ALL
author: LITWIN, MAL
as one LITWIN to another you were great
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Humour, blues and positive madness
author: Finn Bjerke
"The Selfmade Madman" is more than an excellent fingerpicker. On this CD his Vocals are in the foreground. It swings and will make you stomp your feet smile and occasionalkly laugh.
Bradley is a very funny man and a gifted guitarist and singer. This Album is very American in the sense that it brings the power of the blues, the jazz and the roots of American music up to modern time. This is no mainstreamish pop thang. It's a hard working musician who takes fun seriously!
I love the swing and happy feel of this CD and the vocals and guitar is just amazing. Very nice bigband arrangements too. Neo-traditionalists are gonna love this.
American and Wonderfull. Bradley deserves a bigger audience
btw: I'm danish.
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a bluesman through and through combining pathos with wry humor
author: Peter Spencer
If I had a sawbuck for every time I've heard this act done badly I'd own a big stone farmhouse in Bucks County and a monkey on a silver chain to bring me drinks in the grotto. The big hat, the little glasses, the carefully appropriated influences, we've all caught this vaudeville enough times for it to figure in those nightmares where you've gone to
school wearing just your underwear.
And yet Bradley N. Litwin ("the Self-Made Madman") somehow manages a set full of flashy guitar licks, virtuoso singing, and, rarest and most beautiful of all, personality.
He does this by combining the rural blues/ragtime repertoire (the album opens with a super-hot version of Blind Blake's hokum classic "Mr. Diddy Wa Diddy") with vintage jazz and pop material that is artfully selected
and even more artfully arranged.
Litwin has the jazz musician's facility with harmony, which enables him to re-harmonize familiar tunes like "You Always Hurt the One You Love" and "Louisiana Fairy Tale" into convincing showcases for his yelping, over-the-top vocal delivery. And he has the classical musician's ability
to stretch time to the breaking point, as in a version of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain" that perfectly captures the lyrics' doleful melancholy.
In the end, though, Litwin is a bluesman through and through, combining pathos with wry humor in the classic manner. "Baby Please Come Home" is funny and touching at the same time, and the original "Wor Shu Op" should be played in every Chinese restaurant in the land.
- Peter Spencer
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Most Impressed!
author: AZJOHN
I have to make decisions on CDBaby purchases using a dial up connection. I have to decide what to buy based on a short lyric, a chord structure, vocal range, etc. and go on. When I saw that Brad had a saxaphone on this CD, I wrote him and gave him a hassle before buying. He blasted me back. Then I bought and listened to the CD. I now recall and understand how the sax should be played! Not that the CD is about saxaphone. IT IS NOT!!!!
If you heard Mr. Litwin's first CD, you will obtain the same great fun, vocals and most important, great guitar playing and vocals!!!!
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