Les Sampou

Les Sampou | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 11, 1999)
• Original Release Date: May 11, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Flying Fish Records
• ASIN: B00000IMZO
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #205,393 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Personal, February 21, 2001

By 

"emeraldavatar" (Jersey City, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Les Sampou (Audio CD)

This is a great album with a strong personal touch. The songs are really emotional - not that sappy, honey-laden fake emotion we hear too often, and not the indiscriminate, inarticulate "everybody sucks, life sucks, I hate everything and aren't I ironic?" kind either. (Two guesses who I'm talking about). This album is real. Sampou sings her stories like they actually mean something, and knows how to make the lyrics tell the story. Even though this isn't my usual musical cup of tea - the blues-rock with folk sensibilities and minor key guitar work doesn't really get me moving in most cases - I love this album. Buy it, and forget about the top-ten "singer songwriter" fakes.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great offering, January 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Les Sampou (Audio CD)

Its hard to decide what I like most about this CD - the great lyrics or the great music..... Les Sampou writes lyrics that paint stories with emotion and punch. Theres a great mix of tunes here as well - Sitting on Jupitor (if you've heard her live you may know it as "thin blue line"), Same fine line and Hanging by a thread being favorites of mine.

Check it out!

4.0 out of 5 stars Once Again, Keeping The Blues/Folk Lamp Burning, June 13, 2009

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Les Sampou (Audio CD)

The substance of this review was originally used in the review of Les Sampou's "Borrowed And Blue" album. I have revised that review and most of the points made apply to the other three CD's reviewed in this space as well.

The name Les Sampou most recently came up in this space, in passing, as part of a review of blues/folk stylist/ songwriter Rory Block's work. I made the point there that Rory (and Les, Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and precious few others) were performing a great service by keeping the female blue singer tradition alive (and, for that matter, male-witness the songs covered by all four). And along the way doing the same for the more amorphous contemporary folk tradition with their own fair share of masterful songwriting efforts. Since I placed Les Sampou in such august company it was, thus, only a matter of time before I got around to giving her a few kudos of her own. The following paragraph from the Rory Block review can serve here for Les as well:

"But more than that, thanks for this great album of country blues classics some famous, some a little obscure and known only to serious aficionados but all well worth placing in the album with the quirky little Rory Block treatment that makes many of the songs her own. Oh, did I also mention her virtuoso strong guitar playing. Well, that too. I have gone on and on elsewhere in this space about the old time women blues singers, mostly black, like Bessie Smith, Victoria Spivey and Ida Cox. I have also spilled some ink on more modern, mainly white, women blues singers like Bonnie Raitt, Maria Muldaur and a local talent here in Boston, Les Sampou, and their admirable (and necessary) efforts to carry on this proud tradition. Rory belongs right up there with these women."

As For "Les Sampou" here is the `skinny':

There are a lot of ways to be "in" the contemporary folk scene. One way is to write some topical songs of love, longings for love, maybe, a little politics thrown in and maybe some snappy thing about the vacuity of modern life. Yes, that is the easy stuff and Les can, if the occasion calls for it, summon up some very powerful lyrics to make those points. Witness "Broken Pieces" and the almost self-explanatory "Hanging By A Thread". But, something more is going on here. This is a woman who has been through the emotional wringer, and survived. Listen to the heartrending "Happy Anniversary" and the slightly, just slightly, more hopeful "Same Fine Line". You can't fake that stuff.