NICK DERISO: With a tip of the hat to Z.Z. Hill, one of his clearer influences, young bluesman Lonnie Shields debuted 15 years ago with a record that kept its eye out for the head-wagging flourish. Recorded over the preceeding four-year period in Memphis and Clarksdale, Miss., “Portrait” was filledRead More

NICK DERISO: One of the first R&B hits for Shreveport-based Jewel-Paula Records founder Stan Lewis was by that juke-jointy legend Frank Frost. A take-off the Slim Harpo song “Baby Scratch My Back,” it was finally collected on CD as part of the rollicking “Jelly Roll Blues” in 1991 — andRead More

by Pico Wow, I nearly missed this one. For years now, I’ve been a fan of the man from Memphis for his undiluted brand of deeply rooted electric blues and for his harmonica that currently has no peer with the recent passing of Carey Bell. After Musselwhite’s highly acclaimed SanctuaryRead More

Ed Williams, a good-time throwback, is as much bluesman and blue blood — his uncle and musical mentor was the great slide guitarist J.B. Hutto — so it’s certainly no surprise that he strikes a determined retro stance on “Rattleshake.” What’s cool is that he keeps pulling it off. MatureRead More

NICK DERISO: The Rockets were an undeniably crisp, hard-working blues band in the early 1980s, respectable if a little nondescript. Darrell Nulish handled vocals and harmonica, fronting a group led by the unusually named, and just as unusually talented, guitarist Anson Funderburgh. The basis for “Blast Off,” a 1992 retrospectiveRead More

NICK DERISO: Harp player Rice Miller — better known as Sonny Boy Williamson II — used to sludge across Weston’s yard on the way to parties and dances, a leather belt festooned with harmonicas strapped across his chest. Robert Johnson’s stepson, Robert Jr. Lockwood, was the first guitar player thatRead More

The concert had been over for hours, forever. But B.B. King was just getting started.

NICK DERISO: The story goes: Someone asked Fats Waller what jazz is. His reply? “If you don’t know, don’t mess with it.” Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown messed with it on “Just Got Lucky,” and with fine results. In fact, it seemed his string-bending solos found themselves most at home in theRead More

Next to Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown there might not be another act as influential to funk music than P-Funk, the shorthand name for George Clinton’s twin ensembles Parliament (horns) and Funkadelic (no horns). In fact, they were cited in my last OTM as an influence toRead More

NICK DERISO: A trip through the Mississippi Delta this week had me thinking about the old Rooster Blues Records label. Located from 1988-98 inside the Delta Record Mart on Sunflower Avenue in Clarksdale, Rooser Blues releases can still be found in a riverboat-shaped downtown building called Dela’s Stackhouse. “Coahoma theRead More