Red’s Blues Band – Old Diamonds & Uncut Gems
Sherry and Ray Music
15 Tracks – 64 minutes
Sacramento’s Red’s Blues Band is a four-piece band led by vocalist Beth Reid-Grigsby, aka Sacramento Red, on vocals with her husband, RW Grigsby on bass and vocals. Beth’s older brother introduced her to the music of Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt and others and she learned to sing songs like “Summertime”, “God Bless the Child” and “St. Louis Blues” alongside of her mother. RW nominated for Blues Music Award for Best Bass Player in 2017. The 2014 album, Remembering Little Walter, on which he played bass was also nominated for a Grammy Award and won a Blues Music Award for Best Album. He started playing at age 14 and started a professional career while still a teenager. Over the years, he played and recorded with Mark Hummel & The Blues Survivors, Gary Primich, and Mike Morgan and The Crawl. He balances playing with Red’s Blues with performances with other bands. The two first met in the Santa Barbara blues scene in 1977 and lived in multiple southern states before moving back to Sacramento in 2006.
Beth and RW founded Red’s Blues in 2012. Drummer and vocalist Tim Wilbur joined the band in 2015 and Doug Crumpacker on guitar, harmonica and vocals joined the band in 2019. Collectively, the band was inducted into the Sacramento Blues Hall of Fame and Doug & Tim both have been individually inducted. Tim has been a professional musician for decades and has accompanied Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Guitar Shorty. Doug also has decades of experience playing in multiple bands.
Old Diamonds & Uncut Gems is the fourth album for Red’s Blues. The album does include “old diamonds”, which can be interpreted as five older songs the band has previously recorded plus five cover songs. And the “uncut gems” are five new originals – “Lizzy’s Blues”, “Black-Eyed Sally’s”, “Singing a Brand-New Song”, “Looking for a Hustle”, and “Putting My Foot Down”. The album was recorded live at the Starlet Room in Sacramento on October 4, 2023. Beth and RW produced, and Kid Andersen mastered the album. Sid Morris guested on piano, organ, and added vocals on one song. John Cocuzzi played the piano on tracks 13 and 14. Robert Sidwell also guested on guitar on all songs.
The album opens with “Broke Down in the Fast Lane”, their title song from their last previous album released in 2020. She sings that “It is hard to make a living with the shape I’m in”. Supposedly based on a true story about when her vehicle broke down and she had to wait for a tow truck. On “Singing A Brand-New Song”, she tells how after struggling to come up with a song, she woke up one night and had a new song. Sid’s piano plays off nicely with Robert’s guitar. Everybody’s “Looking for a Hustle” as RW takes the lead vocal.
“Poor Girl” slows things down to a sultry, jazzy blues as Beth asks, “what a poor girl going to do…throwing back a shot of gin trying to temper losses down…while she watches all of her dreams fall through.” “Road Scholar” is the story of a man who has spent too much time on the road for too little money. Tim takes the lead vocals for this one. “Putting My Foot Down” lets Doug pull out the harmonica and Sid rocks the piano as Doug says he “put my foot down on shaky ground”.
Beth sings about the goings on at “Black-Eyed Sally’s”, “the meanest joint in town. “Forty Years of Trouble” is their song to get people jumping. Marty Deradoorian adds sax as Beth declares that the man is “rusty as a bucket of nails”. Dave Earl then joins Doug for a harmonica duet on “Mighty Long Time”, a cover of a song written by Rice “Sonny Boy Williamson II” Miller.
Gary Primich’s “Stonebroke” again features Dave on harmonica as Beth declares she is “gonna be stone broke until the day I die no matter how hard I try”. But next she identifies that she “Ain’t Worried No More”, a cover of a song written by Mike Morgan. Jon Lawton guests on the slide guitar as Beth says, “Everything’s going to be alright. Everything is looking up and the sun is shining bright”. “Lizzie’s Blues” is a tribute to Memphis Minnie with Jon’s slide again in the lead. Beth sings “Yeah Memphis Minnie, I wish could say I knew you when, cause you were a pure diamond in an uncut gem”. Which obviously gives a throwback to the album title. She further identifies that “In a world of men, you were the queen of the guitar.”
“Sally Lou” is cited by Beth as her “hooker song”, the story of a working girl who is Sally Lou by night but is known as Betty Lee during the daylight. She “gives lovin’ under the cover like no one else can do”. John Cocuzzi really tears it up on the piano on this one. “Sherry Ann” is a bit of old-time rock & roll as he begs her that “I want to be your lovin’ man”. John again really gets things rocking. Sid’s piano closes out the album with Floyd Dixon’s “San Francisco Blues” from 1953.
The instrumentals drive the album. The male vocalists come off for the most part as somewhat crusty and lacking drive. Beth has some shining moments, and you can certainly hear some sultry tone in her voice on some of the songs.
