Chitlin Circuit Double-entendre -filled Soul 2004 (and onward) Theodis Ealey's "Stand Up In It" is a song of the year

Saw NPR's Bob Boilen (of their "All" music considered website) out at a (mostly all indie-rock) fest. Chose not to beg him to cover Miss Jody or to read Daddy B. Nice's column.

But NPR's Ann Powers is living in Alabama now, so maybe she'd be more open to checking out Southern soul

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/10/17/163095398/for-the-ladies-r-kelly-teddy-pendergrass-and-the-state-of-r-b

Not a big fan of blue-eyed soul singer Eli Paperboy Reed, but if I was in NYC I might want to see him with Roscoe Robinson at this special gig:

For one night only on Friday, November 9th at Rockwood Music Hall Stage Two I'll be performing with one of my great inspirations, Soul and Gospel music legend Roscoe Robinson. Roscoe has been a mentor to me since we first met in 2007 and he's a true titan of American music. He first started recording in 1950 with Gospel group the Southern Sons and went on to record with both The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Alabama among other Gospel groups. In 1963 he made the switch to R&B with the hit "That's Enough" and his career took off from there.

Rockwood Music Hall Stage Two 196 Allen St. @ Houston ST , NYC

I never cut-and-paste press releases, but this is pretty big news, so:

GRAMMY NOMINATED BLUES INNOVATOR BOBBY RUSH
STAKES HIS CLAIM AS A LIVING LEGEND

New studio album Down in Louisiana, due February 19,
updates the sounds of the swamps and the juke joints

JACKSON, Miss. —Bobby Rush’s new Down in Louisiana, out February 19, 2013 on Deep Rush Productions through Thirty Tigers, is the work of a funky fire-breathing legend. Its 11 songs revel in the grit, grind and soul that’s been the blues innovator’s trademark since the 1960s, when he stood shoulder to shoulder on the stages of Chicago with Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter and other giants.

Of course, it’s hard to recognize a future giant when he’s standing among his mentors. But five decades later Down in Louisiana’s blend of deep roots, eclectic arrangements and raw modern production is clearly the stuff of towering artistry.

“This album started in the swamps and the juke joints, where my music started, and it’s also a brand new thing,” says the Grammy-nominated adopted son of Jackson, Mississippi. “Fifty years ago I put funk together with down-home blues to create my own style. Now, with Down in Louisiana, I’ve done the same thing with Cajun, reggae, pop, rock and blues, and it all sounds only like Bobby Rush.”

At 77, Rush still has an energy level that fits his name. He’s a prolific songwriter and one of the most vital live performers in the blues, able to execute daredevil splits on stage with the finesse of a young James Brown while singing and playing harmonica and guitar. Those talents have earned him multiple Blues Music Awards including Soul Blues Album of the Year, Acoustic Album of the Year, and, almost perennially, Soul Blues Male Artist of the Year.

As Down in Louisiana attests, he’s also one of the music’s finest storytellers, whether he’s evoking the thrill of finding love in “Down in Louisiana” — a song whose rhythmic accordion and churning beat evoke his Bayou State youth — or romping through one of his patented double-entendre funk rave-ups like “You’re Just Like a Dresser.”

Songs like the latter — with the tag line “You’re just like a dresser/Somebody’s always ramblin’ in your drawers” — and a stage show built around big-bottomed female dancers, ribald humor and hip-shaking grooves have made Rush today’s most popular blues attraction among African-American audiences. With more than 100 albums on his résumé, he’s the reigning king of the Chitlin’ Circuit, the network of clubs, theaters, halls and juke joints that first sprang up in the 1920s to cater to black audiences in the bad old days of segregation. A range of historic entertainers that includes Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, B.B. King, Nat “King” Cole and Ray Charles emerged from this milieu. And Rush is proud to bear the torch for that tradition, and more.

“What I do goes back to the days of black vaudeville and Broadway, and — with my dancers on stage — even back to Africa,” Rush says. “It’s a spiritual thing, entwined with the deepest black roots, and with Down in Louisiana I’m taking those roots in a new direction so all kinds of audiences can experience my music and what it’s about.”

Compared to the big-band arrangements of the 13 albums Rush made while signed to Malaco Records, the Mississippi-based pre-eminent soul-blues label of the ’80s and ’90s, Down In Louisiana is a stripped down affair. The album ignited 18 months ago when Rush and producer Paul Brown, who’s played keyboards in Rush’s touring band, got together at Brown’s Nashville-based Ocean Soul Studios to build songs from the bones up.

