So on Sunday as I was doing some errands before the Eagles game I listened to a couple of new blues albums the first was Jeff Strahan‘s latest Monkey Around and Five Finger Discount from Soulstack. I enjoyed both albums! Let’s start with Jeff Strahan first. From his website……
So this morning when I was researching Greg Lake I was listening to his latest album Songs of a Lifetime. One of the songs was of course “From the Beginning” somehow during the search and listening I came across a version of the song from the band Glass Harp that appears on their album Glass Harp Strings Attached Live with the Youngstown Symphony Orchestra. Track seven on the album is a nice cover of the song “John the Revelator” Later in the morning I was looking for some new music on the Roots Music Report charts. One of the names on the Roots Rock chart Joe Grushecky was familiar. I remembered that I did like his music so I went and checked out his current release Somewhere East of Eden. The third track on that album is also “John the Reveltor” So this all got me thinking about this classic blues song. So I went to Wikipedia to see what I could find out……
The joyous whoop that Sonny Terry naturally emitted between raucous harp blasts was as distinctive a signature sound as can possibly be imagined. Only a handful of blues harmonicists wielded as much of a lasting influence on the genre as did the sightless Terry (Buster Brown, for one, copied the whoop and all), who recorded some fine urban blues as a bandleader in addition to serving as guitarist Brownie McGhee’s longtime duet partner.(From Blues Harp)
With the IQ test over and having done better than my wife anticipated, I now have my eyes set on my first 5K of the year, this Saturday in Delanco. Tonight was my second to the last workout before the race, and it turned out to be my best run of the late summer early fall! I tried to run short pickups throughout the run and a couple of times my pace dropped below 9 minutes per mile and was under 10 minute per mile pace through most of the run. I pushed it through the first 3.1 miles of the run and then backed off. I was able to pick it back up though for a decent push at the end. Overall the time was 39:32 over 4.03 miles for a final pace of 9:48. which I am happy with! The soundtrack of the run was Bona Fide, the latest release from Chris Thomas King who is somewhere today celebrating his 49th birthday (according to his website and 50th according to All ?Music)! 
This morning I was thinking about how reviewing the birthdays everyday has given me another avenue for discovering new artists, Over the last week, I have discovered Terry Gibbs, “Sweets” Edison, Dave Robinson and Mark Whitfield to name a few, which to me is pretty cool! With that being said, it seems that a review of today;’s birthday’s has yielded possibly two more artist and if additional listening confirms what I heard this morning that possible will turn into a definite!!
As I was straightening sugar and flour in the baking aisle at Target tonight, the “jukebox in my head” started playing Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orléans” and I was singin’ along and hoping that I was singing softly enough, so that no one could hear me!! After that Steve’s “Turnpike Tom” came on. I love that song!
The soundtrack for my great run tonight, which I will write about later if my brain doesn’t want to rest more than write, was the new album All Frequencies from Ottawa’s MoneyJunk. MoneyJunk?? Did I hear you say, “What’s that mean??” If you did here’s the answer, if you didn’t ask skip the following…
