Category: Blues

Crusade front cover 0

John Mayall’s Blues Breakers — Crusade

I do wish there were some consistency as to whether “Blues Breakers” is one word or two, but perhaps that’s a lot to ask of British musicians. On this album it’s two words, so...

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John Mayall — Blues Breakers

For the longest time, I just paid no attention to John Mayall. My British blues was mostly filtered through The Animals and the like – that particularly British turn on R&B. For my blues,...

Mojo Hand front cover 0

Lightnin’ Hopkins — Mojo Hand

Incredibly, I only had one Lightnin’ Hopkins album prior to this, a CD titled “The Legacy of the Blues vol. 12,” that I bought back around 1990 or so at the lamented Records ‘n’...

Larkin Poe Kindred Spirits front cover 0

Larkin Poe — Kindred Spirits

See my last entry on Larkin Poe’s “Self Made Man” for the story of my discovery of Larkin Poe. One of the delights of this pair of sisters is their obvious joy in just...

Larkin Poe Self Made Man front cover 1

Larkin Poe — Self Made Man

Listen, when a new artist comes out, everybody says that they’re the latest and greatest, that they’re the heirs to this and that, that they area doing something amazingly new, taking it back to...

Bettye Lavette Things Have Changed front cover 2

Bettye LaVette — Things Have Changed

I first heard of Bettye LaVette seven or eight years ago – I can’t remember if it was pre-move, or mid-move. Lee had been driving somewhere and listening to NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and wrote...