Blues

Sugar Blue - In Your Eyes (1995)

2019-12-15T16:07:29Z

Sugar Blue - In Your Eyes (1995)


1 	Gucci Gucci Man	5:38
2 	Bottom Line	4:19
3 	In Your Eyes	6:43
4 	She		2:57
5 	Bluepine	6:12
6 	Lip Service And Lies	6:08
7 	Whirlwind	4:52
8 	Listen Baby	4:37
9 	Love's Sweet Secrets	3:12
10 	Little Red Rooster	6:30

Bass – Charles Hosch (tracks: 1,4 & 10), Rob Amster (tracks: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 & 9)
Drums – James Knowles (tracks: 1 & 4), Nick Kitzos (tracks: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 & 9)
Guitar – Herb Walker (tracks: 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 & 9), Motoaki Makino
Harmonica, Vocals – Sugar Blue
Keyboards – Ken Hale (tracks: 7 & 10), Motoaki Makino, Roosevelt Purifoy (tracks: 1, 2)
Percussion – Alejo Poveda (tracks: 4, 10)
Piano – Pinetop Perkins (tracks: 8)
Saxophone, Flute – Dan Johnson (17)
Trombone – Jim Massoth
Trumpet – Carey Deadman, Ed St. Peter

Sugar Blue likes to tell people that blues isn’t tragic, it’s black magic, but he adds that b.l.u.e.s stands for black life under egregious suppression. A veteran blues harmonica player, singer and songwriter, Sugar Blue is a cat who has lived 13 of his nine lives.

Born James Whiting in 1949 to an absent father and a mother who was a chorus singer and dancer at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. The future bluesman who did for the harmonica what Hendrix did for guitar lost five of his six brothers to street violence. Moving from tenement to tenement as a child he avoided the street by burying himself in the pages of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Hemmingway’s Old Man in The Sea. He jumped three grades when he transferred from Catholic to public school.

As a youngster he wanted to play saxophone like Lester Young. But his mother would have none of the squealing that marked his practices. Legend has it that she took him to see Little Stevie Wonder when both he and Stevie were 12 because she felt guilty about refusing to listen to his practicing while encouraging him to take up the quieter harp. “No,” he says, “she took me to see Stevie Wonder because she wanted to see Stevie Wonder. Actually, I think if I was meant to play sax I would have gone after one, and I’d have bought one and managed to play it.”

Instead, the harp, in his words, became part of him. His goal? To make his playing on what some call the poor man’s sax as fluid as the instrument his mother wouldn’t let him play. “I still listen to a lot of saxophone players and trumpeters and listened a lot to Charlie Christian and a lot of big band stuff long before I ever got into the blues.” ---bluesblastmagazine.com

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Sugar Blue - Blue Blazes (1994)

2019-01-14T15:54:21Z

Sugar Blue - Blue Blazes (1994)


1 	I Ain't You 	2:37
2 	Help Me 	5:36
3 	Miss You 	6:10
4 	I Just Got To Know 	6:05
5 	One More Mile To Go 	4:00
6 	That's All Right 	6:08
7 	Country Blues 	5:21
8 	Back Door Man 	7:01
9 	Just To Be With You 	6:30
10 	Out Till Dawn 	9:21

Bass – Charles Hosch
Drums – James Knowles
Guitar – Motoaki Makino, Rico McFarland
Harmonica, Vocals – Sugar Blue
Keyboards – Roosevelt Purifoy
Tenor Saxophone – Henri Ford
Trombone – Bill McFarland
Trumpet – Kenny Anderson

Harmonica player and vocalist Sugar Blue isn't a singer who doubles on harp; he's an extraordinary instrumentalist who's also a quality vocalist. Blue covers tunes by Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, James Cotton and Sonny Boy Williamson (II) classics, presents a decent, if disposable version of The Rolling Stones' "Miss You," and adds the good-natured original "Country Blues," co-written with his guitarist Motaoaki Makino. But it's those harmonica lines and phrases that make the CD. One of Alligator's best contemporary albums in a long time. ---Ron Wynn, AllMusic Review

Sugar Blue is known as the Jimi Hendrix and Charlie Parker of the harmonica for his astonishing technical mastery. His style is melodically fluid, instantly recognizable for its soaring trills, flamboyant flourishes and swooping glissandos that bring the tiny dynamo’s remarkable sonic and emotional range to life.

Born in Harlem, New York he spent his childhood listening to performances by some of the finest show people of the day, including Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon and James Brown, at the famous Apollo Theatre where his mother was a singer and dancer.

His fate was sealed when an aunt gave him a harmonica for his tenth birthday: it was instant love and he began playing along with Bob Dylan (with whom he would later record…) and Stevie Wonder songs on the radio as well as Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson. It was this diverse background that gave birth to his own unique sound.

