Erwin Helfer Trio – Careless Love

Track Listing:
1. This Is Better Than I Thought It Was Boogie - 3:26   2. Careless Love - 6:02   3. Paris But I Don't Know Why - 4:09   4. Blue Monk - 4:36   5. On the Sunny Side of the Street - 3:26   6. Georgia - 4:06   7. Just a Closer Walk with Thee - 3:59   8. Make Me a Pallet on the Floor - 5:53   9. All of Me - 3:06   10. I've Got It Bad and That Ain't Good - 4:27   11. Jambalaya - 3:59

Personnel:
Erwin Helfer (piano) , John Whitfield (bass) , Avreeayl Ra (drums)

Reviews:

1. No Depression - Lloyd Sachs - March-April 2006
The Crescent City may have Dr. John, but for a considerably longer time, the Windy City has had Erwin Helfer, a blues and boogie master whose obscurity masks the great esteem which he is held by his fans and fellow musicians. With a series of fine albums for suburban Chicago label The Sirens, Helfer is chipping away at his cult status as he approaches his 70th birthday. Careless Love is the best of them in terms of its stylistic breadth and the easy elegance with which he connects those dots; among ‘two-fisted’ pianists, he is the most genial as well as the most crafty. The music is lifted by a large-spirited sense of now, ranging from a reading of Hank Williams’ ‘Jambalaya’ on which second-line rhythm meets Caribbean tinge, to a jaunty, staggering ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee’, to a languorous, time-lagging treatment of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Blue Monk’.