Baba Blues Glimmer Of Gold Import LP Scratch & Dent

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The Swedish duo of Baba Blues is famous for sounding like a whole big band on stage with only voice, harmonica and two acoustic guitars put through a PA system. No machines or synthesizers, just pure handmade music... When they make records, they use a little more of technique and instruments as they make them for a different audience and listening situation. They want to bring a story into your living room.

Richard Danielson and Clas Gustavsson met in 1984 as members of a touring blues band called Diving Duck. A little fed up with the cover mentality of the ordinary blues band concept, they started to play acoustically on late hotel nights after the gigs to get the music out of their system. There they founded a form of blues rooted in the early pre-war blues, with no bass and drums, but with a modern rock attitude. In 1988 they started to play and make gigs under the name of Baba Blues and decided to make a tape to sell after the gigs. They had both played in several bands for many years being parts of the Swedish "prog-scene" going on in the seventies, with lyrics in Swedish and a slightly psychedelic "make your own thing" approach.

When they, in the early '90s, wrote and recorded their own blues songs in Swedish and put them on their debut album Fishermen, radio stations immediately started to play it. TV shows invited them on programs and they became favorites of newspaper critics who put it on "the best of the year" lists. They made two albums — Kompassernas man (1993) and Den rasande balansen (1996) — in Swedish with hits on the radio before they decided to try to communicate with the world outside of Sweden.

In 2000 their album Excavations: blues is a rainbow knocked out the critics who again put them on "the best of the year" lists. This time the songs were in English — some of their own, some old blues stuff and, unexpectedly, a Motorhead song.

Deep down in the mirror was released in 2005, with expressive lyrics and experimental settings (choir, violin and brass arrangements), and together with heavy touring they received the Swedish Blues Award of Jefferson Blues Magazine in 2006.

The 2019 album Glimmer of Gold is a collection of Baba Blues' popular album tracks through the years. The eight songs featured on the LP have been selected and arranged with the help and support of music enthusiast Nguyen Hoan Long. The story behind Glimmer of Gold can be traced back to Baba Blues' cover of "St. James Infirmary." The cover became highly appreciated and has gained popularity throughout the years. However, despite the success, "St. James Infirmary" was initially rejected by Clas and Richard on their debut album Fishermen. The song has up until now only been featured on the album All That Blues From Sweden!, a compilation album of different Swedish blues artists.

It has been said about us that we seem to be a bit schizophrenic in our music because we use one part of the brain that has the blues tradition, with lyrics in English, together with the other part that has the Swedish tradition, with connections to the Swedish "visa" with its poetry. Anyhow the name: BABA is African and Asian…

But we are not playing "world-music," we just pick up the junk in our minds and let it go... And the blues is the main part in there for both of us after having been playing it in many different bands for many years. The blues sure have a lot of babies all around the world and it has taken a lot of different shapes and one of them is ours. Sweden has quite a big blues scene these days with many qualified bands and artists, I guess we have to let it all out. Just to survive with all of this snow...

—Richard and Clas

Baba Blues boldly moves on and breaks new ground in a headstrong and truly artistic ambition not to rest on its laurels and settle down. Not to stagnate in comfortable inoffensiveness and routine. It is this attitude that makes Baba Blues surprise us year after year with constant innovation, with never-ending creativity and colorful originality.