With songs about money, black magic women, aspiration, paternity questions, being dissatisfied, leaving your woman, and prostitution, played in older styles, sometimes with a doo-wop bass and composer credits that include Peter Green and Jagger/Richards, French outfit Pink Turtle are indeed back again. Their brief is to tackle well-known pop numbers – in addition to “Black Magic Woman” and “Satisfaction”, the band’s second album for the label offers Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke”, Abbas’s “Money, Money, Money”, The Police’s “Roxanne”, and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, among others, in ways that are never over-reverent and often subversive. The group’s general style is a jazzy swing, sometimes bluesy, sometime more gypsy jazz, occasionally with a Latin flavour – bur always good fun. There is some fine blues-rock guitar on “Black Magic Woman”, a big bluesy arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover”, a knockabout jazz arrangement of “We Will Rock You”, and, best of all, “Billie jean” as a driving, contempory blues shuffle with a strong French accent and an excellent, extended blues harp solo from guest J. J. Milteau. The album closes out with a New Orleans marching band cover of “Hey Jude”; different and always entertaining !
Norman Darwen – Blues in Britain
Norman Darwen – Blues in Britain
