Blues Society of Western PA - Newsletter

Joe Price started playing guitar as a nine year old in Waterloo, Iowa. Focusing on folk and country blues, he was eventually steered into electric urban blues after a chance meeting with Earl Hooker. He settled in Iowa City, often a stopping place for blues artists touring between Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City, playing first with the Rocket 88s and then with the legendary trio Mother Blues (with Patrick Hazell and Bo Ramsey). He retreated to Lansing, Iowa, where he met his future wife, Vicki Ewing, and the two of them began opening for artists like Honeyboy Edwards, Al Green, Louisiana Red, Iris DeMent, John Lee Hooker, and Homesick James). In 2002, Price was inducted into the Iowa Blues Hall of Fame and the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Joe’s latest CD, ”Rain or Shine,” is a delightful little journey back to blues that you do not hear much anymore. Featured prominently - in six out of the ten cuts- is his National ResoRocket guitar. For the most part, it is just Joe and his guitar. He grabbed me right out of the starting gate with “Hornet’s Nest”. I thought I was listening to somebody from the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. It is then on to some serious slide on “Joe’s Guitar Stomp.” Hounddog Taylor would be proud. Joe sings on five of the songs. Although he does not have a great voice, he sings with such passion and conviction that it serves this music very well. His wife, Vicki, sings on one cut and backs him on three with her own Nationals. Other standouts for me were: “Nellie Bell,” the name he gave his guitar, “Blues on 12,” played on a ‘58 Stella 12 string, “Beer Tent Boogie Woogie,” and “Rock Slide,” where he is backed with trumpet and drums.For me this was some real deal blues. It is a style of blues that seems to be a dying art. Mississippi Fred McDowell would feel right at home listening to this. So would Hounddog Taylor. Slide aficionados will find lots to like here.