Celebrate the release with us of Mitch Woods’ CD, “Friends Along The Way” with Mitch Woods and his Rocket 88s! 
The theme of friendship has carried Mitch Woods along through his career and has culminated in the special recordings of this album, which features Van Morrison, Taj Mahal, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, Ruthie Foster, Joe Louis Walker, Maria Muldaur, Cyril Neville, Marcia Ball, John Hammond, Kenny Neal, and earlier recordings with James Cotton and John Lee Hooker.
Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88s have been the torchbearers of a great American blues musical heritage, not for two years but two decades. Taking their inspiration from the great jump n’ boogie outfits of the late 40s and early 50s, they breathe fresh life into the music that gave birth to rock n’ roll. Woods styled his group after the jumpin’ n’ jivin’, shoutin’ n’ honkin’, pumpin’ n’ poundin’ bands of Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, Joe and Jimmy Liggins, Amos Milburn, and Roy Milton. Adding a healthy dose of New Orleans rhythm and blues, piledrivin’ piano, and some of his own contemporary playful lyrics, Woods and His Rocket 88s forge their own brand of music they call “rock-a-boogie.”
“Few pianists around have better captured the definitive boogie-blues, eight-to-thebar styles of Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Otis Spann, Meade Lux Lewis…and all the rest – Woods is one of them.” — Philip Elwood, SF Examiner
“It’s not easy to play that Professor Longhair piano lick – those rippling rumba triplets in the right hand against a driving, eight-to-the-bar boogie in the left – but San Francisco’s Mitch Woods plays it as well as anyone outside New Orleans ever has… This may be complicated music to play, but it’s very easy music to hear. There’s something about the syncopated bounce of boogie-woogie that lifts one’s spirits even as it shifts one’s shoulders and hips.” — Geoffrey Himes, Washington Post
“Piano master Mitch Woods is one of the brightest exponents of West Coast swing, Kansas City boogie-woogie, and Chicago blues. Woods also has a fine touch for New Orleans’ piano polyrhythms.” — Scott Jordan, Offbeat
