"I think a famous person in a suit singing songs of deprivation and despair from times gone by is patronising in the extreme."

Then I met Hugh Laurie, and I decided to become a musician... I been starvin' ever since...

GLW and I caught the end of the show and almost wretched at how bad it was. Hugh's performance was wedding band level at best. This kind of sleb vanity project is something Fry and Laurie would have taken the piss out of 20 years ago.

Mainly because I don't think anyone should have to 'qualify' to play a certain kind of music - you just have to like it. Delta Maid is no more 'qualified' than Laurie to play the blues (she said as much on the recent podcast) but no-one seems to mind.

As for the 'celeb' angle.... well, we'd all make an album if the opportunity was handed to us on a plate, wouldn't we? I think I'd rather Laurie made a record of his favourite kind of music and possibly send people (screaming, if necessary) to the originals than take the even easier crooner-type option.

but everytime he sings his voice brings to mind this role.

Keanu Reeves, Bruce Willis, Scarlett Johanssen, even Russell Crowe - are these just not vanity projects really....just like musicians who cross over into acting they make get an opportunity because of who they are, but we find taking their music seriously as difficult as believing in Mariah Carey or Britney Spears' acting careers.

How much money do you have to have before you are not allowed to sing the blues? Do any other genres have fame/financial qualification limits?

if you don't like it, don't listen to it. Channel you energies into something positive - we are all a long time dead.

...is mounting a similarly vociferous campaign against black men from poor backgrounds being allowed to play Mozart or sing opera. Remind me to send a stiff letter to the Robeson estate, the pretentious bastard. Who did he think he was?

and it clicked with me how big a star he is. I sort of knew this in theory, but I still think of him as a middle-ranking comic actor, only known in Britain.

On the music, well he's no more from the delta than he is a doctor. It's a just another kind of performance. His fellow old Etonian Humphrey Lyttleton played music by black Americans, and wasn't criticised for it. I just found his performance mediocre, nothing to do with his background.

I´m not saying Laurie´s album is a masterpiece, but hasn´t your question been asked since Alexis Corner bought his first amp?

People are entitled to love and play whatever they want to love and play. Good thing is I´m entitled to not listen if I don´t want to.

It´s like saying Muddy Waters should never have left Mississippi and gone electric. I´m not saying that Hugh will do for the blues what Muddy did, but people are entitled to do what they want.

No one will get injured (which is what happened when Celine Dion wailed I Drove All Night to its slow and painful death).

I´m off to play some Mississippi John Hurt on my twelve string now.

http://open.spotify.com/user/doublevisionary/playlist/0ZglCHsHTCs2gVBruZ...

I'm giving it a try. I wasn't overwhelmed by his GN performance either; I'm just a little bit intrigued.

EDIT:

I have put together an alternative Spotify playlist here. Please add versions of the songs that you know / prefer, if you wish.

http://open.spotify.com/user/doublevisionary/playlist/6K3cBlYLEbLXGyyutu...

...don't watch Graham Norton, would be my advice.

Being white, middle-class and Oxbridge doesn't automatically make you a twit, and Laurie obviously isn't, although he gives good twit when required.

This old Can Blue Men Sing the Whites argument is in danger of turning into another one: can white, middle-class etc sing the blues, or do they have to be working class? I don't see a lot of difference between Laurie's efforts and, say, Micky Jupp's, which to my ears sound pretty similar.

I wish I could play the piano as well as HL, though.

and it's very good. Granted his voice is the weak link but the playing throughout is superb. Ditto the arrangements and production. The opener, a light-and-shade version of St James Infirmary, puts me in mind of Dr John's Going Back To New Orleans album (£4.93 on Amazon).
Also he writes very good liner notes in which he addresses his 'credentials' to play the blues. He expected to be knocked for making this record and deals with the issue in a very charming manner. He clearly knows and loves New Orleans piano blues and I for one recommend the album heartily.
Incidently, I sing the blues too. And I come from Pinner.

.

There's a doc about Laurie, and the making of the record on ITV tonight, if anyone's interested:

http://www.radiotimes.com/ListingsServlet?event=20&channelId=26&programm...

That was awful.

This is just a vanity project, selling on his status as one of the most famous actors on American TV.

His piano playing is just above average (in New Orleans that puts him about the 80th best player in the city). His guitar is very average. It's his singing voice that I can't stand. It's not that he's a bad singer, it's his vowels and the general sound that he makes. It's just not nice to my ears.

He obviously loves NOLA music, and good on him for doing something to bring it to the masses. But he adds nothing to the pot at all.

I hope Irma and Toussaint got a good pay cheque out of it at least.

Oh - the pedant says that the version of Go To The Maris Gras that he announced as being recorded in 1959 wasn't the 1959 version, but the Atlantic version from circa 1953.

what's depressing about this is that people need some sleb's interest to be interested themselves. These consumers weren't interested in NO blues before, and the album doubtless won't make them buy Professor Longhair albums. They'll define blues by a soap opera actors interpretation. If Laurie loves the blues as he claims, he shouldn't have done this.

I thought he was really good. Am I missing something?

Voice is not brilliant, but works just fine. And that is a seriously competent band he was playing with (Jools' piano helped a lot).

but I think he can do what he wants. Last time I looked music was open for anyone to get involved in. That's part of the beauty of it. By all accounts he's pretty good on the old joanna. Were people hoping he'd do an album of madrigals dressed as George the third?

Phil Collins' recent album of Motown covers and, I suspect, at any successful mainstream artist who decides to make an album of the music he loves for his own amusement.

he can do whatever he wants. Let there be no boundaries placed on music and the creation thereof.

But there isn't a single track I'd want to hear again.

The band was superb and I loved watching Toussaint rehearsing the horns. He was so exact but he got the groove he was looking for.