Blues 144 Items

Two ecellent country-blues rockers from 1942 pressed with 78rpm labels on a solid center for that authentic feel. Nice job!

Includes two bonus tracks.

High Quality pressing in vintage silk screen sleeve. Surfing on the shores of Java and Casablanca! 2 un-expected tales from the Beat generation.Tony Turpijn and his Evergreens fulfill the dream of every pantropical music lover with a silky instrumental rhythm ’n blues take on the Sundanese love song “Es Lilin” (Ice Lolly). Link Wray meets Mulatu Astatke meets Oslan Husein in Rotterdam, 1965.

When internally the plan came up to release a bunch of vinyl singles for Unrock’s 30th anniversary as an entity, Richard just like his brother Alan, the other keyholder of Sun City Girls legacy was among the first to take a deep look into his archives. Out came two shining pearls from different periods of his long career. Taqasim For Omar (acoustic) was recorded in Seattle in 2008. It was recorded before the Sir changed his mind and recorded the track with an all electric band again for his Freak of Araby LP.

Magrebh Blues was recorded in Tangier, 2018 when Bishop recorded Tangier Sessions in Morocco. The track came out too bluesy for what Richard wanted to show with the album, but it is the only track he played on the mysterious guitar which beautifully sounds like a magrebhinian blues. Photography by Hans van der Linden, realisation by Philip Lethen. One-time limited run on black vinyl.

Limited edition for Record Store Day 2015!

As part of their 20th Anniversary celebrations, Strut present the first new volume in their pioneering ‘Nigeria 70’ series for over 8 years, bringing together rare highlife, Afro-funk and juju from the ‘70s and early ‘80s. Compiled by collector and DJ Duncan Brooker, this new selection of tracks is receiving its first international release outside of Nigeria.

The compilation returns to a fertile heyday in Nigerian music when established styles like highlife and juju became infused with elements of Western jazz, soul and funk and musicians brought a proud new message post-independence. Brooker places the spotlight particularly on some of the incredible Ukwuani musicians from the Delta State region as guitarist Rogana Ottah and Steady Arobby’s International Brothers Band forged their own fluid brand of highlife and soulman Don Bruce drew on the US R&B greats for a series of great albums and explosive stage shows at his residency at Hilton Hotel in Abuja.

Elsewhere, the album explores the close connection between Nigeria and Benin’s music, most famously through Sir Victor Uwaifo, appearing here with a killer mid‘80s ekassa jam, as well as highlife hitmaker Osayamore Joseph on ‘Obonogbozu’ (Joseph made headlines in Nigeria for very different reasons in 2017, surviving a one month kidnapping ordeal).

Other tracks include ‘Sickness’ a 1979 lament on how all countries share troubles by Prince Nico Mbarga, the Nigerian / Camerounian star behind the smash hit ‘Sweet Mother’; reggae singer Felixson Ngasia switches to funk and disco for a heavy workout with potent lyrics around black identity; another major highlife great Etubom Rex Williams unleashes a punchy psych funk gem with ‘Psychedelic Shoes’ and Africa 70 member Pax Nicholas vocals a simmering Afrobeat groove from Jacob Lee’s Saxon Lee & The Shadows International Band.

By incorporating all manner of homemade instruments, jug bands were hugely popular in America during the 1920s and early 1930s. With an unparalleled vibrancy this do it yourself and often overlooked approach to music was highly influential in the history of the blues.

The main ingredient to a good duet is that of
mutual respect, professional admiration, even
love, which often shines through a particular
performance, and the pairings of Louis
Armstrong with Bing Crosby on the relaxed
“Gone Fishing”, or with Velma Middleton on
“Honeysuckle Rose” or with “The Voice” Frank
Sinatra on “Ad-Lib Blues”, or Ella Fitzgerald
on “Summertime”, the great Louis “Satchmo”
Armstrong significantly being the common
denominator in each duo. Also included are two
rare duets with Billie Holiday on “My Sweet
Hunk O’ Trash” and “You Can’t Lose A Broken
Heart,” while Armstrong and bandleader Louis
Jordan perform an entertaining version of the
classic “You Rascal You”.

