{"id":424,"date":"2011-01-14T06:15:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T11:15:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=424"},"modified":"2016-02-02T21:37:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T21:37:53","slug":"cd-review-let-me-tell-you-about-the-blues-nashville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/01\/14\/cd-review-let-me-tell-you-about-the-blues-nashville\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Review: Let Me Tell You About the Blues \/ Nashville"},"content":{"rendered":"

The liner notes come right out and address the argument some might raise against this package. Thought it\u2019s titled Let Me Tell About the Blues: Nashville<\/em>, most people will agree that blues is not the first (or second) genre that springs to mind when one thinks of Music City.<\/p>\n

But as the liners make clear, in the 1940s and \u201850s, quite a number of Nashville-based labels turned out blues. And is so often the case, leave it to our friends across the Atlantic to recognize and compile this sort of thing for us.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a long and proud (or embarrassing, if you\u2019re American) history of U.S. artists having to go the Europe to establish the careers. Jimi Hendrix<\/strong> and the Ramones<\/strong> are among the most celebrated examples. And actor Jerry Lewis<\/strong> aside, we have the French (among others) to thank for recognizing a lot of otherwise-ignored American jazz. The British blues boom of the 1960s gave a second chance to a long line of underappreciated American blues artists.<\/p>\n

So with that in mind it\u2019s less than shocking that UK-based label Fantastic Voyage has collected 75 blues sides from those Nashville labels. In doing so, they\u2019ve brought together a lot of music that would otherwise require a good bit of detective work to hear. While there are a couple of relatively well-known artists (Cecil Gant, Wynonie Harris<\/strong>), the bulk of the music on these three CDs is from unheralded artists performing mostly-unheard music.<\/p>\n

The sonic quality is good considering the source and age of the material. And for listeners who like blues and early R&B but who are not well-versed in its history, this set will often sound like a collection of songs that might have been hits. (They mostly weren\u2019t.) There\u2019s some deep connective history here, including \u201cBeer Bottle Boogie\u201d by Rufus Thomas<\/strong>(!) conducting business under the pseudonym Mr. Swing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In fact the blues tag is a slight misnomer, as a good deal of the music on this set leans toward R&B, but that only makes the collection more varied and interesting. Annotation by Neil Slaven<\/strong> (not included on this reviewer\u2019s copy) reportedly provides history and context for the music contained on the discs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Follow “the_musoscribe” on Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION:
\n\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The liner notes come right out and address the argument some might raise against this package. Thought it\u2019s titled Let Me Tell About the Blues: Nashville, most people will agree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[810],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-fantastic-voyage","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10245,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/10245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}