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FRANK
GOLDWASSER "BLUJU"
Source: Living Blues Magazine
Date: 05/2007
Writer: Lee Hildebrand |
“I first came to Oakland in 1981. I got a gig playing at Eli’s Mile High Club with Troyce Key, J.J. Malone, and the Rhythm Rockers,” singer-guitarist Frank Goldwasser says during a monologue on his terrific new CD. A slow, lazy blues, featuring Malone’s piano and an uncredited organist, underpins the Paris-born musician’s reminiscences about the Oakland blues scene in the ’80s. “They had a few places out in West Oakland, you’d think you were down south somewhere, like in Texas or Mississippi,” he adds.
In the quarter century since his arrival in California, Goldwasser has not only lost his French accent when he speaks and sings, but he has mastered and internalized many different American blues guitar styles. Elements of West Coast masters Lafayette Thomas and Lowell Fulson inform Goldwasser’s stinging, fast-fingered fretwork, as do those of such other pickers as Hubert Sumlin, Matt Murphy, Pat Hare, Albert Collins, and Joe Louis Walker. He seldom apes their approaches, however, instead using them as raw ingredients from which to brew a personal, passion-filled musical stew of his own. His singing, though unremarkable, is consistently authoritative.
Produced by Randy Chortkoff prior to his founding of Delta Groove Productions and originally issued in 2003 on the Crosscut label in Germany, bluju has now been reissued on Delta Groove with two additional tracks, both of them tunes by Hound Dog Taylor, Goldwasser’s initial blues inspiration. Besides nine thoughtfully constructed Goldwasser originals—one sung in French over a second-line beat—he puts his stamp on numbers associated with Fulson, Elmore James, Jimmy Reed, and Phillip Walker (who guests on a remake of his Playing In The Park). While Goldwasser’s music is steeped in genuine juke-joint traditions, he offers numerous twists in his arrangements. James’ Twelve Year Old Boy, for instance, is rendered in 9/4 time. For the original Homesick Blues, Goldwasser plays slide and Alex Schultz plays wah-wah guitar over an intricately syncopated groove borrowed from Somalian artist Maryam Mursal. Hand percussionists, including the Egyptian tabla player Soulhail Kaspar, turn up on a few tracks. And on Reed’s I’m A Love You, Goldwasser blows a harmonica solo under which a vocal group chants the “uh, huh, yeah, yeah” riff that Etta James and the Moonglows once sang behind Chuck Berry on Almost Grown. Other guests on this highly intriguing disc include guitarists Kirk Eli Fletcher and Alaistair Green and saxophonist-arranger Dave “Woody” Woodford. |
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