The Iconic Blues Historic Blues from 1930s to 1970s
SOME FULL REVIEWS OF SET 12
MATCHBOX BLUESMASTER SERIES –
SOME FULL REVIEWS OF SET 12
BLUES IN BRITAIN AUG 2023
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series 12: MSESET12
Blues Like Showers Of Rain (A Compendium
Of The Finest British Country Blues' Artists)
(6 CD set)
To say that the Matchbox Bluesmaster series is special would not even come close in describing their importance: these twelve sets have made up one of the finest (and historically important) packages of original blues ever released. To any blues fan, these sets are surely simply the Golden Nuggets of the blues! Every one of these discs contains absolute blues gems - diamonds to any blues lover of course, but also to those yet unaware of the impact the blues has had on so many areas of modern music.
With eleven sets of blues already, here's the final 12th set, a collection of all-British blues. The series book was titled Blues From The Avon Delta, which sums this set up perfectly, a real cherry on the cake of UK blues from Dave Peabody's informed booklet notes through to the music itself. From finger-picking blues with Dave Kelly, his sister Jo Ann, Dave Peabody, Mike Cooper and Ian A Anderson, to early trios and bands, the ragtime piano releases by Quentin Williams, Bob Hall, Chris Thompson, to bands such as the wonderfully named Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra, and Hokum music and Jug Bands.
The first two discs here are titled Blues Like Showers Of Rain and the material was groundbreaking in its day: taken up by John Peel and many other broadcasters and journalists, creating a stir upon release in the late sixties. This 14-song 1968 collection opens with Dave Keely singing 'A Few Short Lines', a song he's played countless times over the years since and one which became a title track on a Blues Band album not too long ago. His other song here is one he still plays, the Robert Johnson classic, 'Travellin' Riverside Blues'. Jo Ann Kelly's tracks define her musicianship and style, Memphis Minnie's 'Black Mary' and 'Nothing In Rambling' reminding us why her music is timeless. Panama Limited (featuring Chris Anderson) take one of Gus Cannon's Jug Stomper's songs in 'Goin' To Germany' and The Missouri Compromise (who are indeed English) put their own spin on 'If I Had Possession', as does Mike Cooper with a cracking version of 'Black Snake Moan'. It's worth remembering that some of these bands comprised solo musicians joining up for just a song or two.
1969 (Volume 2) introduces a varied but no less interesting dozen tracks, including a very young Fran McGillivray and her 21-year old guitarist partner, Mike Burke and lesser-known acts such as Simon & Steve, Little Brother Dave, John James, the Panama Ltd Jug Band - all with a couple of tracks that gives a good idea of how fine the club blues scene was back then, especially for original acoustic based blues.
Disc 3 has the wonderful title The Inverted World, featuring fourteen tracks by (in the main) Mike Cooper and Ian A Anderson, joined by harmonica men like Elliot Jackson or Chris Turner. Mike Cooper was born in Reading, involved not only in live gigs with well-known American touring artists but also his solo EP Up The Country Blues. A very individually-styled artist, featured among his songs are some by the likes of Blind Boy Fuller (also himself featured in these sets) and Blind Blake, hence the included version of 'Black Cat Moan'. Ian Anderson did a huge amount for the British blues scene, not only with his superb performances, but his pioneering efforts at the first club for country blues in Bristol. Good that they are reissued and recognised on this set again.
Disc 4 is a blues miscellany; Searchin' The Desert For The Blues - if you could call Bristol the desert - but 23 tracks in all, many featuring Dave Peabody, known for many years on the UK scene. He played it all, from jug bands onwards, and encompassed traditional blues from Tampa Red, Maceo Merryweather and many more. One track you must hear is the wonderful Wizz Jones: certainly a great blues acoustic guitarist with the voice to go with it, Wizz was never recorded anywhere near enough, but just hear his version of 'Spoonful' and you'll see what I mean.
Disc 5 is titled Hokum Miscellany: Selling That Stuff, another 23 tracks, Dave Peabody again featuring on a stack of blues classics from Big Bill Broonzy to Jelly Roll Morton and Blind Blake, plus a cracking version of Eddie Cochran's 'Cut Across Shorty'. With his band Tight Like That (which featured alongside Dave, Hugh McNulty, Dave Griffiths and Bob Shortt) there's some good ole jug band music to enjoy.
