Breakin’ News: Ten Years of Blues – Nola Blue Records 2014-2024
Nola Blues Records
10 songs – 41 minutes
Nola Blue Records has been one of the most active labels in the industry since its founding in 2014. It celebrates its 10th anniversary in style with this skintight compilation, a sampling from nine artists from their extensive roster, a group that’s been filling the charts with award-winning sounds ever since.
The label was initiated in Pennsylvania by businesswoman/music aficionado Sallie Bengston shortly she launched her own management company and started working with Benny Turner, who was transitioning from a lifelong position as sideman – which began in the ‘50s alongside his brother, Freddie King – into a star in his own right.
Nola Blue’s debut release was Turner’s Journey CD, and three others now populate its catalog, which includes releases from rising and regional stars and established artists alike. But the spotlights shines bright on its biggest talents here. Benny contributes three of the ten tracks, one of which is a duet with Chicago great Cash McCall. And both John Németh and John’s big band, The Love Light Orchestra, Texas soul-blues giant Trudy Lynn, Keystone Staters Frank Bey and Clarence Spady, Louisiana treasure Lil’ Jimmy Reed and youthful keyboard sensation Ben Levin make welcome appearances, too.
Turner’s rock-steady “Breakin’ News” – culled from his debut Nola release – is an appropriate choice to kick off the album, announcing that he’s “finally got a life” and over the heartbreak left behind by the absence of a lady that he’d loved and lost. Billy Branch’s harmonica kicks off “It Hurts Me Too,” a number Benny tracked with McCall for their album Going Back Home in 2018. Cash powers on the mic through the Elmore James classic.
Bey – known as the Southern Gentleman of the Blues — was also at the top of his game when he recorded “All My Dues Are Paid,” a song he penned with Kid Anderson, Rick Estrin and Kathy Murray. He received BMA nominations for both the tune and its namesake album in 2021, after succumbing to a long battle with kidney disease the year before. Then McCall takes the stage again for “One Who’s Got a Lot,” a slow-and-steady number that praises a woman who always gives him everything she’s got. It was probably one of the final cuts in his life, too.
No stranger to BMA honors, too, Spady picks up the pace for the driving “If Only We Could,” a number that yearns for the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes to be able to know what they know. A seven-time nominee for the Koko Taylor Award, Lynn’s at her sassy best for “Golden Girl Blues,” a steady shuffle that features sensational guitar from Anson Funderburgh and Yates McKendree and served as the title cut for her 2022 Nola Blue release.
The Love Light Orchestra is in total command next as Németh serves as the front man to deliver the burner, “After All,” about being rejected by a longtime love and praying for a happier ending, before taking folks to church for the spirited “The Last Time,” an emotion-packed tune he recorded while facing surgery to free him from cancer in his jaw that would save his life but possibly brought his career to a tragic, untimely end.
The mood shifts dramatically as Reed slows things down for “They Call Me Lil’ Jimmy” with Levin on the keys, recalling his long, successful career but boasting that he’s “still got what a woman needs.” Turner returns once again to close things out with “Who Sang It First,” an unhurried request that all of remember that the blues sprang from both the cottonfields and church and acknowledge the creators no matter what path the music takes today.
Breakin’ News is good news for all blues lovers. Miss out on some of these releases in the past? Give this a listen and you just might be hunting them out in the future. It’s just that good!
