Mike Sanchez and His Band featuring Imelda May is a new CD of material recorded back in 2004. Sanchez by this time had already been fronting his band the band, Big Town Playboys, for fifteen years and had toured with fellow Englishman Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings. As it turns out, in 2004, the Dublin born Imelda May was on the brink of international stardom. The analog tapes from these sessions stayed on the shelf until Sanchez dusted them off recently to release this terrific album entitled, Almost Grown. For our Jukebox selection I chose one of the seven album tracks that feature the terrific singing of Imelda May, which includes the Ike Turner penned classic, Matchbox.  - D.M.

Whitney Shay is a tough and tender singer from San Diego, California. She really impresses on this, her debut release, Soul Tonic. The album is a mix of blues, soul and jazz chestnuts. Whitney delivers strong vocals without sounding like she is trying too hard. The band is versatile and exciting in their approach to songs and Shay can really imbue a song with feeling and meaning. Her reading of Candi Staton’s I’m Just Your Prisoner, for instance, is powerful and nuanced at the same time. Her treatment of songs associated with Dinah Washington is refreshing. While there are lots of young singers covering this type of material, Whitney Shay stands out as an honest artist with real talent.  - C.L.

Another young, exciting talent has a brand new debut album, Nikki Hill. The CD Here’s Nikki Hill is a fun, rockin’ romp through some American roots musical idioms including a touch of blues. The 28 year old is backed by her husband, guitarist Matt Hill. His playing adds some grit to this material and makes for a nice rough edge throughout the proceedings. Nikki Hill is a still young, emerging star with a lot of upside. The album is full of original material and it is one of these tunes that I chose for our jukebox selection. The album’s opening track, Ask Yourself bounces out of the jukebox like a bucking bronco.  – D.M.

Parisian Nico Duportal’s brand new release Real Rockin’ Papa is not unlike Hill’s album in that, at times, it puts me in mind of the type of material that Nick Curran championed throughout his meteoric and tragically short career. The tunes on this release blur the lines between rhythm and blues, vintage rock and roll, rockabilly and blues to make a tangy concoction that has a real kick to it. Like Nikki Hill you can read more about Nico Duportal in this month’s edition of BLUES JUNCTION. From this marvelous fourteen song collection of originals and covers I went with guitarist and vocalist Duportal’s take on the old Jimmy Nolan instrumental, Jimmy’s Jive. – D.M.

Lurrie Bell is one of the greatest living Chicago blues guitarists. His last two CDs have been about stretching himself and, quite successfully I might add, to showcase the breadth as well as the magnitude of his art. However for this Delmark Records release, Blues in my Soul he just wanted to get back to the solid foundation of Chicago styled traditional guitar blues done with his rare blend of reverence, involvement and individuality and framed largely by his working band.  Along with Bell on vocals and guitar are Roosevelt Purifoy on piano and organ, bassist Melvin Smith,  Willie “The Touch” Hayes on drums along with Matthew Skoller who plays harp on six tracks. The album was produced by Dick Shurman. Bell covers one of my all time favorite Chicago blues tunes on this outing She’s a Good Un by one of my all time favorite Chicago blues men, Otis Rush. - C.L.

Candye Kane Featuring Laura Chavez’s latest release, and their Vizztone records debut, mines familiar ground for the veteran West Coast bluesabilly diva. The album entitled Coming Out Swinging features many of the usual suspects including long time Kane collaborator, the album’s co-producer and recording engineer Thomas Yearsley. Yearsley plays upright bass on a few tracks. Kane and guitarist Chavez are joined by the road warrior rhythm section of Fender bassist Kennan Shaw and drummer “Baldhead” Fred Rautman. The album also has a swinging horn section led by saxophonist Johnny Viau. Pianist Sue Palmer and provocateur Billy Watson on harmonica are also along for the ride. Our jukebox selection is the slow, minor key blues, Invisible Woman. This tune is one of several originals written by Kane and Chavez that appear on this album.  – D.M.

