Sonny Black Sonny Black And The Good Friends Band

This collection from Sonny Black inspired by American folk music, is underpinned by strong influences of Country Blues, cowboy Western, Hawaiian and Tejano music genres. Backed by The Good Friends Band who give a polished performance, this mixture of vocal and instrumental tracks showcases Black’s smooth playing style on acoustic and National Steel guitar. Instrumental tracks such as ‘On the Bozeman Trail’ and ‘North of The Border’ evoke a feeling of the 19th century Western frontier and the Mexican border whilst ‘One More Day’ with a vocal from Black is pure Appalachian mountain music in its style. By contrast, ‘New Hawaiian Rag’ is a delightfully  bouncy, slack-stringed slide number and the track that rounds off the collection, the standard ‘Moon River’ is a beautiful arrangement by Black played to perfection.
Guitarist Sonny Black is at his impeccable best again showcasing his fluent style from buoyant rags to boogies and beautiful, slow melodies and this celebration of the popular roots music originating in the Southern United States in the 1920’s shows Sonny Black’s innate talent and a confidence in his playing that is impressive.