A Greenwich Village street entertainer, Blue found his distinctive nick name amongst some 78s in a box thrown out of a window on hot summer night… . “The box almost hit me…I picked a record up,” he remembers, “and it said ‘Sugar Blues’ by Sidney Bechet. And I went -That’s it! ” He made his first recordings in the mid 1970s with pioneering blues figures Brownie McGhee, Roosevelt Sykes, Victoria Spivey and Johnny Shines.

…the man who took Little Walter’s innovations on that same instrument clear into the stratosphere-Time Out Chicago

On the advice of pianist Memphis Slim, he moved to Paris, France where he met the Rolling Stones who used his unmistakable sound to good advantage on three of their albums: that’s Sugar Blue’s harmonica blasting on their ’78 platinum disco hit “Miss You”.

He waxed a pair of albums, Crossroads and From Paris to Chicago, in Europe before moving to Chicago to learn more from the giants of the blues harmonica. He toured with Willie Dixon’s Chicago Blues All Stars, formed his own band and won a Grammy in 1985 for his contribution to the album Blues Explosion recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. He also played on Willie Dixon’s Grammy winning album Hidden Charms in 1989.

“…one of the foremost harmonica players of our times …-Rolling Stone

Blue has made a few appearances on the big screen too: he performed in the Cinemax special, Fats Domino and Friends, (with Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis and others) in the 1987 thriller, Angel Heart starring Robert DeNiro and in the recent years in “The Perfect Age of Rock’n’Roll” along with Pinetop Perkins, Hubert Sumlin, Ruby Dee and Peter Fonda.

After a brace of albums, Blue Blazes (1994) and In Your Eyes (1995), on the prestigious Alligator label, Blue took a 12-year hiatus from the studio, returning in 2008 with the highly acclaimed Code Blue., followed by Threshold and his latest work, a powerful live double album “Raw Sugar Live”. ---petersplayers.com

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Sugar Blue - Another Man Done Gone (2010)

2016-09-04T14:51:47Z

Sugar Blue - Another Man Done Gone (2010)


1. Cold Blooded Man
2. Another Man Done Gone
3. Don't Start Me Talkin
4. Pontiac Blues
5. Devil Woman
6. Help Me
7. Key To The Highway
8. That’s Allright
9. Shed No Tears
10. Begging The Girl To Go
11. Dark And Hungry
12. War Zone
13. Who's Been Talking
14. Secret Lover

Different, but great blues. First few seconds of CD are misleading, it's pretty much old school blues progressions,(kind of) with incredible harmonica. A lot of french influence, not new orleans french. A great recording! ---Bryan L. Bridges, amazon.com

In 1984, Blue's track "Another Man Done Gone", appeared on the compilation album, Blues Explosion. It won a Grammy in 1984 for Best Traditional Blues Album.

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Sugar Blue ‎– Cross Roads (1980)

2016-09-01T13:45:02Z

Sugar Blue ‎– Cross Roads (1980)


1 	Pontiac 	
2 	Begging The Girl To Go 	
3 	Dark And Hungry 	
1 	Shed No Tears 	
2 	War Zone 	
3 	My Baby Caught The Train 	
4 	Another Man Done Gone

Alto Saxophone – Steve Potts
Baritone Saxophone – Bruce Grant (tracks: 4,5)
Bass – Cecile Savage
Drums – Vic Pitts
Engineer [Recording] – Christian Gence
Flugelhorn – Longineau Parsons (tracks: 2, 3)
Flute – Bruce Grant (tracks: 6)
Harmonica – Sugar Blue
Lead Guitar – Jimmy Gourley, Tenko Slavov (tracks: 3, 5)
Recorder – Longineau Parsons (tracks: 2)
Trombone – Mike Zwerin (tracks: 2)
Trumpet – Longineau Parsons

One of the foremost electric blues harpists of the modern era, Sugar Blue was born James Whiting in New York City in 1950. The son of a singer/dancer who regularly performed at the legendary Apollo Theater, he was given his first harmonica at the age of ten, and by his mid-teens had already performed in the company of Muddy Waters; in the early '70s he made his first recordings, sitting in on sessions by the likes of Johnny Shines and Louisiana Red. Sugar Blue relocated to Paris in 1976, where he was introduced to the Rolling Stones; he went on to play on the group's LPs Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, and Tattoo You, lending his skills to such hits as "Miss You." He also played on jazz dates for Stan Getz and Paul Horn, and in 1979 cut the solo efforts Crossroads (1979) and From Paris to Chicago (1982). In 1985, Blue won a Grammy Award for his participation on the Atlantic compilation Blues Explosion. Upon returning to the U.S. in the mid-'80s, Sugar Blue settled in Chicago, and after signing to Alligator, he cut Blue Blazes in 1994, followed a year later by In Your Eyes. Over the coming years he continued to perform and tour, though it would be 12 years before his next album, 2007's Code Blue, was released. Threshold appeared in 2010 followed two years later by the live album Raw Sugar. 2016 would prove to be a banner year for the veteran bluesman, with the release of a new studio album called Voyage, a world tour, and an appearance in the documentary film Sidemen, A Long Road to Glory. --- Jason Ankeny, Rovi

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