Genre: Blues
Rate: 320 kbps CBR / 44100
Time: 00:52:28
Size: 120,03 MB
Album Notes:
Remember the high school parties when you would bring a stack off 45s and take turns showin1 off the newest off your records? We'd walk into friends' houses carrying record cases filled with three-minute doses off soul and rock & roll. Telarc had just that in mind when it invited Tommy Castro, Lloyd Jones, and Jimmy Hall to a studio party. The rules were simple: just bring your ax, a stack off your favorites, and producer Randy Labbe would supply the rest. What no one ever expected was how effortlessly these musicians would mesh together.
Tommy Castro came to the party play in' his high powered, "let's party" guitar, bathed in modernistic leather pants. Lloyd Jones brought a finger-snappin' guitar approach dressed in a stylish coat and tie. Jimmy Hall, formerly a mainstay in the R&B-influenced southern rock band Wet Willie, added his blue-eyed soul vocals, a blues rock-influenced harmonica and growling tenor.
This is a joyous celebration of the soul music and blues that have been at the core off each performer's musical life-direction. That sweet soul foundation is steeped in pure, unadulterated reverence. Though Castro, Jones, and Hall handle all the vocals, guitars, harp and horn, the supporting musicians, Reese Wynans, Tommy Shannon, and Chris Layton, aka Double Trouble, are an all-star lineup with their own deep roots in this traditional musical genre.
Years ago, Sun Records experimented with blue-eyed soul, blues, R&B, and country 'tonk. As the years passed, each style developed independently of the other. This is an effort to bring these styles back to the studio and mix them up again making a fresh music that recalls yesterday and yet has the inventive spirit and boldness of today.
Each song is a reminder of how important this gripping music was to us all in the past. When Tommy Castro learned that Double Trouble would be the rhythm section, he chose the Johnny Winter chestnut "Be Careful With a Fool" because Shannon was Winter's original bassist on this song long ago. Castro's piercing blues guitar blasts with red hot heat as it darts in and out of the lyrics. When he calls in Hall's dirty harp, the highly charged tension and release show off stripped down, early winter blues rock at its best.
Ever wonder what a classic Beatles song turned upside down would sound like? Wait until you hear Lloyd Jones' startling recreation off the Lennon-McCartney classic, "Help." Instead of buckling under a sound-alike, Jones drives the song into uncharted waters with inspirational class.
Mixed in this stew are some spicy R&B morsels like James Brown's kinetic "Good Lovin'." The guitar work is lean and penetrating with Hall's tenor sax squawking on this tour de force piece off nostalgia. The joy one hears in these three voices together on the chorus comes across like three adolescent soul brothers drivin' the car on the strip and blastin' the Godfather off Soul on the radio.
Amid these few covers, each musician wrote songs to suit the approach of the recording. The originals display how accurately each knows his genre. The soul-styled songs "Love Will," "Midnight to Daylight," and "If That Ain't Love" were written by Jimmy Hall. Lloyd Jones brought along the more roadhouse rocker "Sometimes" and the song "Raised in the Country." Which left Tommy Castro the task of bringing a song to show off a funky Philly soul strut on "Whole Lotta Soul."
Songs like "Raised in the Country" accent the good times this trio had in these sessions. From Layton s gentle shuffle to Jones' fluid blue-picked guitar to the vocal egging-on by Castro and Hall, it's not hard to visualize the fun they had during the recording session. The late-night, deep blue soul on Jimmy Hall's gem "Midnight to Daylight" perfectly recreates that nostalgic last dance just before the house lights had to be turned on. It jogs your memory and recalls vivid pictures of couples slowly gyrating wrapped in each other's arms. Hall's sexy tenor solo only strengthens the memories of times long for¬gotten. Hall's other soul sparkler is the funkified "Love Will."
At the end of the session, a jam session was in order. For fifteen minutes, Shannon and Layton laid out a chest thumpin', funky groove. Jimmy Hall started improvising the words, Jones began to jam over the groove, and "Cold Funk" was born. The tape on that conversation could have run all night. (Art Tipaldi - Senior Writer for Blues Revue and author of Children of the Blues)
Tracklist:
01 - Sometimes 02:18
02 - If That Ain't Love 04:39
03 - Be Careful With A Fool 06:46
04 - Love Will 04:24
05 - Help! 04:04
06 - Whole Lotta Soul 06:49
07 - Good Good Lovin' 02:43
08 - Raised In The Country 06:08
09 - Mammer Jammer 05:34
10 - Midnight To Daylight 04:46
11 - Cold Funk 04:17
Tommy Castro, Jimmy Hall & Lloyd Jones here:
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