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IN A FAMILY WAY
(Emit Doog)
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Fans of Saffire — The Uppity Blues Women will dig this album by the group’s pianist, Ann Rabson. More important, blues lovers without a soft spot for that trio may like it too. That’s because these 13 songs allow Rabson’s winning and distinctive approach to the keyboard as much space as her warm vocals. She glides from New Orleans boogie to jazz to R&B to whorehouse thunder with relaxed grace. Sometimes she almost does all that in the same song. The tunes, though mostly mid- and slow-tempo, gambol nicely through a menu of classics and originals. There’s the Bessie Smith sex-me-up "Do Your Duty," which has just the right hint of resignation. And the double-entendre ode to bikers "I Want To Hop on Your Harley," a playful Rabson-penned number. She keeps things light with Howlin’ Wolf’s "Three Hundred Pounds of Joy," a song tailor-made for her big-girl figure, and "Go Where the Bad People Go," which celebrates the virtues of Hell. The album closes with Roddy Barnes’s secular prayer "A Better World," which holds out the hope that Earth can become a bit more Heavenly if we all work together as brothers and sisters. Speaking of siblings: this album is also a celebration of Rabson’s own musical clan, which includes her violinist sister Mimi (who sounds a bit like Stéphane Grappelli) and Mimi’s trombonist/organist husband, Dave Harris, both of whom live in Arlington, plus Ann’s daughter Liz on rhythm guitar and her nephew Kenji on upright bass. They play expertly, with Harris’s trombone and Mimi’s violin ringing particularly eloquent. (Ann Rabson and the Rabson Family Band perform this Wednesday, March 23, at Scullers, in the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel, 400 Soldiers Field Road at the Mass Pike; call 617-562-4111.)
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