I just wrapped up my reviews for this month's edition of Blues Bytes, so I wanted to let you blues lovers know about a couple more new releases that are well worth your listening time, so let's get started.....
Way back in 1987, your humble correspondent made his first trip to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. My friend Scotty called me as I was getting off work and told me he had two tickets for the midnight show on the Riverboat President, a show featuring the Fabulous Thunderbirds (my favorite band at the time) with special guests Bonnie Raitt, Lazy Lester, Katie Webster, Dr. John, Duke Robillard, Rockin' Sidney, and the Roomful of Blues horn section.
Now, I had never even been to New Orleans in my 23+ years of existence, so I was anxious to see the show and take in the festival and the city. We got there in time to look around the city a bit and get on board the President. John Lee Hooker opened the show with a solo set that was awesome and then the Thunderbirds came on. The show was set up like an revue, with each guest getting to do a couple of songs and moving on to the next act.
Near the end, the Roomful horns took the stage and I was really impressed with them, particularly their charismatic tenor sax man, Greg Piccolo. They put on a great show. I saw the entire Roomful of Blues band at the Fairgrounds the next day, where they backed Earl King, having backed him on King's Black Top Records release, Glazed. Their performances led me to check out some of their recordings, where I was surprised that Piccolo not only played sax, but sang and served as the de facto leader of the band.
Piccolo wrote some songs on several of Roomful's releases, even cutting his own solo album for Black Top in 1990, Heavy Juice, before he departed for a solo career in the mid 90's, leading his own band, also called Heavy Juice. Now 75, he's released several albums since going solo and also plays with Heavy Juice and his Greg Piccolo Jazz Trio in addition to sitting in with other artists, but he recently released his sixth album, Who Knows What The Future Holds (MoMojo Records).
This release (produced by Terry Manning, who passed away soon after sending the first mix for review) focuses more on Piccolo's songwriting and his vocals. The songs cover a variety of styles from the jump blues that Roomful of Blues is renowned for, to old time rock n' roll, classic R&B, soul, and a bit of jazz. Don't worry, there's plenty of Piccolo's tenor sax as well, but he does a great job with vocals, showing a lot of range over the various styles.
Providing standout support for Piccolo are Shinichi Otsu (keys), Dean Shot (guitar), Paul Tomasello (bass), with horns from Al Gomez and Mark "Kaz" Kazanoff of the Texas Horns. This is an entertaining set that shows Piccolo to be a talented songwriter and singer as well as a first-call tenor sax man....a great album of classic blues and R&B.
Blues fans may not be familiar with Ryan "Bluwrath" Newman but, trust me, you soon will be. Newman was a young guitar prodigy, learning all of The Beatles tunes before he was seven years old, but he was introduced to Jimi Hendrix as an eight-year-old, and when he first heard "The Wind Cries Mary," his future as a blues guitarist was set. He was reportedly asked to leave the Berklee School of Music for playing too loud, but he has developed into a first-rate blues and rock guitarist influenced by Hendrix, SRV, B.B. and Albert King, John Mayer, and Jeff Beck, while crafting his own unique playing style.
Wrath of Blues (Feverbarn Records) is Newman's debut release and it's pretty awesome. He covers several well-known blues classics along the way on these 14 tracks, from the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan to B.B. and Albert King to Jeff Beck, Earl King, Aretha Franklin, Mose Allison, and Hoagy Carmichael(!). He even covers "Texas Flood" and "Dust My Broom".....and his versions of these tunes manages to acknowledge the original sources as well as presenting his own personal approach to each one. He's also a pretty good singer, though he does use several other vocalists on three or four songs.....keyboardist Vic Washington and singers Arlene Wow and Anita Antoinette. Newman also wrote one of the songs on the album, a nice slow blues that's really well done.
