Freddie Roulette - Spirit Of Steel (1999)

Freddie Roulette is a true original. He has forged a unique personal approach to the 8-string lap steel guitar that is instantly identifiable; even one note is enough to let you know it’s Freddie.

He’s usually referred to as the greatest of blues lap steel players (that’s small, exclusive club that also includes Hop Wilson from Houston, Texas and two San Francisco Bay Area bluesmen, L.C. Robinson and his disciple Sonny Rhodes). But the thing about Mr. Roulette is that he is much, much more than a blues player. Like Bob Wills, Jerry Garcia, Bill Frisell, or Ry Cooder, he is an American Roots Music player who transcends the basic idioms of American popular musics and not only plays rock, soul, blues, country, jazz and classical but creates new hybrids of these idioms that are uniquely his own.

Before the advent of this release it has been difficult to get an idea of the wide ranging creativity of Freddie Roulette. There have only been a few solo recordings released and they have been pretty narrow in their musical breadth. Here you can finally begin to hear some of Freddie’s special magic that I have long enjoyed seeing him perform over the last 25 years in our mutual home, The San Francisco Bay Area. ---Henry Kaiser, tradition-moderne.com