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Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar—The Reckless One—Gypsy Soul
Records ASIN : B08J22K25D

I'd never heard of Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar before but
they had me right from the off with 'Love Is All Around' (not the
Troggs song) with its driving Stax-style soul sounds. The band
hails from Toronto, Canada and the album contains all original
songs, apart from a cover of Dylan's 'Meet Me in the Morning' -

which is delivered in the same high-energy manner. 'Loving You Is
Easy' drops the pace slightly and features some nice slide guitar
alongside the Hammond organ and the horns, while 'I’ve Got a
Feeling' is a brilliant stop-time soul ballad with Samantha's
tortured vocals riding over subdued horns, organ and clipped guitar. 'Sacrifice' and 'Pass Me By' are
both dramatic soul stompers and 'Better to Have Never' is a soul ballad with Samantha's superb
blues voice out front and also with a tasteful, gentle guitar solo. This is an impressive album and

Samantha has a powerful but versatile voice and she also wrote or co-wrote the songs here, with the
band providing great backing throughout.

Graham Harrison

Dr. John—Gumbo Blues—Cleopatra Records ASIN : B08J16N9K7
Cleopatra records recently put out a record by Junior Wells where
old recordings by Junior were augmented by adding guitar parts by
current blues artists, they have now repeated this trick with 1974
recordings by Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. (Dr. John) with new
backing tracks including contributions by amongst others Joe Louis
Walker, Sonny Landreth, Buddy Whittington and Doug Kershaw. I

must admit that I was uneasy about this concept in regards to the
Junior Wells record but I have to admit that it was done very well
with some tracks working fine and the same applies here, I think
you'd be hard pressed to realise on first listen that these are
'doctored' recordings.

Most of the guitarists here are very subtle (if not subdued) in what they contribute, although Brit
Chantel McGregor is normally quite in your face here on 'Helpin' Hand' she stays very much in the
background except for a tasteful solo and Sonny Landreth is almost invisible on his turn on 'Bald
Head'. Another Brit playing here is Matt Schofield and he plays wonderfully on Professor Longhair's
'Tipitina' - normally a piano showcase - whereas another European guitarist Finn Erja Lyytinen

stays very much in the background. Joe Louis Walker, Buddy Whittington, Rafael Nasta, Eli Cook
and newcomer King Solomon Hicks are all a bit more prominent but are still very much part of the
overall band and don't detract from Mac's piano and vocals. For me this album wasn't as successful
as the Junior Wells 'Blues Brothers' album, I didn't think that many of the guitarist’s featured
contributions added a great deal to the original recordings and in some cases they actually detracted
from the original overall balance of the songs.

Graham Harrison

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