Bman's Blues Report

JUNIOR MACK A self-taught musician, Junior Mack is a gifted vocalist and guitarist. He has been playing since the age of nine and is equally at ease playing acoustic and electric styles. Junior started out on the guitar playing gospel - his road map being the early music of the Five Blind Boys Of Alabama with George Scott, Linwood Hargrove with the Swan Silvertones, Pops Staples of the Staple Singers, and the great Howard Carroll of the Dixie Humming-birds. His other influences are the country blues of Lightnin' Hopkins and the big city blues of Freddie King and B.B. King. Junior Mack has worked and collaborated with many major American recording artists including: Jaimoe's Jasssz Band, The Allman Brothers Band, Derek Trucks, Robert Randolph, Dickey Betts, Chaka Khan, Magic Slim, Joe Louis Walker, Honeyboy Edwards, Phillip Walker, Lucky Peterson, Eddie Kirkland, Jeff Healy and others. BILL SIMS. JR. Born into and raised by a sharecropping family in rural Georgia, vocalist...

The grit of low-down country and urban blues to the bold brass of New Orleans; the hand-clapping, hustle and bustle of gospel to fiery postmodern, jazz-infused horn arrangements; the haunting cries of work songs to pulsating drums that reach back to the roots of it all—if you are lucky enough to hear the Heritage Blues Orchestra, you’ll experience this and more. From the first of the twelve tracks on their debut album And Still I Rise, Junior Mack’s propulsive rendition of Son House’s Clarksdale Moan, Heritage Blues Orchestra unapologetically stomps onto the scene and digs in with both heels—taking us from Bill Sims’ hard-shuffling version of the immortal Muddy Waters classic, Catfish Blues, to the solemn dirge of Chaney Sims’ interpretation of Leadbelly’s Go Down Hannah to magnificent three-part harmonies against a slippery slide guitar in their head-nodding version of Get Right Church. The group is driven by the powerful rhythms of Grammy-awarding winning blues drummer Kenny “Beedy E...