best blues albums of the 21st century
For most of his life, this Mississippi-born practitioner of hill country blues received scant attention though in his final decade began to receive the accolades his music deserved. Geoff is referring to the Arhoolie release of the Charles Ford Band, which preceeded the Ford Bros on Blue Rock-It. From North Carolina, Fuller (real name Fulton Allen) was an exponent of Piedmont blues, a US east coast style defined by guitar finger-picking that was influenced by the jaunty rhythms of ragtime music. Bad Company? Listen to the album. About My 21st Century Blues. B.B. A smooth-voiced Mississippi singer who accompanied himself with guitar and harmonica, Rogers was born Jay Arthur Lane and was a crucial figure in the development of south side Chicago blues during the early 1950s. Strong Persuader, his fourth long-player recorded three years later, went double platinum in the USA, where it peaked at No. For Blues Rockers: Toler Bros Toler Brothers Swifts first officially documented pop album saw her shake off any remaining country trappings to become a gleaming synthpop behemoth. Listen to the album. What about The Groundhogs? Also featured is M.O. lol about Joeso true. The songs here are full of the horrible electricity of grief, Win Butler sometimes hollering at the pain, sometimes burned out by it. The remaining antique gems are incredibly obscure. 0. Its now impossible to imagine a world without Seven Nation Army, chanted from football terraces to political rallies. Other gems come in the shape of Im Glad You Reconsidered, the brassy proto-soul ballad, So Many Tears, and the mid-tempo lament, Pay Day Blues, which highlight Fulsons full-bodied, expressive voice and choppy guitar style. Listen to the album. Wht about Ali farka Toures last albumSavane. However, behind the dazzling stage presence lay a considerable musical talent who blended blues with jazz and swing. Highway 61 Revisited is on Johnny Winter Second Winter. Curated by. Alvin Lee. Some of them turned up on this, his debut LP, a blues barnstormer that took his unique style of music to a new audience. His songs have been covered by some of the best. Including blues standards as well as compelling versions of Hopkins signature tunes Mojo Hand and Short Haired Woman, the concert reveals the Lone Star state bluesman to be an engaging and humorous raconteur as well as a mesmerizing musician. Do you even play blues or are you an armchair critic? The first album album from an artist whose records had previously propped up killer singles with passable fillers turned her disaffection and disappointment into generational anthems. It did, however, give birth to a trio called Koerner, Ray & Glover, three white college students smitten by black music whose earnest folk-blues style would purportedly influence Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt. YES too many Blues-Rock releases and BLUES FOR A ROTTEN AFTERNOON isnt even on the list, so THAT tells me the compilers are just kids. From Como, Mississippi, Hemphill was two years shy of her 60th birthday when she cut her debut LP, She-Wolf, for the French Vogue label in 1981; its a groundbreaking album that dispenses with the 12-bar format that had previously defined most blues records. I like Fats Domino singing the blues He did a lot of blues, mostly his earley recordings. My first concert was the Jefferson Airplane with the warm up band The Yardbirds in 1967. A potent blues-rock manifesto. Jack Bruce (though you do have a Cream album)? Clarence Gatemouth Brown..hell yeah !!! Great list! By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. Listen to the album. Born in Harlem and raised in Massachusetts, Mahal (real name Henry Saint Clair Fredericks) is a singer, guitarist and blues harp player who performed with a California-based band called Rising Sons with Ry Cooder before signing a solo deal with Columbia in 1967. A relatively bummer record as the polo-shirted princes of prep entered an early midlife crisis: Wisdoms a gift but youd trade it for youth, Ezra Koenig sings at one point. Johnny Winter Whit Hot and Blue. Exactly my sentiments. Lonnie Mack Wham Thats news to me. Joe Bonamassa is easily worthy of this list. John Mayall is not in the pantheon of blues artists. At least this got people talking and Im sure that many will be picking the lists for stuff they may have missed. It showed Cray giving blues a modern makeover without sacrificing the musics traditional inner essence and confirmed his direct lineal descendent from legendary blues figures like Muddy Waters and Albert Collins. But in those years I have heard five albums that have all had a great influence on me. This was his first long-player and it contained the original version of his signature song, the memorable Gangster Of Love, dating from 1957. Rarely do Black Country Suite, his debut album, is mainly instrumental and is dominated by the ten-part titular opus, which shows off Allisons bebop-meets-blues and country piano style in a trio setting. He scored a raft of US R&B hits between 1948 and 1976, including the No. Though it mainly consisted of self-penned material, the influence of the Mississippi delta blues style is almost palpable. Backed by an ace band (which includes pianist Otis Spann and blues legend Muddy Waters), Smith breezes through eleven Little Walter tunes while putting his own indelible spin on them. Born Albert Gene Drewery in Texas and nicknamed The Ice Man, Collins was a cousin of blues maven Lightnin Hopkins but was inspired to sing and take up the guitar after hearing a John Lee Hooker record. Apologies, a couple of the artists I mentioned are on the list! guess they assume its soul or r and b, but his early stuff was straight blues. Great Album!!!!! King were among those influenced by Jefferson. Curated by. Great stuff. Go to the source not the people that are doing Rock covers. Fleetwood Mac Irish rose. I think I will have to check out a few of these Nevertheless I miss Jimmy Vaughan . I agree 1000% with you. Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee Blowin the Fuses. 1. Pepsiisgood. His double LP Chronology, Vol I, a good mix of blues and soul. This posthumous album collected some of Blakes best sides he recorded for the Paramount label between 1926 and 1932. AC/DC? Hendrix Blues No Sonnie and Brownie or Gary Davis? Web30 Best Blues Albums. Im kind of you that I even looked at this list after realizing of what it consists. Whatever his best technical album might be, I believe it was In Step that brought Stevie further to the attention of music lovers, not just blues lovers. The album, filled with sounds of blues and swing, won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. The star turn came from guitarist, Mike Bloomfield, whose fretboard work is outstanding throughout. Thank you for mentioning them! Listen to the album. Undoing some of the knotted tension of the post-Bends era, it has rollicking rockers (Bodysnatchers, Jigsaw Falling into Place) and restless jitters (15 Step, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi), but the core songs are deep, considered trip-hop ballads such as Reckoner, House of Cards and All I Need. Listen to the album. etc etc. The Malian artist made his best album at the age of 53, his playing and duets with female singers conveying a sense of spontaneity that belied his deep craft. !, no Mose Alison and no Nina Simone!). He began his career in 1959 for a small Chicago indie label called Artistic before joining Chess a year later, where he stayed until 1970. My King, you need a better recommendation than that?? A former Baptist preacher who was imprisoned for a year after killing a man in self-defense, he sang with a sermonizing intensity, accompanying his vocals with metallic slide guitar. Hells Session and Wang Dang Doodle by Livin Blues. The sextets commercial breakthrough came was this incendiary live album, recorded over two nights in rock promoter Bill Grahams New York venue. Maybe you did research but you seem biased to American and English whites as well as universally recognized blues artists! . I also remember that the guitarist played a Mance Lipscomb You Got to Reap What You Sow The title track from this, Harpos second album for Ernie Youngs Excello label, topped the R&B charts in 1966 but it was also significant for including the hypnotic, eminently danceable Shake Your Hips, covered by the Stones on their 1972 LP, Exile On Main Street, and the gentle, country-style ballad, Rainin In My Heart, which was a Top 20 US R&B smash. By contrast, the chugging title track and catchy Long Leanie Mama have a pronounced rhythm and blues flavor. Kendricks brilliance is to swoop between scales nations, communities and individuals to create a truly rounded portrait of contemporary love and politics, and the sheer lip-smacking perfection of his flow on Humble made it his biggest track yet. The lack of Blodwyn Pig is disturbing. I will google. The best music videos of the 21st Century so far. Everyones would be different and we all wonder how isnt this or that album included or this or that artist Certainly overall I think you got the vast majority of choices right. 16. A fascinating history lesson for delta blues scholars. WebStacker set out to find the best albums of the 21st century, compiling data from Metacritic (as of October 2022). A pity there hasnt been a compilation album of his blues work, acoustic and electric. Two other greats of that vintage: Love Sculptures Blues Helping (with Dave Edmunds) Before she achieved significant pop/rock crossover success, Raitts early albums like this one, only her second long-player were an eclectic mix of blues, antique jazz, folk, and singer-songwriter pop. Second Winter, his sophomore album a three-sided LP with the fourth side left intentionally blank featured his younger brother, Edgar, on keys. simply stunning, There is a Hendrix compilation, titled Blues. Allman Bros.? The Blues Forever! Thank you, Wanda. Losing Hand He patented an eclectic yet distinctive sound that was an amalgam of blues, country, Cajun, jazz, and R&B styles. Some other (also not mentioned in the comment section, i think) great blues (or bluesrock) albums I very much like are: Big Joe Turner The Boss of The Blues (1956) The pioneering multi-racial quintet formed in 1963 and two years later released its self-titled debut, which consisted of original material alongside the groups turbo-charged interpretations of songs by Elmore James, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, and Willie Dixon. The Blues was starting to come back to its own in 1965/1966 and would have continued thanks to the desire of college kids willing to expand away from the norm and the hipsters shunning mainstream music. The funk deepened the way Prayer smears its on-beat is astonishing along with his social conscience on The Charade, though the bedroom door still beckoned constantly. 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