​Doug Sahm (from the album Doug Sahm and His Band on Atlantic Records)
A group of musicians gathered in October 1972 in New York City to back Doug Sahm for his first solo record. Atlantic Records had bought Doug’s contract after his band Sir Douglas Quintet folded in 1972, with the Oct 72recordings released early the next year in January 1973 as Doug Sahm and His Band. The limited knowledge of critics for anything outside of the Rock world at the time had trouble translating Roots music into a language they could understand. For the marketplace, Doug Sahm and His Band seemingly collected multiple styles on the recording as its tracks were backed with Country, Blues, Rock’n’Roll, and R&B. Looking back, the album served a larger purpose, taking a Lone Star state secret and spreading the word with Doug Sahm putting a Texas stamp on the sound. Texas Blues gives the album a smooth groove in “Your Friends” while “Don’t Turn Around” dials in a late-night radio station from New Orleans and an audio weather warning brings Doug Sahm together with future Texas Tornadoes bandmates Flaco Jimenez and Augie Meyers with the Tex-Mex style in “Poison Love”.
The recording of Doug Sahm and His Band took two weeks, seasoned players filling in group ranks that included David Bromberg, David ‘Fathead’ Newman, and Dr. John. Two fiddles open the album as Doug Sahm is joined by Kenny Kosek on first cut “(Is Anybody Going to) to San Antone?” as the pair tribute the twin fiddles backing Bob Wills on his tune “Faded Love”. His Band mate Bob Dylan lends his tune “Wallflower”, harmonizing on the cut as well as lending vocals to “Dealer’s Blues” along with a lead guitar solo. Doug Sahm and His Band tributes The Delmore Brothers with slinking Country Blues on “Blues Stay Away from Me”, puts some funky guitar chops underneath the horn blasts of “I Get Off”, and head uptown for a rhythm Saturday night on T-Bone Walker’s “Papa Ain’t Salty” while Doug borrows a tune from fellow Texan with Willie Nelson’s with “Me and Paul”.
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Being in the right place at the right time is a building block for career success. The unspoken parts of the advice are that when you are standing in the correct spot at the perfect time, you had better have everything you need to within arms reach so you don’t have to move. After hitting the Top Ten in early 1968 with “Dance to the Music”, Sly and the Family Stone consumer interest sink with their first three albums. For Sly Stone, everything lined up perfectly with the release of Stand!, and its semi-greatest hits package with the tracks on its April 1969 release. Two successful two-sided hit singles came from Stand! with the title track release offering  B-side of “I Want to Take You Higher” following a 1968 release of “Everyday People” backed with “Sing a Simple Song”. Stand! hit the ground running, its songs and mood mirroring the cultural moments in which it was released. The career of Sly and the Family Stone entered the mainstream at an accelerated pace with the release of Stand!, the band and tracks achieving worldwide success with tour stop for the album including a performance at Woodstock within six months of its release and an infamous appearance on the Dick Cavett Show around the same time with the band becoming a live marching band in parade formation for “I Want to Take You Higher”.
Sly and the Family Stone counseled both the left and right on Stand!. After the #1 success of “Everyday People”, Sly Stone became a counterculture figure who looked at himself as an equal part of a global population. Once the band had everyone’s attention, they let go with the admonition “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” which took aim at both sides of the race divide. Stand! encouraged active participation in changing the world on its title track, and once it had people on their feet, nurtured them with the mantra “You Can Make It If You Try”.
Listen and buy the music of Sly and the Family Stone on AMAZON 
http://www.slystonemusic.com/    

