Joe louis Walker, Bruce Katz & Giles Robson
Journeys To The Heart Of The Blues ever since cray, collins and copeland’s showdown!, the blues has enjoyed a proud tradition of the ménage à trois. Joe louis Walker, Bruce katz and giles robson might look like three pangenerational soaks molesting the pub piano, while their mission statement – to strip a raft of standards to their acoustic kernel – sounds like the stuff of musical taxidermy, but the trio have produced a quite beautiful baby.
ostensibly the junior partner, harp player robson is a revelation, asserting himself on the reed-busting rattle of g&J Boogie and the lonesome wheeze of i’m a lonely man, jockeying for position with katz’s mellifluous plink-plonk on Hell ain’t But a mile & a Quarter and replying to Walker’s fruity conversational vocal on Hard Pill To swallow. if there’s a criticism, it’s that guitar monster Walker can’t go as apeshit in this format, but the scratchy intimacy of his break in Feel like Blowing my Horn is ample compensation.