Kitchen Man

This is another post to consider points I made in my review of Rory Block's album "A Woman's Soul: A Tribute to Bessie Smith." This will be done through comparing her rendition of "Kitchen Man" with several other versions.

Next is the original by Bessie Smith.

Then there is a recent rendition by Catherine Russell

Next, Saffire- The Uppity Uppity Blues Women with the late Ann Rabson taking the vocal

Here is the late Chicago blues woman, Valerie Wellington

A recent recording by a traditional New Orleans styled band, the Yerba Buena Stompers w Miss Ida Blue 

And here one of Bessie's contemporaries, Sara Martin

Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women Old, New Borrowed & Blue
Alligator

This is the 4th Alligator album by Saffire - the Uppity Blues Women, and the first in which Andra Faye McIntosh fully participates as a vocalist as well as a musician. Her presence has added to Saffire’s music by providing new instrumental voices (particularly her mandolin, and fiddle) as well as her wonderful singing. 

The program of 16 songs includes a number of songs that reflect influences and particular favorites of the trio’s members. It opens up with a rousing version of Phil Wiggins’ Fools Night Out with each taking a turn at lead and Ann Rabson pumping the piano with a New Orleans flavor. Then, Ann launches into T’aint Nobody’s Business and Andra Faye sings Sippie Wallace’s You Got to Know How, adding a nice fiddle solo. Gaye Adegbalola provides a wonderful version of Do Your Duty, a song long part of their repertoire. Listening to Gaye’s vocal, one appreciates how confident and expressive she has become after being on the road for all these years, and she sings it here with as much enthusiasm as back in the group’s early days. 

While some tunes hark back to the twenties, some are of more recent vintage. Ann does Amos Milburn’s Roll Mr. Jelly, although her piano sounds too polite for this boogie woogie blues. Highlights from Gaye include a nice reading of Johnny Ace’s The Clock, and her own Bitch With a Bad Attitude, where she tells off her no-good man, from telling the IRS he has no dependents to threatening to Bobbittize him. Andra Faye conveys similar sentiments in The Richest Guy in the Graveyard. Andra Faye closes the album with Ma Rainey’s Yonder Comes the Blues, with her mandolin accompaniment joined by Ann and Gaye on guitars with a fitting nod to the “Mother of the Blues,” ardently sang and played. 

This is the Uppity Blues Women’s finest album. Their newest member plays no small part with her strong playing that augments Ann Rabson’s own solid instrumental contributions, and strong singing is heard from all three. 

This review appeared in the December 1994-January 1995 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 197). I likely received a review copy from Alligator Records. Here is a video from Saffire's farewell tour.

 

RIP Ann Rabson (1945-2013)

2009-0726_Pocono_Blues_Sunday-1520, a photo by NoVARon on Flickr.

RIP Ann Rabson. Best known as a member of Saffire-the Uppity Blues Women, she was such a wonderful musician, singer, and person. I first met her a DC Blues Society picnic in 1987 and we became friends then. So many memories of her and Saffire including a benefit at Georgetown University for the homeless and then seeing the original trio (with Earline Lewis slapping the bass) at a bistro in Georgetown in Washington DC which they played regularly while still a local-regional act.

For the DC Blues Society I did an interview and article on the Trio around the time of the first Alligator album that was soon published in Blues Revue, then a new publication, and thus the first article on Ann and the band. I know she was a regular instructor at Blues Week at Elkins WV and so she has so many people who she taught over these years.

But the most important one thing one could learn was being such a good person. Ann, I am only one of thousands who will miss you.

Here is Ann Rabson on guitar, not piano, performing One Meatball, a song that she performed as long as I knew her.

Here is Ann performing Little Red Wagon in Italy.

Finally a performance of Ann with Saffire-The Uppity Blues Women doing Middle Aged Woman Blues, one of the trio's best known originals that was on the cassette they sold while still a regional band and later re-recorded for the trio's Alligator debut album. Ann is on piano here although you cannot see her.

Ann Rabson with Bob Margolin is Not Alone

I have known Ann Rabson for a little over 25 years. I remember meeting her at a DC Blues Society picnic and seeing her, Gaye and Earline, the original line-up of Saffire-the Uppity Blues Women when they used to play regularly in a small Georgetown bistro and also at some Dc Blues Society events. It was a joy to see them go from being a local blues act to the world-spanning performers that they became. While Saffire has ended its run, Ann, Gaye and Andra Faye have continued with their own musical endeavors. 

Some may now that Ann has had serious health issues recently so word of a new recording was warmly welcome. She is joined on this by Bob Margolin who adds his guitar and vocals to Ann’s piano and vocals. His presence gives the disc its title Not Alone on the Vizz-Tone Label release. There is a mix of familiar and lesser known songs that go down easy with good, heartfelt singing, solid musicianship and good feelings. 

