Resurrection. Understanding the past as a key to unlock the future. The relationship of the individual to nature. All kinds of themes are present here in Chuck Leavell paying homage to the piano blues artists going back to the 1920′s through the the 1950′s. Its an homage, but also rendered as one as say a Glenn Gould recording of Bach. Leavell is that good. How a white middle class boy from the heart of Alabama could comprehend his musical environment and master the technical intricacies of his instrument is on the same level as say Vladimir Horowitz. At a certain sublime, even spiritual level there is little difference between the low arts and higher arts, something that would render a Theodor Adorno purple in the neck, but to play with the semantics of an idiom that Leavell does and emancipate it, transform it from beyond its standard dynamic of liberating/enslaving is a form of creative modern art, to which in the end he permits the listener to develop alternate interpretations. Brilliant.
---It may seem like an odd fit for a rock 'n' roll piano player, but my wife, Rose Lane, and I are tree farmers. Decades ago, she inherited about 1,000 acres in Georgia from her grandmother. The family has been connected to the land for generations, farming, tending forests and raising cattle, so I took our responsibilities seriously—and discovered a passion for it. Our forests give us so much: materials for homes, schools, books—my piano! In the mid-1980s, between Rolling Stones tours, I found myself studying practical forestry, and we've grown Charlane Plantation into a 2,500-acre family forest. --- Read More:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702043948
Chuck Leavell is considered by many to be the greatest rock pianist alive. Gregg Allman once said, “I know some good piano players, man, but . . . Chuck smokes ’em.” He’s held the keyboard chair in the Rolling Stones for twenty-nine years and is such an integral part of the group that Keith Richards once said the Stones “wouldn’t be the Stones without Chuck.” Read More:http://www.atlantamagazine.com/features/Story.aspx?id=1452700
“Mostly the blues masters of the piano, especially Little Brother Montgomery, Leroy Carr, and Cow Cow Davenport. All for the research and preparation for my next CD.”
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