Volume 1

In 2007, while rolling through the American night in a ramshackle retirement home vehicle badly disguised as a tour bus, blues legend Charlie Musselwhite and North Mississippi Allstars guitarist Luther Dickinson engaged in conversation. The younger man related Alvin Youngblood Harts philosophical desire to live as a freedom rocker. The wily elder bluesman listened to his words, then looked out the window and knowingly pointed at the rising moon. He replied: New Moon Freedom Rockers. Back in Mississippi at the Zebra Ranch studio, Musselwhite and Cody and Luther Dickinson joined forces with their dad, roots rock legend Jim Dickinson (who promptly added the words Jelly Roll to the bands name), Alvin Hart, and Jimbo Mathus, with NMA bassist Chris Chew and Paul Taylor as guests. They circled chairs, placed mikes, and hit record. Afterwards, the session tapes were archived. They sat in the vault until Jim Dickinson passed in 2009, and they became apocryphal. Stony Plains Holger Peterson contacted Luther and Cody about releasing them. This program of standards, covers, and originals is loose, organic, and rousing. Before Musselwhite opens his mouth on first track Blues Why You Worry Me? the rooms warm sound embraces and beguiles the listener. Its crackling, immediate, and always present, and it too is a collaborator. When Musselwhite sings and wails on harmonica, the bands swinging shuffle envelops him in tinkling piano, slide, electric and acoustic guitars, and a bumping bassline. Hart takes on Robert Johnsons Pony Blues has fingerpicked electric guitar funkiness and a souled-out grainy moan amid clattering snare, slithering harp, pumping piano, and slide guitars. The singer wrangles and roams through the lyric, gathering speed and intensity with each verse. Mathus slippery Night Time is steamy and slow; his vocal rises to meet and punctuate the bands slow-burning juke joint roil. All bets are off when Jim Dickinson delivers the ragtime barrelhouse standard Come on Down to My House. With Luthers mandolin, harmonica, fiddle, and guitars, his piano digs into the progression as Musselwhite adds backing vocals. Dickinsons laconic delivery and playing are irreverent and salacious -- a rent party aesthetic. Mathus adds another bottle-tipping rag with Shake It and Bake It. Harts revisioning of Jimi Hendrixs Stone Free is delivered as a faithful but nasty, sharp, funky blues. The juke joint setting for Jims delivery of Wilbert Harrisons boogie Lets Work Together is rawer than Canned Heats. Musselwhites poignant, Strange Land choogles, rolls, and tumbles like a freight train careening off the track, with killer six-string interplay between Luther, Hart, and Mathus. Harts closing read of the Mississippi Sheiks Stop and Listen Blues is delivered with joyous jug band grit. New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers, Vol. 1 is a good-time stunner and worth the hype its lineup boasts. This informal session offers Delta blues and roots music without pretention, artifice, or pedantry, not as an archival referent or re-creation, but a vibrant, evolving musical tradition. Heres to hoping theres enough left over for a second volume. ~ Thom Jurek