Born in 1886 in Columbus (Georgia), Ma Rainey is considered by most the mother of the Blues. She did a lot to popularize this style among younger generations and will be a direct influence for countless artists. Author of the first hits of the genre (See See Rider Blues and Chain Gang Blues in the 1920s), she will take a young girl by the name of Bessie Smith under her wing and will write songs with Louis Armstrong or Coleman Hawkins.

Bassekou Kouyaté is a musician from Mali. His new album is about love, friendship, family and true values in times of crisis. Miri means dream or contemplation in bamana. Miri is a very personal album. It talks about his mother Yakare that passed away. The album also pays hommage to two great Malian singers that have blessed quite a number of Bassekous albums: the one and only Zoumana Tereta & the golden voice of Mali Kassemady Diabate. May they rest in peace. They live on in their music.

Having noticed that Christmas tends to be an annual event and that vinyl is suffering a resurgence, we here at Ace have put the two together and extracted 14 blues, R&B and doo wop sides from our Christmas R&B compact disc and turned them into a seasonal platter.

A mostly upbeat selection that will certainly help you and yours get through these fraught times.

Blues stars like B.B. King and Lowell Fulsom, with their ripping up-beat guitars join forces with the mellower mistletoe sounds of Hadda Brooks and Jesse Belvin.

This positive view of seasonal goodwill was probably down to the fact that all these sides were cut in Los Angeles in the warm California sun.

Hot vintage sex songs for your own pleasure

Oh yeah! It’s the 1950s and sweaty night clubs and dance venues are packed with young people wanting to leave their troubles behind to the rhythm of the newest sounds from Black America. In the 1940s blues was speeded up to become Rhythm & Blues, and now it’s at its loudest, electric guitar loaded, hard drumming, harmonica wailing, screamy best. Enjoy this small compilation of tunes and let the smoky club scene of the 1950s / early 1960s bring the party to your own home. These songs that were originally issued in 7” 45 RPM singles that nowadays exchange hands for little fortunes among collectors!

Texas Alexander was from a small town in Texas called Jewett, in between Dallas and Houston. It was here that he first started to sing on the streets and in church. He started to build a reputation through doing gigs. He is known for his personal and unique tenor voice and hollering style which is very reminiscent of field singing.

Limited edition for Record Store Day 2018!

At age 82, bluesman LEO “BUD” WELCH rocks on stage like a teenager—dancing and spinning as he beats out jagged chords and grimy solos on his pink, sparkle-covered guitar. That raw youthful energy and Welch’s old-school juke-joint jones blend full-throttle in the 10 songs on I Don’t Prefer No Blues, his second release for Fat Possum Records’ subsidiary Big Legal Mess. The album is a garage-blues manifesto that weds waves of prickly six-string distortion and gutbucket drums with Welch’s smoke-and-ash voice and mud-crusted guitar—and lives up to Fat Possum’s history of producing edgy but deeply rooted recordings by artists like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside.

Harmonica Frank recorded these tracks for Sun Records in the early '50s! It's definitely blues at the core, but which also has links to Appalachian music.

Ivory Coast isn’t known for country music. But Jess Sah Bi & Peter One’s 1985 recording Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, a massive-selling regional hit, brought a burgeoning interest in folk and Americana into the mainstream and carried two young men to international prominence, culminating in stadium-filling concerts and performances for the first lady of Cote d’Ivoire and dignitaries.

The album was made following a chance introduction via Jess’s nephew, who heard Peter playing for fun around his university dormitory. At the time, Jess Sah Bi (Die Sah Bi) was Ivory Coast’s first political cartoonist, having already published in dozens of magazines and newspapers across West Africa and France. Meanwhile Peter One (Pierre-Evrard Tra) was a university student and soon-to-be high school history teacher. Both musicians had spent time singing and playing guitar and composing songs on their own until they came together to record their independently-released opus.