You Don’t Know Nothing is a stellar live album that was recorded in 2012 at San Francisco’s Biscuits and Blues and features the mellow voice of Frank Bey over the B-3 and horn heavy rhythms of the Anthony Paule Band. Paule was the guitarist with the Johnny Nocturne Band as well as Brenda Boykin and has always had the swinging hard edge to his playing. Frank Bey is a very soulful and strong singer of classic soul-blues. We have been listening to one of the handful of covers that are sprinkled in with some fine original material. Their interpretation of the Bobby Bland classic Ain’t That Loving You is a favorite.  - C.L.

Come on in this House by Steve Freund is easily one of the best traditional blues albums to emerge here in 2013. The Brooklyn born guitarist and vocalist who is a long time Northern California resident via Chicago released an album this summer that is steeped in the 50’s and 60’s electric Chicago blues traditions from which this  modern blues master emerged in the early 70’s. The album is made up primarily of covers save one original from Steve. These tunes are ones that he has been playing live for decades, but has until now never recorded. It is an album he told me recently he has wanted to make for a long time. Steve Freund was our monthly artist spotlight in July so as you might suspect Come on in This House has been playing on our jukebox with a great deal of regularity. There isn’t a clunker in the bunch so making a choice here was tough, but I went with a mid tempo shuffle which is one of two songs where Steve shares the vocal spotlight with another talented singer, Jan Fanuchi. The song Some Other Day Some Other Time is a duet that is a lot of fun. – D.M.

Laura Rain is a revelation. The Detroit based singer, along with guitarist George Friend, leads an ensemble called Laura Rain and the Caesars. Their brand spanking new album, Electrified is a super charged soul shot that generates enough energy to light a small town and ignite a fire under the ass of all of its inhabitants. This ten song collection of original tunes written by Rain and Friend has a late 60’s, early 70’s soul/funk vibe. A couple of ballads are sprinkled in the mix along with the album’s only straight ahead blues tune, the CD closer, No More. Rain’s singing sounds like Aretha Franklin on Red Bull and espresso. This can’t be an easy thing to pull off and make work. She wouldn’t stand a chance if she didn’t have a band that had the chops to keep up with her energy. She does, however, as evidenced by the material contained in this CD. One fine example is the blues infused title track, which is this month’s jukebox selection. – D.M.

I just got my hands on a brand new CD that also comes from the talent laden San Francisco Bay area and Chris “The Kid” Andersen’s Greaseland studios in San Jose, California. The album Got to Move by Eddie B’s Greasy Blues Bash finds the Fender bass player and vocalist fronting a band and taking on some fairly obscure covers from some well known blues masters. Songs by artists as diverse as Elmore James, Jimmy Witherspoon, Robert Lockwood Jr., William Clarke, Roy Brown and others are refueled and taken out for spin. Have a Good Time, the old Walter Horton tune, has always been a favorite and Eddie and the band give it a nice treatment here.  - D.M.

Sure Thing by Don Scott and Curtis Blake is a CD that came out back in 2012, but I just now got my hands on it and was impressed enough with the recording I thought I’d slip it in here as a bonus track. This talented tandem play songs from the masters like Blind Boy Fuller, Tommy Johnson, Brownie McGhee, John Lee (Sonny Boy 1) for example and juxtaposes those tunes against a couple of Don Scott originals. In doing so they put this music in a context that makes this material sound fresh and relevant. This has always been the hallmark of blues music at its finest. By putting their own personal stamp on these classics, Scott and Curtis pay homage to their idols and the form itself. Great blues music has a timeless quality and both guitarist and vocalist Scott, along with harmonica player Blake, seem to have a deep understanding of this concept. Sure Thing is like a beacon that shines a light on the history of the blues and illuminates the road to the future. For our jukebox selection I chose one of my favorites, Brownie McGhee’s Sporting Life Blues. – D.M.

The Walter Davis Project on Electro-Fi Records and produced by Christian Rannenberg comes from various recordings in 2007-2012. It features sympathetic readings of some of Walter Davis' finest recordings. Charlie Musselwhite has two haunting sides from an informal session in 2007. Bob Corritore and Henry Townsend contribute a fine version of Nothing But Blues from 2012 and Billy Boy Arnold has nine wonderful interpretations of Davis' recordings. This set also includes the final recordings of Jimmy McCracklin whose style was direct link to Walter Davis. This is a wonderful, relaxed set of piano blues, which is a real rarity these days. – C.L.

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