The Charles Ford Band The Charles Ford Band

I came across this CD pretty much by accident, never having heard of the Charles Ford Band before. Robben (gtr/vcl), Mark (hca), and Patrick Ford (d) are brothers and make up three-quarters of the band; Stanley Poplin is the fourth member on bass. The music they play is hard-core blues, straight out of the James Cotton and Paul Butterfield Blues Bands. Their slow blues pieces such as BLUE AND LONESOME and BLACK NIGHT are long and languorous with lots of solo space. Mark plays beautiful, heartfelt harmonica with lots of tremolo; the up-tempo WILD WOMAN features him nicely. Willie Dixon's I LOVE THE LIFE I LIVE gets a good treatment, though Robben's guitar solo near the end takes on a Jimi Hendrix feel that seems anomalous to the rest of the tune. The final track is taken from a live date and is an instrumental version of John Coltrane's THE PROMISE, and it's quite different from everything that's come before it. Nuff said about that cut. Robben's vocals have a John Hammond, Jr. flavor to them, though not quite as rough. I really enjoyed this CD and anyone who likes the Butterfield-Cotton-Johnny Winter approach to the blues should dig it too.