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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!
True Blues return to Fight On!
Out today on Yellow Dog Records: Fight On!: True Blues Vol. 2, the long-awaited follow-up to the 2013 debut from Guy Davis, Corey Harris, and Alvin Youngblood Hart. The three first crossed paths at the 1996 Chicago Blues Festival — where the press was busy crowning them “The New Saviors Of The Blues” — and between them now hold a MacArthur Grant (Harris), two Grammy nominations (Davis), and a long shelf of Blues Music Awards nods.
Recorded separately in Virginia, Mississippi, and New York, the record plays like a conversation. Harris migrates a Jimmy Strother banjo tune to Piedmont-style guitar on the title track. Davis reworks Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” as “Everything I Got Is Done In Pawn,” playing it as if Blind Willie McTell had picked it up first. Hart tears into “Screamin’ and Hollerin’,” the first Charley Patton song he ever learned, on a 1950s Kay flat-top. The originals dig into the same soil — Harris on his New Orleans nights at The Funky Butt, Davis on a road musician’s apology to his family, Hart channeling his late friend Henry Townsend.
Raw, heartfelt, and sounding nothing like a museum piece, Fight On! is a record these three have been talking about making for countless tours’ worth of late-night conversations — and we’re proud to finally put it in your hands.
Early reviewers agree: this is the real thing — and a masterwork of the form:
“Still breathes, still sweats, still testifies… an absolute masterpiece.” —Blues Matters
“Sounds historic and current at the same time, totally mesmerizing.” —The Rock Doctor
“Visceral and haunting… the real stuff right here.” —Minor 7th
Stream, download, or grab a copy at bit.ly/true-blues-2026, and let us know what you think!
JB Charts Course to Soul Salvation
The Soul of John Black is on a mission. John “JB” Bigham’s Soul Salvation arrives October 10 on Yellow Dog Records — ten groove-laden tracks that chart a course back to the essence of soul blues and illuminate the path to roots redemption.
Bigham comes loaded with credentials: Miles Davis collaborator, Fishbone alum, and author of a run of critically acclaimed Yellow Dog Records releases. NPR praised Good Thang for its “seductive roots that extend back to the jazz age”; Blues Revue said of The Good Girl Blues that “if the blues is to survive and flourish for future generations, it will be because of artists like these.” Rolling Stone called his work “amazing… a whole new brand of soul.” Soul Salvation is his most personal and grounded work yet.
The album unfolds like a masterfully paced live set — from the ambient-tinged blues of opener “Begging You Baby” through the Memphis soul of “Take Your Time” to the New Orleans party anthem “That Thang.” The four-pointed star on the cover — a childhood drawing turned lifelong symbol — serves as compass throughout. Like the glowing “salvation” marquee inside LA’s Silver Lake Lounge that sparked the album’s title, it points home. Drawing on deep wells of Albert King, Mavis Staples, and his own hard-worn experience, Bigham has made something that both preserves the past and lights the way forward.
Early reviewers agree: Soul Salvation reinvigorates soul blues with irresistible groove and conviction:
“Mixes the mood with rhythmic groove, punctuated with some fantastic solos…” —Living Blues
“This music wants and gets a physical response, setting up a deep, irresistible groove… layered and rich, and sung with such natural conviction.” —Blues Music Magazine
“Reinvigorates the essence of soul blues… a masterful effort that serves up heaping helpings of both.” —Blues Blast
“A powerful set that brings the classic sounds of southern soul and blues to the 21st century… it’s the best release in an already-impressive body of work.” —Blues Bytes
Preview Soul Salvation above or grab your copy right here.