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Meet Dalton
Roberts
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THE KIND OF MUSIC
DALTON ROBERTS PLAYS
===================== Dalton grew up listening to his Uncle Van play the songs of Jimmy
Rodgers, "The Father of Country Music." The Delmore Brothers
were also friends of the family and often stayed at his Uncle Brown's
home while traveling in East Tennessee. These are his earliest memories of music.
After he learned to play guitar, his fingerstyle picking cousin,
Monk Franklin, lived with the family for a year and Dalton was
captured by the Merle Travis finger and thumbstyle sounds.
Later he discovered that blues immortal Bessie Smith grew up near his
old homeplace and he immersed himself in studying her music and other
blues artists.
After decades of heading up his own band and playing commercial
country/rock in southeast Tennessee and northwest Georgia honkytonks and
nightclubs, he
decided to create a solo act fusing his talents as a speaker, humorist,
philosopher, songwriter and musician.
In this process of skills blending, he also fused the country roots
sounds from his earliest years, fingerstyle with it's ragtime feel and
basic blues.
He says, "I'm just a country blues picker," but reviewers who
note his love for writing humorous songs have said "there's too
much good-time in Roberts to be full-blown blues" and "he's
the Cousin Joe of the country-blues genre, bringing up memories of that
maverick mischievous bluesman from New Orleans."
His diverse roots are reflected in his albums. One is basic country,
another is a tribute to blues immortal Bessie Smith, another is a
delightful potpourri of rib-tickling humor songs and his latest is
inspirational.
-- from THE SUN, Lowell, Massachusetts
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