Death -- or some other danger -- lurks around nearly every corner on Bay Area bluesman Chris Cotton's new solo CD...

One of the most amazing blues releases of the year... definitely one disc you’ll be playing over and over again.

It’s as if he’s taken his blues to another time and place, alternately capturing the back-porch intimacy and the juke-joint raucousness of rural Southern blues... romps with the type of ensemble abandon one associates with Howlin’ Wolf’s Memphis sessions.

[Cotton] blends the essence of old-time string band music and pure country blues with his folk-inclined sound... his fleet picking style, delightfully raggedy vocal cords, and taste for flat-four rhythms propelled by loose-tuned snare drums create a juke joint party feel.

As down home and redolent as a Saturday night fish fry without sounding retro or too reverent... Cotton has one of the most authentic blues drawls around and is a demon solo acoustic picker.

Like an unlikely collision between Tom Waits and Robert Johnson, Chris Cotton melds old to new in a bewitching disc that demonstrates more heart and sincerity than anything the blues world has spit up in some time... This is a record of the year, seven months early.

I Watched the Devil Die will end up deservedly on many, maybe most, perhaps just about all, best-blues-recordings-of-2005 lists.

[One of] a number of young experimentalists who innovate without losing sight of tradition...

A cagily primitive, ragtime-nuanced guitar and gravelly baritone vocal approach keep one constantly anticipating what's next...

Equal parts Big Bill Broonzy and the Skillet Lickers... pass the jug.

Chris Cotton may well be the future of the blues...

Blues purists and Blues Roots fans rejoice!

This is blues music without the big label bullshit, well done...

He plays a country style of blues bringing new life to old masters...

Chris Cotton is full of tales of truths and a guitar full of soul...

A breath of fresh air in the overproduced blues market...

This is an album with staying power. Like The Band’s Greatest Hits or Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, it has qualities of one of the albums you grew up listening to with more memories attached than a photo album.

His narrative flair and gift for crafting compelling solos and inventive transitional passages emerge, punctuating a lead voice that’s sometimes haunting and on other occasions spellbinding...

Cotton has a knack for writing songs that sound like they came from another era and sings and plays them with conviction...

As laid back as a Sunday afternoon in Lula, Mississippi on a steamy July afternoon... Cotton can drop Delta guitar licks like a rabid rooster that's gone mad in the barnyard of Life.

A sort of new breed of what folks might call Americana music with bits of hokum and hillcountry mixed together with Memphis streetcorner jug band, Piedmont picking... I don't know what to call it... but every song on there is damn good and will stand up to many listens.

Indisputably powerful, legitimate, authentic music... particularly jumping and syncopated, at the same time, fun and dark.

Cotton's warm and boozy rasp and masterful Piedmont style fingerwork are convincing...

You'd never know from hearing Chris Cotton that he's a California native...

One boot firmly in the Piedmont... the other solid upside yr head!

A knockabout session of small group blues... a real out of left field surprise, I think that you will definitely like this disc.

This is young-at-heart-wise-in-time blues, ragged but right, from a man who gives it up.

A first listen to "I Watched the Devil Die" would suggest an old Delta blues recording from the 1930s...

If the terms piedmont, rags & americana ring any bells in your psyche then "I Watched The Devil Die" will really get your juices flowing...

If you like good ol’ country and traditional blues, then you’ll dig this recording... it’s not the cookie cutter blues CD being released.

I defy you not to be moved... as a debut album for his new label this must have his backers drooling for more

Cotton blazes a new trail with some "old music"...

One of the most refreshingly creative offerings of the year!