BLUES - 30th ANNIVERSARY

BLUES - 30TH ANNIVERSARY ( CVLD395 )

Author : AA.VV.
Performer : AA.VV.

Available in the following media: LP, HD File

LP in pre-sale start of delivery from 30/06/2025

Tracks

• SIDE A – 18:12
  01 – So Long (F.Ranghiero, F.Mazzaron) 7:32 / dir. 03-2008
  Four Fried Fish
  02 – Five Short Minutes (J. Croce) 3:23 / adr. 07-2012
  Barbara Belloni, voice
  Four Fried Fish
  03 – Tin Roof Blues (L. Roppolo, P. Mares, B. Pollack) 3:14 / dir. 10-2000
  Tiger Dixie Band
  04 – I Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues (D. Ellington) 3:59 / dir. 10-2005
  Cristina Sartori, voice
  Stefano Lionello, double bass

• SIDE B – 19:33
  - 01 – Rollin' Stone (Mc Kinley Morganfield) 5:18 / dir. 03-2008
  Four Fried Fish
  - 02 - Freedom (R. Ford) 6:52 / dir. 03-2018
  Michele Giacomazzi, guitar Francesco Giacomelli, electric bass
  Diego Vergari, drums
  - 03 – Come Together (J. Lennon, P. McCartney) 3:36 / dir. 01-2010
  Yasmina and Bad Songs
  - 04 – Cross Road Blues (R. Johnson) 3:46 / reg. 07-2023
  Max Prandi, voice and guitar
  Enrico Merlin, guitar

1/4" Analogue Master made in the VLS studio in Naquera (Spain), starting from the original analogue and digital recordings, the latter made in native high resolution, PCM wav 88.2kHz / 24bit

Production: VELUT LUNA
Executive Producer: Marco Lincetto
Recording Sound Engineer: Marco Lincetto
Mixing and Mastering: Marco Lincetto
Interior photography: Marco Lincetto
Graphic design: Maurizio Ciato for Studio L'Image

It was July 1st, 2009.
We decided to leave Memphis early, eight, eight thirty in the morning; because in those parts, at that time, the heat kills you. Humid, so much so that as soon as you go out into the street you are already soaked in sweat, even if it is early in the morning.

The first stop was relatively close, Clarksdale, the moral capital of the Mississippi Delta, the moral capital of the Blues. One hundred and twenty-five kilometers all along the legendary Highway 61: yes, the one that Bob Dylan also sang about, even if he meant it in the opposite direction to us, from south to north.
On the asphalt in front of our white Ford van, the road, already scorching hot by the sun, made imaginary images appear to us, mirages of reflection, on the horizon. And with us there was nothing, no one, only scorched fields to the right and left.
Around half past ten we finally see the arrow indicating the turnoff for Clarcksdale, and we take it.

The town seems deserted, the streets stretch desolately between rows of wooden houses in a decidedly shabby condition, with the motley African-American population already exhausted in the narrow shade of crumbling porches that had certainly seen better days. And my feeling is strange, inscrutable, although decidedly uneasy, perhaps also because of those non-threatening, but rather astonished looks, that were looking at that decidedly anomalous body that was me and my six friends inside that white Ford van, too clean, modern and pristine, that decidedly clashed in that context.

After a while the houses end and we find ourselves, so to speak, “in the center”: four or five-story buildings, also a bit decrepit, that stretch inside a few blocks, square. And without a tree, so that the sun has a free hand to clean up the few remaining feelings.
We turn right, right again, then left: and John Lee Hooker Lane appears: it is the short road that leads to the Delta Blues Museum, the temple of the Blues.

Now, we Europeans are used to a concept of “museum”, which includes austere monumental buildings, polished to a high standard, with armed controls for access, cameras and the whole range of control…
There, none of that.
A low, reasonably well-maintained red brick building built alongside an old, abandoned railroad line with rusty tracks and a rusty roof with the words “Delta Blues Museum” written underneath.
In the musi you expect a quiet movement of customers, attentive and discreet, with perhaps the classic joyful and slightly noisy schoolchildren: there, again, none of that. Deserted. Nobody. Only us.

The exhibition was all arranged along a path inside a single large hall, with a ceiling not as high as you would expect. And what was on display were common memorabilia: some instruments “belonged to”, some trinkets, lots of photographs, historical and not, very beautiful, I must say.
And little else.
The tour ends quickly, but the previous uneasiness, instead of subsiding, increases. There is SOMETHING that I can't focus on. At a certain point, I hear the rhythmic sound of a drum, like someone trying out some passages. It comes from the entrance area, but far away, from below, perhaps from some dark cellar. I will never find out who and where it was.
At that point, however, I notice an old, really old, African-American man, sitting behind the counter of what looks like a bar; he is reading, absentmindedly, a crumpled newspaper, while savoring a mephitic cigarette, with a smell, the stench, decidedly strong for someone like me, who doesn't smoke.
It comes to me immediately and naturally, from deep inside, the desire, the need, to ask him a question, that has been buzzing inside me for many years, relating to one of the most famous legends of the blues, who tells of how one fine day in the late 1920s, Robert Johnson, who was a poor cotton picker without art or part, in the countryside near Clarksdale met the Devil - yes, that one - who proposed a pact: he, the Devil, would guarantee him success in exchange for his soul. And Johnson accepted. And the rest of the story is well known.

Well, here comes the question to me and opening my mouth uncertainly, I ask the old man: “Can you tell me where the Devil's Crossing and Robert Johnson's Crossing is?”
The old man doesn't bat an eyelid... but he raises it, imperceptibly, while at the same time he lowers the newspaper, looking me over, in silence. A silence that lasted a few eternal seconds, in which time had actually stopped. Then, half-opening his lips wet with sweat and burned by smoke, he said to me: "Hey guy... It's Everywhere...!"
And at that moment, for the first time in my life, I understood what the word “Blues” meant.
And the feeling of uneasiness disappeared in the dangerous grin that appeared on the old man's imperturbable face.

The musicians and I are lucky people, to have received the privilege of living these emotions that are very difficult to describe in words, but that I hope can be at least a little conveyed by the sound tracks that remain in the grooves of the records. Forever.

Thank you all,
Marco Lincetto

I dedicate this project to that old Afro-American with the newspaper,
which finally made me understand what BLUES is.