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Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969
Various Artists
In 1969, a group of enthusiastic college students at the University of Michigan organized North America’s first music festival dedicated to celebrating the blues in all its varied forms. Captured on a new reissue from Third Man Records, Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969, Vol. 1 & 2 offers a snapshot of a moment in time when the giants of Black music converged at a Midwestern college campus and delivered stunning performances.
The album opens with some slick stage banter from Arkansas-born, traveling bluesman Roosevelt Sykes. He warns the crowd that his tune “Dirty Mother For You” could be construed as “suggestive” or “smutty” before launching into a raunchy piano-based boogie jam. Chicago Blues legend B.B. King lights up “I’ve Got A Mind To Give Up Living” with wild, distorted guitar solos. But it’s Big Mama Thornton’s arresting downtempo ballad “Ball And Chain” that brings down the house. The song would later gain popularity via a cover by Big Brother & the Holding Company, but Thornton’s version here is a killer. With its otherworldly guitar solo, weeping brass, and rapturous vocals, Thornton’s rendition becomes a hot, screaming revelation of pain and longing.
Rounded out by performances from Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, and more, the lineup reads like a who’s who of American popular music. By capturing these musicians in that moment, Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969, Vol. 1 & 2 is an essential document of a dynamic, living history.
Third Man Records
CD | LP
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THE TIME FOR PEACE IS NOW
Greg Belson / Various Artists
The tracks are a subset of 1970s-era gospel, not directly talking about Jesus or God, but instead tackling how we live with ourselves and each other.
These are undeniably soulful, passionate, and urgent songs from obscure 45s, dug up from a long dormancy in attics, sheds and rated across the American south. Compiled by Gospel guru Greg Belson.
“The Gospel bands heard on The Time For Peace Is Now were comprised of musicians who played both church and secular music. The church borrowed—or rather commandeered—the guitar, bass, drums, and other instruments used to backup Motown, Stax, and other popular labels—to give power to the songs they supported. Musicians who sang at ‘the club’ on Saturday night were often leading solos or singing in the choir on Sunday mornings. Saturday night and Sunday morning music began to interweave, which was especially felt when the church choirs sang Gospel. It was Gospel’s influence that made Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, and many others the voice of the 1960s and 1970s. Gospel was the soul of America.
This album is reflective of the dichotomy of the sacred and the secular. The music here is in some sense the same as the music of the club. “Keep Your Faith To The Sky” could have you singing “Keep Your Head To The Sky” by Earth, Wind and Fire. Listening to “It’s Hard To Live In This Old World” and “That’s A Sign Of The Times” imbues the pessimistic/realistic sense of what was happening. Like many Blues songs, the problem must first be named before it can be solved. At the end of The Time For Peace Is Now, hope is still present. The problem is named in the beginning and a possible solution is presented. -Pastor Keith L. Whitney
LUAKA BOP
CD | LP
Soundwalk Collective / Patti Smith
Mummer Love
A sonic cross-continental experience, Mummer Love is the second album in the Perfect Vision triptych collaboration between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith. For this body of work, Soundwalk Collective journeyed to Africa to explore the intricacies of Arthur Rimbaud’s most obscure period. After leaving France and what he deemed the western stagnation’, Rimbaud found himself in Harar, Ethiopia – an epicenter of Sufism in Africa. Sufi practise focuses on the renunciation of worldly things, the purification of the soul and the mystical contemplation of God’s nature. A strand within the wider Islam religion, it focuses on spirituality, meditation and chanting sessions. Sufi music is about reaching a communal ecstatic state, and once you find yourself there, you are granted access to the unknown. Stephan Crasneanscki from Soundwalk Collective spent time with the Sufi masters in Harar to record their music and chants in the shrine, of which he says: “You obtain connections to other levels of yourself and consciousness. This connection, like poetry, is a universal language. A language of the soul, for the soul.”
Bella Union
CD | LP
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