Rory Block [Ain't I A Woman]Well here's a Blues disc, i only have about 8 Blues discs in my collection, at one point i purposely tried buying a number of Blues discs to try to get more into this genre, i must admit it's a hard area to get into, there's so many poor or average Blues albums out there, my disc collection is so Classical heavy, i would love to balance it out by getting into this genre more, but i waste oodles of money on trying to find a decent Blues album.
Aurora Block is in her sixties now, she's made many albums, but to my ears each album has hits and misses on it, this in my mind is her best album, it certainly isn't great but definitely good, there always seems to be a gem worth mining.
One of the things you soon find out about her own compositions, is that she has a tendency to not use rhyming in her words, this can throw you a bit at first, but it shows a deeper maturity at being able to really say something, while not propping it all up on this age old device.
I really like track 6 'Rolling Log', it's acoustic, with just another guitarist, a song by Lottie Beaman, it has two memorable devices, one introduced at the beginning, a high guitar jingle that starts to decend down the strings [0:00-0:08], and the other is this mmmmm hum from Block, that is really passionate [0:11-0:15], both come back again and again, a touching song about drifting, and a husband in jail,
I've been drifting, rolling along the road
i'm looking for my room and board
i've got the blues
while my sweet man's in jail
and the judge won't let me call his bail
Here's Buffy Sainte-Marie singing 'Rolling Log' on YouTube, fairly different, there's no mmmmm factor, but a nice cover version.
