Terry Hanck’s album, which came out last June on Delta Groove, entitled Look Out! has the tenor sax man and soulful vocalist in collaboration with Chris "Kid" Andersen who wears several hats in this fine production. The song Appreciate What You Got is a song with a message. Hanck’s sense of humor and Andersen’s guitar help get the point across. It is one of my favorite tunes on an album full of great songs.

Candye Kane’s Sister Vagabond album was released on August 16^th also on Delta Groove Records. It is  very much a collaborative effort with guitarist, song writer and the album’s co-producer, Laura Chavez. We have been grooving to the song, Everybody’s Gonna Love Somebody Tonight. As Candye mentions in her liner notes she has recorded at least one Jack Tempchin song on almost every one of her albums. Sister Vagabond is no exception. Candye says, “I can’t believe this song has never been recorded by anyone else.” James Harman lends his thick harp on to this song.

Steve Cropper’s August release represents the first time the guitarist, songwriter, producer and arranger has had his name on the front of an album in decades. His album on 429 Records is entitled, Dedicated: A Tribute to The Five Royales. Cropper has, for the past fifty years, sited Lowman Pauling as a huge influence in his career. The track Baby Don’t Do It features guest vocalist B.B. King also swapping guitar licks with another pretty fair player who got his start in Memphis, Steve Cropper.

The Hollywood Blues Flames 2010 release called Deep in America has a song on the record written by the man who turned 90 this past August, Jimmy McCracklin. The tune I Don’t Care features BLUES JUNCTION contributors Al Blake on vocals and harmonica and Fred Kaplan playing some very tasty piano. The great songwriter and pianist Jimmy McCraklin is featured this month in an article entitled Catching up with a Legend.

Ana Popovic released her fifth album, Unconditional on August 16^th for Eclecto Groove Records. I am not a fan of excessive blues–rock, slide guitar so I got most of this unpleasantness out of the way with one tune. The track Slide Show features both the Serbian Siren and Sonny Landreath trying to squeeze in as many blues-slide guitar clichés into one number as is humanly posible. I took a chance on this one because the song’s title is a dead giveaway that this track doesn’t feature Popovic's overwrought vocal histrionics which sound like Melissa Ethridge trying to pass a kidney stone.

Red Lotus Revue is an up and coming band out of the San Diego area. These guys have a two guitar, harmonica and drums approach. The band has a very cool, low fi sound. I hope to hear more from them in the coming years. The Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller) tune Unseen Eye features the fine vocals and harmonica of Karl Cabbage. I pulled this track off their self released, self produced, self titled 2010 EP. This band will be playing at the San Diego Blues Festival later this month.

Future Blues is the name of Johnny Nicholas’ July, 2011, release. This guitarist, harmonica player, pianist and singer has been around the block many times, yet he never fell asleep at the wheel, even though he played in that band for a stint back in the day. The new album from the proprietor of the Hilltop Café in Central Texas is a good one and includes some guest appearances by some of Johnny’s old friends including Jimmie Vaughan. One of my favorites on the new disc is the song Hey, Hey.

The import version of Jimmy Vaughan’s Plays More Blues Ballads and Favorites: Featuring Lou Ann Barton has two additional tracks not found on the American release. One of which was recorded live last November at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles. Lou Ann Barton’s version of the Jimmy Reed tune Shake a Hand sent chills up my spine that evening and sends chills up my spine every time I have heard it since. This tune and the entire album is vintage Vaughan at his very best. The July, 2011, Shout Factory Records release is a favorite out here at the JUNCTION and receives our highest recommendation.

Guitarist Andreas Arlt from Germany has stepped away from his regular band B.B. and the Blues Shacks for a moment to record a solo album entitled All Time Favorites. It is scheduled for release this month on Crosscut Records. The album features the song Shotgun Wedding.

While we are in the hermanos portion of our play list, I thought I would play a tune that I saw performed live at the Troubadour a couple of weeks ago. It is a tune from Dave Alvin’s July, 2011, Yep Cat Records release entitled Eleven Eleven. The song What’s up with Your Brother? is an autobiographical tale of living a public life with a famous brother. It is the first time that Dave has done a vocal duet with his older brother, Phil. The Troubadour gig was the first and to my knowledge, the only time the Brothers Alvin performed this song live.

