Michael Benjamin aka Alabama Mike has just released his third album. It is yet another gem from Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios. As per usual, the Andersen produced project features some of the best Bay Area musicians including Jon Lawton, Bob Welsh and Big Kid himself on guitars as well as Jim Pugh on the Hammond B3. He also brings in legendary bassist Jerry Jemmot. This talented singer explores some contemporary themes within the context of some traditional grooves. He then turns around and drags Jimmy McCracklin’s Think and Little Johnny Taylor’s Somewhere Down the Line to new and exciting places. The entire album is everything one would want in a blues album; great musicians in service of fine, mostly original, material, backing an exceptional singer. Highly recommended... 

This release on Jim Pugh’s Little Village Foundation label is one that could only be released on this label. It is the essence of what the Little Village is all about, the presentation of new and exciting music that no label in their right mind would touch. Aki Goes to Bollywood offers up something to offend everyone, which is why I like the record. Kumar takes pop songs from his native India and blends them with traditional blues. Hey, what’s not to love? This isn’t so much east meets west. It is east smashes into west (or visa versa) on a muddy road somewhere in Mississippi or Calcutta...I can’t decide which. Either way, Aki Goes to Bollywood represents the height of creativity and fearlessness. Aki Kumar should be commended for embracing his past and blending that with his adopted true love, the blues. While this record may not be for everyone, it is for those with an open mind, adventurous spirit... and sense of humor. 

This is another adventurous excursion taken by Jim Pugh and his Little Village Foundation as he welcomes a very talented young folk singer to explore some roots she might not even know she had. Again, Pugh taps into the remarkable talent that is Kid Andersen and his prodigious well of musicians that he puts together at his Greaseland Studios in San Jose, California. On Back Where I Belong, Espiritu explores the music of another Philippine-American, Sugar Pie Desanto. As it turns out she is up to the task. I don’t know how comfortable Espiritu is wearing the bay area based r&b icon's soulful dress, but it fits nicely.   

In the case of John Blues Boyd, Jim Pugh this time hits on a blues man with a more traditional blues pedigree. John Boyd is from Greenwood, Mississippi, and is the cousin of blues great Eddie Boyd. However he took a circuitous route to the blues. Boyd was a hard working man who, after his wife of 49 years passed away in 2014, discovered an undeveloped talent as a songwriter. This original material is sung with what Rick Estrin describes as, “pure old school charm” and the The Real Deal has plenty of that. Again, produced and recorded by Kid Andersen with the great coalition of California’s greatest bluesmen, this is a terrific straight ahead blues album of the highest order. 

The Godfather of the modern European blues scene Sven Zetterberg has, by my count anyway,  somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 releases under his belt and his batting average (please excuse a baseball metaphor) is extremely high. For fans of this Swedish hep cat, Something for Everybody has something for southern soul-blues fans. He along with co-producer and guitarist Anders Lewen offer up original tunes mixed in with some covers from that music fertile I-10 corridor between San Antonio and New Orleans. Lewen, formerly of Knockout Greg and Blue Weather, has been a ubiquitous presence on the Scandinavian blues music scene and his longtime association with Zetterberg has always yielded great results and Something for Everybody is no exception. 

This is a band led by San Diegans, vocalist and harp player Karl Cabbage and guitarist Jimmy Zollo, both formerly of Red Lotus Revue fame.  The duo is joined here by bassist Marcos C and drummer George Sluppick. This seven song, thirty minute offering is somewhere between an EP and LP. However, it offers listeners all new original tunes written by Cabbage and Zollo. Both with Red Lotus Revue and with his brief association with Mark Mumea’s Silver Kings, Cabbage has always explored the territory of early post war electric blues. With The Holla Pointe he expands that vocabulary somewhat and ventures into some dangerous terrain where you can still hear the echo of traditionalism. The Holla Pointe will be performing at 12 noon at the 2016 San Diego Blues Festival.

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