Random Review #15 2011 The Black Keys - Chulahoma

C9S3CD11 Column 9 in my CD collection is mostly blues music in my collection so we could have quite easily be listening to some very traditional blues as I went through a phase of listening to very little other than blues delving back to the roots of blues music of Robert Johnson right up to the more modern take of blues using loops and dubs of Little Axe.

This release sits somewhere between the 2, lets get this straight The Black Keys are very cool, cool like the White Stripes who are recycling blues music in a modern format so that new music purchasers don't even release they are buying the blues and therefore bringing a whole new audience to a new genre of music. This release only contains 7 tracks but all are covers of Junior Kimbourgh songs, for those that don't know Junior Kimbourgh played Juke Blues, in the deep south of America, along with RL Burnside, T-Model Ford, and Robert Cage to name but a few who were all discovered playing in tiny illegal drinking dens for people to dance to for hours on end. Mostly they played electric guitar blues unaccompanied, repeating the same riff over and over whilst people danced in a semi hypnotic state. A lot of these artists were discovered by the Fat Possum Record Label team who went on to release a number of fantastic CD's by these artists and brought them to the music public.

This release is The Black Keys tribute to Junior Kimbrough with them rattling their way through 7 of his songs. His rougher edges have been smoothed away and what you get is The Black Keys putting their own style of 7 blues classics and as I have said before what's not to like! Classic blues brought to a new audience in a style that makes the youth of today think it's something special just means somebody might go and discover Junior Kimbrough or anyone of the artists I have mentioned and that can only be a good thing.

In their 2010 release Brothers The Black Keys proved that they are a band on top of their game with the world at their feet, but if you stumble upon this CD you won't be disappointed it just goes to show where the The Black Keys picked up some of their licks and why they sound like they do!

Mark 8/10