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The BluesWax Staff and Friends Pick Their Personal Favorites From 2009

By BluesWax Staff


Don Wilcock
Editor-in-chief, BluesWax and FolkWax; contributing editor Blues Revue; 2008 recipient of The Blues Foundation's Keeping The Blues Alive in Print Journalism Award; former managing editor of King Biscuit Time magazine; author of Buddy Guy's authorized biography, Damn Right I've Got The Blues

1. Tear This World Up - Eddie C. Campbell
For me Eddie C. Campbell is the closest artist to capturing what I loved about Magic Sam, whose West Side Soul is my desert island album. Both Campbell and Sam can be smooth and rough at the same time. They define sophistication without ever falling back on the academic tools usually used to "refine" music. In metaphysical terms, they get there by way of a lower chakra. Campbell told me this year that he knows he's going to lose money recording before he ever goes into the studio, so he just puts it out as fast as he can and gets out of the way. Delmark Records is the best place to do just that. For fifty-six years label head Bob Koester has given artists the atmosphere and the permission to do their own thing. This album comes closest to capturing inner glow that makes Campbell's performances the pure essence of West Side soul. "Voodoo" is going to get me arrested for driving 79 in a 55. I've resigned myself to putting on cruise control whenever I listen. Otherwise, they're going to have to lock me up.

2. Naked - Eddie and Vaan Shaw
I had the pleasure of being a fly on the wall when this was recorded in a tiny trailer studio in the woods near the coast in Rockland, Maine, in December of last year. You couldn't have been further from the atmosphere one associates with Blues if you'd done this under the sink of fast food kitchen. I was three feet from Eddie, who sat on a metal kitchen chair with a folded piece of paper listing every song he'd ever written. Between cell calls from his wife, he pushed those songs out like a sausage grinder turning bloody meat into diamonds, his hands extended, grabbing the air as if it were clay being sculpted into each figure of a song. His son Vaan sat ten feet away with John Lennon sunglasses on. You couldn't see his eyes, but you felt his being like X-rays zeroed in. The two of them bonded as they have for decades onstage and transported me into the Delta unadorned. On the third day I escaped early, beating home the worst ice storm of the year by minutes while they overdubbed the horns and feathered the mix. My little window on their creative world closed like a slamming door, but then the album opens that door again every time I listen.

3. Tijuana Bible - Jim Suhler
Jim Suhler is George Thorogood's secret weapon. George is a caricature of the Blues. He knows it. You feel it in his sense of humor when you speak with him, but he loves the music. He once made the broad statement to me that he saw no margin in writing music because Chuck Berry had said it all. Suhler is George's guitarist, and when he does his own material, he maintains the swagger of Thorogood, the machismo of Coco Montoya, and the cutting shards of a Keith Richards. I don't think of myself as a Blues Nazi, but Suhler has to make even the most jaded "real deal" Blues fan stop and just wonder for a moment if we really should permanently tear down the rope between Blues shuffles and the rock mosh pit.

4. From The Root - Zac Harmon
Harmon is all about dynamics. His shows don't give an audience time to consider where they are. He just takes you higher and higher, zoning out on riffs that may be retro, but he jumps them into timeless territory. This album does not quite equal the spacey nirvana of his concerts, but it is all original and it does come close.

5. Rough & Tough - John Hammond
This is an audiophile recording of a master of acoustic guitar with a voice that's been criticized for being a white man trying to sound black. Bullshit! John's voice does for Blues what Greg Brown and Ray Wylie Hubbard do for Americana. It's weathered driftwood full of knots that swirl the grain and take you into another world. Listen to this next to some earlier versions of some of the same classics he's done in his almost half century career. He's subtler now, but no less powerful.

6. I'm Gonna Live The Life I Sing About - Danny Kalb
My friend Danny tells me he's never been to the Delta and he loves Elvis Presley almost as much as he loves the Rev. Gary Davis and Bob Dylan. He has a way of singing songs from his days with The Blues Project that makes me feel like I'm hearing them for the first time - like he just wrote them as he was playing. He's an intellectual, but he's an intellectual like Mose Allison is intellectual, like Jerry Garcia was an intellectual. And he's just coming out of his cocoon.

7. Done with The Devil - Jason Ricci & New Blood
I hear Tom Verlaine with the punk band Television at CBGB's. I hear Hendrix on harp. I see a guy who is completely comfortable in his own skin, which changes color like a coiled snake to fit its environment. He's not your daddy's Blues and Jason is not afraid to sing about it, and do it with well crafted songs that rock and shuffle and rip and tear.

8. You Got to Move - David Maxwell & Louisiana Red
Sure, Pinetop Perkins is a wonderful living legend of Muddy Waters' era piano boogie, but for my money nobody does Otis Spann like David Maxwell. And Louisiana Red is like Gatemouth Brown. Don't try to categorize his style of guitar playing. He grinds up genres like Captain Beefheart jamming with The Cramps. Together? This is sublime!

9. Betcha Didn't Know - Mighty Sam McClain
Sam loves God. He also loves Blues, and he's not afraid to throw some hip-hop and soulful horns into the mix, either. Like Jason Ricci, he is a man completely comfortable with himself and not afraid to say it in his music. This is genre-bending stuff that works because he's real.

