Best Album of the Year

Big Creek Slim Twenty-Twenty Blues          

If you have followed the career of the man known as Big Creek Slim over the past few years then you realize that few artists, if any, are better equipped to translate these hard times into great blues.  That is exactly what he did in 2021. This vocalist and guitar player is also an incredibly gifted songwriter. It is the latter which make Big Creek Slim aka Mark Rune such a treasure and his 2021 release, Twenty-Twenty Blues, the BLUES JUNCTION Productions Album of the Year. Rune has been knockin’ at the door for the last few years. He won Best Acoustic/Country Blues Album in 2018 for his collaboration with Rodrigo Mantovani entitled First Born. In 2017, he released two albums The Greasy Chicken Sessions Vol. 1 & 2. Volume 1: entitled Good Mill Blues won a BLUES JUNCTION Productions Award for Acoustic/Country Blues Album of the Year. By my count Twenty-Twenty Blues is his ninth release over the past the five years. This man seems to be exploding with fresh ideas. He has something to say and he knows how to say it. Charlie Lange is quoted as saying about Twenty- Twenty Blues, “He sings with an authority seldom heard in contemporary blues and his guitar playing always is right for the song.” He puts me in mind of the troubadours of the 1930’s. However, he sounds like no one else. He is as real as a heart attack. You can’t ask for more than that in a blues singer.

Acoustic/Country Blues Album of the Year: Big Creek Slim Twenty -Twenty Blues

Runner Up: Big Creek Slim Migration Blues

This album is so good it could have easily been my number one. Like Twenty-Twenty Blues, Migration Blues was recorded on tape in the Central Danish town of Karup. Like our album of the year, 100% of the material was written by Mark Rune who’s only accompaniment is his guitar, on which he uses his customary finger picking approach. Like the greatest blues, Rune takes very personal subject matter and makes it resonate with a universality that is extraordinary. Song writing at its best…

 Soul/Blues Album of the Year

Tia Carroll You Gotta Have It                                              

Following in the great tradition of east bay blues with a huge helping of soul (or is it the other way around) Tia Caroll delivers a very strong set of music. Kid Andersen’s Greaseland Studios is where this material was recorded, mixed and mastered for Jim Pugh’s Little Village Foundation label. The gospel group the Sons of the Soul Revivers lend support and a five-piece horn section led by trombonist Mike Rinta are all part of this powerhouse ensemble. Tia Carroll’s confident vocals and spot-on phrasing do not get buried in the mix. She in fact rises to the occasion and lifts this 2021 release to her second Soul/Blues Album of the Year in the past ten years.

Runner Up: Crystal Thomas Now Dig This

Eddie Stout’s Dialtone Records' 2021 release on Crystal Thomas is a real beauty. She is simply an outstanding vocalist and plays the trombone as well. On Now Dig This she fronts a band that delivers the goods. They are guitarist Johnny Moeller, the legendary Chuck Rainey on bass, Jason Moeller is on drums and the late Lucky Peterson plays the Hammond B3 organ. This combo is lethal. Thomas and this great band deliver a program of gulf coast grooves. This was originally released on vinyl. Before you can ask a friend to blow on your stylus, please note that Now Dig This is available in the popular Compact Disc format. 

Roots Americana Album of the Year

Los Lobos Native Sons

Los Lobos is simply one of the greatest Rock & Roll bands of all-time. I know this for a fact as they are NOT in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. No higher honor could be bestowed on a band this talented. This Los Angeles based band’s 2021 album is a tribute to L.A. based songwriters. From Brian Wilson’s Sail On Sailor to Dave Alvin’s Flat Top Joint and  Percy Mayfield’s Never No More to Don and Dewey’s Farmer John, this is a beautiful tribute to my hometown and theirs. Los Lobos has the chops to pull all of it off with aplomb. Songs from Lalo Guerrero’s Los Chucos Suaves to Stephen Stills hippie/folk rock of Blue Bird and For What it’s Worth remind me of listening to the radio as a kid. My romanticized version of this multi-cultural paradise comes alive in Native Sons. 

