Mojo’s Cold Shot: Koko Taylor, 1928-2009

In this week’s Cold Shot, Mojo Flucke bids a fond farewell to blues legend Koko Taylor.

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Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Mighty Sam McClain, “Betcha Didn’t Know”

by Mojo Flucke

My fellow New Hampshire resident Mighty Sam McClain will be releasing his latest record, Betcha Didn’t Know, on City Hall Records July 21. It’s been a while in the releasing, but blues and soul fans will quickly figure out it’s worth the wait.

Betcha Didn’t Know finds McClain, a singer who had some downs earlier in life (luckily, the last couple decades have been mostly up), in fine fettle, belting his deep “red clay” Louisiana soul in front of a full horn section.

Definitely worthy of being featured as the album’s centerpiece, the title track is a midtempo jazz piece that showcases McClain’s vocal chops. At 66 the guy still has total control over his vast dynamic range. There’s blues all over the record, but Mighty Sam infuses it with more contemporary southern soul this time around.

Old fans will wilt over “Just Want to Be,” a gospel-soul love song of the kind that dominated the charts in the early ’70s; McClain still does it better than most people on the planet. Speaking of ’70s material, the guy’s got a love for the funk and takes every opportunity he can to throw it down, e.g. “Funky Love” and “Can’t Stop the Funk,” a live performance with which we’ll leave you.

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Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Koko Taylor, 1928-2009

by Mojo Flucke

You never forget your first love. As such, I will never forget Koko Taylor. I forget lots of other stuff. Spelunking to the craggy areas of my memory where it’s dark, dank, and the stalactites and stalagmites grow, I cannot for the life of me remember what drove me to buy my first blues CDs upon entering college in the late 1980s.

(I don’t know for sure, but I am thinking it was because I liked the music of the dumb Ralph Macchio movie, Crossroads. Ironically, if that was it, it was the harmonica solo by the old blues dude in the big “cuttin’ contest” scene that pushed me toward blues–ironic because the old sage was harmonica-syncing to the J. Geils Band and Magic Dick doing “Whammer Jammer,” and not some good old Jimmy Reed or Sonny Boy Williamson stuff.)

No matter what drove me, a Koko Taylor greatest-hits compilation was one of the CDs I plucked out of the used bin upon cashing in more than 1,000 cassettes for store credit. With no idea whether or not Koko Taylor was a man or woman, I dropped it in my bag–the name sounded bluesy to me. Her signature “Wang Dang Doodle” was one of the cuts on the CD, here live with Little Walter in 1967: (more…)

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Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Do We Call What White Rockers Play “Blues?”

by Mojo Flucke

Since I started listening to blues, that’s been a hard question for me to answer. It’s important, because it speaks to what blues is, really. Can Clapton play the blues, really? Sure he knows the chords better than most any player, ever, and his technical facility was never in doubt, even before some spray-painting urchin deified him in the famous English graffito.

But is it Blues with a capital B? What about Zeppelin playing covers of 1930s tunes, or Mick Jagger barking out sweet papa Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain?” I mean, come on, really.

If you’d asked me that question 15 years ago, I’d spit on your shoes and ask how dare you desecrate the hallowed names of Magic Sam and Buddy Guy and Junior Wells and Muddy and Broonzy and Jimmy Reed by putting people like Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger in the same sentence. I’d invoke the spirit of Big Mama Thornton and have her chase you in your dreams  at night, wielding her crowbar.

That was then, and this is now. It’s not that I’ve done a 180-degree turn, but an acknowledgment that:

  • So many legends have passed away since that time, and it seems that more and more white blues lovers are keeping the art form alive;
  • I’ve gone through deep explorations of obscure 1960s garage rock, much of it including loving, and, well, good covers of Muddy and Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed; and
  • The latest blues revival—Deep Blues, as performed by the likes of the Black Keys and Black Diamond Heavies—sounds more primitive and raw, more like the original blues than polished stuff from the Yardbirds, etc. of the classic rock era ever did.

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Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Happy 70th, Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson

by Mojo Flucke

This column, sadly, sometimes looks like the blues obituary page. Well, forget that for now! This Shot, we’re celebrating the life Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, a ripping-good Chicago-style guitarist who cut his teeth with legends Muddy Waters and Magic Sam, touring with them in the ’60s and ’70s.

