A collection of four 5-track EPs from Hunter and Amendola, each focusing on the music of a particular artist or act. The project opens with ingenious distillations of Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn gems such as “Rockin’ In Rhythm,” “Daydream” and “Mood Indigo.” From Cole Porter’s songbook, they interpret standards, including “Too Darn Hot,” “Every Time We Say Goodbye” and “Anything Goes.” Country music and jazz are often cast as antithetical styles, but the truth is far more complicated.
Eddie Boyd was a half-brother of Memphis Slim and a cousin of Muddy Waters. He spent his early years on Stovall’s Plantation but ran away after a dispute with an overseer. Self-taught on guitar and piano, he worked around the south during the 30s, as both ‘Little Eddie’ and ‘Ernie’ Boyd, from a base in Memphis, before settling in Chicago where he worked in a steel-mill. He was active in music, performing with Waters, Johnny Shines and John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson before he had his first big hit under his own name with ‘Five Long Years’, on the Job label in 1952. He recorded extensively for Chess Records, having successes with ‘24 Hours’ and ‘3rd Degree’. He journeyed to Europe during the ‘Blues Boom’ of the 60s and, considering himself too assertive to live comfortably in the USA, took up residence first in Paris and later in Finland…