Six great acts I discovered thanks to Jools Holland and "Later..."

In a post last year I was very rude about Jools Holland’s evident inability to improve as a TV presenter, despite thirty years’ experience (you can read it here). But, listening to a bunch of tracks by that excellent Nashville-based bluegrass/Americana band, Old Crow Medicine Show (see the video above), I started to feel guilty about slagging off the annoying little Deptfordian, given that his programme has introduced me to so many great acts over the years. I’ve chosen half a dozen of my favourites: they’re all American and they all play Roots music of one kind or another, and I might never have heard of at least four of them  if it weren't for Holland.

C.W. Stoneking is an Australian blues singer and songwriter who does what Kid Creole tried to do back in the ‘80s – create an atmosphere redolent of old Hollywood movies featuring Humphrey Bogart or John Garfield as out-pocket merchant sailors drinking themselves to death and lusting after extravagantly curvy sirens in sweat-drenched tropical locales. But Stoneking eschews rock and pop music for an eccentrically authentic 1930s sound, helped by the extraordinarily wrecked quality of his ancient-sounding voice and deliberately primitive instrumentation.

He also performed “Jungle Lullaby” that night – but not “The Love Me or Die”, which is my favourite Stoneking number to date.

Junior Brown has been a favourite since he appeared on the programme in 1994, doing this terrific, moody version of Red Sovine’s “Highway Patrol” – I’d certainly apologise and pay up!:

Seasick Steve’s a bit of a star over here since his droll appearance on Top Gear, and I’d certainly heard some of his stuff before he turned up on Later… - but this performance of “Doghouse Blues” made me a convert (later finding out that he’s a confirmed climate change sceptic was, of course, a bonus):

I’ve written a post about the wonderful Alvin Youngblood Hart (you can read it here) – and it was Jools Holland who put me onto him. Hart does raw Delta Blues brilliantly, but he displayed his versatility on the show with the self-penned “Tallacatcha” – I mean, Bing Crosby could have covered this number:

My final choice is BR5-49, a country/rockabilly band who look and sound like their next gig’s a Honky Tonk in Arkansas sometime around 1955. My favourite BR5-49 track is their cover of Moon Mullican’s “Cherokee Boogie” (although they closely follow the Johnny Horton version), but on Later… they covered Ray Price’s 4/4 shuffle-beat masterpiece, “Crazy Arms”:

I stopped watching Later… because of too many crappy modern British bands, fat old men trying to recapture former glories, and those dreadful, lumpen versions of old classics featuring all the guests in a Murder on the Orient Express-style act of communal homicide. But I guess I’m going to have to start sifting through it again for the occasional gem.