Singing the blues

Traveler Colin James WEA, **1/2 If you don't know Colin James's work - and unless you're a blues diehard, you probably don't; he doesn't get the radio play he assuredly deserves - you're missing one of Canada's too-little-sung musical treasures. James is a superb blues guitarist, a fine, gritty vocalist, often an inventive songwriter, and a musician unafraid to venture in new directions. The Saskatchewan native was a high-school dropout; he heard the call of the blues early, moved to Winnipeg to form the HoodDoo Men and was soon learning under the long wing of the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan's electrifying Stratocaster. His first two albums, the eponymous ^Colin James~ (1988) and ^Sudden Stop~ (1990) were hits in Canada. Then James became an early convert to the swing revival with the brilliant neo-swing-blues-jazz ^ Colin James & the Little Big Band ~(1993), six years later, after two more albums, following it up with a second retro-swing sortie that may have been even better. That I am mildly disappointed by ^Traveler~ may have more to do with my own expectations than with any defects in the work. It is, in some ways, a return to the blues, with a bit of power funk and Motown-inflected grooves punching up the thoughtful mellowness of most of the 11 tracks. Most of the tunes are written by James, ballads such as ^I Know What Love~ Is and up-tempo, but somehow slightly subdued, rockers like ^ She Can't Do No Wrong ~ (the literate James showing off his drop-out status?). Throughout, his voice is in fine rasp and his axework, as always, is superb. Maybe I find the energy a bit low. That's not the case, though, on the opening and closing cover numbers, almost leisurely, but smouldering, covers of John Lennon's ^I'm Losing You~ and Jimi Hendrix's ^Rainy Day, Dream Away~, in which James gets to make his guitar gently sweep. A lot of people will like this album, and they should. Me, I'm going to hit the floor with ^the Little Big Band~. James's version of ^Let's Shout (Baby Work Out)~ on the entirely splendid second album, out-Jackie Wilsons Jackie Wilson, no small feat and alone worth the price of admission. American Tune Evan Cassidy Blix Street Records, ***1/2 I've praised Cassidy, who died much betimes at age 33, quite wildly in an earlier column, so here I merely want to tell readers that there's another, possibly final testament to her remarkable voice. ^ American Tune ~ is comprised of five tracks of newly uncovered rehearsal tapes, three live recordings, a demo and an early recording of that too-covered tune (but not here), the Lennon-McCartney standard - and who‚d have thunk back in 1966 that we'd be using that term of them - ^ Yesterday ~. In her usual eclectic fashion, Cassidy raids the vaults of rhythm & blues (Ray Charles's ^ Hallelujah I Love Him So~), Philadelphia soul (the Gamble-^Huff Drowning in the Sea of Love~), pop (Cyndi Lauper's ^lovely True Colors~), folk (an exquisite reading of the traditional ^The Water is Wide~) and jazz (Duke Ellington's ^It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing~). One can only hope that there are still more Cassidyean treasures yet to be uncovered.

Photo Credit: colinjames.com