Someone in the Great Random CD Draw in the sky seems to think I
\nneed to develop a taste for N’awlins music and blues, because they
\nkeep sending me all these great CDs. The latest in the series is
\nthe new project by acoustic blues guitarist and singer Corey Harris
\nand N’awlins piano player and singer Henry Butler,
\nvu-du menz<\/i>. (I hate standard character sets. Both “u”s in
\nthat name are supposed to have an umlaut two dots over them, the e
\nin
\nmenz<\/i> should be a schwa, and the z should have a caret over
\nit. Deal.)<\/p>\n
Released by Chicago blues label Alligator,
\nvu-du menz<\/i> is a tribute to the thirties style of acoustic
\nblues and Crescent City barrelhouse blues and jazz. It’s somewhere
\nbetween Jelly Roll Morton and Robert Johnson, at various points raw
\nas fingernails on a blackboard and smooth as absinthe. It is the
\nsound pure and unsanitized; there’s no Bobby Troup or Harry Connick
\nJr here, but the sound that rang from Storyville windows during the
\ngolden age.<\/p>\n
The CD starts off with “Let ‘Em Roll”, and the rolling
\nbarrelhouse
\nchords contrast neatly with the blues shouting style in the
\nvocals. Production is spare and neat, with the string and key
\nsounds still present in the work; the simplicity of the engineering
\nmakes it feel like Butler and Harris are in your living room.
\nAlligator knows blues up, down, and forward, and it shows on works
\nlike this.<\/p>\n
\nvu-du menz<\/i> is a balancing act between joyous celebration and
\nserious, thoughtful blues, and the dichotomy works. Songs like
\n“Shake What Your Mama Gave You”, “If I Was Your Man”, “Sugar
\nDaddy”, and “Song Of The Pipelayer” show the bawdy, good-time side
\nof blues and barrelhouse, but “Mulberry Row” takes a hard look at
\nthe legacy of slavery, “Didn’t My Lord
\nDeliver Daniel?” and “Why Don’t You Live So God Can Use You”
\nare traditional spirituals. “L’esprit de James” is a wonderful
\ninstrumental, “There’s No Substitute For Love” has a soulful feel
\nto it, and “Voodoo Man” is just a brilliant piece of piano blues.
\nAnd where else but on a blues album can you get the helpful
\ninterpersonal counseling of “If You Let A Man Kick You Once”?<\/p>\n
In short,
\nvu-du menz<\/i> is a tasty, tasty piece of acoustic blues and
\nCrescent City piano. We can only hope for more work from
\nHarris and Butler together. If this is voudoun, then Marie Laveau
\ncan show up on my stereo any day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7641],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-39526","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-corey-harris-henry-butler","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39526"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39526"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}