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Cascade Blues Music ReviewsFeed My Body To The Fishes
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Cascade Blues Music ReviewsFeed My Body To The Fishes
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Music Review Reprint from the
July, 2002 BluesNotes
By Greg Johnson
Total Time 46:42
Jack Cook has long been one of the Northwest's best practitioners of playing older, obscure Blues songs. He has quite a deep knowledge of material that most people may have forgotten or simply never knew. And, one of the great feats accomplished by Cook with these songs is that he makes them come across sounding brand new, fun and alive. Recently, Jack traveled to Germany and set down tracks with German harmonica master Marc Breitfelder, making up this latest release. True to form for Cook, he has gathered another fine selection of older songs from a variety of sources which reads like a Blues history lesson: Speckled Red, Sleepy John Estes, Peg Leg Howell and Ishman Bracey among them. Many of the songs will be familiar if you've attended a Jack Cook performance and that makes them all the more special on a personal level. Songs such as Louis Jordan's "Chicken Ain't Nothin' But A Bird" or Freddy Cole's "Mama Didn't Raise No Crazy Kids" will surely place a smile on your face, while numbers with a more serious note will hold your attention not only with their lyrics, but by the exceptional musicianship displayed by Cook and Breitfelder. Not all of the songs are fare from the pre-war Blues era, which Cook often draws his material from. There is also a fine reading of the Jazz standard, "Work Song", and a piece written by fellow Northwest raconteur Johnnie Ward, titled "Supermarket Prices." All-in-all, this CD is a worthy addition to any acoustic fan's collection.
© 2002 Cascade Blues Association