“Everything started with just me and my guitar,” Rush explains. “Then Paul created the arrangements around what I’d done. It’s the first time I made an album like that and it felt really good.” Rush plans to tour behind the disc, his debut on Thirty Tigers, with a similar-sized group.

Down in Louisiana is spare on Rush’s usual personnel, — Brown on keys, drummer Pete Mendillo, guitarist Lou Rodriguez and longtime Rush bassist Terry Richardson — but doesn’t scrimp on funk. Every song is propelled by an appealing groove. Even the semi-autobiographical hard-times story “Tight Money,” which floats in on the call of Rush’s haunted harmonica, has a magnetic pull toward the dance floor. And “Don’t You Cry,” which Rush describes as “a new classic,” employs its lilting sway to evoke the vintage sound of electrified Delta blues à la Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. Rush counts those artists, along with B.B King, Ray Charles and Sonny Boy Williamson II, as major influences.

“You hear all of these elements in me,” Rush allows, “but nobody sounds like Bobby Rush.”

Rush began absorbing the blues almost from his birth in Homer, Louisiana, on November 10, 1935. “My first guitar was a piece of wire nailed up on a wall with a brick keeping it raised up on top and a bottle keeping it raised on the bottom,” he relates. “One day the brick fell out and hit me in the head, so I reversed the brick and the bottle.

“I might be hard-headed,” he adds, chuckling, “but I’m a fast learner.”

Rush quickly moved on to an actual six-string and the harmonica. He started playing juke joints in his teens, wearing a fake mustache so owners would think him old enough to perform in their clubs. In 1953 his family relocated to Chicago, where his musical education shifted to hyperspeed under the spell of Waters, Wolf, Williamson and the rest of the big dogs on the scene. Rush ran errands for slide six-string king Elmore James and got guitar lessons from Howlin’ Wolf. He traded harmonica licks with Little Walter and begin sitting in with his heroes.

In the ’60s Rush became a bandleader in order to realize the fresh funky soul-blues sound that he was developing in his head.

“James Brown was just two years older than me, and we both focused on that funk thing, driving on that one-chord beat,” Rush explains. “But James put modern words to it. I was walking the funk walk and talking the countrified blues talk — with the kinds of stories and lyrics that people who grew up down South listening to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and bluesmen like that could relate to. And that’s been my trademark.”

After 1971’s percolating “Chicken Heads” became his first hit and cracked the R&B Top 40, Rush’s dedication increased. He relocated to Mississippi to be among the highest population of his core black blues-loving audience and put together a 12-piece touring ensemble. Record deals with Philadelphia International and Malaco came as his star rose, and his performances kept growing from the small juke joints where he’d started into nightclubs, civic auditoriums and, by the mid-’80s, Las Vegas casinos and the world’s most prominent blues festivals. Rush’s ascent was depicted in The Road to Memphis, a film co-starring B.B. King that was part of the 2003 PBS series Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues.

In 2003 he established his own label, Deep Rush Productions, and has released nine titles under that imprint including his 2003 DVD+CD set Live At Ground Zero and 2007’s solo Raw. That disc led to his current relationship with Thirty Tigers, which distributed Raw and his two most recent albums, 2009’s Blind Snake and 2011’s Show You A Good Time (which took Best Soul Blues Album of the year that’s the 2012 BMAs), before signing him as an artist for Down in Louisiana.

Although his TV appearances, gigs at Lincoln Center and numerous Blues Music Awards attest to his acceptance by all blues fans, Rush hopes that the blend of the eclectic, inventive and down-home on Down in Louisiana will help further expand his audience.

“But no matter how much I cross over, whether it’s to a larger white audience or to college listeners or fans of Americana, I’ll never cross out who I am and where I’ve come from,” Rush promises. “My music’s always gonna be funky and honest, and it’s always gonna sound like Bobby Rush.”

Hmmmmm, minimalist Bobby Rush on a new label. Will wait and see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvBH0Bqjoyk&feature=related

Johnnie Taylor's son keeping the "Jody" thang going

http://www.soulbluesmusic.com/southernsoulbluescharts.htm

Liking some of the Jeff Floyd album. He's got that timeless raspy, church-rooted voice.