Best Instrumental Album

Chris Corcoran Inferno

Inferno is the 2021 release by British guitarist Chris Corcoran. Here, the very talented and tasteful plank spanker uses a stripped-down ensemble to deliver a program of all original tunes.  Corcoran told me recently that the song titles are all based on the text of Dante’s Inferno. Having heard the album several times before becoming armed with this information, I had already drawn my own conclusions as to the material contained within. I didn’t divine anything remotely as dark as the nine concentric circles of hell but the album does offer some soundscapes with contemplative thematic elements. The album’s eleven tracks hold together conceptually where the poetic vision of the auteur is fulfilled. Five of the tracks feature the Hammond B3 of Claudio Corona. These have a Barney Kessel meets Jack McDuff vibe that is a lot of fun.

Runner Up: Raphael Wressnig & Igor Prado Groove & Good Times

The latest album by this Austrian Hammond organist was released in the fall of this past year on the German based Pepper Cake Record label. He is joined by Brazilian musicians Igor Prado on guitar and his brother Yuri on drums. It picks up where Raphael’s 2018 collaboration with Alex Schultz and James Gadson entitled Chicken Burrito left off. Wressnig is a multi-genre artist who combines instrumental soul/funk/jazz and blues in various quantities and combinations which are irresistible. Groove & Good Times was recorded by the Sao Paulo based blues impresario Chico Blues. Chico, along with Igor Prado, mixed and mastered the entire album.

The Best Career Retrospective

Dave Specter Six String Soul: 30 Years on Delmark

In Texas there is an ethos which is strictly observed. That is,'Bigger is Better'. While that is often the case, it doesn’t apply to this year’s Best Career Retrospective. If it were the case, The Jimmie Vaughan Story would win in a runaway. Dave Specter and Delmark Records put together a wonderfully cohesive 2 -disc, 28 song retrospective. The song choices are exceptional. They are arranged chronologically and with a sensitivity that makes even long time Dave Specter fans (like myself) hear them anew. Instrumentals and vocal tracks are pulled from virtually every album of Specter’s career. At 28 songs, it is a lean sampling which makes listeners hungry for more. One of the problems that can plague a presentation such as this is the liner notes.  Here, without going into a great deal of detail, the twelve-page booklet and discographic information is exceptional and is easy to reference as one listens to each track. The who, what, when and where should be used as a template for other projects of this nature. 

The Very Best of Charlie’s Reissue Rodeo

Single Artist: Muddy Waters and His Band Live in Los Angeles 1954

Featuring Otis Spann, George “Harmonica” Smith, Jimmie Rogers and others.  Recorded at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1954, this live set was recorded at Radio Recorders in Hollywood from a live broadcast presented by Gene Norman. This could be the earliest live recording of Muddy (exluding the Stovall Plantation sides) to ever come to light. Their twenty-minute set includes the blues classics made famous by Muddy, Hoochie Coochie Man and I Just Want To Make Love To You, along with exciting romps through Baby Please Don’t Go and I’m Ready and there is the bonus of a brief interview with the great man.  The tape of the performance has lain in the Crescendo vaults for decades, until dusted off for this special issue. The sound quality is sensational for a recording of such vintage with Muddy's vocal loud and strong and Otis Spann's piano well to the fore. The package is presented on 10-inch vinyl in a deluxe tip-on sleeve, with art in the mode of the iconic early 1950s Gene Norman Presents releases. - Charlie Lange

Multiple Artist Compilation: Mark Hummel Proudly Presents East Bay Blues Vaults 1976-1988

 A treasure trove of 22 ultra-rare Blues recordings from the likes of Brownie McGhee with Francis Clay, Sonny Rhodes, Boogie Jake, Ron Thompson, Mark Hummel and the Blues Survivors, J. J. Malone, Paris Slim, Cool Papa and Mississippi Johnny Waters. Remastered by Kid Andersen at Greaseland Studios. Available in a Limited Edition of 1,000 Pressings Worldwide. - Charlie Lange