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When he was a kid, John "JB" Bigham listened to his mother's stories about Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, but this future Fishbone guitarist had better music to listen to. Or so he thought. Nearly 30 years later, an older and wiser Bigham has come full circle on his new record, Good Girl Blues.
It took Bigham a while to arrive at this point. After finishing active duty in the U.S. Air Force, his demo tape ended up in the hands of Miles Davis, for whom Bigham wrote several songs including "Jilli" (Amandla, 1989). He played percussion in Davis' group for several years before becoming Fishbone's second guitarist in 1990. And that's when Bigham rediscovered the blues, obsessing over the blues-heavy soundtrack for The Hot Spot, a decent (and overlooked) movie directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Don Johnson, Virginia Madsen, and a barely 20-year-old Jennifer Connelly.
"It blew me away," Bigham says. "I started buying all the John Lee Hooker I could get."
Good Girl Blues, his second album under the name The Soul of John Black, is a testament to the strength of African American music and the undeniable influence of the blues. "I feel like I'm a blues man deep in my heart. I like the raw naturalness of it." On the album's standout opening song, "The Hole," Bigham's anguished wail will grab your gut and turn it inside out.
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