Bob Brozman – Blues Reflex (Ruf Records).
Bob Brozman says that he has been playing guitar for 45 years and he’s just beginning to figure out some of the basics of music. I know what he means – he’s revisiting his deeply held ideas and re-evaluating them. Blues Reflex is the result and Brozman opens with the superbly titled Dead Cat On The Line. This is a stomping Delta blues where he plays all of the instruments apart from the drums and there’s a fantastic prelude speech by the Reverend J.M. Gates lifted from 1929. Brozmans National guitar playing is superb and he plays an instrument by the name of a duff bender which I think is an Arabic device of some sort, all of which, when added to his gruff vocal, makes for a wonderfully eccentric song. Rattlesnake Blues is a traditional tune given the Brozman treatment and his beautiful rolling guitar is the making of the song. He turns to the jazz genre for One Steady Roll and the French influences abound. Despite the exaggerated vocal it is his guitar that carries this one. Death Come Creepin’ is a good old Delta blues and Vieux Kanyar Blues is more contemporary. The overdubbing a la Les Paul is welcome and shows how innovative a guitarist he is. Only three of the thirteen tracks are not written by Brozman and Poor Me, written by Charley Patton, is one of them. This is very slow but is full of character.
The last of the covers is Skip James’ Cypress Grove Blues and this is an interesting version of the song. Brozman just about gets away with it and his guitar playing, as usual, is on top form. He goes on to give us a slide guitar master class on Little Tough Guy Blues before giving us a first on New Guinea Blues (I’m sure that no-one else has ever written a blues about that country). The song itself is a standard blues and little else. It’s Mercy We Need is the third instrumental of the album and is a sobering piece of music. Mean World Blues is bouncy but More Room At The Edge is probably one too many instrumentals. He seems to be running out of ideas but there are some Indian influences in the guitar work. The final track, Workman’s Song, is yet another instrumental and although he has been playing Hawaiian guitar throughout it is this one that sounds most like it. The album has petered out a bit but is worth buying at least for the first eight tracks alone.
http://www.bobbrozman.com/
http://www.rufrecords.de/
David Blue.
Bob Brozman says that he has been playing guitar for 45 years and he’s just beginning to figure out some of the basics of music. I know what he means – he’s revisiting his deeply held ideas and re-evaluating them. Blues Reflex is the result and Brozman opens with the superbly titled Dead Cat On The Line. This is a stomping Delta blues where he plays all of the instruments apart from the drums and there’s a fantastic prelude speech by the Reverend J.M. Gates lifted from 1929. Brozmans National guitar playing is superb and he plays an instrument by the name of a duff bender which I think is an Arabic device of some sort, all of which, when added to his gruff vocal, makes for a wonderfully eccentric song. Rattlesnake Blues is a traditional tune given the Brozman treatment and his beautiful rolling guitar is the making of the song. He turns to the jazz genre for One Steady Roll and the French influences abound. Despite the exaggerated vocal it is his guitar that carries this one. Death Come Creepin’ is a good old Delta blues and Vieux Kanyar Blues is more contemporary. The overdubbing a la Les Paul is welcome and shows how innovative a guitarist he is. Only three of the thirteen tracks are not written by Brozman and Poor Me, written by Charley Patton, is one of them. This is very slow but is full of character.
The last of the covers is Skip James’ Cypress Grove Blues and this is an interesting version of the song. Brozman just about gets away with it and his guitar playing, as usual, is on top form. He goes on to give us a slide guitar master class on Little Tough Guy Blues before giving us a first on New Guinea Blues (I’m sure that no-one else has ever written a blues about that country). The song itself is a standard blues and little else. It’s Mercy We Need is the third instrumental of the album and is a sobering piece of music. Mean World Blues is bouncy but More Room At The Edge is probably one too many instrumentals. He seems to be running out of ideas but there are some Indian influences in the guitar work. The final track, Workman’s Song, is yet another instrumental and although he has been playing Hawaiian guitar throughout it is this one that sounds most like it. The album has petered out a bit but is worth buying at least for the first eight tracks alone.
http://www.bobbrozman.com/
http://www.rufrecords.de/
David Blue.
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