Ann is a straight-forward, two-handed pianist who eschews flash for her solid playing and there is plenty of her heart in her rendition of the late Thomas Dorsey’s I’m Going To Live the Life I Sing About In My Song, with Margolin adding some biting electric fills. Her touch and timing is assured throughout with her cover of Tampa Red’s Let’s Get Drunk and Truck, while she is wistful on Leroy Carr’s How Long Blues, on which Margolin shares the vocal in addition to his acoustic guitar break while it rides out with stately piano from Ann. 

I am not familiar with Jim Ritchie, Ann sounds quite animated on his It Ain’t Love, with Margolin’s crying slide providing additional support. Margolin takes the reflective vocal on Memphis Slim’s Guess I’m a Fool, with Ann’s firm support under the vocal and Margolin playing in a jazzier vein here. Ann notes that Louis Jordan’s Caledonia is a fun number, although like almost every cover of I have heard (and that includes recordings by Muddy Waters, Pinetop Perkins and Gatemouth Brown), it is wonderfully played but does not stands out. Woody Herman is one of the few whose cover of the song captured some of the ebullience of Jordan’s original. 

Ann’s matter-of-fact approach to Let’s Go Get Stoned in contrast provides a delightful personal rendition of a very well-known song. Ann’s tango-rooted Crescent City-flavored playing stands out behind Margolin’s Let It Go, a nice lyric calling for having perspective about things and if one cannot make things better, avoid making things worse. After a plaintive Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby, Ann gets things rollicking as she sings that Anywhere You Go, Ann can go there too and can love you like no one can do. After telling us that she has No Time For The Blues. 

Bob handles the vocal on a sober reading of Percy Mayfield’s River’s Invitation. It is the final track of a very genial recording that captures Ann Rabson and Bob Margolin in an intimate, low-keyed setting that should delight many.

I received a review copy from the record company. Here is a video of Ann Rabson performing.

Saffire completes memorable run

Its been twenty-five years since the trio of Gaye Adegbalola, Ann Rabson and Earline Lewis first started performing around Fredericksburg, VA and Washington, D.C.. This writer remembers catching them for the first time at a DC Blues Society charity concert at Georgetown University and picking up their self-produced cassette, “Middle Age Blues,” mostly compiled from classic blues with a few originals, including “Middle Age Blues Boogie,” which became the trio’s theme song with its still memorable refrain “I want a young, young man.” Having the chance to see them on a regular basis in Washington I was delighted to find out they had signed with Alligator in 1989 I believe. Their debut Alligator disc, the eponymously titled “SAFFIRE - The Uppity Blues Women,” was a surprising, but well deserved, success.

A story I did from interviews of them for the DC Blues Society newsletter was the basis for first major story on them that appeared in one of the early issues of “Blues Revue.” Along the way, Earline Lewis departed to be replaced by Andra Faye who in addition to bass, also displayed a multi-instrumental talent on mandolin, guitar, fiddle and more. In the ensuing years they have performed countless times as well as continued to teach at blues workshop programs, mentoring a large number of modern acoustic blues acts. From the Washington DC and Tidewater, VA area such groups as BluesWorks and MSG the Acoustic Trio mine traditional blues along with adding contemporary originals rooted in traditional sources. Undoubtedly the novelty of a trio of mature women performing acoustic blues itself was a source of appeal among a variety of audiences that went beyond the usual audience for Alligator’s house-rocking electric blues bands. But their longevity is evidence that their music had so much more substance than what may have been an initial novelty to some.

“Havin’ the Last Word,”is their eighth album of new recordings for Alligator (this does not include the excellent compilation “Deluxe Edition”) and first since 2001’s “Ain’t Gonna Hush.” The title refers to the fact that this is the trio’s swan song together with the ensuing performances to be among their final regular ones together. Each will continue the solo careers they have each been engaged in the past several years. Unlike their previous albums, there is only one classic blues revived here, “Kitchen Man,” and the rest are fresh tunes composed by the three along with others by EG Kight, and others. The opening song, Carla Daruda’s “Going Down to the River” has all three trading verses about going to the river and wash their troubles away with Ann holding the bottom together like Blind John Davis before Andra Faye takes a crisp mandolin solo. Its followed by Gina DeLuca’s “Nothin’ in My House,” where Gaye delivers the sassy lyrics about let them say what they will, “if I want to honky tonk all night ... what do I care, I ain’t got nothing in their house,” with Ann adding a rollicking solo. Ann revives “Kitchen Man” from the pen of Andy Razaf and Edna Pinkard,” with a stately piano and Andra Faye’s complimentary mandolin. EG Kight & Tom Horner contributed “Somebody’s Gotta Give,” a song that Andra Faye belts out (and one can imagine easily being translated into a band format by Andra and her band The Mighty Good Man).

