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Available at CDBaby.com, iTunes
and all other major download sites.
August 2008
MYSTERY OUTLAW BAND RESURFACES
THE JAMES BOYS are back with a bang! The mysterious outlaw band has surfaced with a new record on Helena Records available now at CDBaby.com, iTunes and all major digital download stores. Now, while it is true that since the release of their historic collaboration with the late Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, music icon Johnnie Johnson, THE JAMES BOYS have been entertaining multi-generational audiences with their unique hybrid of sounds (Roots Rock, Classic Rock, Blues Rock, Country Rock, Pop Rock, and even R&B)—the fact is they hadn't been heard from on CD. But now, from their secret studio locations,TJB has served up this collection, a fusion of all those elements heard in their live performances.
There's the title track, the rollicking homage to Rock pioneer Chuck Berry, "A Really Good Rocker"—an entertaining, contemporary rocker that, at the same time, gives a nostalgic tip of the cap to earlier days. As TJB front man and songwriter Rick Rykart forcefully says : "Chuck Berry and Johnnie Johnson started this whole thing. Everyone that ever set foot into this, from Elvis and The Beatles, to all the present day people that are part of the music scene and making a life of it, they need to give Chuck and Johnnie all respect."And that continuum, dating from the Big-Bang of what would come to be called "Rock and Roll", is what the Re-Mixed version of their collaboration with Johnson, the tribal and anthem-like "A Dose of Rock & Roll", is all about. It's on this track that the great piano master, one of the Prime-Movers of the dawning of Rock, showcased the blazing, boogie piano he had pioneered so many years earlier—that very style that earned him a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. But how about "Anne Marie" for a purely contemporary rocker? Contemporary, yes, but this scintillating track still is all about the most enduring and oldest of Rock themes: paying tribute to a hot girl! (and for those who dig fiery, electric slide solos-you'll love this) Speaking of fiery electric guitar, nowhere do THE JAMES BOYS shine more in that regard than in their Rapping adaptation of the John Lee Hooker classic "Boogie Children". In fact, every instrument shines with power in this track, another characteristic amalgam of styles pulled off by TJB.The Boys show off their Country Rock chops on the ironic, role-reversal song "Same Girl"—a turnabout on past clichés. Instead of a reference to a "kept woman" TJB voices the refrain of a man who was once the "property" of a successful woman of means—but now has decided to follow his heart in matters of love, not his wallet.
A lot could be said regarding all the tracks but one listen to this Helena release will speak louder than anything else. All the descriptions of the great instrumentation and the terrific songs you will find on this album would all be true-but here's what's even more important: THE JAMES BOYS are all about having fun—and you, too, will have a lot of fun listening to this record. Buy it at CDBaby.com, iTunes or load your mp3 player at any major digital download site.
May 2006
Announcing
"A Dose of Rock & Roll"
with the magical piano work
of the late, great "Father of Rock & Roll Piano,"
JOHNNIE JOHNSON
WHAT THE WORLD IS SAYING:
News from Tennessee
News from France
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In April 2005 this world suffered the loss of a shining light in popular music as the great Johnnie Johnson passed on. One of the pioneers, in fact a founding father, of “Rock & Roll” and member of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Johnson had no peer as a blazing,  scintillating, monster of the piano. His trailblazing work as Chuck Berry’s piano player showed the way for all those who followed—indeed the sound the Berry recordings created is arguably the “Big Bang” of rock music that defined the genre to begin with. For that reason as well as the worldwide live shows Johnnie performed (which continued until the very end of his life) he was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall in 2000 and inducted in 2001. All of that said, however, there remains an interesting fact regarding the man’s legacy: Blues and Jazz were what he focused on in his post-Berry career—rarely performing the Rock genre that helped make him famous—and rarely recording it. There would be an occasional live “Rock and Roll” performance with Berry or with Johnson friends Keith Richard and Eric Clapton, such as in the live concerts that were documented in the 1987 film “Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll”—and then, even though he made a multitude of stops in the recording studio playing Blues and Jazz for his own records and others, there would only be a rare stint playing songs which had a related flavor of the classic Rock and Roll style that he had pioneered in the 1950s. Those few tracks are all that is left to the world.
Now Helena Records is proud to release one of the most ferocious of those new tracks “A Dose of Rock & Roll” by Helena’s home based artists THE JAMES BOYS and Johnnie Johnson—one of the greatest tracks Johnson ever chose to record post-Berry in the classic Rock style that Johnnie helped pioneer. As hot as it is historical, the song and track will absolutely blow away the listener.
A contemporary homage to 50’s Rock and Roll and the icons who created it, the song was penned by Johnson friend JAMES BOYS lead singer Rick Rykart. “Johnnie was one of the great Blues performers of all time, not just a Rock and Roll guy, he was so much bigger in his artistry than the pigeon-holing thing the culture tries to do with performers and artists” Rykart mused, “yet he was and is a giant in the Rock and Roll universe and anybody that missed that fact—hey, just listen to this record.” Indeed the track reveals, in a way that the original Berry classics often tended to obscure in the mix, the incredible power of the Johnson invented, boogie-woogie driven hybrid mix of piano styles that fused with Berry’s guitar and songs to create what the world would come to call “Rock and Roll.” “I’m so lucky, and the whole world is lucky that Johnnie chose to do his Rock thing one more time on this record—generally he avoided it” Rykart noted and went on with obvious awe “at his age he still could create fire on the ivory like no one else.” Legendary for the warmth and giving nature of his personality, Johnson’s passing inspired this observation from Rykart. "Johnnie’s generosity knew no bounds and he wanted to help me out, but you can bet he also wanted to show the world yet again the absolute magic he could create on a record.” He certainly did that and more on “A Dose of Rock & Roll”—a record for the archives.
UPDATE
“A groove that really cooks”—that’s the understated way in which JAMES BOY singer/songwriter Rick Rykart describes the latest Helena Records release “The Reason For The Blues”—a track sure to, in fact, chase away the listener’s blues. Johnnie Johnson, the legendary piano man and seminal figure in Rock who passed away earlier this year, again collaborates with THE JAMES BOYS in what is yet another historical offering featuring the only known recording of Johnson playing organ. “You’ve got something there that no one else has,” reflected Johnson’s widow Frances upon review of her husband’s studio history. Indeed Johnson was musically far more in life than the rock piano prime mover visitors to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will find enshrined forever – his blues and jazz records and gigs were also the stuff of legend. “Johnnie was a bluesman through and through and he particularly liked jazzy blues” opined Rykart, the song’s co-author, “and that’s why we wrote the song—as a vehicle for capturing that side of him.” That effort in songwriting by Rykart and former guitarist and musical director of the Johnson touring band Tom Maloney succeeds in a big way. It’s a jazzy blues toe-tapper that will delight blues purists and jazz fans alike. “Let me tell you, in the studio when Johnnie wanted to play organ on this song I was just thrilled,” proclaimed Rykart on release day. “I’m just another of the millions of Johnnie Johnson fans, I loved everything he did,” he continued, “And I’m truly happy and humbled to be instrumental in the whole world being able to hear him cruise on organ the way he does here.”
Rick, so are we at Helena Records.
Available at CDBaby.com, Itunes and other major download sites.
Johnnie Johnson onstage with Tom Maloney.
photo by Sheryl Rudy
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