Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues: More Different Voices

As far back as 1966 veteran bluesman Corky Siegel, who made his mark in the 60s as co-leader of the respected Siegel-Schwall Band, began fashioning a scintillating chamber music-blues hybrid. In 2022 More Different Voices extends his chamber blues “experiment,” if you will, to a seventh such album, and a formidable follow-up to 2017’s superb Different Voices it is. For instance: amidst a jittery swirl of violins, cellos, table, and sputtering blues harmonica, vocalist Marcella Detroit (doubling on harmonica) wails a swaggering mean man blues on “There Goes My Man.” For instance: the 10:22 opus “Oasis,” written by legendary sax man Ernie Watts, leisurely unfolds in layers behind Watts’ melodious, warm sax exploring the melody line and in deep dialogue with Kalyan Pathak’s tabla ornamentations over subtle string and harmonica support. Tracy Nelson is on board too, burrowing passionately into her classic “Down So Low” with empathetic strings embroidering her spare, bluesy piano and bruised vocal. Blues stalwarts Toronzo Cannon and Lynne Jordan also make striking contributions here, but the current climate elevates Ukrainian Cantor Pavel Roytman’s stirring Jewish chant “Hine Ma Tov Blues,” a theme-and-variation work defined by blues and Mozartian flourishes, to a higher plane of meaning. Selah.