Blues star Sue Foley releases a tribute album to the female pioneers of the guitar. One Guitar Woman is a solo acoustic triumph in concept and execution.
Canadian blues guitarist and vocalist Sue Foley has released more than a dozen albums, several of them award-winners, but her new release on Stony Plain Records, One Guitar Woman, is something special. She has forsaken (momentarily, we’re sure) her famed Pinky Telecaster for a nylon-string classical guitar, a flamenco Blanca model created by master luthier Salvadore Castillo. Not surprisingly, Sue’s technique and expressiveness with this guitar is impeccable; her finger-style playing is immaculate while the sound is warm and intimate. Every cut on the album is performed solo on this one guitar, each number dedicated to a woman pioneer in music, whether their field be folk, blues, roots, and even classical. The results are memorable.
She has reached far into early blues and folk roots with her choice of artists to honour. Songs from such luminaries as Maybelle Carter, Elizabeth Cotten and Sister Rosetta Tharpe appear on the album, along with tributes to lesser-known pioneers such as Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas. “They were massively talented, and they all possessed courage and vision which transformed both their cultures and the story of the guitar,” Sue writes in her liner notes.
Standout tracks: “Oh Babe, It Ain’t No Lie”, which features the Piedmont finger-picking style made famous by Elizabeth Cotten, and “Maybelle’s Guitar”, an original composition by Sue that illustrates the “Carter Scratch” guitar style. “Last Kind-Hearted Words”, by the unfortunate Geesha Wiley, is a hard-driving number that deserves to be widely known. “Romance in A Minor”, written by Paganini as a violin showpiece, follows the adaptation of Ida Presti, who was one of the foremost female classical guitarists of the 20th century. Presti was often called the greatest classical guitarist of the 20th century, bar none, so Foley’s choice of this piece is highly significant. Sue’s classical chops, including the challenging tremolo, are more than adequate to the task of performing this showpiece.
Most unexpected is the closing cut on the album “La Malagueña,” a classical guitar standard written by the Cuban pianist and composer Ernesto Lecuona, who wrote countless songs and was known as the “George Gershwin of Cuba”. This highly emotional piece is well-known to every student of the classical guitar in simplistic though still moving form, but was given a more complex and incendiary interpretation by Charo, who was twice voted Flamenco Artist of the Year. Sue’s delivery on this cut is modelled on Charo’s version, and is a fitting close to the album.
Highly recommended.
