For fifteen years now Sao Paulo, Brazil’s Igor Prado Band has made one outstanding album after another. I suppose Richard “Lynwood Slim” Duran put it best when, in an interview that appeared here at the JUNCTION a couple of years ago, he said of the band upon hearing them for the first time, “I was literally in shock at how good they were, the drummer, the bass player the guitar player and not one of them was 25. The sax player was 20 and he was as good as anyone I’ve heard in my life.” I might add that they just keep getting better.

Igor is now 33 years old and he, along with his younger brother Yuri on drums, their long time bassist Rodrigo Mantovani and sax man Denilson Martins, have yet another marvelous entry in their already impressive catalogue. Their album Way Down South on the Delta Groove label is scheduled to be released on February 17^th. This latest offering has the band mining the rich Chicago blues heritage to a greater degree than anything in the band’s extensive catalogue to date.

Much of this sound comes via the material written by Jimmy Rogers, Elmore James and Muddy Waters. It also comes from some of the guests who bring this material to life. The band however moves beyond the windy city sounds to incorporate elements of New Orleans, Texas and West Coast blues into the program via tunes written by Paul Gayten, Long John Hunter, Joe Tex and Lowell Fulson. They even hit on some 60’s style southern soul, which the band has shown such a proclivity for in recent years.

This set opens up with Sugaray Rayford singing the Ike Turner standard Matchbox. Here Igor shares guitar duties with Monster Mike Welch. Longtime Prado band collaborator, pianist Ari Borger, is heard here as he is on six of the album’s thirteen tunes.

On Hunter’s Ride with Me Kim Wilson sings in front of a stripped down version of the band with just Igor, Yuri and Rodrigo racing down an open stretch of a lonesome Texas highway. Wilson takes this ride back in time and sounds like he is behind the wheel of a Fabulous Thunderbird circa 1978 with his foot to the floor.

On the next track, Larry “Mud” Morganfield takes on one of Pop’s songs, She’s Got It. Brazilians Ivani Marcio and Donny Nichilo channel the harp and piano sounds of Little Walter and Otis Spann respectively. Just past the song’s halfway point, Igor starts playing Muddy Waters style slide and nails the tone and phrasing of the unique sound that the blues icon brought to the idiom. As far as the vocalist on the track, if you are doing Muddy, nobody conjures up those elusive sounds better than Mud. He is as close as white on rice and cold is to ice.

The album’s forth track is a Lowell Fulson/Lloyd Glenn number which is taken from one of Fulson’s mid-60’s Kent sides. It is given a wonderful treatment here. Borger’s uptown piano and Martin’s old timey tenor fills are sublime. The rhythm section forms the right malleable structure for Igor and Junior Watson to swap swinging licks as if Bill Jennings and Tiny Grimes are cutting heads. Then there is the vocalist to which the entire album is dedicated, Lynwood Slim. He is heard here on what is certainly one of his last sessions. It is hard to imagine a better reading and arrangement of this tune. It is certainly the album’s high water mark.  

The record then does a U-turn and heads straight back to Chicago’s south side via the wonderful Jimmy Rogers number, What Have I Done?  Here Mitch Kashmar sings and blows harp. Kashmar is an extremely underrated vocalist as he demonstrates here. His highly acclaimed harp playing is in full force on this number.

On the tune Shake and Finger Pop we hear Igor’s pipes get a workout for the first time. He is a terrific singer who I suspect doesn’t know how good he really is at this aspect of his arsenal. The band is joined by Hammond B3 player Raphael Wressnig on his only appearance on the album.

Fans of Rod and Honey Piazza will enjoy their contributions to Way Down South as they take on the Elmore James standard, Talk To Me Baby.

After a slow south Louisiana style blues ballad, If You Ever Need Me, sung by Kim Wilson the CD takes another sudden turn via an old Joe Tex number where J.J. Jackson trades vocals with Igor. The tune entitled You’ve Got What It Takes is what it would sound like if Jimmie Vaughan was playing guitar at the Fame Studios in the mid-60’s. Igor nails Vaughan’s idiosyncratic guitar licks and instantly recognizable tone. It is southern soul gems like this one that The Igor Prado Band have been excelling at so marvelously in recent years. By adding heavily blues influenced ideas to material like this, Igor and company show some true daring and creativity. This is another high water mark in an album full of them.

The album then returns to a more conventional Chicago blues sound with a grinder again featuring vocalist Sugaray Rayford and guitarist Monster Mike Welch entitled Big Mama Blues.

Slim returns to the program on the Paul Gayten penned number, You Better Believe It, which originally appeared on the November, 2014, release under his own name, Hard To Kill on Rip Cat Records. Here Slim pulls out the flute and takes a wonderful solo. This tune sounds like it could have been recorded at J&M Studios in New Orleans circa 1949 with Herbie Mann doing a guest slot. Denilson Martins handles both tenor and baritone sax duties on this number.

Tennessean Wallace Coleman steps into the spotlight and sings Rooster Blues. The album closes with a country blues featuring Chicagoan Omar Coleman (no relation) singing and playing harp on one of his originals, Trying To Do Right. He is accompanied by Igor on acoustic guitar.

Even with all of the heavyweight star power on this release, the bright light that is The Igor Prado Band shines through every track on Way Down South. They continue to amaze with their uncanny ability to play with so many different accents in the blues dialects and do so with such a commanding authority.

-David Mac

Editor’s note: You can read more about the making of Way Down South and what Igor Prado has been up to over the past couple of years in an interview I conducted with Igor Prado which also appears in this month’s ezine.

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