Showing posts with label Boz Scaggs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boz Scaggs. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Boz Scaggs - Out Of The Blues (Extended Edition)

Album: Out Of The Blues
Size: 121,1 MB
Time: 52:34
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2018
Styles: Soul/Blues
Art: Full

1. Rock And Stick (4:50)
2. I've Just Got To Forget You (2:57)
3. I've Just Got To Know (4:11)
4. Radiator 110 (4:08)
5. Little Miss Night And Day (5:20)
6. On The Beach (6:33)
7. Down In Virginia (3:24)
8. Those Lies (4:31)
9. The Feeling Is Gone (3:37)
10. Good Information (Bonus Track) (5:11)
11. 25 Years (Bonus Track) (3:53)
12. Good Lover (Bonus Track) (3:53)

Boz Scaggs considers Out of the Blues to be the final installment in a (primarily covers) trilogy that began with 2013's Memphis and continued with 2015's A Fool to Care, excellent outings that reflected Scaggs' desire to reach back into the cradle of inspiration. This set looks back to his 1965 debut album Boz (a solo acoustic covers set released only in Sweden by Polydor) and 1997's criminally overlooked Come on Home, a woolly, house-rocking collection of (mostly) vintage R&B and soul-blues covers, for its foundation. While these early recordings don't necessarily sound similar, they make use of the work of a particular set of performers and songwriters - including Jimmy Reed and Don Robey (credited with many of Bobby "Blue" Bland's hits) - who have always provided inspiration and grounding throughout his lifetime.

Whereas Scaggs' two previous offerings were produced by Steve Jordan, Boz opted to co-produce Out of the Blues with Chris Tabarez and Michael Rodriguez, creating an impression of intimacy and loose immediacy that ranks with the swampier feel of Come on Home. His band here includes holdovers bassist Willie Weeks, Jim Cox, and rhythm guitarist Ray Parker, Jr. as well drummer Jim Keltner (the kitman on Come on Home), and guitarists Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton; there is also a selectively and impactfully used three-piece horn section.

The set includes two Robey tunes closely associated with Bland: the souled-out nighttime groover "I've Just Got to Forget You" (with its gorgeously charted horns) and the organ-drenched jazz-blues of "The Feeling Is Gone" (whose horn section sounds like the Jazz Crusaders). And while the vibe on those two numbers is more sultry that raucous, that bill gets filled with an uptempo fingerpoppin' version of Reed's "Down in Virginia," with Scaggs delivering a punchy I-IV-V progression to rival the master's, and Jimmy McCracklin's swinging jump blues "I've Just Got to Know," with a burning guitar break from Sexton.

Interestingly, these tracks, fine as they are, are not the album's high points. Opener "Rock and Stick" is one of four tunes written or co-written by Jack "Applejack" Walroth, a compadre of Scaggs since the 1960s who has worked with everyone from Elvin Bishop to Mike Bloomfield, from Steve Miller to Cash McCall. Its shuffling, smoky, seductive futuristic West Coast blues is elevated by the composer's harmonica and Bramhall's evocative, slippery guitar solo. The punchy six-string riff on the composer's "Radiator 110" is played in tandem by Scaggs, Walroth, and Steve Freund with a lonesome highway harmonica break that rises like steam heat from the middle eight. Scaggs and Walroth co-wrote the thumping Chuck Berry-esque "Little Miss Night and Day," with lead breaks from both Sexton and Bramhall.

The set's outlier is a moody, deep-blue read of Neil Young's "On the Beach," where Scaggs' trademark croon invests its minimal melody with a dark passion. Out of the Blues may be an excellent final chapter in this roots trilogy, but stands on its own as one of Scaggs' most sure-footed releases. /Thom Jurek, AllMusic

(For personnel details, see artwork included.)

Out Of The Blues mc
Out Of The Blues gofile

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Boz Scaggs - A Fool To Care

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 52:10
Size: 119.4 MB
Styles: R&B/Soul/Blues vocals
Year: 2015
Art: Front

[2:59] 1. Rich Woman
[2:03] 2. I'm A Fool To Care
[6:14] 3. Hell To Pay
[3:39] 4. Small Town Talk
[6:24] 5. Last Tango On 16th Street
[4:12] 6. There's A Storm A Comin'
[3:36] 7. I'm So Proud
[5:41] 8. I Want To See You
[3:34] 9. High Blood Pressure
[4:16] 10. Full Of Fire
[5:08] 11. Love Don't Love Nobody
[4:20] 12. Whispering Pines

A Fool to Care may not have a concept as linear as some of Boz Scaggs' other recent albums (2013's Southern-fried Memphis, the jazz standards on 2003's But Beautiful and 2008's Speak Low), but it sure does tell a story. These 12 songs map out a concise history of American soul, with a heavy dose of New Orleans strut — including the title track (a hit for Fats Domino) and Huey "Piano" Smith's "High Blood Pressure" — and a dollop of Chicago sweetness (the Impressions' gorgeous "I'm So Proud").

Backed throughout by a stellar group of studio aces — guitarist Ray Parker Jr., bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Steve Jordan, who also produced the album — Scaggs' well-worn, textured voice deftly navigates this range of styles. His lone composition on A Fool to Care, the sly blues "Hell to Pay" ("Between the bank boys and the lawyers/I don't know where it ends"), is a sparkling duet with Bonnie Raitt, featuring her signature slide-guitar mastery. Versions of Al Green's "Full of Fire" and the Spinners' "Love Don't Love Nobody" even recall the slinky, disco-fied grit of Scaggs' 1976 smash, Silk Degrees. The wild card, though, is the album's final track, an aching duet with Lucinda Williams on the Band's "Whispering Pines." So what if it's not an R&B song? The emotion conveyed proves that, in the end, soul is where you find it. ~Alan Light

A Fool To Care mc
A Fool To Care zippy

Monday, July 4, 2016

Louie Shelton - Bluesland

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 44:02
Size: 100.8 MB
Styles: Guitar blues
Year: 2016
Art: Front

[3:41] 1. You're On The Top (Feat. Boz Scaggs)
[4:45] 2. No Fine Line (Feat. Big Jon Toney)
[4:38] 3. Take Me To The River (Feat. Damian Black)
[4:10] 4. I Get Up (Feat. Big Jon Toney)
[4:16] 5. Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven (Feat Damian Black)
[3:14] 6. How Good Does It Feel (Feat. Big John Toney)
[4:33] 7. What's Left Of My Old Friends (Feat. Doc Span)
[2:47] 8. Tell Me Love Is Easy (Feat. Big John Toney)
[3:18] 9. My Babe ( Feat. Big John Toney)
[5:16] 10. When I Found The Blues (Feat. Peter Cupples)
[3:19] 11. The End Of The Road (Feat. Leon Russell)

Louie was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 6,1941, and got his first guitar for his ninth birthday, a $13.00 Stella. While other young boys were out having a good time playing ball or fishing, Louie had his ear pinned to the radio for hours a day with his guitar in hand teaching himself to play. He lived and breathed music and by the age of twelve was so good he was in the country band 'Shelby Cooper & the Dixie Mountaineers', was featured every Saturday night on a Grand Ole Opry style show called the Barn Yard Frolics in Little Rock, which was broadcast live throughout the South on KRLA Radio and which featured performers like Johnnie Cash. Not only did young Jr. Shelton (as he was known) back up most of the artists on the show, he was given the opportunity to perform all of the "hot" guitar instrumentals he learned from listening to the recordings of Chet Atkins, Jimmy Bryant, Hank Garland and others. Best of all, Louie was able to graduate musically by purchasing himself a brand new 51 Telecaster.

Bluesland