{"id":145601,"date":"2024-08-16T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-16T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=145601"},"modified":"2024-08-15T21:16:41","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T04:16:41","slug":"review-sue-foley-honors-women-of-the-blues-and-beyond-on-one-guitar-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/review-sue-foley-honors-women-of-the-blues-and-beyond-on-one-guitar-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Sue\u00a0Foley\u00a0Honors Women of the Blues and Beyond on \u2018One Guitar Woman\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Sue Foley is known as one of the finest blues guitarists around, though up until now she has mainly worked her magic as an electric player fronting bands, usually wielding a paisley Fender Telecaster (\u00e0 la the great James Burton). For her latest release, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3ArWI3y\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">One Guitar Woman<\/a><\/em>, Foley has shifted gears and recorded a true solo album, with just her voice and a single, warm-sounding nylon-string acoustic Flamenco Blanca model made by Mexican luthier Salvador Castillo. Since her electric style is based on her intricate fingerpicking, the switchover to nylon-string feels seamless, and in this solo setting the brilliance and purity of her picking really come to the fore in ways that are perhaps even more apparent than in an electric context.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Oh Babe It Ain&#039;t No Lie\" width=\"1290\" height=\"968\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LdGg3DUZpkI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Like her Stony Plain label mate Rory Block, whose \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4fFXom9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Power Women of the Blues<\/a>\u201d series has put out three releases since 2018, Foley\u2019s offering showcases works associated with eight female guitarists and spanning four decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s. And though overall it feels like a blues album to me, it leans more to the genre\u2019s folk\/acoustic roots, and it also diverges in a few other directions: She performs a solid version of the Mexican instrumental staple \u201cLa Malague\u00f1a,\u201d which she associates with the popular entertainer Charo (who studied with Segovia when she was young); gives a nod to straight classical guitar with Paganini\u2019s \u201cRomance in A Minor,\u201d via the late-\u201930s recording by the great French guitarist Ida Presti; and includes a powerful reading of the Tejano classic \u201cMal Hombre,\u201d a hit for Lydia Mendoza in the early \u201930s, here including two verses in English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elsewhere on the album there are a pair of rather similar-sounding chestnuts by Elizabeth Cotten; two blues from 1930 by Geeshie Wiley; one from Memphis Minnie; Maybelle Carter and the Carter Family\u2019s 1941 track \u201cLonesome Homesick Blues\u201d; the mid-century gospel number \u201cMy Journey to the Sky\u201d (Sister Rosetta Tharpe); and to close out the album, Foley\u2019s own writing contribution, \u201cMaybelle\u2019s Guitar,\u201d a tribute to Maybelle Carter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/One-Guitar-Woman-Sue-Foley.jpg?resize=1000%2C1000&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"One Guitar Woman-Sue Foley\" class=\"wp-image-145603\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/One-Guitar-Woman-Sue-Foley.jpg?w=1000&amp;ssl=1 1000w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/One-Guitar-Woman-Sue-Foley.jpg?resize=500%2C500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/One-Guitar-Woman-Sue-Foley.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/One-Guitar-Woman-Sue-Foley.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/One-Guitar-Woman-Sue-Foley.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">One Guitar Woman, Sue Foley (Stony Plain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>All in all, <em>One Guitar Woman<\/em> is a fascinating and rewarding musical odyssey that shows a different side of an acknowledged master guitarist.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For her latest release, Foley has shifted gears and recorded a true solo album, with just her voice and a single, warm-sounding nylon-string acoustic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":145602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"For her latest release, Foley has shifted gears and recorded a true solo album, with just her voice and a single, warm-sounding nylon-string acoustic.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Review: Sue\u00a0Foley\u00a0honors the women of the blues and beyond on One Guitar Woman","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[885],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1539],"class_list":["post-145601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Sue-Foley-photo-Todd-V-Wolfson.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","authors":[{"term_id":1539,"user_id":7,"is_guest":0,"slug":"blairstringletter-com","display_name":"Blair Jackson","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/blair-jackson-headshot.png","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/blair-jackson-headshot.png"},"user_url":"","last_name":"Jackson","first_name":"Blair","job_title":"","description":"Blair Jackson is the author of the definitive biography <i>Garcia: An American Life<\/i> and was senior editor at <i>Acoustic Guitar<\/i> before retiring in 2023."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145601"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145609,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145601\/revisions\/145609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145601"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=145601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}