The Fairfield Four will be touring Japan in September. It looks like they will be joined on stage with the local gospel groups in each cities. The Wild Magnolias will be playing at the Blue Note Tokyo in August. (Aug. 2 - 7) This will be their third tour to Japan, but the very first to Tokyo. They played only in Western cities (Osaka and Kobe) in the last two tours. It seems a little strange that funky Mardi Gras Indians like them will be on stage at a sophisticated club like Blue Note, don't you think?

There are two new notable disks of Japanese bands from the Southside label . (distributed by Vivid Sound) One is "Blues Music?", a debut album by a group named the Nihil Brothers. They are a guitar-less trio (piano, bass, and drums) and they play songs with strong influence by New Orleans R&B. The other is the brand new recording by Roller Coaster titled "Roller Coaster ｳ Chibi-Coaster" which was made celebrating their 25th year. Now that the band is smaller with two members leaving the group since their last album ('96), they often call themselves "Chibi-Coaster" (Chibi means "Little") and that is why the album is titled like this. It features 10 great renditions of blues classics. The last cut is the very impressive Robert Jr. Lockwood song "Take a Little Walk With Me." The guitarist/vocalist of the band, Hitoshi Koide, who claims Lockwood to be one of his major influences, plays very true to Lockwood's style. By the way, Koide also played guitar behind Lockwood in '95 in Tokyo, and P-Vine made a live album from that concert the following year.

Another interesting disk is the first album by Mori Electric, a band lead by 35 year old guitarist Tatsujiro Mori. Produced by veteran harmonica player Fumio Ishikawa, this album "Into the Blues" (Ekoda Club EC-CD-B001) features wide variety of blues music. The classic tune "Jump Sister Bessie" arranged with a New Orleans beat is well worth hearing.

P-Vine Records has started to release the recordings of the French Black & Blue label. Among the first batch released on April 25, the notable one is "Live In France 1963" (PCD-5513) by Memphis Slim & Matt Murphy. The duo plays completely by themselves, but it's really hot and outstanding! This is the first time this album becomes available on CD. Other titles are The Aces/Chicago Beat (PCD-5514), Robert Jr. Lockwood/Plays Robert & Robert (PCD-5515, the same one that Evidence Music reissued in the U.S. but with one more extra unissued track), and Jimmy Rogers with The Aces/That's All Right (PCD-5516).

If you are interested in Blues scenes in Japan, yet don't know any media that covers information for such in English, here's good news. There is now a free quarterly paper named Blues Alive written all in English covering Blues topics around Tokyo area. Issue No. 1 has just been published. If you are in Tokyo, you can pick up your copy at major records stores near you. For more information, contact E.A. Stauffer, publisher, at 1-12-10, Toranomon, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0001, Japan. (ezwalker@gol.com) Stauffer has been running a blues pub named Kiki's Pub in Toranomon, Tokyo for the past 13 years.

This years's Japan Blues Carnival has just ended. The headliners were Dr. John and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. Probably the highlight of the event was on Sat. May 29 at the Hibiya Outdoor Amphitheater. Dr. John came on to do an encore to wrap up the evening, and Gatemouth joined on stage with him for a number. I had never seen these two perform together, and according to Joe Krown, Gatemouth's keyboard player, this night was the very first that they did. The song they did was "Jambalaya" with Gatemouth on fiddle. Wow, what an experience!

(6/2/99)