“This is 2022 & Susie Blue & The Lonesome Fella’s have their eyes on the future – 16 hot and cool, swaggering, staggering tracks recorded with care & authenticity. Originals sit easily with new readings of old favourites from the 50’s & 60’s, covers of almost forgotten gems by Janis Martin & Ruth Brown … It’s music to make you croon & swoon and maybe even take you back a few years, and it’s an album that will be a firm favourite on my playlists in the coming year.” – Noel Casey, ‘After Midnight’ 103.2 Dublin City FM

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From her early beginning at the Bop Shop and Chicago jazz w/ Johnny Frigo, Von Freeman & Willie Pickens to Doc Cheatem in NY… then back to SE Chicago and a world of 1957-64 Blues, Jazz and Jump Swing… Miles says “The only thing you can count on in life is change!” And no one can brew up a good time like the best of Chicago’s Jazz and Blues musicians featuring harmonica maestro Howard Levy, guitarist Neal Alger and Chicago sax king Eric Schneider. BLUE TRAIN’s almost forgotten standards from the late 1950s to the early 1960s + originals, deliver 16 upbeat tracks of pure unadulterated FUN! (Did you know there were lyrics to Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn originally written for and sung by Sarah Vaughn?) Susie Blue & the Lonesome Fellas is not just echoing sounds from the past …but are rather serious Chicagoland musicians energetically and authentically extracting new sounds from long forgotten standards and from the roots of their very souls.

You might remember the song  “Baltimore Oriole” hitting the jazz charts in 2010 from Solitaire’s “Born to Be Blue Sessions” with Willie Pickens and Paulinho Garcia featuring Neal Alger, Art Davis, and Jim Gaillioreto, with Marlene Rosenberg, Robert Shy, Phil Gratteau, Joe Vito, Larry Kohut, and more.

PRESS

“Vocalist Solitaire Miles sings with warm highs and holds her lows neatly. There’s a jazziness about Miles’s phrasing, but she holds fast to a sound reminiscent of roadside bars where just three people are left near closing at the pinball machine.” – Wall Street Journal

“Just when you think gals are becoming an endangered species, a well pedigreed jazz singer goes looking for some new challenges and finds a tasty set of retro-nouveau vibes. Chops are chops and they are they are here by the truck load. ” – Midwest Record

“Susie Blue and the Lonesome Fellas includes some of the best Jazz and Roots players and Miles adds a lively vocal style that brings to mind a winning blend of Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday. ” – DownBeat Magazine

Susie Blue and the Lonesome Fellas takes you back to the days of Kay Starr, with the husky voice of Solitaire Miles along with Chicago’s best jazz and blues musicians. They get the crowd on the floor with syncopated honky tonking. Miles is a joy and you feel like you’re listening to tunes at the juke box on the counter alongside your hash browns. This band takes you to a place you want to be.” – George W Harris, Jazz Weekly