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Cathy Lemons And Johnny Ace - Lemonace

Vizztone Label Group

12 Tracks. 60mins:22 secs

www.lemonace.com

Bass man Johnny Ace has been around for a long time. Back in the 1980s his band (Johnny Nitro and the Door Slammers) were considered by many to be the top band in San Francisco. Tommy Castro, now an award winner was sitting in with Mr Ace at the time and both have been deeply influenced by the likes of Muddy Watters and Wilson Pickett. Ace played bass with some of the blues greats, John Lee Hooker, Otis Rush, Charlie Musselwhite and even with Victoria Spivey.

Now Ace has linked up with TX blues-lady Cathy Lemons who comes with a soulful voice and a touch of Texas attitude (‘You can always tell a Texan, but you can’t tell him much’.) and they have brought together some top-class musicians to fill-out this CD.

Tommy Castro is himself on two of the tracks, ‘Used To These Blues’ and ‘When Bad Luck Looks Good‘ whilst Kid Andersen (who also mixed and mastered the CD and helped Lemons and Ace produce) appears on four tracks, one of them ‘Not The Woman I Used To Be’ on organ. Harp maestro Paul Oscher delivers a sterling performance on ‘Gimme A Penny’. (I may be biased here as I am one of those who thinks that Ocher with Muddy is the pinnacle of the blues.)

Most of the songs were written by Lemons and Ace except ‘Got It’, ‘Shoot To Kill’ (co written with Pierre Le Corre (lead guitar on many tracks) and ‘Move On’ by Baby Washington and ‘Gimme A Penny’ by Rhone and Moore. And all the songs are strong and some will undoubtedly be covered before too long.

Not at all ‘traditional’ blues this CD is well worth checking out.

Reviewer Ian McKenzie lives in England. He is the editor of Blues In The South (www.bluesinthesouth.com) a monthly flier providing news, reviews, a gig guide and all kinds of other good stuff, for people living and going to gigs along the south coast of England. Ian is also a blues performer (see www.myspace.com/ianmckenzieuk) and has a web cast regular blues radio show on www.phonic.FM in Exeter (Wednesdays: 1pm Eastern/ 12 noon Central).

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