It’s one thing to interview a legacy artist over the phone. It’s another to sit knee to knee with him and watch his fingers sail across the fret board.
Author: Don Wilcock
Don Wilcock
Now into his second half century as the warrior music journalist, Don Wilcock began his career writing “Sounds from The World” in Vietnam, a weekly reader’s digest of pop music news for grunts in the field for the then largest official Army newspaper in the world, The Army Reporter. He’s edited BluesWax, FolkWax, The King Biscuit Times, Elmore Magazine, and also BluesPrint as founder of the Northeast Blues Society. Internationally, he’s written for The Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards program, Blues Matters and Blues World. He wrote the definitive Buddy Guy biography 'Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,' and is currently writing copy for a coffee table book of watercolor paintings of blues artists by Clint Herring.
Linsey Alexander’s Live at Rosa’s is perfectly suited for the times we’re in. For post-war Chicago blues fans it’s a comfort blanket. No surprises, no attempts to push any envelopes. Just solid South Side Chicago blues beautifully recorded by the Windy City label that hasn’t wavered in its mission since Bob Koester founded it in 1953. While Chess, VeeJay, Cobra and other small indie labels beginning in the early 50s were tweaking the newly plugged in sound with heavily produced music that spiked the live nightclub sets by A&R guys — particularly Willie Dixon, to create recordings to generate record…
As a music journalist, I have half a century of interviews with artists who prove that age is relative and is measured in one’s health, vitality, creativity and attitude more than in chronological age.
We’re being told that live music may well be the last element of life as we’ve known to come back. But the blues is no stranger to hardship.
For the first time in history, all of humanity is suffering from the same enemy. This disease is an equal opportunity destroyer.
Says Bob Dylan, “Dion knows how to sing, and he knows just the right way to craft these songs, these blues songs. He’s got some friends here to help him out, some true luminaries. But in the end, it’s Dion by himself alone, and that masterful voice of his that will keep you returning to share these Blues songs with him.”
Indeed, this album is the “shelter” from the storm that permeates so much of today’s electric blues and Americana.
In my 2004 interview with Pitney he shrugged off this seemingly uncanny ability to fit in with every kind of eccentric in the business.
Music is medicine. Sometimes it’s a lifeline.
Come home to the 35th annual King Biscuit Blues Festival.