Curtis Blues Forget With Me CD

“It’s like listening to the reincarnation of Robert Johnson.” This is what the review in The Sensible Sound said about Curtis Blues after one writer voted him one of the top ten CDs of this year. Curtis Blues plays One-Man-Band, acoustic, Delta blues honed through years of street performing, and playing clubs in the Washington D.C area.Curtis Blues plays guitar (metal resonator or wood acoustic), harmonica, a bass drum and hi-hat cymbals at the same time. He both re-interprets traditional blues and performs his own originals in the Delta style. Having played harmonica for 34 years, Curtis doesn’t just play copycat licks from the masters. He emotes through his harmonica’s wails and moans straight from his heart to yours. This is real street blues. Since this act was created on the street with no mike, his vocals are field hollers, evoking Son House with its volume and depth. His slide guitar is a second voice, slashing and cutting through the pulse of the natural shuffle rhythm of his bass drum and hi-hat cymbals. This is a full band sound from one man, a natural ebb and flow of emotion expressed through all instruments at once.The CD ranges the whole history of Delta blues from Charley Patton’s forceful “Moon’s Going Down”, through Son House’s, “Levee Camp Moan”, Robert Johnson’s “Walking Blues”, all the way to the intensely personal and plaintive original, “River of Missing You”. It ends in a harmonica solo, “Train Time”, that Curtis wrote in his teens in the style of the county blues harp players imitating a freight train. This is his personal signature piece to end his shows. The songs on this CD have been performed thousands of times, a process that makes even the oldest songs from the 20’s become a personal expression of his feelings. Curtis defines busking, or street performing as “turning strangers into a paying audience”. Curtis has played on the streets in the D.C. area for a decade, where he is a local institution. He views street performance as a way to keep this music alive as it was created, acoustic street music, played without a mike, in the open air. On a Saturday night you can see crowds around him while he plays on the waterfront boardwalk in Alexandria Virginia, preaching the blues to an international audience of all ages. This CD captures that spirit. No multi-track gimmicks, recorded live in a studio, as honest and direct as his style. Reviews:1.The $ensible Sound, Staff PicksOur Favorite Things: RecordingsRoy Nakano“Sometimes the best new sounds emanating out of the audio system come from recordings that have been around the block once or twice. My top desert island discs represent personal treasures discovered or rediscovered this past year. Most were released prior to 2005. Nonetheless, I played these enough this past year to wear out the loading mechanism in my CD player. Curtis Blues – Forget With Me (www.curtisblues.com). He’s a street musician who plays Mississippi Delta Blues without the aid of any electronic amplification. It’s like listening to the reincarnation of Robert Johnson. His guitar work is good; his harmonica playing is even better. If you happen to see him on the riverfront in Alexandria Virginia, be sure to pay him a visit.2. Review by Gene Roebuck, author of “Finding Robert Johnson”, and musician.Do you love acoustic delta blues and sometimes find yourself wishing you could just be transported back to the days of the 1920’s and 30’s when it all began? You are in luck! Forget With Me by Curtis Blues holds that magical power.Curtis Blues, a one-man-band, has set very high standards for himself with the release of his very first CD recording. Armed with his guitar, harmonica, bass drum, cymbal, and a veteran blues voice, Curtis single handedly delivers true blues of times past that very few today can even remember.Forget With Me is firmly grounded in the roots of the delta blues tradition with covers from Ch