Bman's Blues Report

TOM WAITS STREAMS SOUL OF A MAN FROM NEW COMPILATION GOD DON'T NEVER CHANGE: THE SONGS OF BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON AT HIS FACEBOOK PAGE   Legendary artist Tom Waits is streaming his new recording of Soul Of A Man from the forthcoming album God Don't Never Change: The Songs Of Blind Willie Johnson at his Facebook page . Waits also recorded John The Revelator for the album. The album -- to be issued on CD on February 26 and soon after on vinyl -- features newly recorded versions of the iconic slide guitarist/vocalist's most seminal material. In addition to Waits, Lucinda Williams, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, Cowboy Junkies, Blind Boys Of Alabama (with Jason Isbell on guitar), Sinéad O'Connor, Luther Dickinson featuring The Rising Star Fife & Drum Band, Maria McKee, and Rickie Lee Jones all deliver deeply moving interpretations of Johnson's otherworldly "gospel blues" music. Produced by Jeffrey Gaskill (pr...

GOD DON’T NEVER CHANGE: THE SONGS OF BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON   TRIBUTE ALBUM ONLY HAPPENS IF FANS FUND IT Salute to legendary gospel singer-guitarist Blind Willie Johnson,   with new recordings by Tom Waits, Sinead O’Connor, Lucinda Williams, Luther Dickinson, Cowboys Junkies, Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi, Blind Boys of Alabama and Rickie Lee Jones, is a Kickstarter project in the works. LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Johnson's music was charred with purgatorial fire — more than sixty years later, you can still smell the smoke on it.—Francis Davis, The History of the Blues  More than 60 years after his death, Blind Willie Johnson continues to capture listeners in a way that few singers or musicians have equaled. The list of artists he has influenced goes back to Robert Johnson and forward to the White Stripes. The most obviously indebted would include several generations of hard country gospel singers...

Another in a series of releases that I believe are noteworthy which weren't sent to me for review, Revelator by the Tedeschi Trucks Band is as fine a contemporary R&B/ blues release as you're likely to hear. When slide guitarist extrordinaire, Derek Trucks determined to pair up with his wife, blues guitarist and vocalist Susan Tedeschi it was a marriage literally made in heaven. Tedeschi has a sassy vocal that lends itself really nicely to R&B and blues/pop music and Trucks, like many of the great players of our times needs a musical vehicle to express his art. Opening with Come See About Me , a funky pop track with really strong vocals, key work, great rhythm and hot hot slide work! Don't Let Me Slide has a bit of formatting like some of the earlier Allmans work but again with Tedeschi's silky vocals and super harmonies. It is nearly impossible for Trucks to play on any recording without being noticed as his sound is so his signature...and that is great. ...

I'm sure that everyone knows now that Derek and Susan got married a while back. It could turn into a decent thing for the music industry. I personally prefer Derek's work away from his personal band and particularly like his work with the Allmans as well as with Buddy Guy (with Tedeschi). Here's Derek's band with Susan sitting in. "Key to the Highway" is usually credited to Charles "Chas" Segar and William "Big Bill" Broonzy. As Broonzy explains: "Some of the verses he [Charlie Segar] was singing it in the South the same time as I sung it in the South. And practically all of blues is just a little change from the way that they was sung when I was a kid ... You take one song and make fifty out of it ... just change it a little bit." Charlie Segar's original "Key to the Highway" was done in the form of a mid-tempo twelve-bar blues. When Jazz Gillum recorded it later that year (featuring Big Bill Broonzy on guitar), he ...