Omar Shariff - The Raven (1992)

Tracklist

01. The Raven
02. Fillmore Street Boogie
03. House Built by the Blues
04. Love Is Just a Fool
05. San Francisco Can Be Such a Lonely Town
06. Great Balls of Fire
07. This Is Love
08. Stranded in St. Louis
09. Omar's Boogie
10. Just a Blues
11. The Rattler
12. The Hoodoo Man
13. Blue Tumbleweed
14. Suffering with the Lowdown Blues
15. Cold Feeling
16. Jimmy, Is That You?
17. So You Want to Be a Man



Texas blues singer and pianist Omar Shariff was born March 10, 1938; during the 1960s he relocated to San Francisco, where in 1971 he recorded a pair of albums for the Arhoolie label under his given name, Dave Alexander. Upon adopting his stage name, he kept a low profile and did not record for another two decades; The Raven, a collection made up of ten songs cut in 1991 and seven songs cut in 1972 , marked his return to prominence. Shariff was nominated for a W.C. Handy Award in 1993. In 1996 small blues label Have Mercy released Baddass and followed it up with Black Widow Spider in 2000. Both records are stripped-down nasty blues: song titles like "My Life Is a Nightmare" and "Seven Years of Torture" give the listener an idea where Shariff is coming from. His next album, Anatomy of a Woman, was a concept album about Shariff's favorite subject: women. Shariff remained an obscure but blues-to-the bone artist until his passing January 8, 2012.

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