Full Circle: Eden Brent Wins the Koko Taylor Award
Growing up in Greenville, Mississippi, Eden caught Koko Taylor’s sets at the Greenville Blues Festival more times than she can count. Standing on the Memphis stage decades later, accepting an award bearing Koko’s name, she described her gratitude at the full-circle moment. Plenty of artists win trophies; not many of them get to close a loop that started in their own hometown.
It’s the latest chapter in a remarkable stretch. Last year, Eden took home the Blues Music Award for Instrumentalist — Piano (Pinetop Perkins Piano Player), and her track “Watch the World Go By” from Getaway Blues earned a Blues Song of the Year nomination. Getaway Blues (“laid down in London, mixed up in Memphis, made in Mississippi”) remains the record powering this run of recognition, and Living Blues caught its essence:
“Refined blues, heartfelt and passionate… has true soul and in spots is outright sensual. Eden Brent is on fire.” —Living Blues
Listen to “What You Want,” the New Orleans-channeling, 88s-rollicking gem from Getaway Blues while we congratulate Eden!
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Acoustic blues masters Guy Davis, Corey Harris, and Alvin Youngblood Hart reunite to summon ancestral spirits with songs both long remembered and newly created — proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that African American blues remains as vital and vibrant as ever.
"The blues, in their hands, still breathes, still sweats, still testifies… A true traditional blues recording, an absolute masterpiece."Album of the Day
The sound of a band who love to get loud, but who arguably have their greatest impact when they break it way, way down. "When we blew the electricity with our stage lights at a gig in Connecticut last summer, Johnny Iguana went over to the piano in the corner of the room and we did the rest of the set with just piano, voices and percussion," drummer Matt Torre says. "We got standing ovations the whole time. How many loud rock bands can do that?"