Powerhouse
A white-boy-blues album as delicately balanced as “American Landscape” would be hard to find. Ten well-chosen covers and two originals, running the gamut from R&B to rock to jazz to soul to country, are tied together so neatly that one wishes it were Friday night at the local no-cover-charge watering hole in perpetuity.
Victor
With each album, the Derek Trucks Band just keeps on truckin’ — not only in terms of evolution but also each disc’s uniqueness: the improvisational jazz/blues of their self-titled debut; the Southern folk/blues bent of “Out of the Madness”; the Latin and fusion forays and expanded Indian influence on “Joyful Noise”; the mostly jazz leaning of “Soul Serenade”; and the melting-pot maturity of “Songlines.”
Manatee
Talk about a well-kept secret: Brown has gone from recording a fluke single for Checker Records to fronting Doug Brown & the Omens (who counted Bob Seger among their ranks) to engineering the Righteous Brothers to producing Del Shannon to being a member of country-rock outfit Southwind (along with Moon Martin and which almost had an Apple Records deal) to fronting Fast Fontaine to chillin’ for about 20 years in Laguna Beach just writing songs.
Rhino
One of these days, someone’s gonna do the 4-CD box set Cooder deserves — with early Rising Sons and Captain Beefheart material, session work, solo stuff, soundtracks, world music collaborations … But until then, this double CD culled from studio albums and soundtracks will have to do.
Delta Groove
Bishop’s newest succeeds on three fronts: It’s a great album; it pays tribute to the Oklahoma-raised singer/slide guitarist’s early influences; and it assembles an impressive cast of supporting musicians, some of whom are old friends and some who are up-and-coming artists, both types to which he often humbly relinquishes lead vocals.
