Twisted Blues Vol. 1 - Oz Noy - Special Review

Been waiting a while for the opportunity to review this utterly spectacular release. Yes, I know it's been out for some time, but it's terrific and under appreciated. Opening with Twisted Blues, Noy is joined by a who's crew of unbelievable musicians. Oz plays a tele on this first outrageous funky track and is joined by Jeff Beck pal Vinnie Colaluta on drums, Will Lee on Bass, Jerry Z on Organ and John Medeski on organ. This is such a great groove and features spectacular bass, drums and guitar work difficult to describe. On Oh Really, Noy and gang is joined by Alan Toussaint for a little twist of New Orleans. Maintaining incredible musicianship, the band takes you on an incredible trip through the quarter like you've never seen. Noy is relentless on guitar and Colaluta punctuates the day like only he can. Touyssaint plays a really nice classic piano solo snugged up to these musical madmen. Unbelievable! You Are The State has a different line up and a different feel. Featuring Noy on a strat, Anton Fig on drums, Roscoe Beck on bass, Reese Wynans on organ and Eric Johnson on guitar, this track has a ballad feel to it and of course without saying... all instrumental. With warm concentric lead guitar runs at the bottom of the fretboard, Noy takes the listener on a brilliant journey. Whole Tone Blues is written around a SRV lope and coincidentally is backed by Chris Layton on drums. This is a swinging track but not at all complying to any kind of borrowing but sticking to his own style...and with style like this...why not? Wynans steps up with a pretty serious organ solo on this track and the release is really well balanced instrumentally, but it's Noy who is running this carnival! On the classic Sissy Strut, Noy gives us a whole new look at how it's to be heard. Using guitar loops and his tele, Noy creates a sonic wall before the jam. Joined by Fig on drums, Lee on bass, Medeski on organ and Talph MacDonald on tamburin. I do want to comment that most everyone who covers this track on thier own release finds this to be the best track on the release. This is a really good cut, but Noy hits the ball so far on every track that this is pale by comparison to the best. Ripping solid blues guitar riffs and with solid back drumming, this track moves. Light Blue, a Thelonius Monk track, is treated with honest respect and the guitar wizardry is just perfect. Noy creates super effects with reverb and clean tones mixed. Wyans on organ has just the right touch and a pristine melody played by Noy is beautiful. Steroids is a funky R&B style track with a bit of James brown mixed in. An eccentric guitar break in the track keeps it from being an outright dance track... but it is artistic and well done. Colaluta takes some really nice explosive breaks on this track showing why he is such high demand as drummer for the best of the best. Two Centers is a solemn study on musical theme. Noy has such a great sense of musicianship and technique that this track, laid back and easy creates a super punch. The release is completed with Trinkle Tinkle with Noy on Strat, Layton on drums and Beck on Bass. A moving jazz like piece with a cool walking bass line and chasing drums, it is a super soaker to keep you foot tapping and you head bobbin waiting for the next release. In case you haven't already figured it out, I think that this release is terrific! If you haven't already heard it, bought it, seen the band and gone nuts... don't say I didn't warn you!!

  If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

 

Grammy-Winner Cyril Neville Cooks Up a Mojo Musical Gumbo on "Magic Honey," His Ruf Records Debut Solo CD, Coming September 10

Cyril Neville Cooks Up a Mojo Musical Gumbo on Magic Honey, His Ruf Records Debut Solo CD, Coming September 10

Grammy-Winning Singer/Percussionist Dazzles on New Album, Produced by David Z, with Special Guests Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Mike Zito and Walter Trout

NEW ORLEANS, LA – Ruf Records announces a September 10 release date for Magic Honey, the new album (and first solo outing for the label) from Grammy-winning singer/percussionist Cyril Neville. On the new CD, Cyril steps outside his Royal Southern Brotherhood membership to create a dazzling roots musical gumbo that stirs the pot with many flavors. Produced by David Z (Prince, Etta James, Buddy Guy) and recorded at Studio in the Country in Bogalusa, Louisiana, Magic Honey delivers an amazing amalgam of sounds, all tethered to Cyril’s most-soulful of vocals, and backed by an all-star band that includes Cranston Clements – guitar; “Mean” Willie Green – drums; Carl Dufrene – bass; and Norman Caesar – keyboards. And if that’s not enough, joining in on the fun as special guests are two roots music icons - Allen Toussaint and Dr. John – on piano and organ respectively, plus fellow Royal Southern Brotherhood bandmate Mike Zito and Walter Trout on guitars.     

