Title: Cherry Ball
Artist: Catfish Keith
Label: CD Baby
Product Type: COMPACT DISCS
UPC: 783707369600
Genre: Blues

'Cherry Ball' CD (FTRCD003) 1993 Recorded in one night after an inspiring 7-Nation World Tour, this album includes five originals and a couple of island pieces as well. A fan favorite. 'Cherry Ball will give you goose bumps and leave you howling for more!' -Dirty Linen This album features Catfish Keith all solo and live in the studio on National and acoustic guitars, vocal, and feet. QUOTES AND REVIEWS: 'Catfish Keith is one of the best blues entertainers in the USA.' -Dave Van Ronk 'Catfish Keith is the new slide king of the National steel guitar.' -Blueprint (British Blues Connection) 'Catfish Keith is a young, astoundingly accomplished steel guitar player originally from East Chicago, Indiana...an individual style...Keith's vocals are impressive; he's not just a guitar player but puts everything into his performance. If you like powerful well-played country blues, this is for you!' -Norman Darwen, Blues Life (Austria) 'Blues Wizard.' -The Boston Globe 'Keith's raging slide guitar, intricate fingerpicking and infectious vocals tab him as one of the idiom's top acoustic revivalists.' -Bill Dahl, Living Blues 'Breaking new ground for blues, Catfish Keith is a solo revelation. He makes each song sound new...See him if you can...Catfish was the star of the (Edinburgh Jazz & Blues) festival.' -Bob Flynn, The Guardian (UK) 'Catfish sings and plays with grit and a growl, and he obviously has a blast...So do we.' -Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, Acoustic Guitar 'Catfish Keith is one of the most exciting and skilled bluesmen of his generation. A man with drive and real swing.' -Robert Tilling, Blues & Rhythm (UK) 'There is an excitement that jumps out of the speakers. His slide work is a joy to hear. The tension of the strings with the pleading wail is eerie and touching at the same time -- highly recommended.' -Richard B. Kamans, Cadence 'The dynamics and intensity of this new release had me jumpin' . . . a new atmosphere in the blues.' -Bob Vorel, Blues Revue Quarterly 'Catfish Keith is a personality kid who takes charge right off...dazzling acoustic guitar work. Growls and falsettos alternate in the same number, as if he's doing duets with himself. Catfish is fearless...he reshapes and recycles the gems he's plucked from the past.' -John Douglas, Blues Access 'Catfish Keith is one extremely dynamic, energetic blues performer . . . uncanny blues ability. MY HIGHEST RATING. LOADS OF FUN.' -Victory Review 'He's our era's premier exponent of the classic delta blues. Those who saw him were universally overwhelmed with his veritable one-man show on the National Steel Guitar and fingerlickin' cool country blues. -Catalyst 'Keith's brand of delta blues radiates an infectious, life-affirming buoyancy. He tells stories and plays roles through his songs, and his picking displays a rhythmic and harmonic richness not always associated with the blues.' -Daily Iowan 'Catfish Keith satisfied a standing-room-only crowd of blues hungry souls. It was DYN-O-MYTE!!' -Louisville Music News -------------- CATFISH KEITH 'Spreading the Country Blues Word All Over the World' Feature article from Blueprint Magazine (UK), Issue 55, September 1993 (Catfish Keith Cover Issue) by Trevor Hodgett 'I was trying to play that old Memphis Minnie song 'I'm So Glad I Don't Know What To Do' and I started singing, 'All you men, why don't you take Catfish's advice, treat that woman like she was a paradise.' The modern message in that being, 'Treat everybody right,' and not like the old time message, 'I'm gonna shoot my baby just to see her die.' In the Nineties I want a positive message to go out. There's no room left in the world for destructive things. We need more love and good things.' Acoustic bluesman CATFISH KEITH explained his philosophy to Trevor Hodgett shortly after his performance at the Guinness Jazz & Blues Festival. Seems like only yesterday that a generation of young, fresh faced, white kids like John Hammond and Stefan Grossman began earnestly attempting to emulate the magnificent music of certified geniuses like Son House and Robert Johnson. Mention yer Hammonds and Grossmans to acoustic guitar maestro Catfish Keith and the reaction is somewhat disconcerting. 