For those of you in the Memorial Day BBQ crowd, wrapping up your roadtrips, or just chillin’ on the porch, here are some random unrelated tunes posted in May of the years 2020 – 2025, ordered by year of release.
[Caveat: I don’t own the copyrights to any of the recordings. They are presented here for entertainment purposes only.]
Lionel Richie once described his voice as “the sound of barbecue sauce.” Luke Bryan remarked, “I could sit and drink a lot of bourbon listening to that voice.” Louisiana blues and soul singer Jovin Webb made it to the final ten performers on the 2020 season of American Idol and moved on from there.
Singer, songwriter and keyboardist Kevin ‘Sonny’ Gullage has earned much acclaim despite his young age (26 years old this year), and combines the sounds of New Orleans roots blues, boogiewoogie and gospel with modern styles.
The Melbourne Ska Orchestra covers a tune from the 1927 Broadway show Good News.
Been pretty busy this week. A lot of time and effort goes into pretending to be busy, and I’m definitely getting better at it. Free lessons tomorrow on the porch. See you there.
Gospel, soul, blues and jazz singer Ruthie Foster began her career singing at churches in rural Texas, described herself as a “little Black girl with a guitar.” After college, she joined the US Navy where she began singing in the naval band Pride, playing pop and funk hits at recruitment drives. Since then, she’s won numerous Blues Music Awards and earned three Grammy nominations.
“Austin, Texas, doesn’t have a Trombone Shorty, the Subdudes or Dirty Dozen Brass Band like New Orleans does but they do have Mingo Fishtrap, and they’re just as funky and soulful as those bands with a healthy dash of Motown tossed into their pot.” –Something Else Reviews
From Oakland, The California Honeydrops cover Wilson Pickett.
“The California Honeydrops…evoke the greasy rumble of Booker T. and channel the spiritual ecstasy of Sly and the Family Stone.” -Rolling Stone
It seems the news machine has skipped the soak, wash and rinse cycles and is stuck on spin with a noisy unbalanced load. It’s just about time to fire up the porch and take it for a sit. See you there.
Krissy Matthews (NOR) backs Big Daddy Wilson (US) and Alice Armstrong (UK). Nice soul blues groove.
Anna Scionti won the Melbourne Blues Appreciation Society’s (MBAS) Blues Performer of the Year 2023 (Solo/Duo Category) and represented the MBAS at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis Tennessee in January 2024.
Australian guitar slinger slider Dave Hole is living proof that there’s a Mississippi Delta somwhere in Oz.
So many things to pay attention to these days, and watching the fireworks of the internet go off in unpredictably absurd directions makes me grin. Tomorrow is a good day to do the porch thing, see you when the time is right.
Master of the 3-string electric shovel, Justin Johnson slides on anything.
Too Slim & The Taildraggers go slidin’ all over the two lane. The award-winning trio has had six albums peak in the top 10 of the Billboard Top Blues Albums. Members currently consist of Tim “Too Slim” Langford (lead vocals, guitar), Robert Kearnes (bass, vocals) and Jeffrey “Shakey” Fowlkes (drums).
Gospel, soul and blues singer Otis Clay (1942-2016):
Gospel would remain Otis’ primary focus. After arriving in Chicago during the mid-1950s, he joined the Golden Jubilaires, then hooked up with Charles Bridges’ Famous Blue Jay Singers in 1960. “Here we are singing acappella, and we’re singing in elementary schools, high schools, hotels and colleges and things like that. We were known as variety singers, or we were billed as (performing) ‘Old Negro Spirituals and Plantation Melodies.’ ”
Nice to have 2024 behind us, but 2025 better settle its ass right down pronto or I’m getting out The Belt. Have a great weekend, we’ll weigh down the porch tomorrow, noonish o’clock.
The end of a long year deserves a playlist to bring in the new one, and just as we did a mere twelve months ago, here’s a compilation of songs that buzzed my earballs in 2024.
Set 1 – January, February, March & April
Set 2 – May, June, July & August
Set 3 – September, October, November & December
[I omitted most of the tunes from the Halloween playlist, but you can hear them all here.]
