Indian Blues | Loppylugs

Submitted by Sian Thomas on 22 May 2016 - 8:47pm

Cover:

Artist:

Donald Harrison Jr

album-ID:

a_184

Nationality:

USA

Year:

1 992

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Hu-Ta-Nay*Indian Blues*Shallow Water*Ja-Ki-Mo-Fi-Na-Hay*Indian Red*Two-Way-Pocky-Way*Cherokee*Hiko Hiko*Uptown Ruler*Big Chief*Walkin’ Home*Shave ’Em Dry

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_70

Now-num:

2 016

Spotify-URL:

49O2OUJQUm6eBCt1gPSr0d

Short-title:

IndianBlues

nominator-ID:

u_109

Meeting-date:

Tuesday, 18 October 2016

MusicBrainz-URL:

d9ef046b-2462-34eb-aa38-aa1760b8817d

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Donald-Harrison-Jr-With-Dr-John-Indian-Blues/master/878915

Allmusic-URL:

indian-blues-mw0000078210

Musixmatch-URL:

Donald-Harrison-feat-Dr-John/Indian-Blues

code

Some global variables used across pages

code

this is code for each album page, to be hidden

review-form data

guest-list data

108

109

117

reviewers-IDs data

-109-

-1-

-14-

-13-

75

reviewed by

Sian Thomas

This is a quintessentially New Orleans album. It blends a number of musical traditions: Mardi Gras Indian chants with contemporary post-bop and Dr John's rhythm & blues. I love it. I bought it on the the strength of Indian Red, which is so beautiful it makes me drive really slowly when I play it in the car, so that I can listen to every note.

I love the blend of musical styles and the chants in particular have a dark mythic quality that I adore, but then I love jazz, so I'm bound to be keen on an album that spans the life of jazz music from its roots to the early 1990s. This is jazz, from the beginning. It echoes the calls of a few freed slaves in Congo Square, who met to spar together, each man claiming to be the fastest, the strongest, or to possess supernatural powers that could destroy his enemies. The sparring became chanting and dancing, which in turn became trad jazz, which in turn spawned almost all contemporary western music. It's irresistible.
70

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

5-8-10

3-7

Putting aside my reservations (no pun intended) about jazz, I was surprised to find I largely enjoyed this one. But, before I get onto that, let's talk about those reservations…

I do like to think I can appreciate a variety of musical styles. And while pop, in its broadest sense, might convey any range of ideas or emotions – anger, fun, claustrophobia, joy, beauty, weirdness, aggression and so on and so forth – I can’t help feeling jazz can have a remarkably limited emotional palette. It seems to me it is all too often trying to capture just one flawed ideal: * jazz * a sort of cool, detached, indifference. That is the nub of my issue with listening to music in this style, I hope that’s useful to you.

Getting back to this specific album, happily the jazz vibe was broken up with enough of a variety of other stuff; more bluesy bits and these unusual Native American colourings. This meant I could enjoy the more typical jazz segments when they came along. The piano playing, in particular, was impressive and a pleasure to follow, on Hiko Hiko especially. I even enjoyed the old fashioned little instrumental passages that occur from time to time, where a particular instrument takes the lead for 16 bars or whatever. I can't help feeling there there should be a polite ripple sounding after each from an audience in a dimly lit, cigarette-smoke filled backstreet venue somewhere. It's kind of reassuring, in a corny sort of way, but actually quite a refreshing change for me to hear these.

Cherokee is an example of the sort of jazz piece that I found a bit of a turn off, going through the jazz motions, without any particular theme or invention and which lacked the generally more uplifting mood of other jazz pieces on the record.

Overall, in spite of my better intentions, I did actually generally enjoy this album.
58

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
25

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Nice, smokin', great...

9

4-6-7

Not strictly a jazz-blues album, more blues-jazz perhaps, but it did rather contain the general jazz cliches which I have an issue with, so at least I got the chance to explore these a little and quantify them somewhat.

Tunes: There seems to be a necessity to build tracks around a common little ditty which gets repeated throughout. They tend to be short passages, quick in tempo, a bit nursery rhyme like. I find them irritating to listen to, like being stuck in a room with someone whistling when you can't escape.

Saxaphone: I'm sure it's a great instrument and expertly played, but I get angry when every track gets swamped by yet another sax solo. A couple of tracks on this album start quite beautifully (i.e. T5 & T9) but are ruined by a quite unecessary sax break.

The vocals, although part of the theme of the album, are rather annoying. The piano is the one thing I enjoy, and saves the album for me, being the pianist that I am.