From "Woman Mind Of My Own"
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Natalia M king was born in Brooklyn at the end of the sixties, a New York district not usually connected with the blues. She grew up in a single parent family. Her Dominican mother made many sacrifices to raise her and her brother. After completing studies in Sociology and History , she set off across the US in true beatnik style, hitching and taking the Greyhounds, with her sole baggage consisting of a notebook and overflowing courage. She got by doing different jobs; washing up, delivering pizzas and working as a mechanic. She even got as far as Alaska where she worked on a trawler preparing fish. From all these adventures she sourced strength and endurance. However, nothing from her childhood, her vagabond life or exile in Paris, where, enthused by the writings of James Baldwin, she arrived with her only baggage being an Ovation guitar, destined her to become a blues singer.
Under such wonderful omens, ‘Woman Mind Of My Own ‘ accompanies all the rocky, soul searching, revealing all the traits of character held up by an extraordinary and unique talent. If, evidently, these nine tracks remind us of something, they certainly tell the tale of a hungry heart forever seeking to be filled. The soul meandering of the decorous brass, typical of the Stax Muscle Shoals, ‘Forget Yourself’ leads Natalia to the throne of the legendary Love queens, Candi Station and Etta James, where laws are written and justice given.
Whereas she seems to have encountered the ghost of Robert Johnson at the famous Clarksdale Crossroads in ‘Woman Mind Of My Own ‘, on ‘Play On ‘ in a similar deep Delta blues vein with the ad hoc resonator guitar, she sends a message worthy of Shakespeare , ‘ If music be the food of love, play on .....’
And as the heart is a solitary hunter, her's is roaming, poaching in all the dense forests, from torrid passion in ‘Sunrise to Sunset’ where she holds her own with the two miss Jones’ of the music world, (Rickie Lee et Nora), to the melancholic sensuality of Karen Dalton on ‘So Far Away’. And the proof that Natalia never ‘copies the same style’ is in her cover of George Michael's ‘One More Try’; one of the most poignant and personal moments of the record. Same thing for two other covers, ‘(Lover)You Don’t Treat Me Good’ from the group Sonia Dada where she ‘goes to battle’ with New Zealand bluesman Grant Haua, and Johnny Cougar Mellencamp’s ‘Pink Houses’ where she duos with Elliot Murphy, another American exile in France. If ‘Woman Mind Of My Own ‘ is a celebration of that Americanism that is an integral part of her DNA, it’s also a baptism with its high point ‘AKA Chosen’, gospel LGBT where Natalia dons the crown of the chosen one, ‘who has to work to open the minds of people who think that skin colour or sexual orientation is a criteria, a value...Showing I am blessed is to counteract those who, on the contrary, believe I am condemned and damned for being homosexual.’
The Soul of a Woman.
© Dixiefrog Records
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