He still plays out–mostly in New England, where he makes his home nowadays. In fact, I and fellow Popdoser Ed Murray caught him at The Village Trestle in Goffstown earlier this month, where he rang in his 70th birthday after the gig.

Here’s a fantastic 10 minute shot of Luther in his solo rockin’ prime of the 1980s, done from a Cambridge, Mass. club. You can hear the Mississippi and N’Awlins in his voice in the interview part, but the music is pure urban blues along Memphis and Chicago lines, with Muddy and B.B. King sounds coming out of his guitar. (Bonus: The video also features awesome Pinetop Perkins footage, as he performs with Luther; that guy, by the way, is still pumping out blues in his 90s, and last I heard, was still pretty sharp):

So there you go. Still kicking and entertaining folks, Luther’s a living guitar legend, the kind of which we’re losing left and right as they all get to be that age. Go see him and support him out there on the road, the guy’s got blues running in his veins and still brings it, albeit with a few more slower, downhome selections mixed in that he used to. After the show, meet him, buy a couple CDs, shake his hand, get an autograph. He’s good like that.

Here’s a double-shot of music, “Doin’ The Sugar, Too,” the title track from his 1984 Bullseye Blues album, and “Got To Find A Way,” another title track–this one from his 1998 Telarc album.

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Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens

by Mojo Flucke

Be still my soul. Lawd have mercy. When soul first came out, so many social issues made so many people so PO’d (civil rights, Vietnam, rioting in seemingly every urban area, drug abuse, the specter of nuclear war) that retreating into gospel-sounding soul music was a welcome respite–and a way to constructively vent the emotions that otherwise might drive a man or woman to commit an act that was, er, socially nonconstructive.

Welcome to 2009, the post-Bush wasteland of scorched-earth economics, war and pestilence, terrorism, drug abuse and bad, bad pop music. Along with acts like Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, James Hunter, Amy Winehouse and a fistful of other neo-soul artists my peers have been writing up on Popdose (Ken Shane’s Black Joe Lewis piece is one example), Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens have come to rescue us from the stuff we hear about on the radio and see on the TV and flat-screen computer monitors that just plain don’t make no sense. Like a shooter going off in Binghamptom at a facility whose sole reason for existence was helping noncitizens become citizens here in our land of milk, honey, and executive bonuses. I mean, WTF? (more…)

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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Left Lane Cruiser

by Mojo Flucke

On one hand, Jon Spencer, in my book, has a lot to answer for. The half-baked, half-rehearsed stuff he sometimes releases is offensive to the people who work for a living for actual money to buy his records.

On the other hand, he and a few other people grafted their musical knowledge, interest and love of Mississippi Hill Country blues to their own tuneage and created an exciting new genre of music known today as Deep Blues, practiced by the folks who attend the annual Deep Blues Festival in Lake Elmo, MN (of all places).

Gotta love him for that. YAY-ess. I’ll also give Flat Duo Jets, Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, and Timbuk 3 a share of the credit for the fantastic Deep Blues acts out today like the Black Keys, Black Diamond Heavies, and even the White Stripes, the latter of which the Deep Blues guys kinda ignore–I think–because Jack White can seem a little arrogant and a little too big for his britches.

This week’s electric blues duo you’ve never heard of–but should love–is Fort Wayne, IN’s Left Lane Cruiser, which belts out guitar-based blues, raucous like few others in the milieu.

I love their unofficial theme song, “Truck Song.”. And then there’s “Wash It.” Bashing, raw, primitive, electric blues. No synths, no frills, no Timbaland or Pharrell to smooth out the sonic rough spots that might offend your rose-fragile ears. If that ain’t a Cold Shot, I don’t know what is.

Jon Spencer fans, don’t think I am a hater. I am ambivalent. As a peace offering, I give you a deeply unauthorized track from Pussy Galore’s, ur, reinterpretation of the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street. The whole album, they did, but I’m just giving you “Hip Shake.” Google the rest of it if you’re really curious.

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Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: John Cephas, 1930-2009

by Mojo Flucke

Last summer, I gave y’alls a Cephas & Wiggins Cold Shot that had no news peg, no current-events hook that made it relevant to that time, just a nice little cut to get you through the day and toss some props to one of my favorite traditional blues acts.

