Back Door Man” Henry, “J.B. don’t shout like Joplin, or growl like LaCroix, but he’s a remnant of the same blues rag…yes! GOD looked down on the broken hearted and said ‘Let there be Blues’, and yes J.B. is one of the ‘Blues Prophets’, so the boy be bad, and ‘it makes for good blues’”.In addition to J.B……

Amazingly, many of the recordings guitarist Tampa Red made for RCA Victor and Bluebird in the '40s and early '50s never saw reissue until this 2015 double-disc by Ace. As John Broven points out in his rightly evangelical liner notes for Dynamite! The Unsung King of the Blues, CD-era reissues of Tampa Red usually began at the beginning, which for the guitarist meant 1934, and petered out by the late '40s, which is when Tampa Red eased away from hokum and into earthy guitar-and-piano blues that had substantial influence on the electric blues of the '50s. On Dynamite! The Unsung King of the Blues, the interaction between Tampa Red and his pianists Big Maceo Merriweather and, later, Maceo's protégé Little Johnnie Jones certainly points the way to the classic sound of Chicago blues - particularly when it's paired with a big, swinging drumbeat - and the bluesman's repertoire was also cherry-picked by B.B. King…

Rare 1970 album produced by Johnny Otis featuring the stinging guitar of his son Shuggie – with two previously unissued bonus tracks Bluesman Slim Green made very few records in a career that started in 1948 and ended with this LP in 1970. Born Norman G. Green in Bryant, Texas in 1920, he grew up in Oklahoma and played guitar in Las Vegas before settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s. He made his first records in 1948 for local labels. Listening to them suggests a player full of country influences, updating them for a modern urban audience. He reappeared a decade later in a group called the Cats From Fresno, who made two singles for Johnny Otis’ Dig label, a contact he renewed in the late 60s. Johnny Otis, a pioneer of post-war R&B, had scored hits as a producer and recording artist as well as being a renowned talent-spotter. Having dropped out of sight for much of the 1960s, he returned to the studio in the latter part of the decade and released a series of records for the Kent label, distinguished by the guitar playing of his teenage son Shuggie.