Title: Live at Rosa’s Lounge
Artist: Omar Coleman
Label: Delmark
Formats: CD, MP3
Release date: June 17, 2016
Last year we reviewed Omar Coleman’s Delmark debut, Born & Raised, released in June 2015. Due to that album’s success, Delmark decided to follow up immediately with a live recording. The result is Live at Rosa’s Lounge, recorded over three dates at “Chicago’s friendliest blues bar.” Six out of 10 of these live tracks appeared on the previous album, though in the new release you get some nice, extended versions, a couple of which are nearly double in length. Both albums feature the same line-up: Peter Galanis on guitar, Neal O’Hara on keyboards and organ, Dave Forte (tracks 1-5) and Ari Seder (tracks 6-10) on bass, and Marty Binder on drums.
New to the live album are four cover songs including the opener, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy’s “Snatch It Back and Hold It.” Coleman’s rendition inserts a dose of funk with a grooving bass line and organ riffs, and other than a brief harmonica appearance in the intro, he wisely makes no effort to improve on Junior Wells’s harp solo. This is followed by a hard-driving version of Willie Dixon’s “I’m Ready,” with O’Hara taking over the solo on keyboards. From the Stax catalog there’s Rufus Thomas’s “Give Me the Green Light.” Coleman states in the intro, “As you can guess, we like our blues with a dose of funk, soul, and all kinds of other stuff,” before the band lays into a heavy groove, deftly fusing Southern soul with electric Chicago blues. Another Dixon song popularized by Junior Wells, “Two Headed Woman,” closes the album in a fast and furious rendition that pits Coleman’s harp against Galanis’s guitar.
Though it’s impossible to recommend one of these albums over the other, Live at Rosa’s Lounge captures a younger generation of musicians, proving that the blues club scene is alive and well in Chicago.
Reviewed by Brenda Nelson-Strauss