'Those guys are all my father's age,' he patiently points out. While your alarmed scribe ponders time's hurtling progress and wonders where his golden youth went, Keith describes his conversion to the blues, which began, as perhaps all conversions should, with a Son House record. 'When I was fifteen years old I started to pick up guitar and I found this Son House record, so I said, 'I'll try a little of that!' I put it on and, man, the emotional impact of the way he was singing and playing those blues really knocked me out. It really transformed my idea about what I wanted to do with my life.' So how is the guitar playing of a country blues player in the Nineties, like Keith, different from the playing of a country blues player in the Thirties, like Son House? 'In many ways it's very much the same. It's still rooted in the real down-home blues tradition, but I'm also a modern guitar player in that I've heard all the things that have come along since and I also incorporate early jazz elements and island music in my guitar playing, so there's a lot of different elements than just pure Delta blues. 'When I was a kid in Davenport, Iowa -- this is the home of Bix Beiderbecke and they have a Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival -- I heard more traditional jazz live than I heard blues, because, heck, there wasn't anyone around Iowa playing country blues. So I kinda developed my own style, cos I was all by myself and I wanted to create a style of music that would stand up all on it's own and could be a whole band by itself. 'I still got my same two raggedy guitars that I always had: the 1930 National steel-bodied guitar and that old Nick Lucas Special -- it's an old Gibson from the early Twenties. Those two old guitars kinda helped me develop my style, just by the guitars themselves. 'I have an electric guitar and occasionally I'll sit in with a band for fun, but my commitment is really to acoustic blues and to bringing as much power to solo performing as possible. I want to keep on with the acoustic style because that's where all the warmth and intimacy and dynamics and expressiveness are.' Keith of course was too young to ever hear the Son House generation of country bluesers live. 'Well, I did get to hang out with Johnny Shines. He was a great, great inspiration. I'd always been a fan of his and I'd played his songs, and then one time I had the opportunity to sit next to him and feel the power in his voice. Words can't express how it hit me. Man, it was just something that can't be duplicated by listening to records and studying that way. Just by sitting there and hearing his stories and his philosophy on life and the way he lived life was a very big inspiration for me, for he was a very great and proud man and he kept his integrity through all those years. He quit the music business for a while because he wanted to keep his own integrity, but he came back for the same reasons. Same as Son House.' The Sixties' revivalists also inspired Keith. 'Paul Geremia, John Hammond, Dave Van Ronk -- they've all been very encouraging. It's inspiring to meet these players and to have them share their music and encourage me to keep on going and to take it to the next generation.' Keith recorded his first album, Catfish Blues, for Kicking Mule in 1985. 'At the time I was very happy with it, but it's just a document for me of when I was 22 years old. I think a lot of it's good, but it was just the first stage in the development of what became finally my style. 'Once I met my wife Penny Cahill we formed Fish Tail Records, because we wanted to do it all on our own.' In 1990 Fish Tail Records released Keith's second album, Pepper in My Shoe! Which contains a mixture of original compositions and covers. 'Well, I just pick things that I like, and often they'll c

Tracks:
1.1 Mr. Catfish's Advice
1.2 Cool Can of Beer
1.3 Your Head's Too Big
1.4 By and By I'm Going to See the King
1.5 Cherry Ball
1.6 Rabbits in Your Drawers
1.7 Swim Deep, Pretty Mama
1.8 Hawaiian Cowboy
1.9 Deep Sea Moan
1.10 Goin' Up North to Get My Hambone Boiled
1.11 Ramblin' Blues
1.12 Leave My Wife Alone
1.13 Mama Don't You Sell It, Papa Don't You Give It Away
1.14 That Ain't No Way for Me to Get Along

Audio Sample:
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