C.W. Stoneking: King Hokum (Inertia)

 |   |  <1 min read

C.W. Stoneking: King Hokum (Inertia)

Okay, this one had me stumped -- and increasingly impressed. The guy on the black'n'white cover sitting outside a clapboard shack is a round-faced thirty something white guy, but the guy singing on the album is quite obviously a sixtysomething black guy from somewhere in the Old South, maybe even recorded in the Thirties.

I could only think the cover was some kind of joke. Fact is that the "sixtysomething black guy" is the white guy on the cover, he is Stoneking from Footscray near Melbourne who plays banjo, dobro and guitar, and has a band which includes tuba, clarinet, trombone, sousaphone and double bass.

That's a pretty authentic line-up of instruments for his original songs which are located right at the heart of jazz-blues in the Twenties and Thirties. These immediately engaging songs have titles like Charley Bostocks Blues, Goin' The Country, Bad Luck Everywhere You Go, Handyman Blues and Rich Man Blues, all titles which could have come from 78s.

Stoneking isn't parodying or even ripping off this music, he's obviously a genuine aficionado who comes from within the genre with love and respect. He's also made a damn fine album of memorable songs, some a bit raunchy in that old heavy-innuendo style, which is at first bewildering.

You may start by asking, "Why?" but by the end you'll be saying "Wow".

Terrific stuff.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Blues at Elsewhere articles index

Joe Louis Walker's Blues Conspiracy: Live on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise (Stony Plain)

Joe Louis Walker's Blues Conspiracy: Live on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise (Stony Plain)

That this was recorded on a Caribbean cruise might tell you all you need about its crowd-pleasing nature. But Walker's guests (guitarists Johnny Winter, Tab Benoit and Duke Robillard, Watermelon... > Read more

Howlin' Wolf: The Howlin' Wolf Album (Set on Down)

Howlin' Wolf: The Howlin' Wolf Album (Set on Down)

One of the assertions on the cover of this album – released in 69, reissued after a long absence – isn't true. Bluesman Howlin' Wolf had been an “early adopter” of... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

KINGMAKER by SONIA PURNELL

KINGMAKER by SONIA PURNELL

Pamela Digby did not marry well but she did, in a way, marry wisely. Everyone warned her off Randolph whom she had only been with a few times before she agreed to his proposal. Both wanted... > Read more

PRINCES AMONGST MEN: JOURNEYS WITH GYPSY MUSICIANS by GARTH CARTWRIGHT

PRINCES AMONGST MEN: JOURNEYS WITH GYPSY MUSICIANS by GARTH CARTWRIGHT

London-based author Cartwright made his name in New Zealand in the late 80s/early 90s as an opinionated and often contentious art and music critic, and an award-winning journalist. His... > Read more