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Half Deaf Clatch—Songs From The Clatch Cave-Vol 3—Speak
Up Recordings

Half Deaf Clatch is well established on the British Acoustic Blues
scene and is prolific when it comes to releasing albums. ‘Songs
From The Clatch Cave—Vol 3’ as the name suggests is the third
release in a series of lockdown recordings.

The album opens with ‘Beware of the Werewolf’ a title that
makes me smile, followed by ‘Boneyard Bound’ with some lovely
bluesy slide guitar.

As is the great tradition of solo acoustic blues artists over the years to be first and foremost

storytellers, Clatch really carries this baton for the cause. What sets him out from the rest is his
attention to detail. His compositions are slick and often niche with regard to subject matter, there
is a hint of the macabre, a hint of humour. The song ‘Bright Lights and Bedlam’ fuels the
imagination with the title alone!

Underpinning these stories are a precision guitar sound and a great vocal delivery. In fact his voice

has often been compared to Tom Waits with some justification and here he covers a Tom Waits
song ‘Coney Island Baby’.

He does a great version of ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ breathing new life into this all time classic
song. My favourite on the album is ‘Little Missiles’ not only because of his wordplay with the song

‘Little Boxes’ which I remember singing as a child but also the poignancy of the lyrics. I couldn’t
help but smile once again when I listened to ‘Groovin Godzilla’ yet another killer song title. ‘Slide
Wars’ an instrumental closes the album.

The amount of detail that Clatch puts into the associated artwork, the videos and design really
compliments this album of well constructed songs. The stripped back style of musicianship

whether it be six string, resonator or banjo is first class.

All you need to change the world is a guitar and a good story, check this out now!

Ged Wilson

Snooks Eaglin—New Orleans Street Singer—Jasmine Records
Jasmcd 3132

Way back in the early nineteen sixties, we were able to purchase
the first L.P. of Snooks Eaglin (same title on Folkways Records) and
what a fantastic talent was revealed. Here was a young man who
was referred to by Allen Toussaint as the 'human juke box', because

he could play pretty much anything asked of him.

This double cd set contains three Snooks Eaglin albums, the above
mentioned, plus the Bluesville Records release of ‘That's Alright’,
and sixteen tracks he recorded for the Imperial label between 1960
and 1962.