Cds 1 - Macallè Blues

FABRIZIO POGGI & CHICKEN MAMBO

"Spaghetti Juke Joint"

Appaloosa Rec. (I) - 2014

Bye bye bird/King bee/The blues is alright/Devil at the crossroad/Mistery train/Way down in the hole/Checkin' upon my baby/One kind favor/Mojo/Rock me baby/Nobody/I want my baby/Baby please don't go

This disk - the eighteenth one for Fabrizio Poggi - since the title, tells a story; a story little known also to the most informed on the genre and with legendary contours: the story about the Delta Italians. Farmers for the most native of Marche, Emilia, Veneto and Lombardia that, to the passage among '800 and '900, they abandoned Italy to settle in the cotton plantations of the Mississippi Delta. With the abolition of the slavery and the consequent one, progressive, abandonment of those plantations from the Afro-American manpower, were really those "italians" to replace, partly, the lacking work force for the harvest of the cotton.
And as for the Delta Italians then, for Fabrizio, today, this new disk represents a sort of revolution. After the various artistic and stylistic peregrinations between Italy and United States and the "unplugged" association by now consolidated with Guy Davis, Poggi infuses new sap to the Chicken Mambo rehandling the formation that, currently includes the very talented Enrico Polverari on guitar, Tino Cappelletti (for years and years with Fabio Treves) on bass and Gino Carravieri on drums. Sonorities, veer now some more on the rock side, but the repertoire looks a lot at the Mississippi with ample quotations of sacred authors such as Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller), from whose songbooks are extrapolated the initial Bye Bye Bird and Checkin' Upon My Baby and then Slim Harpo, whose King Bee is embellished by the slide guitar of a volcanic, inspired, Sonny Landreth, Blind Lemon Jefferson with his One Kind Favor and Big Joe Williams with the very famous and conclusive Baby Please Don't Go. There are then the remake of well known tunes and other American guests to peep out in the continuation of the listening: to Little Milton's The Blues Is Alright the lyrics have been reinvented and the addition of the guitar here comes from a monumental Ronnie Earl; while in Mojo, reinterpretation of the well famous Mojo Workin', appears  the guitar of Bob Margolin that was, for years, guitarist of that Muddy Waters, original author of the number. Not to forget, then, the passages to signature of Fabrizio like the evocative Devil At The Crossroad, original counterbalance to the Tom Waits of Way Down In The Hole, also present in the disk or I Want My Baby to which the balanced and elegant slide of Claudio Bazzarri is added. To remember, then, the sonorities of near Louisiana, always dear to Fabrizio, here and there the accordion of Claudio Noseda.
We don't know if and how much, the Delta Italians, has contributed to the development of the blues; probably not at all and their quotation is only a pretext to ideally trace a parallel line to that of the Afro-American ones. But this job, that seems overseas to directly originate from is, as many ideally devoted to them and their hypothetical juke joint inevitably called Spaghetti. G.R.              

HENRY CARPANETO

"Voodoo Boogie"

Orange Home Rec. (I) - 2014

Drinking & thinking/My baby is gone/One room/Angel child/Welfare woman/Steady rolling/Caldonia/Mambo mama/Turn down the noise/Dog & down blues/Rock me baby/Blind man love

Of blues guitarists, the world is full. The pianists don't also miss but, apart some bright example, they are noticed a great deal less. It will be that, also in the blues, the guitar has always covered a magistral role and, for its nature, it has contributed to make the ego of so many axe magicians assume forms abundantly expanded to outclass others, also noble, instruments; it will be that the sinuous form of the guitar, already by itself, evokes sensual imaginations that the black, austere, wood of a piano removes, but when the class is there, you don't need eyes to see it.
Talented pianist from Liguria, Enrico "Henry" Carpaneto has run by law to become the exponent of the blues piano "made in Italy" to the foreign countries. But let's go for order. Henry, nicknamed Cool Henry Blues from guitar master Bryan Lee, who's the producer of this cd, is a boy that has done all of his homeworks and it feels. So much blues & boogie, bump therapies of Pinetop Perkins and Jay McShan, pills of Professor Longhair and Dr. John besides so much work and taste. Former keyboard player in the band of Guitar Ray & the Gamblers, with them he has also backed so many American artists like Jerry Portnoy, Big Pete Pearson, Otis Grand, Paul Reddick and, at last, Bryan Lee from New Orleans. The genesis of this disk draws origin from this last collaboration. Henry was invited in New Orleans from Lee which, having recognized Henry's talent, decided to be like godfather to his first soloist flight, giving him a recording studio, a handful of original tunes, his own share to the disk as singer and guitarist and, to tempt the mix, the presence of two additional aces such as Otis Grand and Tony Coleman as guests. The band, also assembled in various recordings, reaches notable levels of homogeneity, recognizing to every musician the really correct role and contemplating more to the final result that not to emerge as single individualities, including Henry. Otis Grand that, in Caledonia, seems the lamented B.B. King and, in the other passages where he appears, puts the revisited T-Bone Walker  that serves, injects an extra dose of energy; also the drumming of B.B. King ex band-mate, Tony Coleman, where he appears confers a different, but always functional drive. The result? A succeeded, finished, example of traditional rollin'n'jumpin' blues. And now, what to wait from Cool Henry? Well, if the listener has enough patience and doesn't surrender to the appearances, the ghost track in the disk reveals it really on the very end. So, let's wait for his solistic triumph! A second disk with Henry's piano well, well in evidence and with the whole taste of which he has shown to be able of. G.R.