Los Lobos have never been a one-trick musical pony anymore than they are Just Another Band from East L.A., the compilation title that collects tracks the band’s releases as a package. The early output of Los Lobos added touches to traditional Mexican music with Rock’n’Roll, R&B, Rockabilly, and Blues as well as Tejano/Mariachi Folk music. Kiko arrived in 1992, almost a decade since their E.P. release, …And A Time to Dance since gave Los Lobos the ability to tour, and their mid-1980 releases, How Will the Wolf Survive? (1984) and By the Light of the Moon (1987) sealed the band’s fame on a worldwide level. While all of the 1980’s releases showcased diversity, it was Kiko that gave a glimpse into the depth of musical possibilities from Los Lobos. When main songwriters David Hidalgo (guitar) and Louie Perez (drummer) met in high school, the bonded of the more obscure talents of Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, and Fairport Convention. Kiko shows love for many styles as it exhibits the ability of Los Lobos to cross multiple musical soundscapes and never miss a step in their groove.
The Blues carves a path through the Cesar Rosas (guitar) co-write “That Train Don’t Stop Here Anymore” and colors the snaking swamp edge of “Wicked Rain” with Blue Experimental Rock. Second line drumming opens the album as “Dream in Blue” shuffles in while a ghostly big band plays tag back alley Jazz backs “Kiko and the Lavender Moon”, covers “Arizona Sky” a percussive Tex-Mex desert wind, and taps a toe for mountain music for “Two Janes”. Los Lobos stretch the boundaries of their own music as they push against the existing confines of rock and roots. Kiko delicately picks flurried notes for “Saint Behind the Glass”, kicks out street beats on “Angels with Dirty Faces”, and heads down “Whiskey Trail” on a Southern Rock road as Los Lobos shake out “Wake Up Dolores” on a snaggle of strings and rhythms and strum out a welcome “When the Circus Some to Town”.
Listen and buy music by Los Lobos from AMAZON

​Hayes Carll – (from the album Trouble in Mind)
Album number three for Hayes Carll, Trouble in Mind, was his first album to be released through Lost Highway Records. Trouble in Mind fully stepped into the brand persona that Hayes Carll had been developing in touring and his initial album releases. His characters fully stretched into their collective skins, wearing the hard luck and good times found in questionable decisions and late-night rambles. Trouble in Mind wakes up with a co-write with Ray Wylie Hubbard on the first cut, “Drunken Poet’s Dream”. Katey sashays into “Girl Downtown” with goals set high for her future as a local musician plugs in and makes a wish on “I Got a Gig” and a young man goes to sleep armed with a ready-made dream in the Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan tune “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up”.
As the men and women in the tales walk the story halls of Trouble in Mind a cast of players joined Hayes Carll to instrumentally back the tracks as Will Kimbrough, Fats Kaplin, Dan Baird, Al Perkins, Darryl Scott, George Bradfute, and a steady stream of talent unpacked gear in Nashville and Austin recording studios. Trouble in Mind pulls into “Beaumont” with Houston memories, sighs “It’s a Shame” on a Country shuffle, and makes promises to both angels and devils with “Wild as a Turkey” and “Willing to Love Again”. Hayes Carll received a nod from the Americana Music Association in 2008 when it made “She Left Me for Jesus” Song of the Year. The tracks joins the batch of tracks on Trouble in Mind that have made themselves a soundtrack for lives as “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart” doubles down in a stormy romance while “A Lover Like You” sees trouble walking its way.
Listen and buy music by Hayes Carll from AMAZON
http://hayescarll.com/

Various Artists (from the album Swampland Jewels available on Yep Roc Records)
An audio makeover presents Swampland Jewels as a new listen for 2017. Yep Roc Records offers the compilation as the first full-length of their partnership with the Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s Southern Folklife Collection, with the re-issue produced by Steven Weiss, curator at the Southern Folklife Collection. The recording represents music from East Texas and Louisiana, taken primarily from studio work of the 1950’s and 1960’s, with some material recorded in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The collection features twelve cuts from the original 1991 release as well as seven newly discovered tracks with updated liner notes on Goldband Records label, who originally put out Swampland Jewels and label founder Eddie Shuler. Marquee names such as Boozoo Chavis, Sidney Brown, and Jo-El Sonnier appear alongside regional superstars mixing Zydeco, Cajun, Rock’n’Roll and Rhythm & Blues into the music.
 
