 Listen to samples at Musicline. Click here ...With their current Seven Nights CD, Dieter Kropp & The Fabulous Barbecue Boys are continuing their musical path in a way that is consistent and true to style. They present the various facets of the blues genre with their own rousing authenticity: little compositional pearls from Louisiana, New Orleans, or California. Songs by musicians like Smiley Lewis, Dave Bartholomew, Lonesome Sundown, Otis Blackwell and Moon Mullican fuse with their own creative broadside and musical compactness, characteristics that undoubtedly make Dieter Kropp & The Fabulous Barbecue Boys one of the leading and most entertaining German representatives of the blues.
Seven Nights includes the brachial depths of a classic blues theme like “Laughing To Keep From Crying” in harmonious concord with the light-footedness of the swing track “Where Were You, Baby?” The wonderfully relaxed “Samplin’ Man” with its New Orlean’s rhythm is right next to the country adaptation of “My Little Girl.” The influences of swing, rhythm’n’blues, and jump blues are enriched and perfected by a four-man brass ensemble: Oliver Groenewald’s R&B Horns raise the roof and enthusiastically reflect this epoch during eight of the tracks. Their performance becomes almost compellingly programmatic for the “Barbecue Boogie”!
As a result, Seven Nights wonderfully radiates the sweaty elegance of a Forties nightclub, providing pure listening pleasure by coupling the passion of early rock’n’roll with the soulful atmosphere of deeply felt emotions that is anchored in the traditional blues. The expressive harmonica fireworks of protagonist Dieter Kropp – “one of the craftiest European harp-players” – gives all of this that splendid touch of extravaganza, creating the most recent work by Dieter Kropp & The Fabulous Barbecue Boys that critics have called a “great new, elegant and stylish album.” Brilliant.
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