It’s not enough to be merely the best at what you do in music. You have to be compared to other great musicians before you can be validated in the eyes of critics and many fans alike.
So it is with Robert Randolph, who only five years ago was playing in a band in the House Church of God in West Orange, New Jersey, and today seems to be perpetually on tour while being heralded as the finest non-traditional pedal steel guitar player extant.
Which of course begs comparisons with other great guitarists, notably Jim Hendrix. But as comparison averse as I am (how many times have you heard that So and So is “the next Bob Dylanâ€), linking Randolph to Hendrix works.
Randolph, whose Family Band headlined at the 19th annual Appel Farm Festival in South Jersey on Saturday, dipped into the Hendrix songbook on several extended solos during a gospel-tinged, funk influenced, soulfully delivered two-hour set, and I must tell you that in his hands, “Purple Haze†reinterpreted on his shocking yellow custom 13-string pedal steel, is a thing of beauty.
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