Eddie Shuler built the studio that housed the hits next to his radio shop in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the music recorded in a space that measured eight feet wide but eighteen feet long and twelve feet high. In that room, he put to tape the soaring vocals of Leroy Broussard  on “La Valse de Bo Sparkle”, the Cajun accordion of Jo-El Sonnier alongside Sidney Brown on “Fee Fee Poncho”, mixed Cajun with Delta in “Good Morning Blues” from Cleveland Crochet and Jay Stutes, covered a Louisiana anthem with “Bon Ton Roulet” by Herman Goulee, and let traditional fiddles and accordion vie with rock’n’roll guitar licks in Joe Bonsall’s “Creole Song”. History is showcased on Swampland Jewels in both the songs and studio environment, producer Steve Weiss filling in each portion, stating that ‘I researched the Goldband collection to find the original single or session masters for all the songs. It was a thrill hearing the raw recordings with studio talk, count-ins, and unissued takes that captured the way Eddie worked and the immediacy of studio recordings in the 1950s and ‘60s. The original tapes also captured a strong sense of place’. Boozoo Chavis opens Swampland Jewels with his tune “Paper in My Shoe” as Jo-El Sonnier puts a little Country into his reading of “My Blue Letter” and Latin rhythms dance with an Acadian twist for Joe Bonsall’s take on “La Cucaracha” with his version, “La Cuca Rochman”. 
 
http://www.yeproc.com
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Etta Baker was born in 1913 North Carolina. Etta played Piedmont Blues for ninety years, beginning before she could hold the guitar her dad gave her at age three. Her father, Boone Reid, taught his daughter the Piedmont Blues that he played, with Etta learning six-, and twelve-string guitar as well as banjo. Etta Baker stuck more to the guitar, becoming a key component of the Piedmont Blues scene and tradition in North Carolina, though she did not begin recording until 1956 when she and her father met Folk musician Paul Clayton.

​Music Maker Relief Foundation reissued the Etta Baker disc, Railroad Bill, to re-acquaint the music of Etta Baker, whose legacy spans decades of American music from nineteenth century parlor songs through post-World War II electric Blues. Etta played every day, arranging and fine-tuning music. One sotry of her life tells about a twenty-one year old Bob Dylan visiting fellow Folkie Paul Clayton where he met and heard Etta Baker, returning to his NYC home to write “Don’t Think Twice”.  
Another story told that Etta’s husband had traditional views of women in the home and refused to let her travel and perform away from home while another version says that Mr. husband was afraid of his wife’s beauty leaving his four walls. Etta never stopped playing her music. Taj Mahal cites that ‘This gracious grandmother was the source of a great deal of joy and surprise when I found that she still played guitar after I had heard her early recordings from the 60s. One of the signature chords of my guitar vocabulary comes from her version of "Railroad Bill". This was the first guitar picking style that I ever learned’. 
Etta Baker has a light touch on the strings. There is gentleness in the high notes she coaxes from her guitar, while her bassline is sturdy, it’s strength supporting the playful fingerpicking. That style lies in the traditions of Piedmont Blues, a way of playing with an alternating thumb bassline keeping the rhythm against a more syncopated treble lead, in the style of ragtime music.
Railroad Bill offers the fingerpicking style of Etta Baker. The title track for the album holds hints of riffs and playing style that seem familiar, airing the depth of Etta Baker’s mark on music with her sound. The album features traditional tracks that have become an audio fabric covering the American Roots landscape with “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad”, and “Don't Let Your Deal Go Down”. Etta Baker picks with an ease that blends the intricate stylings into one mood of sound. Etta Baker’s fingers take control of the tunes as they fly over “One Dime Blues”, duetwith a songbird outside the window while recording “Carolina Breakdown”, gusts with the breeze from “Chilly Winds”, shine and strum on “Sunny Tennessee”, and become the strong current carrying “Cripple Creek”.
Listen and buy the music of Etta Baker from iTunes or Musicmaker Relief website