#482 : Alabama Slim - The Parlor

2020 – Cornelius Chapel

Music Maker Relief Foundation

Release Date: Jan. 29, 2021

By Phillip Smith; Jan. 16, 2021

 

Originally from Vance, Alabama, Milton Frazier aka Alabama Slim was born in 1939 and moved to New Orleans in 1965.  It was there when he started jamming occasionally with his cousin Little Freddie King.  By the 1990’s they had become best of friends, and spoke to each other on a daily basis.  In 2007, with the help of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, they cut an album together called The Mighty Flood.  In 2010 Alabama Slim recorded his first solo album Blue & Lonesome, which was also made with the help of the MMRF.  And now, a little over ten years later he has a brand new fabulous record of fresh downhome blues called The Parlor.  The album was recorded in New Orleans at The Parlor Recording Studio in four hours’ time, and incorporates the talents of Jimbo Mathus (Squirrel Nut Zippers) on piano/organ, and Matt Patton (Drive-By Truckers, Dexateens) on bass and Ardie Dean on drums, with Alabama Slim front and center on guitar and vocals.  As an added bonus, Little Freddie King even steps into the studio with guitar in hand to record a track. 

From the first few measures of “Hot Foot”, I knew this was going to be an extraordinary record.  Slim’s guitar picking is a blues-lovers delight.  Next up, Slim brings his cousin Freddie in for the hard-driving “Freddie’s Voodoo Boogie”.  It’s absolutely wonderful.  Slim slows it down and sings about a woman who steals his heart in “Rob Me Without a Gun”.  Story-telling songs like this one really grab me, especially when sung with the conviction Slim incorporates into his performance.  Mathus and Slim form a most interesting partnership of guitar and piano in the slow blues of “All Night Long”, a first-person account of a man in search of his two-timing gal.  A soulful Stax-like groove runs through “Forty Jive”, a political satire number which goes right for the jugular.  His cover of Sleepy John Estes’ “Someday Baby” is played with finesse and puts a smile on my blues-loving face.

The Parlor is certainly a recording to be embraced.  It captures Alabama Slim in a non-filtered environment, allowing the music to be heard the way it was meant to be.  Records like this just aren’t made this way anymore.          

         

---

For more information about the artist, visit this website : Alabama Slim - Music Maker Relief Foundation

 

#378 : Music Maker Relief Foundation (Various Artists) - Blue Muse

2019 – Big Legal Mess Records

By Phillip Smith; March 2, 2019

The Music Maker Relief Foundation, whose mission is “to preserve the musical traditions of the South by directly supporting the musicians who make it, ensuring their voices will not be silenced by poverty and time”, is issuing a new book and CD package called Blue Muse to celebrate their twenty-fifth year.  According to their website, musicmaker.org, this organization, founded by Timothy and Denise Duffy, has helped with over 12,000 grants, and has supported 435 artists.  Blue Muse contains twenty-one tracks of southern blues and roots music from various artists.  It features recordings made from the nineties up to the present day, with tracks contributed by both Taj Mahal who beautifully performs “Spike Driver Blues” and Eric Clapton who joins with Timothy Duffy for a sweet instrumental cover of Willie Brown’s “Mississippi Blues”.

Eddie Tigner who played many years with the Ink Spots and was at one time the lead of Elmore James’ house band, tears it up on piano with his performance of “Route 66”. When Alabama Slim kicks off “I Got the Blues”, it puts a big smile on my face.  His hypnotic guitar stylings pull me deep into the song.  The soulful deep-cutting vocals of Robert Finley marvelously sing out on “Age Don’t Mean a Thing”.  With Jimbo Mathus on guitar and Al Gamble on keys, this is southern soul at its best.  Former Carolina Chocolate Drop co-founder Dom Flemons breaks out his harmonica and sings “Polly Put the Kettle On”.  Ben Hunter appears on fiddle and Guy Davis on guitar, making this traditional song also covered by the blues-great Sonny Boy Williamson, a delightful listen.  

One can feel the blues in the voice of the late great Piedmont Blues artist Algia Mae Hinton, who passed in February of 2018, as she delivers “Snap Your Fingers”.  Guitar Gabriel’s “Landlord Blues” oozes with authenticity.  ‘The Blues Doctor’ Drink Small from Columbia, South Carolina wonderfully sings and picks “Widow Woman”, a melancholy and reflective piece paying homage to those who have lost their husbands.   

This collection also contains “I am the Lightning” from one my recent favorites, Willie Farmer whose latest album, The Man From the Hill was reviewed on my blog last month. This is such cool song.   I was also happy to see Ironing Board Sam’s “Loose Diamonds” appear on this album too.  His CD, Super Spirit, which this track is from, was one of my memorable finds in 2018 while visiting one of my favorite stores on the planet, Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art in Clarksdale, Mississippi.   

Available by March 28^th, 2019 , Blue Muse is also paired with a powerful 152 page companion book titled Blue Muse: Timothy Duffy’s Southern Photographs, published in association with the New Orleans Museum of Art, and loaded with tintype photos taken by Duffy of musicians representing American roots music.  For more information or to purchase this set, visit musicmaker.org .        

---