One of Los Angeles’s finest young blues bands has cut its first album, HOUND DOG DAVE AND THE MEL-TONES. Recorded live at a local club, the new CD shows just why the band has become a popular attraction in recent years. Every one of the CD’s twelve cuts is played and sung in lusty, high-spirited fashion, making for good vibes all around.
A quartet comprised of Martin “Sonny B” Bennett on drums, Roger Handy on vocals and harmonica, Mike Hightower on electric bass, and Dave Melton on guitar and vocals, the band digs into such blues and r&b classics as “Suzy Q,” “Jambalaya” and “Dust My Broom” (the Robert Johnson song made popular by Elmore James) witha gleeful kind of intensity and passion which is quite infectious. It’s hard not to want to jump up and dance to this album, especially when Handy belts out “Shake Rattle and Roll” with all the rollicking force of a young Joe Turner. Melton on slide guitar also romps exuberantly on “She’s Tuff” and “Reconsider, Baby.”

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