Opening with the innuendo-laden “Cornbread,” which makes you want to sop up all forms of sexual beans and greens, lead singer Eric “Dirty Red” McDaniel’s powerfully soul-drenched vocals and funky harmonica immediately let you know you’re in for a long, sweaty night. The pure, rolling thunder of “Shotgun,” with its impressionable refrain of “My shotgun […]
soul
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Blues brothers
One would think that Eric McDaniel, leader of Dirty Red & the Soulshakers, would be content with promoting the local blues band’s debut album around town. Instead, he’s also put together a supergroup of fellow Okie blues talents — including members of Miss Blues and Watermelon Slim & the Workers — to back blues progeny […]
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Wanda Jackson — Unfinished Business
Here she builds on the success of last year’s The Party Ain’t Over, her collaboration with Jack White, but unlike that effort, this album is raw, spare and constructed to showcase the Oklahoma-born-and-bred Jackson’s prodigious gifts. Ample credit goes to Justin Townes Earle, who produced this 10-song collection of blues, country, gospel and soul covers. […]
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Simply Red: Live at Montreux 2003
That was then; this is now. I no longer own Simply Red — in any format — so it’s only with sheer nostalgia that I gave the group’s Live at Montreux 2003 a spin. The Blu-ray presents a live concert of 18 tracks of jazz- and soul-inspired pop (and then seven more from a 2010 […]
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B real
The trio, which began as a quartet in 2003, is composed of Tré McCoy of Omaha, Neb.; Dele Olasiji of Norman; and Eric Hollowell of Davenport, Iowa. They met at a party in 2001, while attending college. “Four different states and we all happened to end up at the same party,” McCoy said. “The name […]
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Beneath the Keith
Memphis blues and soul man John Paul Keith is wiser than most about the music industry. Clocking years in playing affords him a certain perspective. “We were coming back home from Baton Rouge on a Sunday afternoon. I was driving the van, and you think, ‘God, this is a long drive,’” he said. “It occurred […]