Newman currently fronts Righteous Continental, a power blues trio who appears on one of the tracks here. He also plays with The Incredible Amplifires, whose harmonica player guests on one track. The remainder of the band is considerable with additional guitars, horns, keys, bass and drums. However, the large cast doesn't take away from the talents of this powerful new guitarist, who should be raising eyebrows for an extended time to come. This is one that blues and blues-rock fans definitely need to investigate.
Another new band, The Shaelyn Band, was formed in 2020 in Florida and has enjoyed some success touring the eastern part of the U.S. and making it to the semi-finals in the 2024 I.B.C. in 2024. They are fronted by Shaelyn Mulberry, who is a dynamite vocalist. She and drummer Tim Mulberry also wrote all 14 of the songs on their third release, appropriately titled Chapter 3 (House of Berry Productions). The five piece band also includes guitarist Eric Guess, Moses Maldonado (trombone), Isaiah Gaytan (trumpet), Curtis Harris (bass), plus backing vocalist Win Carlson.
The songs are more or less modern updates on traditional blues topics and the band does an outstanding job throughout. Shaelyn's vocals are the real story here. She's quite talented and moves easily between blues, funk, rock and soul, with a couple of tracks that take on a countrified southern rock feel. I haven't heard the band's previous two releases, but listening to Chapter 3 may lead me to check those albums out.....this is a rock-solid set of blues and soul from a fine band and vocalist.
Our Blast From The Past this week is not an album. It's a book that I've been trying to track down for several years. I first encountered Robert Ealey on his two releases for Black Top Records (Turn Out the Lights and I Like Music When I Party). He was one of the most interesting vocalists I'd ever heard at the time. He was also mentioned in Alan B Govenar's enlightening and essential book Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, along with several other Dallas/Fort Worth musicians.
Over time, I had heard about Robert Ealley and His Five Careless Lovers, a Fort Worth band that never made it to the studio, but were a tremendous influence that's felt even to this day. Their only recording was a 1971 live release, Live at the New Blue Bird Nite Club (produced by a young T-Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton) that's available on LP or via streaming and it was a long sought-after collector's item until Record Town Records (which was owned by the Bruton family) reissued it in 2021.
Author Joe Nick Patoski, who's written biographies of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Willie Nelson, and Selena, as well as a history of the Dallas Cowboys. grew up in Fort Worth and was an eyewitness to the short-lived history of this band, which consisted of Ealey (vocals), the Reverend Good Rockin' Ralph Owens (keyboards), Freddie Cisneros (guitar), Sumter Bruton (guitar), Jackie Newhouse (bass) and Mike Buck (drums). In 2020, Patoski wrote The Ballad of Robert Ealey and His Five Careless Lovers, which is an oral history narrated by Cisneros (who went on to play with Jimmy Don Smith and the Cold Cuts and his own band The Sheetrockers), Bruton (who joined Ealey in the Juke Jumpers and also ran Record Town until the family sold it in 2018), Newhouse (who later played with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Anson Funderburgh, the Leroi Brothers and Alan Haynes), and Buck (who co-founded the Leroi Brothers, played drums for the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Texas Mavericks and currently co-owns Antone's with his wife, guitarist Eve Monses).
The band stayed together in its original form until Buck exited in 1975 and it eventually dissolved a couple of years later, but the recollections shared by the surviving members (Ealey died in 2001 and Owens passed in 2006) are priceless, from how the band came together, their numerous gigs in the Fort Worth area, stories of their numerous supporters, and all the close calls and near-misses they endured over their short history. The book is relatively slim, but is loaded with rare pictures of the band in action and stories that you probably won't see anywhere else.
As Patoski put it in the introduction:
"This was genuine Texas blues, the hometown stuff those British bands had been stealing from and sending back to American youth for the past decade. Only unlike the Brits, this was the real deal, skipping along a gliding rhythm called the Fort Worth Shuffle. Ain't seen anything like it since."
If you're a fan of Texas blues, particular the DFW brand, you need to read this book. Here's Patoski and some of the surviving members talking about Robert Ealey back in 2020 promoting the upcoming release of the album that should give you a taste of what's in the book as well.
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