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 Rory Block (from the album Prove It on Me available on Stony Plains Records)
For a lifetime career, Rory Block has been a Blues player, primarily keeping her releases in a direct lineage from the Country Blues originators. Rory gives back to the music, and the voices that championed the sound while pushing against their era’s racial and gender bias to record. She singles out cuts made popular during the early Blues days on her latest release, Prove It on Me, the tracks included, with the exception of the Ma Rainey penned title track and Memphis Minnie’s “In My Girlish Days”, culled from relatively unknown names the never traveled beyond of The Blues heyday of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Rory Block gives a new voice to songs written, and performed, by the women of the period, a time when little promotional money was spent on the novelty of a woman on stage as a featured artist. From back when booty went by another name, Merline Johnson was The Yas Yas Girl, represented on Prove It to Me with her tune “Milk Man Blues”. Following the path walked by Lottie Kimbrough, Rory Block tells the tale of “Wayward Girl Blues” while she sports the same sass as Helen Humes with the singer’s cut, “He May Be Your Man”, and aims for the prize along with Arizona Dranes in Rory’s version of her hit with the traditional “I Shall Wear a Crown”. Over a decade in, Rory Block has made a mission of curating the work of Blues masters with her Mentor series tributing the men in the genre with full album releases honoring the work of Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Skip James, Bukka White, and Rev. Gary Davis. Beginning with Bessie Smith, Rory Block shone a light on the women Blues singers with similar releases leading to the female-driven one-off songs of Prove It on Me. The Blues of the singer with her name on the album cover finds a place among the versions when Rory Block presents her original cut, “Eagles”. All the instruments on the album are handled by Rory Block, her fingers plucking out chords for the admonitions of Rosetta Howard’s “If You’re a Viper” as she stomps out a rhythm to back her slide guitars grooves in Madlyn Davis’ “It’s Red Hot”. Listen and buy the music of Rory Block from AMAZON Listen and buy the music of Rory Block website from AMAZON
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