More Blues, Less Christmas Tradition, Please!

Cover of the album being discussed (from the Amazon.com MP3 download Web page)

These days it seems that the “Christmas season” (more accurately, the annual assault of advertising in the interest of buying Christmas presents) gets under way before Halloween. (At the rate things are going, I expect to see the first Christmas shopping advertising on the Fourth of July.) So it should not surprise anyone that Endless Blues Records released its own Christmas recording, Uncle Mick’s Christmas Album, this past October 15. As of this writing, that nine-track CD can only be purchased directly through an Endless Blues Web page. Amazon has created a Web page for MP3 download. Sadly, the download does not include any PDF metadata; so anyone interested in the musicians involved in making this album will be sorely disappointed by the download content.

My interest in blues peaked during the second half of the Eighties. That was when my wife and I were living in Los Angeles, and we used to listen to Bernie Pearl’s radio program regularly. The high point came when we went to see the Bernie Pearl Blues Band in concert. Not long thereafter we made our move to Singapore, where the only opportunities to listen to blues came from visiting record stores.

“Uncle Mick” is Mick Kolassa, who is both guitarist and vocalist. Listening to his performing style prompted a moderate flood of nostalgia. Nevertheless, his approach to “Christmas standards” tended to be on the lame side, particularly when compared with the two originals on the final tracks, “Christmas Morning Blues” and “Beale Street Christmas Jam,” the latter composed with the other guitarist in Kolassa’s band, Jeff Jensen. As can be guessed from the latter title, the blues style of this band is a heady gumbo of New Orleans and Memphis influences.

Readers have probably figured out by now that my whole attitude towards Christmas is on the negative side. Basically, I can tolerate an annual performance of George Frideric Handel’s HWV 56 oratorio Messiah and an occasional traversal of the six cantatas that constitute Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 248 Christmas Oratorio. After that, there is a long void, punctuated only by Louis Armstrong’s “Zat You, Santa Claus?” “Christmas Morning Blues” may not displace that Armstrong classic, but it is a viable contender. In that same vein I admit to being a sucker for the Second line spirit of “Beale Street Christmas Jam.”

Ho, ho, ho!