Skip the Cheesake, Order the Blues:Alvin Jett & the Phat noiZ Blues Band's Milk and Cookies

What is it with blues artists and cheesecake album covers? The blues is a classic-but-contemporary, vital, rootsy, inspiring, engaging, challenging art form, but these album covers just make the new blues look dated—as if they’re still living in some polyester, leisure suit, free love, 70’s aesthetic.

Regardless of how you feel about the appropriateness of the voluptuous French maid waitress on the cover of Alvin Jett and the Phat noiZ Blues Band’s Milk and Cookies (a picture I chose not to duplicate here), the picture strikes the wrong tone. The album isn’t cheesecake, fake blues achieved by schmaltzy keyboards run through a vanity press. Jett and company play much better blues than that, and Milk and Cookies deserves a better cover photo.

The Phat noiZ Blues Band hail from St. Louis, but their blues represents the crossroads of St. Louis more than strictly the St. Louis blues—although it begins in the Missouri-Mississippi basin. Track 1, “Boogie to the Blues,” with its St. Louis horn soul (and some touches of neo-swing) finds Jett’s voice taking you right in. It reminds me of a New Year’s Eve I spent at a blues club in St. Louis’ Soulard neighborhood, soaking in the grime, joy, and passion of the region’s blues style.

But Milk and Cookies is not a Soulard album. It is like the Gateway Arch to the Blues Expansion. “Best Friend You Ever Had” comes with a Memphis rockabilly on the back of a tight snare and the rumble of a big, ol’ V8. “Ain’t Been the Same” is a little more electric to power up some Chicago blues. Then there’s the B.B. King-like shuffle of “My Baby’s Place.”

Could it be that now we’ve gone up to Motown for the 70’s soul blues of “It’s a Cinch”? Big chords step into a sing-along chorus as Jett finds a little bit of Jack Sheldon’s voice that made Schoolhouse Rock so cool. The horn introduction shines on “Milk and Cookies” with its hints of James Brown. Then you fly back across the country to Oakland, California, for the Tower of Power/Tommy Castro blues of “Borrowed Time.” Then it’s back onto a Boeing for the jump jazz blues of “7:47 Central Time” before floating down the river for some Mississippi mud on “Down in the Delta.”

Thanks to Alvin Jett & the Phat noiZ Blues Band for the review CD.