Orange Blossoms is bluesy soulman J J Grey's masterpiece. Tony Joe White-worthy swamp funk stirred in with Grey's gritty vocals are a prequel to what he would be serving up in future iterations, most notably on his last outing, 2024's Olustee, paying homage to his North Florida roots.
Initially released in 2008 on CD, this new remastered edition is on vinyl, but not an LP version like the ones that have made a comeback in recent years. For this project, Alligator has chosen to re-release the album on two 45 rpm records. That format was the medium used to release singles starting in 1949 and running through the mid-1980s. The seven inch slab of wax only held a little over three minutes in its grooves, so an artist had to tell a story quickly and succinctly before the grooves ran out of room.
