Year-end awards for Candice Ivory (December '23)
Candice Ivory's album When the Levee Breaks was selected as the #1 Delta blues album of 2023 by the journal Roots Music Report. "You Can't Rule Me," one of the singles from the album, was named the most memorable blues track of 2023 by John Kessler, music critic for KNKX (Seattle).
https://candiceivory.com/Roots%20Music%20Report_'The%20Roots%20Music%20Report's%20Top%20Delta%20Blues%20Album%20Chart%20for%20the%20Year%20of%202023'_Roots%20Music%20Report%20(2023).pdf
https://www.knkx.org/blues/2023-12-04/best-of-the-blues-john-kesslers-mo...
Candice Ivory's When the Levee Breaks has received several new rave reviews in a number of outlets, including Downbeat, All About Jazz, Blues in Britain, and Blues News (Germany) (12/10/23)
An early link between urban and country blues, singer-guitarist-songwriter Memphis Minnie has great stature in the blues story. Candice Ivory, a St. Louis-based jazz-and-more singer with Memphis roots, knows it and celebrates Minnie with an album that has her treating a dozen songs recorded by her foremother in the early 1930s. Ivory’s appealing, heartfelt voice goes at the lyrics with determination to assimilate Minnie’s dramatic sense.
Candice Ivory is more than a little ambitious to conceive and execute an album comprised wholly of material by blues icon Memphis Minnie. But to her credit, she has been quite resourceful in enlisting some formidable resources in the effort: guitarist/bassist Charlie Hunter serves as a player and the album producer, the latter role also filled on the album by the steel guitarist DaShawn Hickman. Needless to say, camaraderie abounds throughout the dozen cuts…. In performing with such apparent effortlessness, in tandem with her kindred spirit accompanists, Candice Ivory…posits herself as a figure of staunch independence and forthrightness comparable to the source of her inspiration.
—Doug Collette, All About Jazz
This set marks fifty years since Minnie died and contains a dozen of her finest songs—but is no futile recreation. Candice pursues her own path here; there’s plenty of percussion for a start, somewhere between Caribbean and West African sounds and what J.B. Lenoir called his “African hunch” rhythm in the ’60s, and her vocals have plenty of the church in them, as on “Crazy Crying Blues,” where label mate DaShawn Hickman adds some sacred steel playing. I must mention co-producer/bassist/guitarist Charlie Hunter, who is also integral to the sound of this album. Note however that the stars of this wonderful set are the songs themselves and Candice’s wonderful vocals. The arrangements are totally successful, highly individual and refreshingly ego-free…
—Norman Darwen, Blues in Britain
Recording an album of twelve cover versions of songs by the unruly blues legend Memphis Minnie is a demanding project that requires much self-confidence. But for Candice Ivory—who is deeply rooted in gospel, R&B, and blues as well as jazz and has been an active performer since her childhood—her self-confidence is certainly justified. She succeeds in giving these classic songs a modern avant-soul character without distorting their essence.
—Sandra Iris Patzeil, Blues News
Candice Ivory's album When the Levee Breaks: The Music of Memphis Minnie, was reviewed by critic Graham Clarke in Blues Bytes.
The name Candice Ivory is likely a new one for many of us, but just one listen to this fabulous singer's tribute to the music of Memphis Minnie will make you a believer.
http://bluenight.com/BluesBytes/su0923.html
https://candiceivory.com/Clarke,%20Graham_'Surprise'_Blues%20Bytes%20(September%202023).pdf
Candice Ivory's album reviewed by the French music site Paris-Move
Candice Ivory, instead of imitating her predecessor, has embarked on a reinterpretation of the song, making it perfectly relevant today. In fact, this entire album shines through Candice Ivory’s artistic vision.... With a deep voice, Candice Ivory retraces the history of Memphis Minnie, a commendable effort carried out with mastery, touching, and moving, which commands admiration. Besides her own life journey, one can consider that Candice Ivory, by making such an artistic choice, is also doing valuable intellectual work to preserve collective memory—a necessary memory, marked by the pain of a people who managed to rise above the worst and gain international respect through their cultural contributions. No other community has contributed as much to 19th and 20th-century music and the arts as the African American community. A form of blues transcended by a contemporary artist, a pure artistic marvel, and well beyond the blues, an album for all those who love the beauty of art.
—Thierry De Clemensat, Paris-Move
https://www.paris-move.com/reviews/candice-ivory-when-the-levee-breaks-t...
When the Levee Breaks, the new album by Candice Ivory, was reviewed by WNYC critic John Schaefer on the Soundcheck segment of NPR's All Things Considered. The broadcast can be heard on Soundcheck's website: https://www.newsounds.org/story/weekly-music-roundup-ana-tijoux-allison-miller-jeremy-dutcher
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of the great blues singer/guitarist Memphis Minnie (real name Lizzie Douglas), who, despite a hard road in life, wrote the enduring classics “When The Levee Breaks” and “Me and My Chauffeur Blues.” Candice Ivory, from a longtime family of Memphis musicians, has just released a tribute album called When the Levee Breaks: The Music of Memphis Minnie, done in collaboration with noted guitarist/bassist Charlie Hunter. The opening track, here listed as “Me and My Chauffeur,” is a salty number – it’s pretty clearly not about driving – with Hunter’s guitar embroidering Ivory’s vocals while the percussion, avoiding the usual drum kit, offers a surprising and appropriately Afrocentric sound.