This year's Mel Waiters is not so good

Finally listened to some of the new Bobby Womack album that Brit Mojo mag critics and NPR Music folks love. Womack's voice is still nice enough for me, but that polished, triphoppy D. Alborn/Jamie XX production and the Gil Scott-Heron sample is just a copy of what they did last year with Gil Scott-Heron.

The Jeff Floyd album is better

Bet I will be the only person to put Jeff Floyd on a year-end list. The Southern soul genre continues to be ignored-- the labels don't push it to the crossover media (which does not seek it out on its own); there's no real indie-crossover or mainstream billboard r'n'b crossover; the performers are older but don't make boomer or Mojo mag or soul fanatic friendly sounds with "real instruments". blah blah blah. I'm a broken record or is that a non-working soundcloud link on this.

http://soulandbluesreport.com/top-25/

1 Good Motor LJ Echols Neckbone
11 3 2 Country Boy Sir Charles Jones KISS
14 1 3 Not Good Enough To Marry Peggy Scott-Adams Desert Sounds
9 4 4 Bring Back My Blues Donnie Ray Ecko
8 6 5 Meat On Them Bones Sir Jonathan Burton Aviara
8 5 6 Slow Grindin' Theodis Ealey IFGAM
11 7 7 Using Me Jeff Floyd Wilbe

Peggy Scott-Adams has a great voice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emyVCzkEHxM

Sir Charles Jones too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ngck2cXoQNs

Sir Charles Jones "Country Boy" is a song of the year

It's better than any Scott Walker song I have heard so far

ALABAMA SHAKES “Boys & Girls” (ATO) This isn’t a soul revival. It’s plain old soul, and the only gimmick is that there’s no gimmick. Alabama Shakes are a small-town Southern band with a singer, Brittany Howard, now 24, who earns Janis Joplin comparisons because she’s dynamic, direct, improvisational and raw. The band stays steadfast and proudly unvarnished; the songs call for perseverance and forthrightness, and go on to embody both.

-Jon Parles from his NY Times top 10

NO, this is not soul, its bar-band rock with a Janis Joplin and soul influenced singer. Overrated

Pareles

Someday someone other than Xchukx or I will post to this thread

I bet the Singles Jukebox blog contributors would like this song:

Sir Charles Jones "Country Boy" is a song of the year

― curmudgeon, Monday, December 10, 2012 3:38 P

If only Sir Charles Jones and Jeff Floyd had a pr team and a street team

Maybe I should be an annoying tweeter and see if Ann Powers would check out that Sir Charles Jones' song; but since the album is not out yet and there's no pr push to other critics, it might not make a difference even if she clicked on it and liked it. Whatever, maybe. Avante-jazz and metal fans probably don't worry too much about their faves getting crossover attention.

Lots of catching up to do with this genre part 125. Someday maybe the rest of life will allow that

http://www.southernsoulrnb.com/calendar_mailbag2008.cfm

Some good gigs coming up down in Alabama and Georgia

Somebody should talk up this genre at the New Orleans session of the EMP Pop Conference in April this year. It fits the theme for New Orleans perfectly.

Due South: Roots, Songlines, Musical Geographies

2013 EMP Pop Regional Conference at Tulane University

April 18-21, 2013

New Orleans, LA

Jointly sponsored by Experience Music Project and

The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University

"The South" has a hold on the cultural imagination as tangled as its musical geography: it represents tradition even as its musical pasts are repurposed for tourism and new genres emerge from cross-pollinations. John Hiatt sings to an imaginary rider, "so when you're feelin' down and out / Come on, baby, drive South," as if the entire region is a balm for modernity. Where is this romanticized South? It depends on who's asking and who's driving. Are they headed to the Upper, Mid-, Deep or Gulf South, to Appalachia or the Delta? Are musics still aligned with geography or specific sites? Along Southern roads lie the elusive roots of many American genres and a host of sonic signatures: Nashville and Memphis, Macon and Athens and the A-T-L, Lafayette and New Orleans, Muscle Shoals and North Mississippi. Yet "the South" still signifies as roots Americana to some outsiders or backwards and bigoted to some others. We'll do the South by driving straight into its tensions: tradition vs. modernity, faith vs. transgression, racial nostalgia vs. new immigrant populations, authenticity vs. performance.

