John Nemeth - Memphis Grease

For John Németh, his native Boise, Idaho is where his love for soul and blues music began — and the starting point for a journey that's taken him from his first gigs fronting a teenaged band to the west coast, and now Memphis, and five Blues Music Award nominations in 2013 alone.

Memphis Grease, the long-awaited follow up to Németh's fourth solo studio release, 2010's Name The Day!, embodies everything that sets this artist apart from the revivalist pack: It's innovative and unique while epitomizing the absolute best of the genre. It's a deeply forged amalgamation of scorching harmonica-driven blues and sweet blue-eyed soul ala the Box Tops or Roy Head, delivered via two fistfuls of originals and a trio of carefully chosen covers, including Roy Orbison's "Crying," reinvented here as a slow-burning soul number that matches anything that came out of circa-late 1960s' Muscle Shoals.

The album title itself is evocative of Németh's journey to Memphis. The soul-blues scene he fell into in the Bay Area is historically referred to as "Oakland Grease," and a pair of Oakland's "greasiest" artists, guitarist Lowell Fulson and pianist Jimmy McCracklin, journeyed south to record two of their best, if often overlooked albums: Fulson's funky psych-blues In A Heavy Bag and McCracklin's soulful High on the Blues. For Németh, Memphis Grease is a natural concept that marries the techniques he honed in the Bay with the intuitiveness that flows between him and the Bo-Keys. The Bo-Keys are producer and musician Scott Bomar's group of veteran Memphis performers who made their names backing the likes of Al Green, O.V. Wright, Rufus Thomas and the Bar-Kays.

 

Side 1

Three Times A Fool

Sooner Or Later

Her Good Lovin’

Stop

It It Ain’t Broke

I Can’t Help Myself

Side 1

Crying

My Baby’s Gone

Testify

Bad Luck If My Name

Keep The Love A Comin’

Elbows On The Wheel

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