The final sixth disc claims the title Ragtime And Miscellenous: The Nailbreaker and its another gem featuring two dozen cracking tracks, featuring a few names you might not know such as Quentin Williams (a true ragtime piano master), or the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra, with further tracks featuring Dave Peabody's Tight Like That, plus a tasty little trio featuring one of our finest boogie pianists in Bob Hall, joined here by Steve Rye and Simon Prager.
Years ahead of what was to develop into what we now term blues-rock, the artists featured throughout this set brought a standard like never before to the British and European blues scenes. Throughout, the recorded sound is of the very highest standard, and this is not so much a history of British blues of the I 960s, it's a set that truly demonstrates what put British blues on the map: not so much where it began, but when British blues really did equal the best of blues, anywhere.
Totally unmissable, it's thanks to our friends at Saydisc for releasing every one of these sets, because this is the blues and how!
Pete Clack
LONDON JAZZ NEWS SET 12 REVIEW
This, the twelfth (and concluding) 6-CD set of Matchbox reissues, documents not the original US blues recordings of the 1920s and 1930s but the British music scene which they inspired. Ian Anderson (later editor of Folk Roots, but in the late 1960s a sparkplug firing up the country blues scene in Bristol and beyond with his own performances and indefatigable promotional activities) introduces the set with a characteristically enthusiastic and highly informative essay. “Suddenly in 1968 the blues and folk worlds found that they had produced a number of artists singing the country blues of the 1920s and ’30s perfectly in the idiom, but with a quality and personal involvement which lifted them far above the level of mere copyists,” is how he remembers this heady time, and (the best of) the passionate, committed music caught on these six CDs of British blues and associated music goes some way towards vindicating his claim.
The first two CDs stand head and shoulders above the last four. They are taken from two Matchbox albums, Blues Like Showers of Rain, recorded in Frenchay on the outskirts of Bristol in 1968. Singer/guitarist Jo-Ann Kelly is pictured on the album sleeve, but it is her brother, Dave Kelly, who kicks the first volume’s proceedings off with a spirited visit to Eli Green’s “A Few Short Lines”, setting his wailing vocals against driving bottleneck guitar. Jo-Ann Kelly interprets her chief inspiration Memphis Minnie’s “Nothin’ in Ramblin’” with great panache and does an unaccompanied version of “Black Mary”. Simon [Prager] & Steve [Rye] power through Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Dealing with the Devil”, the Reverend Gary Davis’s “Say No to the Devil”, and Steve alone provides a plaintive version of “Bread of Heaven”. Doyen of bottleneck guitar Mike Cooper plays a rag and an affecting version of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” and Anderson himself contributes a couple of classics. The CDs also contain vigorous group music from The Panama Limited Jug Band (Gus Cannon’s “Going to Germany” and set-closing stormers, “Cocaine Habit” and “Wildcat Squall”) and The Missouri Compromise, whose singer Pete Hassel gives his considerable all on both Tommy Johnson’s “Dark Road Blues” and – an immortal classic – Robert Johnson’s “Possession Over Judgment Day”. Frances McGillivray sets her strident vocal version of “It Hurts Me Too” to the faultless bottleneck guitar of Mike Cooper, and the second volume also showcases the skilful picking of John James, his impeccable ragtime guitar liberally embellished with showers of harmonics. The albums were considerable successes on their release and it is easy to see why: what these committed practitioners inevitably lack (the grit that derives, in the originals, from genuine oppression and suffering), they make up for with love and respect for their source material and the unfussy virtuosity with which they interpret it.
The third CD features Cooper and Anderson picking their way through a selection of familiar country blues numbers (anomalously attributed on the original album not to individual blues composers but “trad.”). Cooper’s guitar playing, as ever, is simply faultless throughout, Anderson’s a great deal better than adequate, but their singing (especially when compared with the heart-rending, chilling vocals of Robert Johnson, the sly conversational informality of Blind Willie McTell or the affectingly plaintive emotional power of Sleepy John Estes, to take just three examples) does tend to let them down a little, and a novelty selection, “Beedle Um Bum” probably worked better in live performance than in a recording studio.
