DVD Movie Rating for: Bernard Allison, Kentucky Fried Blues

4 out of 5

Movie Plot of: Bernard Allison, Kentucky Fried Blues

Recorded at W.C. Handy Festival in Henderson, Kentucky (August 1999).

DVD Production Details of: Bernard Allison, Kentucky Fried Blues

Starring: Bernard Allison

Format: Color, Dolby

Studio: Music Video Distribu

DVD Release Date: April 22, 2003

Cast of the movie: Bernard Allison, Kentucky Fried Blues

Track List

• Buzz Me
  
• Going Down
  
• Bad Love
  
• Life Is A Bitch
  
• Midnight Creeper
  
• Leave My Girl Alone
  
• Good Time Woman

Photo Gallery of the movie: Bernard Allison, Kentucky Fried Blues

Reviews of the movie: Bernard Allison, Kentucky Fried Blues

Critics seldom agree upon anything so much as they do with Bernard Allison. The son of the blues legend Luther Allison is regarded as one of the most important and creative representatives of 21st century blues. And correspondingly, the career of the guitarist and singer born in Chicago in 1965 has taken a steep course.

Luther Allison, who has since passed away, loved to tell the following tale. It was in 1978 when he had just returned from a tour and a studio had been booked for the next day in order to do some live recording for an album. Luther Allison woke up rather irritated because he could hear his own music playing loudly. Half asleep, he went downstairs and saw his 13-year old son playing the guitar. As a result, the youngster was allowed to come to the session to make his first recordings on tape for two songs of the album "Gonna Be A Live One Here Tonight". The foundation for his career had been laid.

From then on things happened fast and Bernard Allison began recording his own albums. With each new album he showed new ways of interpreting the good old blues. And each time he underlined his testimony from the "Next Generation" days, "I do not want to be put into the same category as my dad. A considerable amount of his blues feeling is naturally also within me. This is nothing unusual. But I don't want people to compare his music with mine. I'm not a pure blues man, but a musician who is open to all kinds of influences."

The guitarist and singer has stuck to his motto. In doing so, he has definitely found his own mixture of rock, blues, R & B and funk. And he keeps on setting new trends on the guitar - always to the delight of his own worldwide flock of critics. It is hardly possible to put the blues into music in a more up-to-date, colorful and complex way than Bernard Allison does.

You can tell that Bernard Allison is a serious blues man just by looking at his hat: above the brim, replicas of two nasty snake heads bare their teeth and flick their tongues. You don't want to mess with this guy, or his hat. Allison was recorded at the 1999 W.C. Handy Blues and Barbecue Festival, in Henderson, Kentucky, and he and his backup band offer a hard-driving hour's worth of classic old Mississippi delta blues.

Lyrically, what's here isn't especially innovative, but Allison's growling delivery infuses the tunes with heart. He's a virtuoso on the guitar, clearly, but occasionally things spill over just the slightest bit into self-parody-as with Nigel Tufnel, Allison's solos are his trademark, and Allison also does that bizarre tongue-on-the strings guitar thing. Most of Allison's backup musicians get their moments in the spotlight, and it's nice to see the bandleader be so generous with the guys who are playing behind him. Allison also pays his respects to the history of this music, especially on Leave My Girl Alone, which features overt homages to Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughan.