Eddie Martin - Black, White and Blue

Bitrate: 320K/s
Year: 2016
Time: 49:13
Size: 112,8 MB
Label: Blueblood Records
Styles: Blues/Blues Rock
Art: Front

Tracks Listing:
 1. Mississippi Sound - 4:54
 2. Angry - 5:25
 3. Black, White and Blue - 5:10
 4. I Choose You - 5:28
 5. Too Much Choice - 4:25
 6. Graceful Ways - 4:39
 7. I've Lost my phone - 3:24
 8. How - 4:44
 9. Song of Five Things - 4:01
10. It all Depends - 6:59

Explosive and exciting: That’s how a blues rock album should start, and Eddie Martin’s 10th studio album “Black White and Blue” begins like it means to take no prisoners. But if you are expecting endless guitar soloing and a generic list of grooves instead of proper songs – so often the case with blues-rock releases – you are soon enlightened. Martin’s songs may ROCK but they are well-crafted and sophisticated. After 2 rave-reviewed big band projects, the blues-man Eddie Martin is back with 10 original songs and a punchy trio for his 16th release. “Black White and Blue” marks a career pinnacle for this prolific musician and his 30-year mission to explore, study and update blues traditions.  His humble respect to the Afro-American legacy goes deep and he is not shy to acknowledge the racism that gave birth to the blues. But here he is also cool about the contribution of his white-boy contemporaries since the era of Classic Rock. A verse in the album title song puts it like this “The African legacy shines like a jewel..We’re now in a blend,  but the history is bruised: It’s all black, white and blue.” Martin can strut a blues-rock guitar solo with the best of them (Hendrix and SRV influences resonate on “Angry” and the title track “Black, White and Blue” for example), but Martin is all about pushing the genre forward. Alongside his fluid slide playing and pyrotechnic Strat-wielding he also showcases his extraordinary simultaneous harp and guitar soloing skills. In fact, for all the simplicity of the line-up here, this album is like a lesson in how many different textures and sounds you can treat a bunch of strong songs to in a trio.
Variety is key and Martin’s multi-instrumental virtuosity helps (even though he left his acoustic instruments at home for this set). The soundscapes embrace country slide picking on his gritty Telecaster Custom as on “How”, slide and harp boogie-rock as on the testifying “Mississippi Sound”, but also slick bluesy rock ballad as in “I Choose You” with female backing singer Elles Bailey, to T Bone Walker and Peter Green influences as on “I’ve Lost My Phone” and the tender “Graceful Ways”. Commended by the Penguin Guide to Modern Blues Recordings for the “originality and intelligence in his music” it is not surprising that often Martin’s lyrics are deeper than the usual blues-rock fayre. The album closer “It All Depends” darkly ponders post-modern political themes, but then “I’ve Lost My Phone” and “Too Much Choice” explore comic situations with everyman humour. But the variety doesn’t detract from the unity of the album. Abrasive angst is balanced by mature-lovers themes. The carefree humour of “Too Much Choice” and “I’ve Lost My Phone” is the yin to the yang of heavier numbers like “It All Depends” and “Song of Five Things”.
After completing his mammoth Anglo-Italian blues orchestra project Big Red Radio, Martin chose simpler options. Staying home to work in a trio, he recruited outstanding young players from the lively Bristol music scene, Tom Gilkes and Zak Ranyard. They ably rose to the challenge of Martin’s approach to the blues, which could perhaps be summed up as “Study and Respect Tradition and then Follow your Own Star”.  Dishing out the coolest of grooves – as if with sacred reverence to the jook joint blues tenet that dropping the beat is a shootable offence – the lads command an impressive style range and still come up with something new along the way (just listen to Gilkes’ playful cymbal lines).
Martin is full of surprises and, running his own record label, he relishes the creative freedom this allows to do something fresh and different each release. If it means his work is sometimes difficult to pigeon-hole then don’t worry. As Willie Dixon said “Blues is the roots: the rest is the fruits”. Eddie comes out rocking on this one. But its nothing if not a juicy new fruit to savour from the blues stall of the “Ambassador of British Blues”.

Black, White and Blue