10. Live at Rooster's Lounge - Tail Dragger
Tail Dragger channels Howlin' Wolf; Rockin' Johnny is a young Hubert Sumlin; and the album was recorded live on the West Side by Delmark. What else do you need to know?

Disclosure: I wrote the liner notes for the Danny Kalb and Eddie and Vaan Shaw CDs, but I picked them because I like the music not because I wrote the notes.

Bob Putignano
WFDU, Blueswax, Hittin' the Note, Westchester Herald, www.SoundsofBlue.com

1.   Live from Madison Square Garden - Eric Clapton & Steve Winwood
2.    Mojo Zone - Enrico Crivellaro
3.    Already Live EP - Derek Trucks
4.    Acquired Taste - Delbert McClinton
5.    Is What It Is - Brian Bromberg
6.   Trading 8s - Carl Verheyen
7.   Live at the Turning Point with Jimmy Vivino - Felix Cabrera Band
8.   Live Blood - Cold Blood
9.   Sunnyland - Zora Young
10. Terry Blersh - Terry Blersh


Art Tipaldi
Contributing Editor Blues Revue and BluesWax and author of Children of the Blues, Profiles of 49 Blues Musicians.

In no particular order

1. Chicago Blues: A Living History - various artists
I could play "Night Watchman Blues" all night long. The record reminds you to pull out all the old Sonny Boy I, Memphis Slim, and Magic Sam you haven't played in years.

2.  Truth According to Ruthie Foster - Ruthie Foster
Her "nickel and a nail" nails it!!! and "Truth" is a Song of the Year contender.

3. Almost Free - Derek Trucks 
"Already Free" is the best song here.

4.  Never Going Back - Shemekia Copeland
Title cut and "Sounds Like The Devil" deliver the goods. Her dad's "Circumstances" warmly closes the record.

5. Between A Rock and The Blues - Joe Louis Walker
"I've Been Down" is even better than the BMA nominated "I'm Tide" for Song of the Year.

6.  Troubled Child - Charles Wilson
Every song is bathed in old-time soul. Check out Wilson's stylish treatment of Bob Marley's "Is This Love?"

7. Back to The Black Bayou - Louisiana Red
Red takes you into the world of dirty, gritty, earthy Chicago-styled Blues. Every song's a winner.

8. Right Here, Right Now - Big James and the Chicago Playboys
Title track is a definite song of the year.

9. The Ballad of John Henry - Joe Bonamassa
Title song is great for driving home on Friday to get ready to party! Voice and guitar combine to conjure memories of early Led Zep.

10. Soul Monster - Rod Piazza

Others of note:

From The Root - Zac Harmon
Sweetheart Like You - Guy Davis
Brand New Blues - Cyril Neville

Top DVDs: Bonamassa - Live at Royal Albert Hall; Clapton/Winwood - Live at Madison Square Garden; Pocket Full Of Soul - In the Reeds; and Delmark's 55 Years of Blues Live Anniversary Celebration at Legends.

My top historical picks are the Freddie King Taking Care of Business boxed set and Roy Lee Johnson's When A Guitar Plays The Blues, both on Bear Family records. Johnson wrote "Mister Moonlight," covered by the Beatles, but there are 29 other great songs from the 1960s.

Steve Daniels
Contributing editor, BluesWax

1. Hard Believer - Tommy Castro
2. Live at Pineapple Willy's - Ben Prestage
3. The Roots of Bob Dylan
4. 11th Hour - Deanna Bogart
5. Times Are Getting' Hard - Henry Gray & the Cats
6. A Memorial Retrospective - Sean Costello
7. Superhero - Candye Kane
8. Just for You - Darrell  Nulisch
9. Soul Monster - Rod Piazza & the MFBQ
10. Stomp! The Blues Tonight - Duke Robillard's Jumpin' Blues Revue


Richard Ludmerer
Contributing writer, BluesWax and FolkWax

1. Chicago Blues: A Living History -various artists
2. Comin' Back Hard - Bobby Jones
3. Hard Believer - Tommy Castro
4. Living in The Light - Ronnie Earl
5. Mojo Zone - Enrico Crivellaro
6. Just for You - Darrell Nulisch
7. Big Town Playboy - Omar Kent Dykes
8.  Love Me Tonight - John Nemeth
9.  Never Goin' Back - Shemekia Copeland
10. Roots in The Blues - Dave Keyes


T-Bone Erickson
Contributing Editor, BluesWax

1. Back To The Black Bayou - Louisiana Red & Little Victor's Juke Joint
2. Tiger In Your Tank - Monkeyjunk
3. Stomp! The Blues Tonight - Duke Robillard's Jumpin' Blues Revue
4. Black John - The Soul Of John Black
5. Day To Day - Alabama Mike
6. Hard Believer - Tommy Castro
7. Heads, Tails & Aces - Matt Schofield
8. My Lady Don't Love My Lady - Bryan Lee
9. Beale Street To The Bayou - Victor Wainwright & The WildRoots
10. Mojo Zone: The Blues Guitar Of Enrico Crivellaro - Enrico Crivellaro