If you put vocalist Oscar Wilson in front of an all-star Chicago blues band, what do you call it? The Cashbox Kings would be a perfectly acceptable answer. However, this time you’d be wrong. It is simply an Oscar Wilson solo album entitled One Room Blues. 

This Airway Records release which was co-produced by label owner and tenor sax man Sam Burckhardt along with the ubiquitous guitar virtuoso, Joel Paterson, is a beauty. Paterson fronts his own bands, The Joel Paterson Trio as well as The Modern Sounds. He is also the guitarist for that aforementioned Chicago blues collective known as The Cash Box Kings which of course also features Oscar Wilson. He, along with Joe Nosek, is one of that band's principal singers and songwriters. 

By the way, The Cash Box Kings recently signed with Alligator Records and have a new release slated for the 30^th of June. While we look forward to that, Wilson comes out of leftfield with this gem.

Paterson and Burckhardt are joined on the bandstand by organist and piano player Pete Benson as well as upright bassist Beau Sample along with drummer and recording engineer Alex Hall.

As Paterson points out in the album's liner notes, “Sometimes great recordings happen for simple reasons.” He goes on to inform listeners that this project came about as he and Burckhardt simply wanted to have something to sell off the bandstand at a blues festival in Basel, Switzerland, the hometown of longtime Chicago resident Sam Burckhardt. The economic realities are that getting a band together of this caliber on the same night in Chicago is almost impossible. Paterson goes on to point out this project soon became, “...a labor of love.”

So this ensemble went into the studio, one room really, and on January 31^st and February 1^st of 2017 turned out a thirteen song masterpiece. The tracks were engineered, mixed and mastered by Alex Hall.

They took some very familiar blues tunes out for a ride and in the process found head room in some old favorites. Wilson was up to the task as he breathes new life into some blues classics. Each musician speaks fluently in several different blues dialects, but for this program they land on more of a swinging Texafornian sound.  Songs such as Lowell Fulson’s Reconsider Baby, Percy Mayfield’s Lost Mind and River’s Invitation, Bobby Bland’s Further On Up The Road, B.B. King’s Your Letter and others are subtly reimagined.

The album also features two original instrumentals Paterson’s Texas Turnaround and Burckhardt’s Happy Reunion.

However, the real star here is the natural unaffected voice of Oscar Wilson. By stepping slightly out of his comfort zone he demonstrates a real aptitude for his craft. His ability to put his own spin on some very familiar material is refreshing and fun. In that upside down blues world where vocal histrionics are revered and even rewarded, it is great to hear a singer who understands the true art of singing the blues. Subtlety, nuance and impeccable phrasing are all hallmarks of Wilson’s approach to this material and are on full display on One Room Blues.

What could have been just another mundane blues release is truly something very special. Highly recommended...

- David Mac

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