WIN A BLUES CD PRIZE PACK!!Blues: Eddie Turner's Rise

Eddie Turner electrifies the country blues. Although he’s been playing longer than either of them, Turner takes Keb’ Mo’ to Lenny Kravitz. After supporting many others, including giving the Otis Taylor Band its guitar sound, Rise is now the chance to hear Turner as a solo artist.

“Rise” opens the album with a military parade cadence on snare drum (Mark Clark) over which Turner lays a funk blues transparency, which at the end of the song is removed to listen to the troops march off into the distance, a trumpet (Kenny Passarelli) blowing a little jazz ditty instead of a call to war.

The electrified country blues comes through on “The River,” which recalls more of Keb’ Mo’. The instrumental “Resurrection,” though, takes the slide blues of Kelly Joe Phelps, amping it up a notch, and overlaid with a wail of a guitar. Turner makes a gutsy move by putting a Jimi Hendrix cover as the fourth track, but he brings all of that electrified country blues to his version of Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary.”

Turner is adept at tapping into the many variations of the blues. For the instrumental “It’s Me,” it’s the Mississippi blues rocked out to the hilt. Finding another blues standard form, “Gangster of Love” is talking/jump blues, but imagine Vernon Reid (Living Colour) unleashing that electricity from the guitar.

Spiritually, the Gospel and the blues connect right here. “Rise,” “Resurrection,” and “Sin” are song titles. “Rise” features a spoken Lord’s Prayer. The spiritual all comes painfully clear on “Sin,” which is a haunt, dream-style Gospel with this growing, ominous sustained bass from the organ. It’s a song that confesses the depths of sin and the need for God’s forgiveness—a need that’s palpable in the sound.

WIN A BLUES CD PRIZE PACK!
I have 2 Blues CD Prize Packs to give away. Prize packs include a NorthernBlues sampler, NorthernBlues full length CD, and other blues CDs. Enter Now! Please send an email to pastorsquires@lsol.net. Winners will be asked to send $1.50 in postage (Non-U.S. residents will be asked to pay the required postage through PayPal). Thanks!

Thanks to Eddie Turner and NorthernBlues Music for the review and giveaway CDs.