One of my favorite local bands, the Parlor Cats from Binghamton, NY (known as "the Parlor City" a century ago) has their first CD out. It's called "Help Me!" with an exclamation point and with the band's frontman looking to weasel a way out of jail for the band. They did well to select a theme and opening song that lots of people might know: "Help Me", which was written by Sonny Boy Williamson II (Aleck "Rice" Miller, the second "Sonny Boy Williamson"). The song was a hit for SBW2, for Junior Wells, for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, and for Van Morrison. (I found this Horrid Example, category Pronouns, in the liner notes from the Rhino Records anthology "Blues Masters Volume 4: Harmonica Classics": "A young disciple of Williamson's was Junior Wells, who recorded 'Help Me' as a tribute to Williamson shortly after his death." Wells recorded postmortem? Maybe that's why it can sound so eerie.) I just listened to Williamson's version (with Matt Murphy on guitar) and the Parlor Cats' new one back-to-back. They sound plenty different but the crying harp gives the same feeling. That sets the tone for the whole album: authentic traditional postwar blues, led by HOT HOT HOT harmonica and (often slide) electric guitar. Even the originals (more than half the songs) sound like they could have been written in Chicago in the 1940s. The title song is also a tribute to Rod Piazza (of Rod Piazza and the Mighty Flyers), who turned Brian Potenziano onto this kind of music and helped him learn how to make a harp howl and wail: the song's intro and outro are an answering machine message from Piazza, who wrote the arrangement used here. Brian P plays through the Rod Piazza modification of the Harp King amp from Kinder Instruments, and this gives GREAT sound. You don't lose the most soulful sounds; they fill the room and they come through on the recording. The other covers are also familiar (and happy) for old-blues fans... Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man" was first released by Howlin' Wolf (1961), and was covered by the Doors (1967), the Grateful Dead, Shadows of Knight, Bob Weir, Harmonica Slim & Hosea Leavy, Sam Gopal, Frank Marino, and Quicksilver Messenger Service if the Wikipedia entry I'm seeing is correct. On this one, the 'Cats sound more like Howlin' Wolf than like the later versions. It feels raw, which is right for this song. There's another Willie Dixon song, "Dixon City", which was a multiple hit under the title "Bring It On Home": first for Sonny Boy Williamson (the second one again) in 1959, then by Led Zeppelin on the very influential _Led Zeppelin II_ in 1969. There's Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson's "Alimony Blues", and Junior Wells' 1960 "Messin' With The Kid". The originals are as hot as the covers, and being pretty much good ol' blues and a bit of swing, they're easy to pick up on; after a couple of listens, they can become almost as familiar as the oldies-but-goodies. Brian P's "Love My Baby" is just dirty enough that it could have been written by Eddie Vinson in the days when he couldn't record many of his best songs. "The Bounce" is credited to "Swan, Osterhout and Brown" because it's what Brian S, Jamie, and John play first after break, when Brian P is still drinking. Brian P's "Lazy Lovin' Woman" has a fun bounce and some nice sleazy lyrics. Jamie-O's "Uptown Strut" and Brian P's "Be My Friend" and "Don't Tell Me" get it done in various ways. The last original on the album is "The Parlor Cat Boogie", which (as you might guess from the title) is a swing strut. It's lots of fun, especially at live shows when Brian P takes his harp and a wireless mic around the audience, playing wild licks while peeping over people's shoulders. This worked well at the last two years' Blues on the Bridge festival in Binghamton. All the Parlor Cats original songs that I hear, on this CD or at live shows, show both originality and understanding of where this music came from. They rock, in some of the ways that R&B rocked so people so hard that rock'n'roll overpowered conformist society. Some of them make me dance as readily as my favorites among their oldies. So I recommend their CD (contact information is on www dot theparlorcats dot com), and I recommend their live shows, which so far have been in Binghamton (NY) and the surrounding counties. I've been hearing them various bars and restaurants for over a year, and every show is lively and colorful. Most songs are a bit different each time and it always sounds fresh and real.