Dave Peabody is heavily featured on the last three CDs, and he also contributes extensive liner notes in which he painstakingly charts his journey from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan to John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson and jug band music. This last form is strongly represented on CD 4, much of which sets Peabody’s somewhat nasal, reedy vocals against a variety of textures created by, among others, the multi-talented Dave Griffiths (violin/mandolin), the harmonica of Steve Rye and the rollicking piano of Bob Hall. Tenor saxophonist Don Weller also appears on a couple of tracks. Peabody’s material is taken mainly from the likes of Tampa Red, Robert Johnson and Maceo Merryweather, but he does perform a few original blues compositions which, while lacking bite and intensity (“Scared at Night” is hardly “Hellhound on My Trail”, for instance, and “My Friend was Arrested” pales by comparison with a line such as “They got me jailed for forgin’, can’t even write my name”), do effectively showcase his neat guitar style and his considerable arranging skills. Peabody’s material is interspersed with a couple more Ian Anderson tracks, guitar maestro Wizz Jones performs “Spoonful”, Al Jones contributes a couple of polite John Renbourn-style blues songs, and Strange Fruit (harmonica player Keith Warmington and singer Pete Keely) perform “Shake That Thing”.
CD 5 is devoted to hokum, and begins with the injunction “let’s have some fun”. Peabody contributes all of the tracks except “Dan Scaggs” (Al Jones), and for him “fun” consists, in the main, of salaciousness (Will Shade’s “Everybody’s Talking About Sadie Green”), outright misogyny (his original, “Shut Your Mouth”), or back-handed compliments (“She’s Alright with Me”, another original in a genre unforgettably satirised by Tom Lehrer’s “She’s My Girl”). The instrumental skill on show is considerable, but the songs will appeal only to devoted hokum aficionados.
CD 6 is again mostly Peabody (highlights: neat rags with great mandolin playing from Dave Griffiths), but is notable chiefly for containing four cuts by the eccentric but adept ragtime pianist Quentin Williams, whose intriguing originals are as quirky as his suggestion that they are played with “plyers and a molewrench”. The Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra are also featured; they were apparently “national favourites” courtesy of their “humorous live act”, but their songs here are comparatively lame and their singer’s laid-back vocal style fatally lacks zip. Fleshed out with another Dave Evans instrumental, the delightful “Insanity Blues”, plus a pleasantly lazy vocal contribution from Chris Thompson, the CD is thus something of a curate’s egg, providing a disappointingly anti-climactic ending to an extraordinary reissue series. The British Blues Revival is justly celebrated for its respectful and spirited championing of a cruelly neglected artform (and for its spawning of rock behemoths such as the Rolling Stones and Cream), but on the evidence provided by these CDs, its major achievement was in sending a whole generation of listeners back to the originals of Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Sonny Boy Williamson et al.
Chris Parker
David Evans, Professor of Music Emeritus, The University of Memphis
and author of Big Road Blues
I wasn't too familiar with the British "country blues" scene of the 1960s and early 1970s, and based on its American counterpart I didn't expect much. Thus I was very pleasantly surprised at how generally good the music was, much better than most of its white American counterpart. There were a lot fewer of the annoying mannerisms of so many of the American artists and a lot less superficiality. The British performers really made an effort to get into the spirit and style of the original music and largely succeeded. ...Excellent notes too by Dave Peabody and Ian A. Anderson. I hope this set gets some recognition and awards. I liked the jug band tracks too, with a serious blues sound rather than the corny hokum approach of so many American revivalist jug bands.
