For his latest release in a long association with Canada's Stony Plain label, guitarist and singer Duke Robillard digs deep into the American songbook of jazz classics and throws in a couple of original instrumentals for good measure.

A Swingin' Session does much more than spotlight Robillard's nimble guitar work and nuanced vocals. Backed by his longtime bandmates and some former Roomful of Blues colleagues, Robillard directs the spotlight just as often on the horns and keyboards. Like one of his heroes, Duke Ellington, Robillard plays his band like an instrument, and that comes naturally for these dozen players who share an affinity for the place where jazz meets blues. Many of these musicians hail from Robillard's Rhode Island stomping grounds, including such familiar names as Gordon Beadle (tenor and baritone sax), Al Basile (cornet), Scott Hamilton (tenor sax), and Carl Querfurth (trombone).

The songs come from familiar sources, but they're not necessarily well known to modern listeners, so the setlist sounds fresh. Ray Charles' "Them That Got" features great piano work by Bruce Katz, and Basile's muted cornet punctuates Irving Berlin's "The Song Is Ended." Robillard's charisma as a vocalist shines, especially on the Charles number.

Blues and jazz scholars might pore over the obscure song selections and Robillard's approach to the arrangements, but none of that matters to the people who go to his shows. What makes this material work is what happens on the dance floor when a band swings this hard. We should thank Robillard for reprising and reinventing classic American music in an age when real musicianship gets short shrift while shallow theatrics can earn you a stint on American Idol. Call me cranky, but I'd rather swing.

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Guitarist Amos Garrett typically flies under the radar. The man has been a major player for four decades, from working with Ian & Sylvia’s Great Speckled Bird to ‘70s groups like Paul Butterfield’s Better Days and supplying the drop dead solo on Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis” hit single. But he’s never really been known as a front man, though he’s made a string of striking solo albums. Garrett might have finally met his perfect match on this tribute to singer-songwriter Percy Mayfield, another underappreciated vet who never quite got his due. Amos Garrett’s guitar work is a soulful blend of elegant rhythmic attack and scintillating lead lines. He has a way of turning the normal into the improbable, but always gets back home right on time, kind of like changing the rules of algebra, but they still work. Performing Mayfield’s music, he can relax and roll into a perfect groove, sneaking up on the emotions of the songs with a weathered voice that feels like it’s coming from a favorite friend. It doesn’t hurt that these are some of the best r&b songs ever written. They called Percy Mayfield the Poet of the Blues, and they weren’t kidding. Get Way Back is one of those albums that just had to be made, but still is a swinging surprise. (less)

Jeff Healey's recent passing caused great sadness in the blues world and around the world. We were, perhaps, too used to having him around to appreciate his talents.

I saw him first in Toronto in 1985, when he was still unknown outside his home city. They brought him up on stage to play for a flabbergasted Albert Collins. It wasn't just his unique style, playing the guitar on his lap with a combination of pulling and plucking the strings, that surprised so many. It was also the fact that he was so good at it. My last encounter with Jeff was as the emcee for his show at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival, leading his greatest love, his pre-Second World War era jazz band. He made it look so easy, and was so unassuming, you had to remind yourself of how good he was.

Recent years saw Healey move away from the blues for lengthy stretches of jazz, but he never stayed away for long. It remained his bread and butter, as concert requests continued to come in overseas and at home.

Plus, he had his Toronto namesake bar, which thrived when its famous owner was onstage. Healey put together a crack bar band for those gigs and figured he should document it on disc, as well. The result, planned long before his lost battle to cancer, is Mess Of Blues (Stony Plain).

Part live, mostly studio, it's made up of tracks Healey's group would wow the crowds with, playing for the fun of it and showing off a little, too. Much of the disc is party-trick material, familiar songs that make a bar crowd happy, especially with the new and exciting takes the group brings to them. You get a little Elvis, with Mess O' Blues, an old classic in Sittin' On Top Of The World, foot-stompin' fun with Jambalaya and Shake, Rattle & Roll, and curveball Canadian covers with Neil Young's Like a Hurricane and The Band's The Weight.

The album is what it was meant to be, a great night at the best roadhouse around. But Healey is gone. And what stands out for me is that I won't see this group, which was scheduled to play the Harvest this September, do these songs. Hearing them now, hearing him, I realize what I always took for granted: He is that good. Here are some of the most soaring live electric guitar solos you will ever need. They match the best players working today or in the past. His signature style may have been how he played the guitar, but what he played was amazing, too.

This last album will no doubt be my favourite blues album by Healey. Not bad, considering blues wasn't even his favourite music.

Bob Mersereau is a music writer and the arts reporter for CBC in New Brunswick.

