Jeff Golub - Blues For You (2009)

Guitarist Jeff Golub has long mixed his soulful crossover jazz with a healthy dose of modern electric blues. However, he's never devoted a whole album to the kind of greasy rocking blues that makes up his 2009 effort Blues for You. An assured fret-wiz with a knack for juicy, well-tempered jazz licks, here we find Golub going for more of a laid-back shuffle and rocking twang that is more Stevie Ray Vaughan than George Benson. Joining Golub are a bevy of unexpected, but no-less blues familiars, guest vocalists most likely culled from Golub's time in the pop world backing Rod Stewart. Included are such names as Tom Waits, Marc Cohn, and even '80s rocker Billy Squier who shows up here to help Golub rework his classic hit "Everybody Wants You" into funky, Southern-blues drawl. The result works surprisingly well and overall brings to mind the earthy late-career efforts of Bob Dylan. Golub-himself has never sounded as muscular and assured as he does on such tracks as the shuffling jump-blues "Rooster Blues" which also features Peter Wolf sounding as inspired and back-alley slippery as ever. This album may be Blues for You, but it is clearly a work meant to please Golub's own soul as much as his audience's. ~ Matt Collar