Blue Steel
Lo-Ball
After seven solo albums of pedal-steel instrumentals (all of which include decidedly non-country covers), Joe Goldmark switched gears two albums ago by incorporating vocal numbers.
Lo-Ball
After seven solo albums of pedal-steel instrumentals (all of which include decidedly non-country covers), Joe Goldmark switched gears two albums ago by incorporating vocal numbers.
Eclecto Groove
For her sixth studio album (counting her 1998 debut as a member of Hush), Yugoslavian singer-songwriter-guitarist Popovic left her Amsterdam base for three months to descend on the Crescent City and craft her finest release.
Blue Bella
For those who like Willie Mitchell, the Mar-Keys, Booker T. & the MG’s, the Bar-Kays and that 1990 self-titled album by the Memphis Boys, Stubbs comes highly recommended.
Vanguard
It’ll be 10 years ago in November that Sahm, 58, went to sleep at a New Mexico motel and never woke up. Since then, there have been enough releases to keep fans happy while preserving his legacy: “The Return of Wayne Douglas” (his final sessions, 2000); “The Songs of Sahm” (the Bottle Rockets’ covers disc, 2002); two limited-edition reissues — “The Genuine Texas Groover” (“Doug Sahm & Band” and “Texas Tornado” with more than an album’s worth of outtakes, 2003) and “The Complete Mercury Masters” (the Sir Douglas Quintet’s six original Mercury/Smash albums plus bonus material, 2005); and “Live From Austin, Texas” (a 1981 “Austin City Limits” performance, 2006).
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.