BLUES BLAST MAGAZINE 19/10/23 USA
Blues Like Showers Of Rain - A compendium Of The Finest British Country Blues Artists - 1966 - 1976
Saydisc Matchbox Blues Series
6 CDs - 106 songs - 316 Minutes
Disc 1: Blues Like Showers Of Rain (Vol.1)
Disc 2: Blues Like Showers Of Rain (Vol.2)
Disc 3: The Inverted Word
Disc 4: Blues Miscellany:Searchin' The Desert For The Blues
Disc 5: Hokum Miscellany:Selling That Stuff
Disc 6: Ragtime And Miscellaneous:The Nailbreaker
For lovers of British Country Blues this extensive collection will be like Christmas morning squared. It is all presented in pristine sound. The kicker is that it isn't all just country blues. There are acoustic blues guitar guys, jug bands, piano players, rags, a bit of hokum and a few surprises to boot. I am familiar with some of the names and musical reputations here, but I have heard little of their music until now. I have heard of Jo-Ann and Dave Kelly, Bob Hall and Ian A. Anderson (Not the Jethro Tull guy, the other one). Going in one may think this is a collection of boring guitar folkies, but you would be wrong. These are talented artists all. From skilled guitar finger-pickers to goofy jug bands to energy-charged piano masters. I found myself tapping the occasional toe. This music draws you in. There are covers and variations on classic blues, as well as original songs. A few nice surprises as well. There are some instrumentals to give variety to the proceedings.
The most represented country blues purveyors here are Dave Peabody, Ian A. Anderson, Mike Cooper and Simon and Steve. That is not to downplay the quality of those with fewer tracks. Many of the songs are collaborations of various musicians. Steve Rye of Simon and Steve pops up all over to lend his harmonica expertise to various musicians, as well contributing one vocal-harmonica piece on his own. Covers of the blues innovators include the ubiquitous Robert Johnson, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Tampa Red, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Skip James and Blind Blake. Some of the titles are altered, such as "Write Me A Few Of Your Lines" becomes "A Few Short Lines". Occasionally you witness the lyrical inbreeding that was a usual practice among the old-time innovators.
It is needless to say that I won't be commenting on every one of the over one hundred songs. Here are some of my personal favorites of the more traditional country blues performances. Dave Kelly and Mike Cooper offer great versions of "A Few Short Lines". Dave's sister Jo-Ann Kelly, one of the few female country blues singers of this era, does a good turn on Memphis Minnie's "Nothin' In Ramblin'". She also does an unaccompanied and dark "Black Mary". The only other female included in this collection is Frances McGillivray. She was a vocalist and is accompanied on guitars here by Mick Burke & Mikel Kooper. Her hearty vocal energizes "It Hurts Me Too" and "Rambling Man".
Mike Cooper and Ian A. Anderson were among the most well-known artists of the era. Ian's vocals and guitar shine on "Rowdy Blues", "Big Road Blues", "Little Queen Of Spades" and "Beedle Um Bum", among others. He is joined by Elliot Jackson on harmonica on a few tunes. Al Jones shares vocals and guitar on the latter. There is also an uncredited person playing kazoo. Mike Cooper's approach is similar to that of Ian A. Anderson. His finger-picked guitar skills and vocals are well represented on Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Black Snake Moan", "One Time Blues", "The Way I Feel", among others. His original guitar instrumental puts his guitar skills out there. Another of his instrumental numbers "The Inverted World" also has Ian A. Anderson on guitar and Chris Turner on harmonica.
Singer, guitarist, harmonica player and songwriter Dave Peabody also has quite a presence here. His performances include "Death Letter", "Love In Vain", and Big Maceo's "Worried Life Blues". Two curious inclusions by him that are not usually associated with the blues are Tommy Tucker's "Hi-Heeled Sneakers" and Rufus Thomas's "Walking The Dog".
The Panama Limited Jug Band and Tight Like That honor the jug band tradition with their collection of feel good tunes featuring kazoos, washboard, jug and all manner of percussion. Songs like "Wildcat Squall" and "Muskrat Ramble". One song by Tight Like That jumped out at me-"If I Had A Talking Picture Of You". It was done by many acts in the twenties, but the first time I heard it was by The New Vaudeville Band.
Piano players also make a great impression too with the likes of Bob Hall, Diz Watson and Quentin Williams. They do solo instrumentals and/or accompany others. Damn, these guys can play!
A variety of instruments show up all over the place: violin, saxophone, harmonica, mandolin, banjo and assorted percussion instruments.
I barely scratched the surface of the treats in store here. Everything here is well worthy of a listen. Here are a few: Al Jones, Little Brother Steve, Simon & Steve, Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra...on and on. Pick out your own favorites. Not a lemon in the bunch! Saydisc has done a real "bang up" job with this compilation.