Join us at the bottom of the South in New Orleans for discussions on the following themes:

-Faith/transgression

-modernity vs. tradition

-Hip hop, bounce and rap: Dirty South aesthetics of country and city

-DJ culture

-Studio sounds and record labels

-Noise ordinances and city streets

-blues highways

-Southern dance floors

-cultural creolization

-Americana roots music

-country musics

-Selling the South: Nashville, country, and the business of Southern music

-jazz and blues as world musics

-jazz and blues diasporas

-gothic

-gospel

-songwriting

-accordions

-Cajun music

-regionalism vs. nationalism

-Appalachia and its roots

-African/Cuban/Caribbean roots

-New Orleans and brass band funk
-Memphis and rock'n'roll

Maybe I should pitch a presentation. February 13th deadline for submitting abstracts with a bio

Sir Charles Jones "Country Boy" still sounds great. What a catchy tune

New Mr. Sam and Ms. Jody albums on Ecko are definitely good enough to keep, but don't kill me. Actually think I like Mr. Sam's Just Like Dat more, of the two -- especially "Put A Little Water With It" and then the two songs naming downhome dive bars that come right after, "Down At Cee Cee's" and "Mama N Nems (Hole N Da Wall)." I'm thinking Ms. Jody and O.B. Buchana (who has another new album coming out soon) might want to slow their release schedules down, and get a little more selective with the material; they settle for a lot of rote writing. Then again, maybe their audience are such loyal buyers that those two have to churn out one album or another just to make ends meet.

"...one album after another...," that is.

Maybe Ecko pressures them to crank 'em out

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/latimore-denise-lasalle-and-shirley-brown-are-ignored-by-cultural-gatekeepers-but-beloved-by-longtime-fans/Content?oid=3287257

http://www.basement-group.co.uk/Site/In_The_Basement.html

Old-school classic soul zine from the UK is now a website

Vick Allen's "Soul Music" from last year has a catchy chorus, nicely delivered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2_gZiwfUcU&feature=em-share_video_user

http://www.empmuseum.org/programs-plus-education/programs/pop-conference/2013/emp-pop-conference-2013-new-orleans.aspx

Chitlin circuit Southern soul at EMP New Orleans April 19th-21st

On the Memphis panel

I'm liking the most recent Mel Waiters album

http://soulandbluesreport.com/top-25/

Working my way through that list. Don't like the weak high-pitched guy voice of Ricky White who has the #1 song, but Miss Jody's #2 song ain't bad, and Katrenia Jefferson's "That Thang" is even better -- she's got a strong voice for that old-school feeling song with more modern lyrics.

The Mr. Sam "Just Like Dat" drop that booty dance song further down the list is fun too.

Charles Wilson "This Bed Ain't Big Enough (for the three of us)" works. Its better than his "(I wanna make your) Monkey talk".... How do these guys think of these lyrics!

The Avail Hollywood song "Country Road" on that list is not as good as this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELM6h2DokRs

It's got a bit of zydeco line dance feel to it plus a rap

Here's why Ecko is always cranking out new cds from artists so fast:

Ecko must steadily release new records to keep cash flowing. It keeps Chambers pressing the flesh at every soul blues festival within 150 miles, on the phone day and night, and burning up the highway to meet program directors, disc jockeys, and mom-and-pop shop owners. As the only Ecko marketing employee, his territory is the entire U.S., though he focuses on the Deep South, where the highest concentration of Ecko listeners and affiliated businesses are located.

http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/do-you-hear-an-ecko/Content?oid=1146762

New Bobby Rush Americana/blues cd is just ok, and I feel the same about the recent Theodis Ealey blues effort. These guys are trying to get a crossover audience.

So Sir Charles Jones "Country Boy" is a cover/adaptation of a song from earlier this century called "Mississippi Boy" by Will T (credited on youtube though to another singer)

Don't think I ever posted this:

http://www.soulbluesmusic.com/2012bluescriticawards.htm

That last Ms. Jody album, not the current one, but the one with "My Give a damn don't give a damn" is awesome.

Spin, for example, has notched up its competition against Pitchfork since July, when Buzzmedia bought the magazine (and within weeks shut down its print edition). Spin’s 870,000 readers now closely challenge Pitchfork’s 1.1 million. But comScore’s figures show that visitors to Pitchfork spend more than quadruple the time as visitors to Spin.

From something I read elsewhere. Now if only they'll let Xchuckx write about Southern soul there.

I've got Sir Jonathan Burton's "Too Much Bootyshakin' (up in here)" running through my head. Infectious linedance #

Ms. Jody's "Still Strokin" is ahead of R. Kelly in this beach music chart:

http://www.beachmusic45.com/id897.html