Crescent City Moon

Jumpin' Johnny Sansone released Crescent City Moon on his own Shortstack label in 1996, but it inspired such a positive buzz on the blues circuit that Rounder's Bullseye Blues label decided to pick it up and give it the national distribution it deserves. Like the better known John Mooney, Sansone takes the Mississippi-Chicago tradition of the blues and infuses it with New Orleans second-line rhythms that transform the genre completely. Sansone plays harmonica and accordion and sings in a gruff, authoritative baritone, but everything he does is locked into the syncopated beats that get the party going in his native Louisiana. The album features guest appearances by such local stars as slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, pianist Jon Cleary, and the Iguanas, but Sansone dominates the proceedings. He wrote 11 of the dozen tunes and he produced them all. He pays tribute to fellow Louisianan Slim Harpo with the fat harmonica tone and swamp-boogie beat of "Crawfish Walk." Fats Domino meets Buckwheat Zydeco when Sansone's squeezebox and the Iguanas' horns hook up on the well-greased New Orleans R&B of "Your Kind of Love." The push-and-pull, Professor Longhair shuffle of "Give Me a Dollar" perfectly evokes the hustlers who tapdance for dollars in New Orleans' Jackson Square. For all his Gulf Coast influences, however, Sansone can still turn in a good impersonation of Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter as he does on "The Talkin' Is Over (The Walkin' Has Begun)." --Geoffrey Himes