Music
Booker T. Jones, The Road from Memphis (Anti- Records)
Booker T. Jones, still occasionally of Booker T. and the MGs, reminded us of his mastery of the Hammond B3 two years ago with Potato Hole, which satisfied all Memphis […]
Ricky Riccardi, What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years (Pantheon Books)
A friend I know as intellectual and a roots music aficionado waved off Satchmo, saying the man’s main interests “were pot and Swiss Kriss.” When I told her that the […]
Louisiana Red, Sweet Blood Call (Fat Possum Records)
I was fine with this until the sort-of title track—“Sweetblood Call,” two words, versus the album title above—and then I couldn’t carry it anymore. That’s the song about sticking a […]
Dave Thompson, Bayou Underground: Tracing the Mythical Roots of American Popular Music (ECW Press)
Gotta be the succulent-est book to feature the Axeman of New Orleans. If you don’t know the Axeman of New Orleans, feel free to look him up while I wait […]
Jerry Lee Lewis, Mean Old Man [Deluxe Edition] (Verve Forecast Records)
Nick Tosches wrote a whole book on Lewis and proclaimed him elsewhere, “the last man to have been touched by the Holy Ghost of Gnosis.” Does that leave everybody else […]
Solomon Burke, Nothing’s Impossible (E1 Entertainment)
I was lucky enough to catch Joe Henry, one of Solomon Burke’s “older” producers, (Don’t Give Up on Me, from 2002), at a conference. We ended up likening Solomon Burke […]
Two Louis
David Stricklin Louis Armstrong: The Soundtrack of the American Experience (Ivan R. Dee) Scott Allen Nollen Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music, and Screen Career (McFarland and Company) Louis Daniel Armstrong […]
Andre Williams, Sweets and Other Stories (Kicks Books)
Hello world, meet Andre Williams, man of letters. If you’ve already met “Mr. Rhythm” in his better-known persona as purveyor of greasy R&B to the world, said knowledge shall deepen […]
Hannibal Lokumbe, Dear Mrs. Parks (Naxos)
Hannibal Lokumbe, the former Marvin Peterson, took up trumpet at age thirteen, in 1961. By his 30th birthday, he’d played with Gil Evans, Pharoah Sanders, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, and […]
Grandpa Elliott, Sugar Sweet (Concord/Playing For Change)
Like his soulmate, the late, great Ted Hawkins, Grandpa Elliott’s specialized genius lies in exhilarating simplicity belying the hassle that refined it. According to The New York Times, he play-acts […]
