Three years after
William Lee Ellis gained the attention of the world's blues community with his stellar third album and Yellow Dog Records debut,
The Full Catastrophe, he arrived on a horse of a different color.
Conqueroo is a record steeped deeply in all of the traditions that have informed
Ellis' musical, spiritual, and emotional lives: folk, bluegrass, prewar blues, ragtime, country gospel, and classical, and yet what comes from his guitar and voice is entirely his own. Sure, one can hear
Gary Davis and
Lonnie Johnson in his playing, but one can also hear
Clarence White,
Merle Travis, and most of all,
Ellis himself in his playing. Unlike the revivalists out there,
Ellis is a stylist, an original guitarist and songwriter who understands that tradition is the source of the flame but is never the fire itself -- that comes from the heart of the artist.
Ellis' songs are deeply spiritual and full of street and amorous grit. Using his acoustic guitar and soulful baritone voice, he talks about virtues and vice as blessings that are forever linked inside the human heart and in the soul of the Divine. On an a cappella gospel tune such as "It's My Religion Too" with the soul/gospel quartet the Masqueraders, the mood is sacred; on the gutbucket slide blues of "Never Be the Child," it's profane; on the gorgeous folksy country of "Where Would I Go?" with father Tony's violin (the elder Ellis was a member of
Bill Monroe's
Bluegrass Boys and named
William after his old boss), it's one of forlorn love; and on the spooky "Northern Lights," with the bowed bass of Larry Nager, the feel is an old Scottish love ballad of the moors, but it's far more lonesome -- and menacing. There's solid bluegrass in the mix too on "King of the Mountain," but it's graced and greased with Delta blues in its turnarounds, and then, on an amazing read of
Chuck Berry's "Maybellene,"
Ellis re-reads the original through the blues via the rag styles of
Rev. Davis and
Tampa Red. The tune is a duet with Reba Russell, and Nager keeps it rooted into its changes while
Ellis runs all over its body with his guitar. The other duet is with
Susan Marshall on "Honey Take Your Time," a bawdy little love song that makes the feet shuffle and the backbone slip involuntarily. The last three tracks -- "Rider on Your Soul," "Black Sea Blues," and "Rose Hill" -- are
Ellis ripping it up on lap and steel guitars, playing the living hell out of it, singing about damnation and deliverance as if the Devil arrived on the doorstep at the same time Jesus did and you have to choose between them though they look the same. While
The Full Catastrophe was a brilliant blues record and deserved its accolades,
Conqueroo is in an entirely different league. This is a fully realized project that distills American music to its essence and creates something from them that bears
Ellis' distinct image. Not since the late
John Campbell has there been a blues talent so original, though his vision is not as haunted or hunted.
Ellis proves that not only are the blues not dead or a relic, but a morally instructive, sensually delightful art form whose possibilities have only begun to be mined for what they might contain for the future. This disc deserves the W.C. Handy Award for Album of the Year in 2003. ~ Thom Jurek