Blues News - Macallè Blues

May 16th, 2016: Billy Price and Otis Clay win Blues Music Award: This Time for Real named Best Soul Blues Album of 2015

"I'm back in Pittsburgh after a great weekend in Memphis at the Blues Foundation's Blues Music Awards. I brought this statuette home with me, awarded to me and the late Otis Clay for This Time for Real, our Vizztone release produced by Duke Robillard, which won best Soul Blues Album of the year. I only wish that Otis could have been there to accept the award with me, but I was glad that his daughter Sena Clay and his manager Miki Mulvehill were there to accept on his behalf. Otis also won a posthumous award for Soul Blues artist of the year, and Duke won for best Acoustic Album. Thanks to all of you who voted for us, and thanks to the Blues Foundation for the honor."

Beside, Billy Price accepting BMA for This Time for Real.

May 2016: Jan Mancuso of Reference Recordings let us know that, for the second time around, Doug MacLeod is the winner of Blues Foundation's Acoustic Artist Blues Music Award!

May 2016: Italian pianist Henry Carpaneto's having a succesful european tour backing american guitar player Joey Gilmore.

Beside, a "promo" video sent us by Henry himself.

January 8th, 2016: struck by a heart attack, 73 year-old gospel and soul singer Otis Clay died in Chicago. He started singing as member of various gospel groups, in the beginning of the 60s and right after he became a solo singer, turning to secular music (soul and R&B) by signing a contract with the Chicagoan One-Derful Records. His first success was That's how it is, followed by She's about to mover. But he really made it big moving to the fundamental Willie Mitchell's Hi Records label in 1971. For this label he recorded his first, real hit, Tryin' to live my life without you song that, once covered by Bob Seger, would contribute to make Clay also celebrated by the vast and variegated rock audience.
Other than in US, Otis Clay has always established and maintained all through the years a great following both in Europe and in Japan, where he has recorded three live albums. In more recent times, he has recorded for other important labels such as Rounder, Blind Pig and Bullseye and in the last years, never forgetting his gospel roots, he has recorded a couple of valuable duet albums, one with Johnny Rawls and, then, another with Billy Price. Actively involved in various social initiatives as the promotion of the Harold Washington Cultural Center in Chicago, in 2013 he has officially been nominated in the Blues Hall of Fame.
Otis Clay has been and always will be one of the greatest gospel, soul and R&B singers ever.

November 10th, 2015: another serious mourning has just struck the music world. At the end of a concert held at Lara Theater in Madrid, the great Allen Toussaint died. Pianist, singer, composer, author and producer, Toussaint began to play the New Orleans clubs as a teenager and soon became one of the most prestigious musicians of soul, R&B and jazz. Along the years, Toussaint wrote several famous hits and so many were his prestigious collaborations, from Robert Palmer to Joe Cocker up to Elvis Costello. Born in 1938, he was still very active. He also would have had to perform in New Orleans on upcoming December 8th, together with his old friend Paul Simon.

September 2015: without a doubt this year has been a sadly mournful one for the blues. After B.B. King, Mighty Sam McClain and others the Holmes Brothers have lost, in the turn of few months, two of their carrying columns. On January 9th, in fact, drummer and falsetto voice of the group Popsy Dixon died. On last June 19th, has been Wendell Holmes's turn too; he was the guitarist, the main voice, as well as the band's charismatic front man. This band was the interpreter of a mix of gospel, blues, country and soul, perpetually stable on the border between sacred and profane, they have enjoyed a long career (Holmes Brothers have recorded twelve albums, three of which have ranked Billboard's Top Five) and several artistic collaborations among which we remember the one with Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, Odetta, Willie Nelson, Phoebe Snow. Sick of cancer as well as his friend Popsy Dixon, Wendell Holmes did get to see the June issue of the Living Blues magazine whose cover was meritoriously dedicated to them.    

June 16th, 2015:

Due to a second, severe stroke (a first had struck him in April) as well as complications from an ongoing battle with cancer, the great soul singer Mighty Sam McClain has died. The news comes to us from his (and our) friend Peter Giftos, who was also for years his guitarist and bandleader.
Sam McClain was born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1943.  As a young teenager, he was already a powerful soul and R&B singer and soon became one of the first Muscle Shoals recording artists.  But, after only a few years, his star plummeted just as quickly as it rose, and Sam was nearly forgotten altogether until he and the great guitarist Wayne Bennett went to Japan in 1987 to record a highly touted and now near impossible to find live album.
In 1993, Sam was signed by the record label AudioQuest to record several CDs starting with the acclaimed album and beautiful title song “Give It Up To Love,” and his career was once again revitalized, placing him among his contemporaries as one of the greatest singers of the genre.
To us, Mighty Sam’s intense performance at the Macallè Blues Festival in the fall of 1997 will forever remain indelible.