Artist: Jeff Chaz
Album: Sound Like the Blues to Me
Label: JCP Records
Release Date: 03/18/2016
Jeff Chaz has apparently played with many gone bluesmen including Albert King and Little Milton, to name but two. And if this release is anything to go by, they sure had some pretty top quality support at hand. Sounds Like the Blues to Me is a twelve track offering dripping quality from every pore. A truly excellent studio performance that’s absolutely bang on the buck.
This is an album of all originals from New Orleans-based Chaz marking his first release in a decade, since he launched post-Katrine album In Exile back in 2006. I’ve yet to hear this earlier album so can’t compare the two, but frankly that is hardly necessary because this current album is packed with gripping fretwork, gravelly vocals and assured writing.
Raw and raucous at turns, it is also paced perfectly with a variety of songs that cover the emotional gantry while delivering hints of high-energy, tough, old solid R&B and blues that both B.B. and Albert King would have been proud to call their own. Chaz doesn’t just sound like the blues, but on this package he clearly is the blues. A top-dollar, full hog offering.
– Iain Patience
Be the first to comment!