Consumer Guide Album

Saffire: The Uppity Blues Women: Deluxe Edition [Alligator, 2006]
A dynamite post-vaudeville act enters history on a best-of that preserves its choicest lines and deepest riffs. Where in the true vaudeville era Butterbeans and Susie regaled the T.O.B.A. circuit with connubial comedy, recovering science teacher Gaye Adegbalola and gap-toothed blueswoman Ann Rabson dramatize not just feminist sex but post-menopausal sex. They prefer young men for their malleability and take shade from no one--only once do they slip into the ladies-love-outlaws trope male songwriters should outlaw. Adegbalola sums up the prevailing mood in "Middle Age Blues Boogie": "I'm throwing away my dustmop/Got a brand new vacuum cleaner/You should hear me when I holler/'Eureka, eureka.'" A−