Other highlights include Bald Headed Blues,” an original by Gaye where she addresses consequences of chemotherapy and dancing with life and not death. Andra Faye adds fiddle to Ann’s not completely reflective “Since You’ve Been Gone,”while her own “Blue Lullaby” has a country flavor. EG Kight and Tom Horner collaborated with Ann for “Travelin’ at the Speed of Love,” a celebratory boogie with Andra Faye’s fiddle adding a nice counterpoint to her jaunty piano. Gaye’s “I Can Do Bad All By Myself,” has a nice guitar solo from Ann while Gaye sings about how bad things have gone “so she needs to take a payday loan,” but she does not need anyone else’s help. Andra Faye is playful in celebrates her body on having “Too Much Butt,” while Gaye’s “Bald Eagle,” is a lustful celebration of female sexuality with spirited mandolin and piano in the backing. Deanna Bogart’s “I’m Growing Older,” an humorous about the inevitable as Andra Faye is quite comfortable about aging like fine wine and becoming a wilder woman. The album concludes with another Ann Rabson collaboration with Kight and Horner, “The Bad Times,” with echoes of “Drown in My Own Tears,” in its melody, noting that we have had bad and sad times, but held on to faith and through it all these times these words of wisdom that “bad times make the good times better, bad times make our love strong … good times will be here before long.”

Saffire has provided many with some real good music over a quarter of a century that has given us good times to get past the bad and sad times. It is a cliche that all good things must come to an end, and while the musical partnership of Saffire - the Uppity Blues Women may be ending, their musical legacy is firmly established and will be enjoyed for many more years just as each of the members will establish more of their own legacy. Like Jim Brown leaving professional football, “Havin’ the Last Word,” has Saffire ending their run while still performing at the highest level.

(This review was originally published in Jazz & Blues Report # 313 which you can download at www,jazz-blues.com.)

Detroit's Blues Queen is A True Blues Treasure

Alberta Adams is truly Detroit’s Blues Queen. A dancer who became a singer when the vocalist did not show up, she has become the grande dame of the Motor City’s blues scene. She toured extensively with Louis Jordan, Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson, T-Bone Walker, James Moody and Duke Ellington and recorded extensively particularly in the jump type blues style that is her repertoire today. Her latest disc is Detroit Is My Home (Eastlawn Records), and brings her together with some marvelous musicians including that swinging drummer, R.J. Spangler who produced this. Certainly the album can’t get off to a hotter start than the opening boogie woogie, Keep On Keepin’ On, with Mark Braun (aka Mr. B.) coming off like Pete Johnson while the tempo slows down on for the evocative Tired of Being Alone,” with some strong gutbucket piano from Mr. B.,, solid horn playing and nice use of brushes by Spangler. More boogie styled piano is contributed by Al Hill for Hello Little Boy, which reverses the gender on a classic jump blues that Jimmy Rushing and others have sung. Her voice may have developed some rough edges but she still puts so much heart in her vocals with Paul Carey taking a terrific solo here. Mr. B is back on piano on I’m So Worried, which also sports some terrific trumpet from James O’Donnell on this moody performance. The title track has a strutting tempo with a touch of a rumba in the rhythm with Alberta reciting the places she has been and having been on the road forever but no matter how far she roams, “Detroit is My Home.” Saffire’s Ann Rabson handles the piano on a duet of Alberta and CeeCee Collins on Lucille Bogan’s sassy Struttin’ My Stuff. Rabson also is heard behind Adams on a medley of I'm On The Move / Every Day, on which CeeCee Collins and Thornetta Davis add backing vocals, and also on Rabson’s blues ballad Hopin’ It Will Be Alright. A bonus live track has Collins joining her for a lively rendition, from the club Sushi Blues, of Rosco Gordon’s Just a Little Bit. Anyone who has been fortunate to see Alberta Adams perform know that she is a national treasure and this latest labor of love on Eastlawn will be highly welcomed by anyone who has seen her and give a sense to others what they have been missing. This should be available on cdbaby.com as well as from bluebeatmusic.com.

An interesting take on Ike Turner

I've know Gaye Adegbalola for about two decades now, when I saw Saffire - the Uppity Blues Women performing at venues in the Washington DC area. With them and on her own she has produced some wonderful music and recordings as well as mentors and teaches singing and songwriting to up and coming performers.

I came across a article on Ike Turner that I think more folk need to now about. Ike was no angel and was a drug-addict and wife-beater, but he has served his time. he was a monster yet still was a musical innovator and appears to have turned his life around. Gaye's article on Ike certainly is thought provoking.

What's Love Got To Do With It