David Maxwell is nominated for the 2008 Blues Music Awards "Pinetop Perkins Piano Player of the Year" award. For more information the Blues Music Awards, click here.

Highly acclaimed blues and jazz pianist DAVID MAXWELL is releasing in North America on Blue Max Records his star studded latest effort "MAX ATTACK". This is the album that was distributed by Dixiefrog Records in Europe last year entitled "DAVID MAXWELL AND FRIENDS". James Cotton, Kim Wilson, Duke Robillard, Ronnie Earl, Hubert Sumlin, and Pinetop Perkins all make appearances. The album is a melange of original down in the alley blues, boogie woogie, soulful songs and scorching instrumentals. There are eight vocals and four instrumentals,with Kim, Hubert and a soulful Liane Carroll contributing vocally along with David. Some stunning horn arrangements compliment David's keyboards.

David Maxwell has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, having won a Grammy (with his work with James Cotton) and nominated for several others along with three Handy Award nominations. He's played with a lot of the greats, including John Lee Hooker, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, James Cotton, Muddy Waters, and many more. He's recorded dozens of albums accompanying and collaborating with many different artists, played in festivals and toured all over the world, and is regarded as one of the greatest living true blues pianists on the scene today.

Pianist Maxwell true blue to blues

By Daniel Gewertz Friday, January 16, 2004

In 2003, the official Year of the Blues, America's mass media gave the blues a needed dose of attention. But local pianist David Maxwell didn't need congressional approval or TV documentaries for an overview of the genre. More than any other living Bostonian, Maxwell has been a participant in the life - and witness to the near-death - of this American art form.

Just scan his 35-year resume:

* Played in the touring bands of John Lee Hooker, Freddy King, James Cotton, Bonnie Raitt and Big Mama Thornton.

* Festiva-circuit gigs with Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and Otis Rush.

* Recorded with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Hubert Sumlin.

* Close cohort with the post-war blues piano greats Otis Spann, Pinetop Perkins and Sunnyland Slim.

* Jammed with every generation of blues artists, from Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Sippie Wallace and Muddy Waters to Ronnie Earl and the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

"Fortunately, I was young at a time when I was able to see the great country-blues artists at Club 47, and at the same time I was exposed to the urban blues with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf,'' Maxwell said over coffee at Somerville's Panini Cafe.

"I'm rooted in the tradition, starting with the language of the Chicago school. But then I added my own phrasing, voicing, peculiarities of telling a story. I try to keep it an evolving language. As B.B. King says, be yourself. "There's a lot to do that I haven't done yet. It's a never-ending quest,'' said Maxwell, who brings his Maximum Blues Band to the Regattabar on Thursday. Singer Nicole Nelson will beaboard, as will Kevin Barry, Marty Ballou and Marty Richards.

That quest has, at points, grown outrageously eclectic. A lover of bebop, avant-garde jazz and Asian-African music, Maxwell currently makes Indian/Moroccan-inspired abstract improvisation with his band Out-Takes Unlimited. It plays the Zeitgeist on the third Friday of every month. "I love the raw sound, the Eastern tonalities, the Turkish-Islamic stuff,'' he said.

Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor were early heroes. "But my bread and butter remains the blues: It's accessible to others, and it's an immediate emotional vehicle for myself,'' he said.

The pianist's penchant for the experimental is far superior to a more popular indulgence: lazy, formulaic blues. "There's a temptation today to indulge in cliches. It's something I try to avoid.''

Despite all the Year of the Blues hype, Maxwell has noted a significant drop in concert activities and recording contracts. Even the last remaining blues progenitors, men like Cotton and Perkins, aren't getting as many good offers of late.

Acceding to commercial constraints, Maxwell was convinced to sing on his recent CD, ``Max Attack,'' but even that move and the inclusion of such heavyweights as Cotton, Earl, Perkins, Sumlin, Duke Robillard and Kim Wilson have not, so far, won Maxwell a U.S. record contract. The CD is on Europe's DixieFrog label.

Singing should be kept as a change of pace for Maxwell. His piano is an instrument of increasingly rare soul and vision, whatever year his bluesis made.

Boston Herald