Blues Blast Magazine (USA) (Greg “Bluesdog” Szalony hails from the New Jersey Delta)
RnR Set 12 review Nov/Dec 2023
****
Blues Like Showers Of Rain
MATCHBOX BLUESMASTER SERIES Set 12
This six-CD boxed set is subtitled A Compendium Of The Finest British Country Blues Artists 1966-1976.
Unlike the British electric blues players of the era, many of whom became multi-millionaire rock superstars, few of these acoustic musicians made much of a living from their music but their playing is often impressive. Mike Cooper's fingerpicking is marvellously intricate on several
tracks, including his self-composed instrumental, 'Meeting House Rag'; ragtime guitarist, John James's playing is scintillating on 'Maybelle Rag' and elsewhere; Jo-Ann Kelly's performances are hair-raisingly impassioned; Dave Kelly's playing is expert; and there are notable contributions from Ian A. Anderson, Steve Rye, Wizz Jones, Chris Thompson and others. The performers, though, are typically more persuasive as instrumentalists than as singers.
Fifty-three of the 110 tracks feature guitarist, singer and harmonica player Dave Peabody, solo and with Tight Like That, all of which are enjoyable. But for so many tracks to be by one artist skews the anthology (as does the fact that all 110 tracks are from a mere three, related, labels - Matchbox, Village Thing and Saydisc) and means that Blues Like Showers Of Rain is far from being definitive. Trevor Hodgett
Matchbox Bluesmaster Set 12 – Blues Like Showers of Rain
Ian Lomax (Jazz Journal)
With its twelfth set Matchbox turns to the British country-blues scene of the 1960s and 1970s and artists such as Mike Cooper and Jo-Ann Kelly
All the previous Matchbox Bluesmaster sets have concentrated on pre-war recordings (studio and field) made in the USA, but the series now turns its attention to the British blues scene of the mid-60s to the mid-70s. Whilst the electric blues boom of the mid-60s (Clapton, Mayall etc) is well documented, the acoustic country-blues scene is less so. This set traces the remarkable work of the Bristol-based Saydisc label and its role in the development of homegrown British country blues.
In 1967, Saydisc released its first country-blues record, a seven-inch LP by local trio Ian Anderson, Alun Jones and Elliot Jackson. By 1986, it was helping three “pop-up” DIY blues labels – Sunflower, Kokomo and Highway 51 – to get to market. In 1968, Saydisc created the Matchbox label with the objective of releasing material by contemporary British country-blues artists as well as LPs of classic pre-war US country blues.
By 1968, the UK blues boom was in full swing, albeit with more attention given by the major labels to electric blues bands. In July 1968, Matchbox released the country-blues album Blues Like Showers Of Rain to positive acclaim. It featured a collection of British artists including Dave Kelly, Mike Cooper, Ian Anderson, Jo-Ann Kelly among others. John Peel played it on his Night Rideradio show and several artists were subsequently invited to record BBC sessions.
The British blues phenomenon did eventually run out of steam and Matchbox folded in 1977. Thankfully, it returned in 1982 to concentrate on classic pre-WWII US blues and created the Bluesmaster label. All-in-all, it is thought that Saydisc released over 100 blues albums between 1967 and 1987, as well as promoting homegrown country-blues talent. It made Bristol the epicentre of the UK’s DIY blues record label industry, no small achievement for a label that most music fans have never heard of.
It’s a fascinating story that continues today with the digital release of the entire Bluesmaster Series of LPs, including this uniquely British set. This album will appeal to all blues fans (especially those with a soft spot for British blues) as well as many folk enthusiasts.
Living Blues (USA) Jan 2024
Matchbox Bluesmaster Series, Set 12
Blues Like Showers of Rain: A Compendium of the Finest British Country Blues Artists, 1966-1976
And so it ends: here's the final entry in this series of six-CD sets launched early in 2021, a dozen collections offering a staggering 72 CDs total. This set reflects the tastes and talent of the initial English audience for the pre-war blues (and related sounds) heard on the other I I.
