So many shades of blue

Is it big and getting bigger - or just always there? GRAHAM REID considers a batch of the blues

The blues is a bit like the tide. Not that it's inevitable it will reach a highwater mark soon, but that only every seventh wave tells you in which direction it is running.

There have been regular waves from the mid-60s when its greatest advocates (and some of its best practitioners) were skinny white Brit-guys like Eric Clapton and John Mayall. It got washed away by psychedelics and prog-rock (although bands like the Paul Butterfield Band, and Big Brother with Janis Joplin kept it alive in rock culture). Americans - like the Allman Brothers - reclaimed their music in the 70s and over time the genius of people like John Lee Hooker, Albert King and others was acknowledged.

Then there was the Jack Daniels' stomp of George Thorogood and ZZ Top, stadium shaking of Stevie Ray Vaughan and cool suburban sound of Robert Cray.

The blues is always out there, just ask BB King, Bonnie Raitt, and those in its most recent wave, T Model Ford and RL Burnside. But there are also the journeymen who keep working between the seventh swells. Here's a sampling.

Tinsley Ellis ain't no shakes as a singer - but then nor was the late Roy Buchanan whose righteous spirit he sometimes conjures up on The Hard Way in tracks like the moody-then-sky scaling Let Him Down Easy. Then again, he pulls off a Cray-style sophistication on the soul-filled Me Without You. The Georgia-born Ellis showcases an admirable diversity from a slightly swamp-blues sound into wah-wah, and My Love's the Medicine which sounds like Rick Bryant. That broad palette and his guitar-for-all-seasons approach lifts this above the ordinary.

The title track of Dave Alvin's Ashgrove pays tribute to the dirty LA clubs he frequented as a teenager and the great bluesmasters like T-Bone Walker that he learned from. Founder member of the rockabilly-blues band the Blasters with brother Phil, he quit in the mid 80s, briefly joined X then took off on a solo path. He's a narrative blues singer but also a singer-songwriter who has much in common with the Texans like Tom Russell (on Rio Grande particularly). The gentle acoustic side gets aired here in Nine Volt Heart and Edward Ruess, but blues fans will head for brooding, barbed wire tracks like Black Haired Girl and Out of Control ("I scored some speed ... so me and baby could get a little bump now she's in that motel room putting on a show for some chump ... ") Dark, lyrical and sometimes soaked in menace. Sample slowly for the full effect.

The cover of Guitar Shorty's Watch Your Back suggests that's good advice. The big Texan in the stetson comes from where they breed the blues tough and in his stuttering playing sometimes nods towards Hendrix (who was his young brother-in-law). He treats the studio like a booze and smoke-soaked bar-room and accusations of subtlety and nuance need not be thrown. Pure force, no prisoners taken. Drinkin' man's blues.

Guitarist/singer Eric Bibb has impressive friends: Guy Davis, Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal, Odetta, Hawaiian ukulele player Led Ka'apana and Malian kora player Mamadou Diabate are among the guests on his Friends, an album which digs deep into traditional rural acoustic blues (the back porch Going Down Slow) and airy romantic folk (Ribbons and Bows with violin and mandolin) but also makes the connection to African origins. The hypnotic version of Mahal's Lovin' In My Baby's Eyes with trickling lute-like kora and Needed Time with lap-steel Indian guitar and tablas are stone delights.

Guitarist Ronnie Earl is one of a long tradition of white guys playing blues (and jazzy licks). On Now My Soul he opens with a swinging Jimmy Smith blues, moves through a stinging, emotional and minimal treatment of Otis Rush's Double Trouble, then steps off into his own material which can be slippery and exploratory (Feel Like Going On), gospel with the Silver Leaf Gospel Singers (Walkin on the Sea), sparse balladry (Kay My Dear), funky on the mouthharp-embellished My Buddy Buddy Friends, or like a nicotine-thick off-Vegas Strip cocktail bar on #7 ... With a fine band of sympathetic players, some deft arrangements, and that dextrous, stretching guitar everywhere this feels like the highwater mark of a fine career. This is the seventh wave.


Tinsley Ellis: The Hard Way

(Herald rating: * * * )

(Telarc)


Atlanta guitarman gets away from his hard-rock attack and offers a soulful selection while keeping one foot near the wah-wah.

Dave Alvin: Ashgrove

(Herald rating: * * * * )

(Southbound)


LA singer-songwriter and former founder of the Blasters offers gritty electric blues and thoughtful acoustic-framed songs.

Guitar Shorty; Watch Your Back

(Herald rating: * * * )

(Alligator)


The man who taught Jimi Hendrix some moves leaves the word "subtle" in the dictionary and decants bottled lightning.

Eric Bibb: Friends

(Herald rating: * * * * )

(Little Big Music)


Absurdly young-looking 53-year-old teams up with peers and seniors for a set of mostly acoustic sessions which is part folk and elsewhere sounds beamed in from the Delta in the 40s.

Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters: Now My Soul

(Herald rating: * * * * )

(Stony Plain)


Illness has meant the New Yorker born Ronnie Horvath doesn't tour much but this stylish set suggests he's found his place in the studio.