Singer, harp player, painter, surfer, jet propulsionist, songwriter and renaissance man for the new millennium, Billy Watson just released his eighth album. It is entitled sEcret 8. No typo here. The emphasis is on the “E” is because every song on these 8 tracks is in the key of “E”. You know, the people’s key (his line, not mine). The album also features fellow North County (San Diego) resident Nathan James on guitar. James also produced this fine album. This record is full of Billy Watson originals and trust me, this guy is an original. The song Ice or Coal might give you a taste of what I’m talking about.

Roy Gaines' tune, Thang Shaker, is one of my favorite tunes from one of my favorite albums to come out in 2010. This November release on Black Gold Records puts the native Texan and long time Angeleno in front of a big band for some great Basie style arrangements. It is up town blues at its finest. Guitar player, vocalist Roy Gaines' long and very distinguished career has seen him in variety of musical settings including playing guitar in Roy Milton’s bands as a teenager and session work in Los Angeles with Ray Charles but Tuxedo Blues is his first big band album as a leader.

The next four songs on the jukebox are inspired by the article in this month’s BLUES JUNCTION entitled Catching the Next Blue Wave. They are all great songs from very important albums that came out in and around the very late seventies and early eighties, towards the beginning of the last blues revival.

Rock this House is the first and only commercial release by the legendary Hollywood Fats Band. This album, originally released in 1979, is for many one of those desert island classics. Many folks consider this the finest west coast blues album of the past 40 years. I’ll let others hash that out but, needless to say, it is one of my favorites. The title track is a Jimmy Rogers original that swings hard from start to finish. It features the late great Michael “Hollywood Fats” Mann on guitar and Big Al Blake out front on vocals and harmonica.

The self titled 1979 debut release by the Fabulous Thunderbirds has been re-released under its unofficial name, Girls Go Wild. The original T-Bird lineup included Mike Buck on drums, the late Keith Ferguson on the Fender bass, Jimmie Vaughan on guitar and vocalist/harp player Kim Wilson. The opening track, Wait on Time, is a Wilson original that begins with a stinging Jimmie Vaughan guitar intro before yielding to Wilson’s plaintive vocals. This is the first of four albums the band did in four years on the independent Takoma label. Before taking a more commercial turn with the release of their hit record Tuff Enuff, Wilson, Vaughan and company made some of the best blues of this or any era.

The third album by Robert Cray was 1986’s Strong Persuader. It was his breakout record and yielded the hit song, Smoking Gun which was on heavy rotation on commercial radio stations. A year earlier though, Cray participated in an album with two veteran guitar players, Albert Collins and Johnny “Clyde” Copeland, whose careers benefited greatly from the young blue wave players of the day, like Cray. The Alligator release Showdown has all three men swapping vocals, and of course guitar licks, on the T-Bone walker classic T-Bone Shuffle. This 1985 album is still the best selling release in the labels history.

It could be argued that the most important album in the blue wave era was the 1983 debut album of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, entitled Texas Flood. The album was released by Columbia Record’s subsidiary Epic Records. My favorite track on this record is Stevie’s take on Buddy Guy’s Mary Had a Little Lamb. The album received wide distribution and was an instant hit. For much of the next seven years Vaughan would open up for rock stars in big arenas and fill large halls and outdoor amphitheatres on the strength of his own reputation. From the stage he would extol the virtues of his guitar heroes and helped to create an interest in blues music to a greater degree than any single individual performer has before or since. He knew he was standing on the shoulders of Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Jimmie Vaughan, Hubert Sumlin, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Guitar Slim, Albert King and others, but he never let anyone forget who had done the heavy lifting to help him get to that rarified air in the music world. He had a deep appreciation and understanding of blues music and used that to create his own distinct sound. He did it all with a sense of humility that can only come from an understanding of his own place in the great and ongoing blues narrative. That is the greatest lesson young guitar players can take from Stevie.