Artist:     Trudy Lynn

Album:     I Sing the Blues for You

Label:     Connor Ray Music

Release Date:     10/21/2016

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Houston-based veteran blues singer, Trudy Lynn, again teams with harmonica player Steve Krase to leverage the success of 2014’s Royal Oaks Blues Café, a #1  Billboard blues charter, and 2015’s radio charting Everything Comes with a Price with her third release for Connor Ray Music. This is the raw, uncompromising blues we often associate with deep, growling singers like Koko Taylor and Big Mama Thornton, done Texas style. The five piece backing band plays mostly straight ahead blues, giving Krase plenty of room for his soaring harp solos when Lynn’s not belting it out. As with any Lynn effort, (this is her twelfth solo album) there are hints of soul and R&B too. She is a five-time Blues Music Award nominee and recently inducted member of the Houston Music Hall of Fame.

Lynn talks about the album this way, “Choosing material for this album was quite an adventure. In my musical career, there are so many blues artists that I have been inspired by… Each one of these songs means something to me. I truly understand something about each one of them.” Here she covers songs from Big Mama, Lowell Fulson, Memphis Minnie and Johnny ‘Clyde’ Copeland, among others. Her one original, “Thru Chasin’ You,” is on the funky side.

Born as Lee Audrey Nelms in Houston’s Fifth Ward, Trudy began singing as a teenager, but once she reached club status, she quickly realized that she needed a stage name. The club she was working had cartoon character names painted on the wall and she noticed “Trudy.” She paired this with one of the popular names of the day. “Lynn was something in those days,” she recalls.  “Gloria Lynne, Barbara Lynn. I thought, ‘I’m going to one of those Lynns, too, baby.’” Prior to her latter day success with this label, Lynn put out five very highly acclaimed albums for the Ichiban label in the late eighties and early nineties. After a period of a different label for each outing, it is reassuring to see that Lynn has found a home with Connor Ray Music. As with most of her releases, true blues fans will revel in the real deal Trudy Lynn.

-Jim Hynes