Slightly Grey Feisty Females Strut Their Sassiest Stuff:
Saffire -- The Uppity Blues Women's Deluxe Edition
by Carol Cooper
Saffire -- The Uppity Blues Women
Deluxe Edition
Alligator
|
If you buy only one acoustic blues album this year, why not a best-of
from a self-affirming trio of feisty females? Culled from six previous
Alligator albums, Deluxe Edition by Saffire -- the Uppity Blues
Women lets these slightly gray ladies strut their top-drawer vocal and
instrumental licks on an array of sassy originals and vintage covers
reverentially resurrecting the "wild woman" legacy of Victoria Spivey,
Ma Rainey, Sippie Wallace, and Bessie Smith. Where contemporary pop
"bad girls" from Shakira to the Pussycat Dolls evoke the sensuality
and spunk of the blues but none of its wisdom, Saffire lyrics provide
all three. Their allegorical "Silver Beaver" is as sexually explicit
as anything Lil' Kim or Foxy Brown might record, just more elegantly
phrased. As players they embrace every shade of difference between
country, urban, and vaudeville blues, even veering toward country
swing and gypsy jazz in "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby."
Omni-American and young at heart, Gayle, Anne, and Andra are as
soulful as Alicia Keys, as defiant as the Runaways, and as heroic as
the Dixie Chicks, with none of the career drawbacks of callow
youth.
Published in: Village Voice, March 24, 2006
