On August 14, 2014, the British Blues Awards presentation will be held at the The Great British Blues Festival in Colne. The other day I traveled to the website for the awards and reviewed the nominees for the award for Blues Album of the Year, and the nominees are:
One of the albums that has been in my music rotation this week is the new album HeartSoulBlood from the Royal Southern Brotherhood. This is the second release from the Brotherhood following their 2012 self-titled debut album. The Royal Southern Brotherhood is composed of Devon Allman, Cyril Neville, Mike Zito, Charlie Wooten,and Yonrico Scott. Of the five both Devon Allman and Mike Zito’s solo work, appear in my music library.Both of these albums and their 2013 release a live album titled Songs from the Road have been released on Ruf Records with the legendary Jim Gaines serving as the producer.
So yes, as listed under Currently Reading on my webpage, I am still reading Subversives! I am now more than 65% of the way through the book, Reagan just became governor of California, so the battles rages more fiercely! But while reading that, I am still reading mysteries, and just finished Book 14 for 2014, Kings of Midnight from Wallace Stroby.
Checking the birthdays at All About Jazz, yesterday I saw that it was drummer Stanton Moore’s 42nd birthday, and that he had released a new album Conversations this year. I first discovered Stanton’s drumming back in 2010, when he released Groove Alchemy, Anyway I enjoyed that album, additionally, when I looked back at the old post that I wrote I saw that I also heard Stanton’s drums on Anders Osborne’s album American Patchwork! So it didn’t take me long to head on over to Spotify to explore the album. Here’s some background for those of you unfamiliar with Stanton’s work….
Originally posted at Let’s Explore Jazz
So while I did really enjoy all of the albums on the Jazz playlist that I created yesterday. There was one album though, that caught my attention very quickly and that was Alive by Hiromi! The album was released on June 17th on the Telarc label and currently the album is No, 37 on the JazzWeek Chart and No 11 on the Billboard Jazz Chart. Alive is Hiromi’s ninth studio release and her third release as Hiromi’s Trio Project. The current trio features: Simon Phillips on drums and Anthony Jackson on bass. Her first four releases were as Hiromi, For the next two releases guitarist David Fiuczynski joined the group and the band became Hiromi’s Sonicboom. As a composer Hiromi blends a variety of musical genres like post-bop, progressive rock, classical, and jazz fusion, into her compositions. Wait prog rock? Does she have a page at ProgArchives….Yes, she does, she is included in the Jazz/Rock Fusion sub-genre. From her biography at ProgArchives….
This morning I took a moment and gave a quick listen to a few of the albums now on progstreaming, I picked two, found the albums on Spotify, put them on the iPhone and listened today. The two albums were from Roy Strattman: The Lie of the Beholder and Mike Kershaw’s Ice Age. Of the two I listened to more of Strattman than Kershaw, so I guess I’ll begin there.
So this morning I sat down and made a list of five Jazz artists whose new albums I thought I would like to explore. Rather than listen to each of them fully today, I made the following playlist picking a few tracks from each of the albums. I figured I’d listen to the playlist and see what album stood out the most for me and then listen to that album. So here is the playlist give it a listen in full or one track from each artist and then vote for our favorite….. I already know mine ….all of them – just kidding…..
Today way back in the year of 1913 on this date James William Perkins was born in Belzoni, Mississippi. Ninety-seven (97) years later now know better by his stage named Pinetop Perkins, he won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album for Joined at the Hip, an album he recorded with Willie “Big Eyes” Smith. Perkins is the oldest-ever Grammy winner. In between he had a fantastic career that saw him play with many of the most influential blues and rock and roll performers in American history.
Among the jazz musicians birthdays yesterday was Hammond B3 organist and pianist Milt Buckner. Buckner was an influential musician on both instruments. He started out playing piano in Detroit in the 1930s.