Well as I sit here on a back porch in Chicago I can hear the "el" train rumble by. Cars honk, and jets rumble above and around me as the world is on the move, constant progress. Back here in the garden, if I block out the noise, things probably don't look or feel much different from when this house was built in the early 1940's. World problems then, and music was there to restore us. The States are as confused and divided today as I have ever experienced. On the radio this morning I heard my good friend James Porter spin a dusty classic by Jerry Butler and the Impressions. The song really grabbed me, and moved me so that I had to stand still for a minute and give it a listen. I was moved almost to tears- that is what a good song can do. What I know dear friends of the LaNoire series is that we are linked to our pasts. We are linked to our family members and friends. All of us touched by the reached out hand of that song on the radio. The Blues are not always sad; it's that music that brings us close to each other on the dance floor. It shows us the way in hard times. The Blues allows us to drink that juice together, fall in love, get happy and forget for a minute our plight or the darkness. So let's do our thing together on this record full of soul. The producers at Doghouse and Bone and LaNoire once again bring us these very rare 45 records as the original recording masters intended.
