Customer Reviews

Blues Mongrel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a truly great album, and goes way beyond straight ahead blues. Carlos Del Junco is a world champion harp player and winner of many national and international awards. He plays beautifully and brilliantly across all the tracks of this CD. The album is an exciting eclectic mix of blues, jazz , latin, bluegrass, and country and features a great group of musicians in addition to Carlos himself. I had read multiple great reviews of this album before I had chance to hear it myself and the praise is well deserved. Anyone who enjoys virtuoso harmonica playing and blues/jazz based music will love this CD. Highly recommended.

Harpist Carlos del Junco accentuates carefully placed golden melodies and lounge-tenor vocals that will give his southern American bandleader counterparts a listening ear. As a harmonica player, del Junco has a wonderful understanding of traditional music styles. His knowledge of Latin rhythms and percussion leads to abrupt stops and key changes mid-tune, and he has been known to "split" his harmonica at times during solos. Kevin Breit, the album's bottleneck and guitar player, shines on this record with dirty and drunken bottleneck rhythms. Breit fills the dozen tracks with whiskey fuzz and hammer-down tube-amp drawls that mimic none other than Lightnin' Hopkins himself; with de-tuned low strings and lollygagging slide. This record is recommended for fans of Rod Piazza, and the James Harman Band. - Brett Lemke - (...)

This music talks to my soul. I love it! The whole thing.

True art all the way.

the confidence and versatility of his playing will at first make you want to throw all your harps out the window and try piano instead. he's so amazingly good it'll make you smile.

I love what I've heard from this label in the past, especially Paul Reddick's stuff. But the claim on the cover was definitely false advertising. Nothing here resembles the blues of Led Zeppelin or John Mayall--this is not only a different style of music, but that's like comparing In Sync to the Beatles. He's got some interesting harmonica chops, but maybe they're too eclectic for me. I appreciate his talent, but this ain't the raw, driving blues I expected it to be.