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Mike Campbell
John Mayall: The Sun Is Shining Down
by Scott Gudell
British blues master John Mayall can still turn out a rich collection of originals and covers six decades, and approximately sixty albums, after his first songs were released in the early 1960s. Add the fact that he still has a knack for enlisting top guitarists--this time Mayall spotlights Mississippi born/Chicago bred Melvin Taylor among others--and it is a Brit-led blues bash at its best. Often considered the Godfather of British Blues, Mayall said during a 1980s interview that ...
read moreThe Sun Is Shining Down
by Doug Collette
Having announced he will be limiting his touring in the future, John Mayall doesn't seem to have lessened his engagement with recording. On the contrary, for The Sun Is Shining Down, 'The Godfather of British Blues' surrounds himself with a roster of high-profile contributors, all of whom play to their respective strengths and sound inspired collaborating with a genuine musical icon. Equally importantly, this fifth Forty Below Records studio outing (out of some forty overall) radiates a sense of deep ...
read moreBob Dylan: Springtime in New York 1980-1985: The Bootleg Series, Volume 16 (5CD)
by Doug Collette
Generally speaking, revelations abound within the various installments of The Bootleg Series, Bob Dylan's ongoing archive initiative, and Volume 16 is no exception. But in listening to Springtime in New York, 1980- 1985, the epiphanies come in slow bursts, flashing over the course of the five CDs to generate a cumulative momentum that reaches a flash-point with the content taken from the much-maligned Empire Burlesque (Columbia, 1985). And that outcome in itself is a truly Dylanesque curve ball: pre-release anticipation ...
read moreJohnny Cash: Johnny Cash: American VI: Ain't No Grave
by C. Michael Bailey
In his tribute to Johnny Cash on the artist's death in 2003, commentator and VH1 Executive Director Bill Flanagan put forth this bit of wisdom on the CBS program Sunday Morning: It's becoming more apparent with every year that goes by that the period from the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s was a golden age for popular music. To have lived in the era where Cash and Presley and the Beatles and Stones and Aretha and Dylan and Miles Davis were ...
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