Jean Shy & The Shy Guys

Fate can be strange. Mid-set Jean Shy sang ‘Still got the Blues’, and at evenings end I had an SMS saying the songs writer Gary Moore was dead. The music he loved so much is very much alive though and Shy and her ‘Shy Boys’ band proved it with a shimmering display at The Harmonie on Sunday.

Jean Shy was born in Chicago and at only twelve years old was signed up to the legendary Chess Record label. She’s written four childrens books, had her own U.S. TV programme and as recently as 2009 she was a Blues Music Awards Nominee from the renowned ‘Blues Foundation’. How can it be then that most of the Blues fans I’ve spoken to at other shows had never heard her name? In the words of RUF Records Managing Director Thomas Ruf “People forget quickly”. Promoter Manuel Banha saw her some fifteen years ago in Bonn and didn’t forget though.

The reward for Banha’s good memory and taste was a mesmerising evening. Back to the roots of the Blues in tracks like ‘Boom Boom’ and the Etta James classic ‘Wang dang doodle’ but also showing the flowers those roots have produced: modern classics like Cockers ‘Unchain my Heart’, ‘Whitesnakes ‘Aint no Love’ and Gary Moore’s ‘Still got the Blues’.

Further proof of where those roots have taken hold was physically on hand in the shape of teenager Alex Walker from California band ‘Nine Door Empire’ who joined Shy’s lead guitar duo for a storming ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. His own band is more in the Foo Fighters direction he told me, but he listens to everything and usually the blues is in there somewhere. Despite Shy having made diverse discs over her long career – with Gospel, Soul and Jazz offerings – tonight Blues is thankfully not just ‘in there somewhere’ but is everywhere. ‘My Girl’, ‘Little Red Rooster’, ‘Rock me all night long’ every one a classic sung and played flawlessly.

You know the band puts music first when the bass player sits on a barstool – automatically there’s a wonderful old fashioned ‘bigband’ feeling. These guys were ‘Erste Sahne’ too as a German colleague later described them (cream of the crop as we Brits would say) They reminded me of the sort of people you’d see behind Elvis or BB King. Musicians who can (and do) play everything fate (and top quality singers) throws at them. They even keep the beat perfectly on ‘Sag mir wo die Blümen sind’. One minute conjuring up a John Lee Hooker rhythm the next a searing Gary Moore solo.

Which brings me back to the sad news of the evening. Jean had a bad cold so after getting a CD signed I wished her ‘Gute Besserung’ and mentioned Gary Moore’s passing. He was a hero of mine I remarked. “Mine too!” she replied. Somehow I think Jean Shy is someone Gazza, with his love for raw Chicago Blues, would treasure hearing that from.

Feb.2011 - www.english-network.de - Feb 2011

7 Page feature about Jean Shy in the Issue Nov 07/Jan 08

Download at::
http://www.kingedwardmusic.com/lama/jeanshyandtheshyguys.htm - In The Basement, UK Magazine - Feature Story - January 2008

Download the Jean Shy & The Shy Guys EPK with Bio, Credits, Discographie, 7 Page Feature, various CD Reviews, and many European Press Reviews at:
http://www.kingedwardmusic.com/lama/jeanshyandtheshyguys.htm
- Various European Press Headlines

6 Page Feature Story, Page 32- 38
- Living Blues Magazine - Feature Story - April 2011

Chicago soul singer Jean Shy has been recording since the late 1960s for such labels as Starville, Checker, Dakar, Foxcar, Honey, Fantasy, Playboy, Polydor, and R.S.O., and since 1983 for King Edward Records, a company originally based in Duisburg, Germany, but now located in Hollywood. She has garnered little attention for her efforts, at least here in the United States, and even Robert Pruter’s otherwise impressive 1991 book Chicago Soul makes no mention of her. Such inattention is a crime that should be rectified by her current CD, which shows her to be one of the most awesome soul, blues, rock, and gospel singers performing today.

Shy, who divides her time between Germany and Southern California, possesses big, remarkably elastic contralto pipes that she applies with consummate passion on The Blues Got Soul to a diverse set of oldies that includes Ray Charles’ “Unchain Mys Heart,” Donny Hathaway’s “A Song For You,” Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You),” Muddy Water’s “Rock Me,” Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock’n Roll, and the church songs “Precious Memories” and “Amazing Grace,” as well as several original compositions, both secular and spiritual. Her moans and guttural asides bring Mavis Staples to mind.

Nine of the dozen tracks were recorded live at an Open Air Festival in Duisburg, the remaining three at studios in Duisburg and Frankfurt. The Shy Guys, an exceptional band of German musicians that features the torrid guitar work of Klaus Zimmermann, and Martin Hoette, the tightly locking bass and drums of Peter Bruemmer and Bernhard Spiess, and the blistening tenor saxophone of Bernd Winterschladen, match the intensity of Shy’s vocals blow by blow. And Georg Mahr’s Hammond B-3 organ gives an ideally sanctified flavor to three of the gospel numbers.

-Lee Hildebrand- - "Living Blues" Magazine - April 2010

Jean Shy is one of the most versatile vocalists on the planet. On her previous album, 2008’s magnificent The Blues Got Soul, the veteran Chicago-born singer delved into a mix of soul, blues, rock, and gospel, all delivered with power and passion, with backing from her tight German band, the Shy Guys. Shy’s newly issued 13th CD, Blow Top Blues, presents her in more of a jazz-oriented mode, although there’s still some soul, rock, and straight urban blues among the 15 tracks. The booklet credits are not entirely clear, but at least some of the selections appeared on earlier releases and were recorded between 1993 and 2003 with three different bands: the Shy Guys, Poland’s Jazz Band Ball Orchestra (JBBO), and one billed as the Real Climax Band Cologne (not to be confused with England’s Climax Blues Band). Several others, including the autobiographical rocker Livin’ The Blues, feature synthesizers and drum machines.

The title track and Evil Gal Blues were early Dinah Washington hits, both written by renowned jazz critic Leonard Feather. Shy sings them with sass, backed by the Climax band. Blow Top Blues is treated to a medium tempo swing groove and features the commanding guitar work of Guenter Allmer. Evil Gal Blues is rendered as a hard-driving shuffle, with solos by high-note trumpeter Martin Reuthner and two-fisted pianist Uli Stollenwerk. Another blues with Climax, the classic The Night Time Is The Right Time, is given a shuffle arrangement at a much faster clip than Nappy Brown and Ray Charles had taken it years earlier. JBBO leads Shy down an even more straight-ahead jazz path on three of her own compositions, of which Maze (I Just Wanna Escape) is especially outstanding. And, with the Shy Guys, she nicely swings Fred McDowell’s You Got To Move.

Shy can really belt the blues, but she also has a tender side on which her breathy tones at times suggest an Esther Phillips influence. Among the disc’s strongest ballad performances are the standard Willow Weep For Me, Sam Dees’ Love All The Hurt Away, and a sweet, heartfelt version of Where Have All The Flowers Gone? She and Climax give Pete Seeger’s anti-war anthem a For Your Precious Love–like triplet arrangement, with Shy singing the lyrics entirely in German as Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind, a translation by Max Colpert that was originally performed by Marlene Dietrich.


—Lee Hildebrand - "Living Blues" Magazine - Feb 2011