Seasoned artists Paul Weller and Buddy Guy. Photos / Supplied
Seasoned artists Paul Weller and Buddy Guy. Photos / Supplied
Review by Graham Reid
Graham Reid is an NZ journalist, author, broadcaster and arts educator. His website, Elsewhere, provides features and reports on music, film, travel and other cultural issues.
With a few exceptions – Bowie’s Pin Ups, Willie Nelson’s Stardust – albums of covers rarely sell well. Fans want artists doing their own songs and covers often invite unfavourable comparisons with the originals.
Paul Weller sidesteps those sinkholes here with songs that, asidefrom a stately revision of the Bee Gees’ maudlin I Started a Joke and Richie Havens’ socially conscious folk-blues Handouts in the Rain – are largely unfamiliar.
Finding the reflective centre of relatively unassuming but often lyrically rich songs, he explores soulful ballads such as Bobby Charles’ Small Town Talk and Irish folk takes on American country (Merle Haggard’s White Line Fever), and recasts as folk One Last Cold Kiss by 1970s American hard rockers Mountain. Kora player Seckou Keita sprinkles magic on Journey and Robert Plant arrives on vocals and harmonica for the folk-blues of Clive’s Song by Clive Palmer, a founder of the hippy-era Incredible String Band.
Despite apprehension about a covers album – his second after 2004’s Studio 150 – this slips effortlessly into Weller’s recent catalogue. Dad folk-rock it may be, but it debuted in Britain’s top five.
Ain’t Done with the Blues
By Buddy Guy
Opening with a warm-up riff on John Lee Hooker’s Boogie Chillun, this generous 18-song collection from the 89-year-old legend (with guests Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Joe Walsh, Joe Bonamassa and Peter Frampton) is a journey through the life of a guitarist who influenced seminal rock musicians (Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck) and has played with every significant blues and rock artist.
These songs read like a ledger of memories, with references to BB King and Lightnin’ Hopkins, covering JB Lenoir’s Talk to Your Daughter, Sam Cooke soul (Send Me Some Loving), Congo Square, racial injustices encountered (the moving I Don’t Forget) …
With Chuck Leavell (Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones) on keyboards, Guy closes off blues subsets: the tough Chicago style, chooglin’ rockabilly boogie (I Got Sumpin’ For You), gutsy bayou funk (Swamp Poker) and rockin’ gospel on Jesus Loves the Sinner with the Blind Boys of Alabama.
If this is a farewell – he still sounds in good health – we’ll lose the last connection between cotton fields and Grammy stages.
These albums are available digitally, on vinyl and CD.