The music contrasted starkly with the popular sounds of the time, ranging from fast-paced regional dance music genres to ziglibithy to soukous to straight-up funk played by Abidjan’s plethora of bands. Country music and folk-rock weren’t very popular with the general public. But interest was bubbling up within the growing student population, who connected with the protest sentiments expressed by many English and American artists of the era. “It’s very nice music, with very nice harmonies, and it’s different from what you hear every day,” Peter says. “The language was a big barrier though. You had to learn English to understand the songs, and the students were the ones learning English.” Having access to education along with their awareness of social and political inequality and injustice made students the perfect audience for folk music in Ivory Coast.

Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Don Williams’ music could be heard on some radio programs around Ivory Coast’s major cities, and some younger people were getting hip to Simon & Garfunkel, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cat Stevens and Crosby Stills & Nash. The stage was set for Jess Sah Bi & Peter One’s homegrown country music to make a mark on Ivorians’ consciousness. Complete with slide guitar, soaring vocals and anthemic, politically-conscious lyrics in three languages, the recording became ubiquitous across French-speaking West Africa. “We expected the album to be a big success, but we could not have imagined how far it would go,” Peter says.

After Our Garden Needs Its Flowers release, Jess and Peter’s profile lifted rapidly, leading to stadium performances in Togo, Burkina Faso and elsewhere. Their ascent was accompanied by critical acclaim from the local press and television programs, appearances at galas organized by Marie-Thérèse Houphouët-Boigny, the wife of the late Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first president of the Ivory Coast and even a performance during the 1988 ECOWAS (Economic Coalition of West African States) summit in Yamoussoukro at President Houphouët-Boigny’s request. Jess and Peter’s run lasted until the early 1990s, capped off with the BBC using their song African Chant as theme music the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

Jess and Peter now live in San Francisco and Nashville, respectively, and continue to make music on their own. Plans for shows reuniting the duo are in the works for later this year.

"This release is my way of celebrating the memory of one of the most important figures in early blues and gospel - the great Blind Willie Johnson - who would have turned 125 this year. The recording of his masterpiece "Dark was the night, cold was the ground" (recorded in my favorite recording year, 1927) can be found on the golden records onboard Voyager I and II and was added to the National Recording Registry in 2010, which selects recordings annually that are deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Although his music is often very hopeful, when you look back at his life, hope is not the first word that comes to mind. Willie wasn't blind at birth but became blind at seven years old. Exactly how it happened is uncertain, but one statement is that his aunt accidentally threw lye in his eyes. In his older years a fire took his house, but him being poor and blind and black he wasn't left with much else of a choice than to stay and live in the ruins of his old home. Living in this environment gave him pneumonia which subsequently led to his death. But his beautiful music just might live forever - forever floating in space."

Our new record is called Blues Pyromaniacs. It was recorded in New Orleans in January 2020 and produced by Anders Osborne. Then the virus stroke and we, consequently, had too much spare time... and idle hands are the devil"s tools... so we"ve constantly been working on the tracks for almost two years. That"s the reason why the record is to be released in two very different versions: the vinyl edition contains the original US recordings, the cd/digital version contains four extra tracks. It has been mixed in Italy in a very different way, the mastering has been made by Brian Lucey (The Black Keys/Arctic Monkeys/ Royal Blood) and, last but not least, there are two very special guests: Mike Zito on two of the tracks and Bombino on another.

Born Aaron Livingston, GRAMMY Award winning Son Little unleashes his album Like Neptune never sounding stronger or more confident than now, showcasing his original vision of r&b, informed by his love for hip-hop imbued with tinges of funk, pop, and psychedelia. While Little"s collaborations with The Roots and RJD2 had already helped him make a name for himself by that point in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, critics on both sides of the pond were quick to recognize the unique power of Little"s solo recordings, which stripped the past for parts that could be reconstituted into something wholly new and original. NPR hailed Little"s "impeccably crafted songs" as "honest and unpretentious," while The Independent proclaimed him "a formidable talent," and Vice declared that he was "dissolving the barrier between R&B and rock "n" roll one tearjerker at a time."