Mighty Mo Rodgers

"Blues Is My Wailin' Wall"

Blue Thumb 314 547 781-2 

After the SBS became well established, Larry and I started receiving more and more Blues cds in the ol' PO Box. It's gotten to where we can hardly keep up listening to all of them. I'm here to tell you that there is a lot of redundancy in the Blues. And I don't mean how the songs like to repeat a verse. That's all part of the genre'. I mean hearing the same basic 12 bar structure and its limitations repeated ad nauseam with minor lyric changes to hide the similarity to something that's mutated from Robert Johnson, Willie Dixon, Muddy, etc.

What makes the music rise above the mundane is an individual who can bring some fresh ideas and perspective to the "Blues" we know today.  Beyond "men versus women" or "troubles with the boss man" stuff. More far-reaching social issues that fuel further thought and discussion. It also helps if this individual dissects their own soul searching for the answers.

You've guessed it. Mighty Mo is your man! The first three tracks, Blues Is My Wailin' Wall, Took Away The Drum and Heaven's Got The Blues, I dare say are the best tunes out of the gate I've ever heard! That's not to say that the fourth song, No Regrets, is a loser. It just follows along the more traditional Blues themes I mentioned earlier. Mighty Mo understood that you'd need some time to recover from the first three. He then goes on in Tuskegee Blues to shame the doctors who performed the infamous syphilis experiments on African-Americans in Tuskegee, AL. He reveals the 18 minutes of the Nixon tape and describes the assassination of Kennedy as the "ultimate drive-by" in The Kennedy Song. (Bring Back) Sweet Soul Music is a lament to that lost art form which rings even truer with the recent loss of curtis Mayfield.

So who is this guy? Liner notes didn't reveal much. To the internet I went. Bingo! Maurice Rodgers holds a masters degree from california State University. His thesis was titled "Blues As Metaphysical Music [Its Musicality And Ontological Underpinnings]," and teaches at-risk youths for the L.A. county Office of Education.

Rodgers has been immersed in the blues since he was a teen in East chicago, Ind., where he heard such performers as Eddie Boyd, Earl Hooker, Jimmy Reed and
Willie Dixon. After beginning his performing career in the Midwest, he moved to california, where he worked as both a session and backup musician.  In 1973, he produced Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee's "Sonny And
Brownie." So the man's been around. Go buy it!

Ken Torvik

© copyright 2000, Suncoast Blues Society