Cyril also makes the recording a true family affair with the addition of his wife, Gaynielle, and son, Omari, providing a special dash of spice on backup vocals. There’s also a sprinkle of celebrity stardust, with New Orleans veteran Allen Toussaint handling the keys on the cuckolded shuffle of “Another Man,” Dr. John on organ for “Swamp Funk,” ex-Bluesbreakers axeman Walter Trout boiling up “Running Water” and Mike Zito lending muscular riffing to “Money and Oil” and “Working Man.”

“Making this record was a spiritual, musical event,” says Neville about the sessions. “The musicians and I approached it like it was an important gig we were playing. All the tracks are first takes. The atmosphere was just that electric. All the way live! I waited a long time to work with David Z and I feel the wait was well worth it. I love how the record turned out. I was blessed with the best rhythm section for the occasion in ‘Mean’ Willie Green, Cranston Clements, Carl Dufrene and Norman Caesar. And blessed again with the presence of two of my mentors and heroes: Allen Toussaint and Dr. John. I'm extremely proud of this record. It's a tasteful, well-cooked musical gumbo that I think will be pleasing to the musical palates of most music lovers.”

As in any great gumbo – musical or otherwise – Cyril Neville blends many ingredients to create a signature sonic dish that draws from a wellspring of blues, soul, funk, rock and world music, adds some heat to the mix and stirs it up to a beautiful boil. The even-dozen tracks on Magic Honey showcase an incredibly talented songwriter bringing his words to life with a mystical, spiritual honesty and simplicity that transcends any musical categories.

Cyril might have one foot planted in the traditions of the blues, such as the raw emotion on “Something’s Got a Hold of Me” or the slow-burning “Blues Is the Truth,” but the other is striding out and kicking the rulebook aside. There’s the spring-heeled, funk-flavored strut of “Running Water,” the snare-cracking groove of “Invisible” and the stinging title track (“My baby is a queen bee… magic honey dripping from her hive”). Then there’s the amped-up socio-political sideswipe of “Money and Oil” (“Don’t matter how you feel, it’s all sell, sell, sell”) and the album’s most overt rocker, “Working Man” (“Got no time for living, ’cause I’m working all the time…”). By the time you reach the silver-tongued reggae of “Slow Motion” and the irresistible dance floor-filler that is “Swamp Funk,” you’ll be reminded that Cyril is a songwriter who combines a clear artistic vision with a wandering eye.

At age 64, Cyril Neville has amassed a creatively varied resume during his four-plus decades in the music industry. Born in late-’40s New Orleans as the youngest of the four siblings who would soon define that city’s R&B sound as The Neville Brothers, Cyril absorbed his parents’ vinyl collection and found his own voice when he turned professional at 19. His first gig was with Art Neville and the Neville Sounds (alongside elder brothers Art and Aaron), and though his subsequent splinter-group Soul Machine never quite achieved the heights it was due, Cyril was on fire, pricking up ears with 1970’s debut solo single, “Gossip,” then arriving in the lineup of Art’s funk outfit, The Meters.

By that point, The Meters were already flying with the release of their 1969 smash-hit, “Cissy Strut.” Cyril added his congas and vocals to the mix on such landmark albums as 1972’s Cabbage Alley and 1975’s Fire On The Bayou, and when unabashed über-fan Mick Jagger invited The Meters to open up the Rolling Stones’ U.S. stadium tour of 1974, Art’s suggestion that Cyril take lead vocals was vindicated by a series of roof-raising performances.

When The Meters dissolved in 1976, it cleared the path for the bloodline to regroup as The Neville Brothers and start a four-decade hot-streak – from 1976’s Wild Tchoupitoulas, through 1989’s Grammy-winning Yellow Moon, to 2004’s Walkin’ in the Shadows of Life – that continues to this day. When critics refer to the Nevilles as New Orleans’ first family of funk, it’s not hyperbole but a statement of fact.

Even with all the success of The Neville Brothers, Cyril remains an artist in constant creative motion, always seeking a new groove and ways to paint musical pictures with his sound. He not only maintains a thrilling solo career that’s given us classics like 1994’s The Fire This Time and 2000’s New Orleans Cookin’, but has also collaborated with icons including Bob Dylan, Bono and Willie Nelson, toured the world with funk act Galactic, led his offshoot band Tribe 13, founded his own record label, Endangered Species, and made TV appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and HBO’s Treme. In 2010, he co-wrote the title-track for Mike Zito’s Pearl River album, which won the Blues Music Award as “Song of Year.” And in 2012, he, along with Devon Allman, Mike Zito, Charlie Wooton and Yonrico Scott formed Royal Southern Brotherhood, a supergroup that promptly took the world by storm and earned a Blues Music Award nomination for their self-titled debut CD on Ruf Records.