[Caveat: I don’t own the copyrights to any of these recordings. They are presented here for entertainment purposes only.]
Born and raised in Ozark, Arkansas, Jesse Welles began his career around 2012, performing as Jeh Sea Wells. “It’s obvious that Wells will always be comfortable in some dirty rock and roll kitchen where, as he says in one song, ‘everyone’s kinda ugly in that way that looks pretty.'” – NPR
60s-70s soul sounds from San Francisco: The Anthony Paul Soul Orchestra (APSO) features Willy Jordan.
R&B soul singer Curtis Salgado won the Blues Music Awards’ Soul Blues Male Artist Of The Year two years in a row (2021 & 2022). Salgado was the inspiration behind John Belushi’s creation of the Blues Brothers characters in the late 1970s. They met in Eugene, Oregon, and became friends while Belushi was filming the movie Animal House [Wiki].
Nice Louisiana dixiefunk. Vanessa Collier fronts an 11 piece band that includes Laura Chavez (guitar), Doug Woolverton (trumpet) and Mark Earley (sax).
Gonna take my hatchet and get a Christmas tree tomorrow. Not gonna cut it, I just get a better price with a hatchet in my hand. Don’t know why, I just do. In the meantime, help yourselves to the porch and I’ll be back soon enough.
Step By Step, The Four Hollidays (1963) One of several groups out of Detroit with similar names, this one had an extra L and featured Cleo “Sonny” Barksdale, Robert Barksdale, James Holland and Johnny Mitchell.
OCD.
Cat Hotel [via Mme. Jujujive].
Professional pool hustlers.
Jeremy Jones tells some stories.
Daisy has all the time in the world.
Printing concrete [via Bunkerville].
Unusual food phobias (including mortuusequusphobia).
Constance Frances Marie Ockelman [via Memo Of The Air].
An interview with UK Labour Minister Steven Pineless [via Bustednuckles].
The only instrumental single ever banned from radio in the US.
[Top image: Traditional Taiwanese fire fishing, story here.]
From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.
BALTHVS is a Colombian psychedelic funk surf rock group consisting of Balthazar Aguirre / guitar; Johanna Mercuriana / bass; Santiago Lizcano /drums. Four albums and over three dozen singles in only four years, plus world tours makes for a busy schedule and a lot of spacey retro vibes.
Johnny Rawls is a true soul-blues renaissance man. He’s been recording and performing for over fifty years, winning many awards in the process. Ten of his recordings have been nominated for Soul Blues Album of the Year and two of them won in that category (which didn’t exist until Rawls showed up).
Dan Patlansky was voted the No. 4 Best Guitarist in the world and remains the only artist with two worldwide No.1, and two worldwide No.2 Best Blues Rock albums to his name, as voted by Blues Rock Review USA.
Great googly moogly, the weekend his here already. Too many time flies buzzing about, and that means we have some serious porching to attend to. See you tomorrow.
Known as o Bruxo (the Sorcerer), Pascoal often makes music with unconventional objects such as teapots, children’s toys, and animals, as well as keyboards, button accordions, melodica, saxophones, guitars, flutes, voices, various brass and folkloric instruments. [Wiki]
Brazilian improvisational avant-garde musician Hermeto Pascoal e Grupo play with water in Música da Lagoa, a scene from the 1985 movie Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira by Ricardo Lua.
Texas born Caron “Sugaray” Rayford grew up in starvation-level poverty. His mother struggled to raise three boys alone while battling cancer; when she died, the siblings were relieved. “She suffered and we suffered. Then, we moved in with my grandmother and our lives were a lot better. We ate every day and we were in church every day, which I loved. I grew up in gospel and soul.”
From The Rhythm Shakers‘ website:
As red hair is flailing and double bass pounding, Marlene Perez of the Rhythm Shakers closes out another show in Los Angeles. Ripping wails and howling vocals are rocketed from her torso more reminiscent of Tina Turner and Amy Winehouse than the echo dripped hiccups of the 1950’s rock and roll genre the band exists within.
Happy weekend to all, and tomorrow porch time shall commence promptly at whenever. See you then.
Tacky Raccoons 