It's sobering to note that the time elapsed between these recordings and the present-day eclipses that passed between the early blues era and that of these recordings. More than a half-century on, what are we to make of earnest young Englishmen doing their Delta blues darndest? A lecture on cultural appropriation now comes decades too late. It's often suggested of the blues-based '60s Brit rockers that this English generation was one of Blitz babies who grew up in scarcity and postwar rationing. They had a right to sing the blues.
They also grew up in a culture of pub-based sing-along nights that nurtured the English folk music revival: these "British country blues artists" were arguably a branch of that tree. An American folk (and blues) repertoire had been central to England's ‘50s skiffle craze, so it wasn't a huge leap to go from singing Lead Belly in the '50s to Robert Johnson a decade later. The ghost of skiffle looms over the hopped-up hokum performances on this set, while the leer of the music hall's George Formby hovers in the wings.
Released on vinyl in July 1968, the 14-track Blues Like Showers of Rain offered two songs each (one per LP side) by seven different artists. It was a surprise hit at the time, leading to major label interest in the British country blues crowd. Jo-Ann Kelly debuts with a take on Memphis Minnie's Nothin' in Ramblin', vocalist Chris Anderson does a credible Gus Cannon imitation on the Panama Limited Jug Band's Going to Germany, and Simon and Steve channel Brownie McGhee (Dealing with the Devil). Also on hand: Dave Kelly, Mike Cooper, Ian A. Anderson, and the Missouri Compromise.
Blues Uke Showers of Rain Volume 2 followed a year later, hailed in its Blues Unlimited review as the sequel to "the LP which precipitated the English folk blues boom last year." There are a couple of nice ragtime guitar solos by John James, as well as stabs at relative modernity by Little Brother Dave (Kelly), whose No Time to Lose is Howlin' Wolf's Down in the Bottom. This volume's female voice, Frances McGillivray, does well by Tampa Red's It Hurts Me Too, and returnees from Volume I (along with Dave Kelly) include Simon and Steve and the Panama Limited Jug Band.
It's easy to assume this scene was Londonbased, but while some of the artists (the Kellys) hailed from there, the center of this small world was Bristol. That's where Mike Cooper and Ian A. Anderson, among others, played blues in a succession of pubs and, early in 1968, convinced local record label (Saydisc) owner Gef Lucena to start a blues label, Matchbox. After the success of the label's debut release, Blues Uke Showers of Rain, it was inevitable that the two key players on Bristol's blues scene be featured on a 1969 album, The Inverted World. Singer-guitarist Cooper solos on six tracks, followed by Anderson joining in on second guitar alongside Chris Turner's harp on the driving instrumental title track. Then singer-guitarist Anderson, sometimes accompanied by the harp of Elliot Jackson, has a go at seven formidable songs sourced from the likes of Garfield Akers and Charley Patton.
Those are the three straight LP reissues here. The other CDs are labeled "miscellanies" drawn from sundry sources.
Blues Miscellany: Searchin' the Desert for the Blues takes its name from a Blind Willie McTell song laudably performed by Al Jones, who makes no attempt to hide his Englishness. Ian Anderson and a duo, Strange Fruit, make cameos. as does a legend of English folk, Wizz Jones (Spoonful). But the lion's share of the 23 tracks is given to singer-guitarist Dave Peabody, sometimes heard solo. other times accompanied by piano or the jug band Tight Like That.
Hokum Miscellany: Selling That Stuff opens with Peabody, ably assisted by Dave Griffiths' mandolin, delivering a cracking version of Blind Blake's Come on Boys. Let's Do That Messin' Around. Peabody and accompanists are featured on most of the oft-times manic 23 tracks here, kazoos and washboards ablaze, though the Strange Fruit team offers an agreeably odd take on Eddie Cochran's Cut Across Shorty.
Finally, Ragtime and Miscellaneous: The Nailbreaker takes its title from one of four original (but classic rag style) compositions by pianist Quentin Williams. This
24-track set is instrumental oriented. even with a fair share of vocals by Peabody (again in varied aggregations) and others, including the notably named Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra.
This six-CD compendium is accompanied by a 31-page booklet offering recollections by Anderson and Peabody of a smashing party most of us missed by miles and years. Let's not forget that Blind Blake covered an English music hall song, Champagne Charlie Is My Name. so perhaps these British country blues artists were merely returning the favor.
-Mark Humphrey