SAFFIRE —THE UPPITY BLUES WOMEN
Ain’t Gonna Hush!
Alligator Records
· Strong collection from veteran trio mixes pop and politics.
The blues have a well-deserved reputation for being misogynistic. Countless variations on "My woman done me wrong," "I’m gonna put a hole through her head" and "It’s all my mother’s fault" have compounded the common image that this is music for bitter old men.
Well, strike one for the ladies. Gaye Adegbalola, Andra Faye and Ann Rabson – the "Uppity Blues Women" who make up Saffire – have produced a CD equal to anything their male contemporaries have put out this year. Ain’t Gonna Hush! is gloriously upbeat, intelligently crafted and just plain wonderful to listen to. Fifteen tracks – not one of them a dud – range in style from the helter-skelter boogie-woogie title track, through the "Almost Blue" melody of "Unlove You," to the downbeat finale of "If I Should Die Tonight."
But the track that stands out the most is "Blues For Sharon Bottoms." This song of righteous anger tells the (true) tale of a Virginia woman who lost custody of her daughter to her own mother (i.e., the daughter’s grandmother) on the grounds that she was a lesbian. As the trio sings, "Sharon’s B.’s mother is a baby-stealing so-and-so."
Somehow, it’s tough to picture Muddy Waters or James Brown singing a song like this.
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