An artist with an environmental and social conscience, Cyril has also spread good karma, both through the New Orleans Musicians Organized (NOMO) project that helps fledgling bands navigate the  rock industry, and alongside Tab Benoit on the 2005 Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars tour that raised the profile of the Louisiana Gulf Coast’s environmental plight.

He’ll continue to tour throughout the rest of the year with his own band in support of Magic Honey as well as with Royal Southern Brotherhood. For more information, visit www.cyrilneville.net and www.rufrecords.de.

Holy Cow - Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint (/ˈtuːseɪnt/; born January 14, 1938) is an American musician, composer, record producer, and influential figure in New Orleans R&B. Many of Toussaint's songs have become familiar through versions by other musicians, including "Working in the Coalmine", "Ride Your Pony", "Fortune Teller", "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)", "Southern Nights," "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky", "I'll Take a Melody" and "Mother-in-Law". Toussaint grew up in a shotgun house in the New Orleans neighborhood of Gert Town, where his mother welcomed and fed all manner of musicians as they practiced and recorded with her son. After a lucky break at age 17 in which he stood in for Huey Smith at a performance with Earl King's band in Prichard, Alabama, Toussaint was introduced to a group of local musicians who performed regularly at a night club on LaSalle street Uptown; they were known as the Dew Drop Set. Initially, he recorded for RCA Victor as Al Tousan and recorded an album of instrumentals, including the song "Java", which years later became a big hit for Al Hirt (also on RCA). In his early years Toussaint worked mainly for Joe Banashak's Minit Records and Instant Records, but after Minit was sold to its distributor, he teamed up with Marshall Sehorn, starting their own record label variously known as Tou-Sea, Sansu, Deesu or Kansu. In 1973 Toussaint and Sehorn created the Sea-Saint recording studio in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans In the early 1960s he wrote and produced a string of hits for New Orleans R&B artists such as Ernie K-Doe, Irma Thomas, Art and Aaron Neville, The Showmen, and Lee Dorsey. Some of his songs from this period were published under the pseudonym "Naomi Neville", such as "Ruler of My Heart", recorded by Irma Thomas. The song would go on to be recorded by Otis Redding under the title "Pain in My Heart". In 1964, "A Certain Girl" (originally by Ernie K-Doe) was the B-side of the first single release by The Yardbirds; the song was released again in 1980 by Warren Zevon. A two-sided 1962 hit by Benny Spellman comprised "Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette)," later covered by The O'Jays, Ringo Starr, and Alex Chilton, and the simple but effective "Fortune Teller", which was covered by many 1960s rock groups including The Rolling Stones, The Nashville Teens, The Who, The Hollies, ex-Searchers founder member Tony Jackson and more recently (2007) by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on Raising Sand. A significant early influence was the second-line piano style of Professor Longhair. Toussaint's piano and arrangements show up on hundreds of records during the early 1960s on records by Lee Dorsey, Chris Kenner, and scores of other artists. Starting in the 1970s, he switched gears to a funkier sound, writing and producing for The Meters, Dr John, and the Wild Tchoupitoulas Mardi Gras Indians tribe. He also began to work with non-New Orleans artists such as B.J. Thomas, Robert Palmer, Willy DeVille, Sandy Denny, Elkie Brooks, Solomon Burke, Scottish soul singer Frankie Miller and southern rocker Mylon LeFevre. He arranged horn music for The Band's 1971 album Cahoots, plus Rock of Ages and The Last Waltz film, in conjunction with arranging horn parts for their concert repertoire. Boz Scaggs recorded Toussaint's "What Do You Want the Girl to Do?" on his 1976 album Silk Degrees, which reached #2 on the U.S. pop albums chart. In 1976 he also collaborated with John Mayall on the album Notice to Appear. Toussaint also launched his own solo career, which peaked in the '70s with the albums From a Whisper to a Scream and Southern Nights. It was during this time that he teamed with Labelle, and produced their highly acclaimed 1975 album Nightbirds, which spawned the Number One hit, "Lady Marmalade". The same year, Toussaint collaborated with Paul McCartney and Wings for their hit album Venus and Mars. Two years later, Glen Campbell covered Toussaint's "Southern Nights" and carried the song to Number One on the Pop, Country and Adult-Contemporary Charts. Along with many of his contemporaries, Toussaint found that interest in his compositions was rekindled when his work began to be sampled by hip hop artists in the 1980s and 1990s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and, in 2009, the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. On May 9, 2011 he was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. Contrary to rumors at the time, Toussaint did not take refuge at the Louisiana Superdome in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Instead, Toussaint weathered the storm in the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel. After the hurricane Toussaint left New Orleans for Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and eventually settled in New York City, where he is currently living while his house is being rebuilt. His first television appearance after the hurricane was on the September 7, 2005 episode of the Late Show with David Letterman, sitting in with Paul Shaffer and his CBS Orchestra. Toussaint performed regularly at Joe's Pub in New York City through 2009. The River in Reverse, Toussaint's collaborative album with Elvis Costello, was released on 29 May 2006 in the UK on the Verve label, by Universal Classics and Jazz UCJ. It was recorded in Hollywood and, notably, in Toussaint's native New Orleans as the first major studio session to take place after Hurricane Katrina. In 2007, Toussaint performed a duet with Paul McCartney of a song by fellow New Orleans musician and resident Fats Domino, "I Want to Walk You Home", as their contribution to Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino (Vanguard). In 2008, Toussaint's song "Sweet Touch of Love" was used in a deodorant commercial for the Axe (Lynx) brand. The commercial won a Gold Lion at the 2008 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. In February 2008, Toussaint appeared on Le Show, the Harry Shearer show broadcast on NPR via KCRW. Toussaint appeared in London in August 2008, where he performed a gig at The Roundhouse. In October 2008 he performed at Festival New Orleans at The O2 alongside acts such as Dr. John and Buckwheat Zydeco.[9] Sponsored by Quint Davis of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Philip Anschutz, the event was intended to promote New Orleans music and culture and to revive the once-lucrative tourist trade that had been almost completely lost following the flooding of Hurricane Katrina. After his second performance at the festival, Toussaint appeared alongside then-Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, Mitch Landrieu. The following day, he performed again in London at the NFL Tailgate Party. Toussaint performed a taping for the popular PBS series Austin City Limits on June 30, 2009 as part of the show's 35th anniversary season. He played instrumentals from his most recent CD, "The Bright Mississippi", as well as many songs from his back catalog. He performed with Levon Helm and his band on Imus in the Morning on October 9, 2009. In December 2009 he was featured on Elvis Costello's "Spectacle" program on the Sundance Channel, singing "A Certain Girl". Toussaint appeared in Eric Clapton's 2010 album, Clapton, in two Fats Waller covers, "My Very Good Friend the Milkman" and "When Somebody Thinks You're Wonderful". Toussaint is a musical mentor to Swedish-born New Orleans songwriter and performer Theresa Andersson If you support live Blues acts, up and coming Blues talents and want to learn more about Blues news and Fathers of the Blues, Like ---Bman’s Blues Report--- Facebook Page! I’m looking for great talent and trying to grow the audience for your favorites band! -  ”LIKE”