I am saddened to report that now, I’ve got that news peg: Guitarist John Cephas passed away this week. He was 78 years old.

John Cephas, in 1989

Cephas & Wiggins weren’t electric guitar heroes, they weren’t rock slaves. John Cephas played acoustic guitar in the Piedmont style, with the touch of an extraordinary folk talent and the love of a most devoted fan. Who were his biggest influences? Let him tell you in the spirited, autobiographical—at least he told me it was autobiographical in an interview I did with him once—song “I Was Determined,” from C&W’s Alligator album, Homemade. (more…)

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Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Los Lobos, “That Train Don’t Stop Here”

by Mojo Flucke

Los Lobos‘ 1992 album Kiko is nothing short of fabulous. A tour de force of primitive rhythms, Latino percussion, gorgeous acoustic and muddy electric guitars, and melodic variance of epic Sgt. Pepper scale. Oh, and the album’s punctuated with baritone saxophone, not a common rock flourish, at least since about 1962.

In other words, it’s pure genius. I might argue its a top-five, all-time album, next to the likes of Exile on Main Street and the aforementioned Pepper, if one caught me  in a mood to argue such things (or held a gun to my head). It’s that good.

Part of what makes the album tick is the Lobos’ willingness to dip into whatever musical style that suits each particular song and bust out of whatever typecast that came before in their recorded repertoire. That’s not easy, especially when it comes at the expense of defying audience expectations.

Drunken mariachi (”Rio De Tenampa”),  dusty acoustic folk (”Two Janes”), countrified rock (”Reva’s House”), and a half-dozen other styles find their way on to Kiko—including rockin’ blues of the pre-Cream style.

That brings us to today’s Cold Shot, “That Train Don’t Stop Here,” proving that blues can pop up in the same old places—or where it’s completely unexpected. Songs like this say to me that the blues is a living, organic form, and not just marooned on old 78s in the Smithsonian’s humidor.

In the title of its greatest-hits compilation, Los Lobos called itself “just another band from East. L.A.” I beg to differ—regardless of the humble beginnings, this band—and record—is one for the ages.

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Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, “Gonna Get Old Someday”

by Mojo Flucke

Even in these crushing economic times, blues fans can count on three things: Death, taxes, and until they spend every last red cent they fish from the ashtrays and couch cushions in Mississippi, Fat Possum Records gonna dig up, record, and release records from obscure originals performing the blues, whether they’re commercially viable or not.

Enter Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, whose juke joint The Blue Front in Bentonia (home town of blues legend Skip James) dates back to segregation times and is now on official stop on the Mississippi Blues Trail (below: Duck and his crew celebrate).

His new record on Fat Possum, Gonna Get Old Someday, finds Holmes sharp of spirit and handy with the acoustic guitar. A casual player up until the last few years, Holmes preferred to work the Blue Front, which has been open since 1948, when he was one year old and his father launched it. No doubt Duck himself helped move a bottle or two of his dad’s famed bootleg ’shine.

Today, however, he’s a working musician, and his style is way-gone old skool but his voice is clear and beautiful, as evidenced in “Hurry, Hurry.” It’s not really important that Duck isn’t a longtime fixture on the circuit, someone with a pedigree of B.B. King or Buddy Guy. What he is doing is preserving a fiercely local blues style that James created and Duck’s in a position to understand–and feel.

And in these economic times, we know for sure that he’s doing it out of love for the blues, because there’s no money to be made playing Skip James style during boom years. Bless you, Duck and Fat Possum. Keep it real. You too can keep it real by checking out Jimmy “Duck” Holmes at his MySpace and at his Mississippi Arts Commission home page.

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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

Mojo’s Cold Shot: Restaurant, “Joe D”

by Mojo Flucke

Meet Restaurant, or Restavrant, depending on how the person writing about this crazy Texas duo interprets the band’s logo. Equal parts Flat Duo Jets, Timbuk 3, Black Keys and Chickasaw Mudd Puppies (yeah, you read that right), these frenetic nutballs are a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll.

And a lot blues.

Here’s the group’s first single, “Joe D” off the recently released album Restaurant Returns To the Tomb of [sic] Guiliano Medidici. Rock on with this lo-fi craziness the group itself bills as “electro-country-punk.” Whatever it is, I wants me some more of it.

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