Instrument World

From a marketing standpoint, Blues Bureau International could have come up with a much better title for this 2009 release than simply Travelin' Blues. Ideally, the title should have been something along the lines of Travelin' Blues: The Best of the Blues Bureau Years, Vol. 1, because this 61-minute CD is, in fact, a best-of collection focusing on hard rock and blues-rock that Pat Travers recorded for Blue Bureau in the 1990s and 2000s. Many of Travers' longtime fans will agree that the Canadian singer/guitarist recorded his most essential work in the 1970s and early '80s, but his Blues Bureau discs are nothing to be ashamed of -- and this collection finds him in fine form on solid originals (including "Time Out," "Too Cool Woman Blues," and the title track) as well as ballsy performances of Willie Dixon's "Built for Comfort" (a Chess Records gem closely identified with Howlin' Wolf), Muddy Waters' "Rock Me, Baby," the Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post," and Buddy Miles' "Them Changes." Travers turned 40 in 1994, 50 in 2004, and 55 in 2009, but thankfully, these recordings demonstrate that he hasn't mellowed at all since the 1970s; Travers hasn't lost his grit as a singer, and his guitar playing is as aggressive as ever. Why Blues Bureau simply called this collection Travelin' Blues instead of coming up with a title drawing attention to the fact that it is a best-of collection is anyone's guess, but that doesn't make these 1990s and 2000s performances any less exciting. Travelin' Blues is an appropriate starting point if one is exploring Travers' Blues Bureau output for the first time.

Not all blues artists use the phrase "low down and dirty" as a badge of honor. There are also the uptown blues artists, who are gritty and soulful but also pride themselves on their jazz-influenced sophistication. Typically, uptown blues artists love jazz (especially soul-jazz); are likely to use a Hammond B-3 organ; and have influences like Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Williams, Percy Mayfield, and Jimmy Rushing. But in most blues circles, "low down and dirty" remains a big selling point -- and that continues to hold true in everything from acoustic Mississippi country blues to electric Chicago blues to blues-soul. On this 77-minute compilation, low down and dirty usually means blues-rock. Tough, muscular, ballsy blues-rock dominates Blues Bureau's Low Down and Dirty Blues Collection, Vol. 1: Slow Jams, and there is no shortage of grit on performances by Pat Travers ("Too Much Is Never Enough"), Eric Gales ("Freedom from My Demons"), Stoney Curtis ("Blues Without You"), and Leslie West ("Third Degree"). Any CD with names like Travers, West, and Rick Derringer is bound to have a lot of rock appeal, and this 2009 release maintains a strong rock element even when it detours into more jazz-minded territory on two instrumentals: Neal Schon's "Blues for Miles" (as in Miles Davis) and Scott Henderson's "That Hurts." Henderson and Schon, however, aren't combining blues and jazz in the way that the honkers of the 1940s and 1950s or organ combos of the 1960s combined blues and jazz; "Blues for Miles" and "That Hurts" are straight-up fusion -- and despite being more cerebral than most of the other tracks, they still have plenty of guitar-powered rock bravado and don't detract from the compilation's loud-and-proud aesthetic. Blues Bureau's Low Down and Dirty Blues Collection, Vol. 1: Slow Jams isn't the last word on the label's contributions to blues-rock, but it's still a rewarding and generous sample of what the Blues Bureau catalog has to offer