So yesterday and today I’ve been listening to a couple of female blues musicians. Eden Brent whose album Ain’t Got No Troubles on Yellow Dog Records is currently number 2 on the Roots Music Blues Charts and Rita Chiarelli whose current release Sweet Paradise is sitting at number 8!
Eden Bret aka “Little Boogaloo” a name bestowed upon her by the late blues pioneer Boogaloo Ames after Brant served a 16-year apprenticeship with Ames. Brent is a Mississippi delta jazz musician who plays a mean piano and sings pretty well too! Brant is a three-time Blues Music Award Winner, winning the 2009 Acoustic Album and Acoustic Artist. She was also named the 2010 Pinetop Perkins Piano Player of the Year. In 2006 she won the Blues Foundation’s International Blues Challenge! You can read more about Eden at her page at Yellow Dog Records. Here’s what USA Today says about Brent:
Draws from the boogie-woogie piano bible and evokes the raw vocal sound of Bessie Smith, only with a friendlier New Orleans tinge…”
The title track “Ain’t Got No Troubles” was an NPR song of the day. The piano playing throughout this album is obviously what really stands out! Check out her playing on this track “My Man” from the album!
Rita Chiarelli has been dubbed the Canadian Goddess of the Blues by CBC’s Shelagh Rogers. Sweet Paradise is her eight album. Here’s what some folks says about Rita:
“Tina Turner and Bonnie Raitt may define her genre, but this Rita Chiarelli is going to make you a believer.” – Jack Wallingford, Blues Revue Magazine
“Once in a lifetime you hear a voice so blue it makes the angels cry. Rita Chiarelli is that voice.” – Ronnie Hawkins
Rita Chiarelli has a JUNO win and four nominations, and has won multiple Maple Blues Awards, Canadian Folk Music, and Toronto Independent Music awards. She is an honourary lifetime member of The Manitoba Blues Society. The opening line of her bio. on her website says it all
“Rita Chiarelli… a voice that can growl at her demons or soar with the angels, a gift for lyric, an ear for melody and the heart to combine them.”
While I’ve listened to both of these albums several times and like them after two nights of finishing work past 11:00 and 10:00 o’clock and the Eagles on I can’t think of my favorite tracks right now! So check out Rita’s music on her Reverbnation page or Myspace!
Here’s Rita with the classic “Statesboro Blues”