Party Goin' On - Allen Toussaint

Allen Toussaint ( born January 14, 1938) is an American musician, composer, record producer, and influential figure in New Orleans R&B.

Many of Toussaint's songs have become familiar through numerous cover versions, including "Working in the Coalmine", "Ride Your Pony", "Fortune Teller", "Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues)", "Southern Nights," "Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky", "I'll Take a Melody" and "Mother-in-Law"
Toussaint grew up in a shotgun house in the New Orleans neighborhood of Gert Town, where his mother welcomed and fed all manner of musicians as they practiced and recorded with her son. After a lucky break at age 17 in which he stood in for Huey Smith at a performance with Earl King's band in Prichard, Alabama, Toussaint was introduced to a group of local musicians who performed regularly at a night club on LaSalle street Uptown; they were known as the Dew Drop Set. Initially, he recorded for RCA Victor as Al Tousan and recorded an album of instrumentals, including the song "Java", which years later became a big hit for Al Hirt (also on RCA).

In his early years Toussaint worked mainly for Joe Banashak's Minit Records and Instant Records, but after Minit was sold to its distributor, he teamed up with Marshall Sehorn, starting their own record label variously known as Tou-Sea, Sansu, Deesu or Kansu. In 1973 Toussaint and Sehorn created the Sea-Saint recording studio in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans
Write on our Facebook Wall or post your Photos of great blues events! -  Here