One of such recorded festivals deserving mention is East Texas Pinetop Blues Festival 1998, organized by Footprints Foundation which claims that portion of the proceeds of this CD would go to benefit African American awareness and establishing scholarships for minorities in the East Texas area, such humanitarian side of the festival activities is quite common nowadays and its worthy cause upgrades the value of such festival. Also the purpose of this festival is to promote the rich cultural and historical legacy of the East Texas region and its people, also a worthy cause by all means.

Featured artists who are not well known outside their region, I suppose, make this happening a local one, but very wide on the music side. Variety of artists whose come from different music genres supply some soulful grooves, gospel, R&B and blues oriented material which obviously went well with the crowd. Nice selection of classic songs presented by local talent is a winning combination on this CD. Only weak point on this otherwise pleasing stuff is unconsistently recorded material, sometimes vocals are buried with horns, sometimes sound is rather thin, but the energy of performances make up for these flaws. Plenty of gut drenched vocals, tight guitar licks, swelling organ and busy horn section dominate this CD.

Nacogdoches Interdominational Choir (what a name!) open the proceedings with “I Know A Man”, strong gospel track featuring fine female vocal, maybe some more stuff by this choir should be included! Little Nikki is also in gospel mood with Jim Waetherly’s ballad “Hard To Say Goddbye”. Edwin Holt has three songs on this CD, so he probably must be a star in the area! His rendition of classic stuff by Elmore James, Haywood Tymes and Denise LaSalle shows why is it so, energetic performance and good backing make him a winner also on this CD. Love Company and Lady Princess deliver fine, soul covers of “My Girl” and “Baby I Love You”, while blues oriented material by Perry Jones, R.L.Griffin, Joe Hughes and Edwin Holt covering some classic stuff by Rosco Gordon, Jimmy Cox and others grooves all the time. Harrold Walker does justice to Booker T.’s old chestnut “Born Under A Bad Sign”.

Fine document of what must have been an event of a festival 1998, and I am looking forward to next festival release in the near future.

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