Published on May 14, 2001
Someone in the Great Random CD Draw in the sky seems to think I
need to develop a taste for N’awlins music and blues, because they
keep sending me all these great CDs. The latest in the series is
the new project by acoustic blues guitarist and singer Corey Harris
and N’awlins piano player and singer Henry Butler,
vu-du menz. (I hate standard character sets. Both “u”s in
that name are supposed to have an umlaut two dots over them, the e
in
menz should be a schwa, and the z should have a caret over
it. Deal.)
Released by Chicago blues label Alligator,
vu-du menz is a tribute to the thirties style of acoustic
blues and Crescent City barrelhouse blues and jazz. It’s somewhere
between Jelly Roll Morton and Robert Johnson, at various points raw
as fingernails on a blackboard and smooth as absinthe. It is the
sound pure and unsanitized; there’s no Bobby Troup or Harry Connick
Jr here, but the sound that rang from Storyville windows during the
golden age.
The CD starts off with “Let ‘Em Roll”, and the rolling
barrelhouse
chords contrast neatly with the blues shouting style in the
vocals. Production is spare and neat, with the string and key
sounds still present in the work; the simplicity of the engineering
makes it feel like Butler and Harris are in your living room.
Alligator knows blues up, down, and forward, and it shows on works
like this.
vu-du menz is a balancing act between joyous celebration and
serious, thoughtful blues, and the dichotomy works. Songs like
“Shake What Your Mama Gave You”, “If I Was Your Man”, “Sugar
Daddy”, and “Song Of The Pipelayer” show the bawdy, good-time side
of blues and barrelhouse, but “Mulberry Row” takes a hard look at
the legacy of slavery, “Didn’t My Lord
Deliver Daniel?” and “Why Don’t You Live So God Can Use You”
are traditional spirituals. “L’esprit de James” is a wonderful
instrumental, “There’s No Substitute For Love” has a soulful feel
to it, and “Voodoo Man” is just a brilliant piece of piano blues.
And where else but on a blues album can you get the helpful
interpersonal counseling of “If You Let A Man Kick You Once”?
In short,
vu-du menz is a tasty, tasty piece of acoustic blues and
Crescent City piano. We can only hope for more work from
Harris and Butler together. If this is voudoun, then Marie Laveau
can show up on my stereo any day.