Big Joe Duskin
Big Joe Jumps Again!
Yellow Dog Records (www.yellowdogrecords.com)
When you’re ready for an education on the Cincinnati blues, Big Joe Duskin’s latest album, Big Joe Jumps Again!, is a great place to start. It’s part boogie, part ballad and all soul. With a voice that has only become richer and more sincere with age (Big Joe is pushing 84), Duskin opens the door to his life to you via music in a wonderful 16-track disc that is sure to please blues aficionados as well as those tasting blues for the first time.
Big Joe starts the album with “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” a fitting song for his first studio effort in 27 years. This track serves as a warm up into “Every Day I have the Blues,” featuring Peter Frampton, which is followed by Duskin banging out a number of blues standards on the piano with the accompaniment of fellow Cincinnatians Ed Conley and Phillip Paul on bass and guitar, respectively, in a session at Monfort Heights United Methodist Church in Cincinnati.
Duskin moves through all of the themes that belong to blues such as drinking (“Sloppy Drunk Blues,” “Beer Drinking Woman”), looking for a good woman (“Get out of My Way”) and loving the Lord (“Just a Closer Walk with Thee”). And Duskin’s comical explanation of his father’s hatred of boogie and blues in “The Preacher and the Devil’s Music” caused me to be endeared to Big Joe Duskin on a level most artists never reach.
In fact, the entire CD felt more like a concert in Duskin’s living room than a recording, and I found myself smiling during “Mean & Strange” when Duskin belts out, “When I ask you to bring my shoes,/ You bring me in a suit./ If you don’t get yourself together/ I’m gonna get my gun and shoots you.” Because by this time in the album, I know Big Joe personally and am certain he would never do such a thing.
Finally…Your music collection is not complete without Big Joe Jumps Again! Big Joe is an exceptionally gracious host, and you’ll feel so at ease in his presence that you’ll want to revisit this disc over and over. Besides, this is more than an album – it’s a part of the musical history of America.
Daniel Brantley
earcandycritic@yahoo.com