THE MANNISH BOYS "SHAKE FOR ME" Source: Blues Art Journal Date: 05/2010 Writer: Norman Darwen

Celebrating five years of Delta Groove (the label, I mean, though the comment is apt in other ways too!), and not uncoincidentally perhaps, their fifth album, the loose collective that works under the name The Mannish Boys has come up with yet another winner.

That is, as long as you like the no-nonsense blues of the fifties and sixties, sung by such authentic singers as Bobby Jones, Finis Tasby, Johnny Dyer and Arthur Adams, backed by great musicians such as Kirk Fletcher, Fred Kaplan, Jimi Bott, Frank 'Paris Slim' Goldwasser, Rod Piazza, Lynwood Slim, Mitch Kashmar and others. For the repertoire, the guys began to seek out lesser-known items from the canons of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf (I'd long since given up hope of ever hearing again someone take a fragmentary vocal like Wolf's 'You Can't Be Beat' and making it sound convincing – but Bobby Jones does just that!), Johnny 'Guitar' Watson and more of a similar ilk, and then wrote a few of their own in the classic vein.

Wonderful stuff – one for all the real blues lovers in the house.