DOUG MacLEOD

"Exactly like this"

Reference Rec. (USA) - 2015

Rock it 'till the cows come home/Too many misses for me/Find your right mind/Ain't it rough/Vanetta/Serious doin' woman/Ridge runner/New morning road/Raylene/Heaven's the only place/You got it good (and that ain't bad)

Among the last living bluesmen to have drawn the art directly from the great masters of the past, Doug MacLeod is, today, unanimously considered a superb author and a virtuous guitarist. Californian of adoption, he moved his first footsteps as sideman required by artists such as Pee Wee Crayton, Big Joe Turner and George "Harmonica" Smith, and then he began his solo career, as electric guitarist, in 1984 with the album No Road Back Home. If in the second halves of the '80s would really arrive, basically from California, that synthesis of soul, blues and even pop that would give new rush, also in commercial terms, to the genre, right onto the end of the '80s MacLeod ended up with his experience as modern electric guitarist to start a metamorphosis that, away from the fashions to come, it would bring him to  rediscover the acoustic blues. Belonging to the vast and noble category of the storytellers, singer provided with sour, soulful accents, author of direct calls to the poetic and the keenness of the most genuine blues, also in this last issue (his third one for the Reference Records) he remains true to his own unplugged stilemis. Accompanied by the devoted rhythmics of Jimi Bott and Danny Croy, already present in the previous There's A Time here, the piano skills of Michael Thompson, back to family with MacLeod after the recent tours with the Eagles, are added too. The program that develops along the eleven tracks of the disk, starts with Rock 'Till The Cows Come Home, homage to the amused Louis Jordan, that works really well as proscenium for the savory piano of Thompson. The more intimistas and philosophical sides of MacLeod reveal in Find Your Right Mind, while are numerous, after the initial passage, the other inspirations. Although, as always, all of the tunes derive from MacLeod's own pen, musically the tributes are different: Vanetta is a John-Lee-Hooker-kinda boogie as the following Serious Doin' Woman conveys some echoes of Tony Joe White. New Morning Road, is instead a homage to the old Ernest Banks, Piedmont blues master and among the first MacLeod's mentors. It was not possible, then, to miss a tribute to the women: Raylene is type that, unlike the very famous coeva "baby child" sung by Muddy Waters, "...makes love like a woman, but she's nineteen years old...". By the end, the introspective MacLeod shows in Heaven's The Only Place and then all is closed as it was opened: where the inspiration, in the beginning, was turned to Louis Jordan, here we find it addressed to Duke Ellington, rewritten in form of paraphrase. You Got It Good is, in fact, worthy as well as representative of the listener's dominant feel once he gets to the end of the listening of this disk. And that really ain't bad, Doug!!! G.R.  

BETTYE LAVETTE

"Worthy"

Cherry Red Rec. (USA) - 2015

Unbelievable/When I was a young girl/Bless us all/Stop/Undamned/Complicated/Where a life goes/Just between you and me and the wall you're a fool/Wait/Step away/Worthy

Among the favorite singers of the historian circuit of the so-called Northern Soul, Bettye LaVette artistically cuts the teeth in the '60s engraving for the Atlantic Records. Transited, subsequently, through various smaller labels for then to reenter from the door of service in Atlantic through the subsidiary Atco, she knows a period of stalemate in the swamp of the disco-music when, among the '70s and '80s, raged. But only in the new millennium, thanks to a more assiduous association with the recording studios and accurate productions succeeds, like a small barrel, in showing the mature quality of its wine. This way, starting from 2003 A Woman Like Me, still today with this last Worthy, she fully shows to be on top of her own game.
LaVette is vinegary vocal tool, gravelly, from the big nuisance sometimes, whose ropes arrive to bend in dramatic fracture as in the heartfelt ballad Bless Us All. To the peer of the previous disk, I've Got My Own Hell To Raise, also for this last Worthy, the producer is Joe Henry. Well more sensitive character to the creation of the correct ones, often low, secret atmospheres that to the technician makeups of the mixer, Henry leaves here also the necessary, vital, breath to the singer that, although interpreter of other people's passages (here we find again cover versions of Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones and Beatles tunes), shows once more to be skilled in the reinvent the song, turning it into something of her full ownership.
Excellent the gregarious job of the formed band here mainly from Doyle Bramhall on guitar, Chris Bruce on bass and Patrick Warren on keyboards that, thanks to a sensitive support entirely facing the result, leaves that the raw diamond of Bettye LaVette shines freely on a disk of extremely personal stylistic figure and in which one would well hardly succeed to individualize the most meaningful passages postponing this exercise to the pure personal taste of the listener. G.R.