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A front runner for this year's Top 10 list, Ronnie Earl has crafted one his best albums ever in Hope Radio. Concentrating on his strengths, this is pure instrumental blues, informed by Earl's passion for jazz and fuelled, emotionally, by a release from his troubled past.

Live, the credit for the success of this record must be split with Dave Limina, whose prowess on piano and B3 organ is stupefying, allowing Earl those precious nanoseconds to execute every note with newfound passion, absolute confidence and razor-sharp precision.

Earl's tone rules the day across 11 seamless originals but exceptional inroads are made with Blues for the West Side, an 11-minute opus that wrenches your gut with its soulful range and sheer majesty. Wolf Dance pays an upbeat tribute to Hubert Sumlin, while Kay My Dear - another deliciously languorous assault - demonstrates the subtle power of a taut rhythm section that always knows when to rise or fall between Earl's spirited takeoffs. Blues for Otis Rush, likewise, serves up a 10-minute slow burn of endless gratitude that commands your total attention. You'll not find a better way to spend 78 minutes. Promise.

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It's easy to dismiss country music as antiquated or slow-witted, especially with the popularity of current Canadian indie stars like Feist or Tokyo Police Club, who wear their energy on their sleeves.

Set next to bands like these, a sound like Corb Lund's may seem like a quaint throwback to a time when music was easy, vulgar and anything but complex. Yet Lund's newest album is perhaps the most imaginative and daring Canadian indie album that will be released this year for exactly that reason. It's deceptive in its simplicity.

On the surface, it's an album about that most reliable country music stereotype: this guy really loves his horse. But Lund has been reading his history textbooks, and the album is a lament for the old stories that Lund sorely wishes he had been a part of. This is not so much a political album as it is a yearning for a kind of glory, one that is always just out of reach in times of war.

This idea may turn some listeners off, but many will enjoy the way Lund appropriates the country genre to tell simple, effective stories with his throaty yelp. The music, if nothing else, is good. It doesn't need jangly power chords or crashing cymbals to get a rise out of the listener - it is stripped down and direct without overpowering his lyrics, which approach poetry.

The brusque rat-a-tat of military drums on the opening track "I Wanna Be In The Cavalry" belies the weight of its words. It would be easy to laugh at the folksy fiddle strings or steel guitar if they weren't put to such good use. Lund has created a concept album in the very best sense of the term.

Perhaps his greatest strength is that he doesn't condescend to the listener; he relies on our intelligence and open-mindedness. Yes, country music can be brashly, perhaps stupidly, political. Sometimes, it can be about trucks and seedy bars and going home to yer darlin' after a hard day in the field. But Lund reminds us that country can have soul.

It may be the last musical form that knows its roots, and can see what's been lost to the relentless hammering of modernity. It's a sad burden for Corb Lund to shoulder, but he carries it well as he sings, "The band that played and the grand parade and the patriotic shouts/all faded fast, didn't even last till the uniforms wore out/and there were none to replace nor to help us face the winters cold and bleak".

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9.5-out-of-10
I just couldn't resist the idea of reviewing a tribute to Ian Tyson in the same issue as Quartette, which of course includes Sylvia Tyson, Ian's former wife, and musical partner. While the musical careers of the pair went their separate ways, they will be forever linked in the mind's and hearts of Canadian music fans.
Ian Tyson has of course had an outstanding career helping to preserve and re-popularize the genre of true western music.
As a performer you tend to know your career has earned respect when other artists gather to do a tribute album, and one listen to this effort and you know Tyson's career is indeed worthy. This CD is crammed full of recognizable hits covered by some of the best in Canadian music, along with a few American friends added in. I truly enjoy the mix of veteran and new musical stars paying their respects here.
The CD starts with Canadian super group Blue Rodeo doing a sweet rendition of Four Strong Winds, an early hit from when Ian and Sylvia were famous just by their first names in this country.
On the very next cut Corb Lund, a more recent arrival to the country charts in Canada doing the western classic MC Horses.
Cindy Church, yes another tie to Quartette, offers a rendition of Range Delivery.
Amos Garrett, a great bluesman does Some Kind of Fool, and the Good Brothers do Summer Wages.
A favourite cut here though has to be Canadian folk icon Gordon Lightfoot's rendition of Red Velvet.
The only thing really missing here is a rendition of Navajo Rug, maybe Tyson's best known, and best-loved songs. Perhaps for that reason no one felt comfortable covering such a signature song.
Overall this is a great western CD, made even better because of the collection of artists coming together to pay homage to a true star of the Canadian music scene for decades. He has released 11 solo CDs, dating back to 1973, and Four Strong Winds was a hit a decade earlier than that.
This is one to be cherished.

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