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Review: Joe Henry

Joe Henry – Blood From Stars

Joe Henry has built his reputation on being an old soul. Preferring the company and sound of the antiquated, he’s produced glorious comeback albums for soul legends Solomon Burke and Bettye Lavette, and just this year, pulled lifetime performances from New Orleans icon Allen Toussaint and folk hero Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Thus its no surprise that Blood From Stars, Henry’s eleventh solo outing, dips heavily into musical arrangements of the early 20th century. From the sauntering blues march of “Death To The Storm” or the New Orleans piano and cornet jazz of “Bellweather”, Henry’s songs are tinted with weary lament. His voice shifts between the finessed, literate pronounciation of Randy Newman to a less guttural Tom Waits, but its all carried with the expressive playing of drummer Jay Bellerose and guitarist Marc Ribot. It a solid effort throughout, and a clear nod to jazz and blues as a resilient and malleable art.

Listen To:Bellweather

Review: Yim Yames – Tribute To

Yim Yames – Tribute To
In 2001, with little more than a guitar and an avalanche of vocal reverb, My Morning Jacket frontman, Jim James, held a late-night tribute to the passing George Harrison. This is an intimate affair, traveling the arc of a six song set. Positioning Harrison’s Beatles compositions with choice cuts off his classic All Things Must Pass, it’s sequenced as only a true fan could have requested. Starting with the romantic pining of the White Album’s “Long, Long, Long” and ending with the plaintive reassurance of “All Things Must Pass”, James mirrors Harrison’s spiritual love and mystical calm throughout this homage. Even more fitting are the echoey vocals of Jim James, recalling the saturated production of Phil Spector who recorded All Things Must Pass. Whether its the ghostly, backwood bjango reading of “Love You To” or the stripped-down, overdubbed harmonizing on “My Sweet Lord”, Jim James will make you want to revisit the originals, which is the perfect eulogy a musician can give to a fellow songwriter.

Listen To: Yim Yames – My Sweet Lord

RIP: Les Paul

Les Paul, who invented the solid-body electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock ‘n’ roll greats, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.

As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording. The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-’50s.

Les Paul has had such a staggeringly huge influence over the way American popular music sounds today that many tend to overlook his significant impact upon the jazz world. Heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt at first, Paul eventually developed an astonishingly fluid, hard-swinging style of his own, one that featured extremely rapid runs, fluttered and repeated single notes, and chunking rhythm support, mixing in country & western licks and humorous crowd-pleasing effects. No doubt his brassy style gave critics a bad time, but the gregarious, garrulous Paul didn’t much care; he was bent on showing his audiences a good time. And of course, his early use of the electric guitar and pioneering experiments with multitrack recording, guitar design and electronic effects devices have filtered down to countless jazz musicians. Among the jazzers who acknowledge his influence are George Benson, Al DiMeola, Stanley Jordan (whose neck-tapping sound is very reminiscent of Paul’s records), Pat Martino and Bucky Pizzarelli.

A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.

“I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.

In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar. Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string. Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.

Les Paul – Chasing Sound!