| Blues |
The European Soul of the Blues: Hugh Coltman and Jean-Jacques Milteau Reimagine an American Legacy
There is something quietly radical about hearing the blues sung in a European accent. It’s not about imitation, not about homage in the polite sense, it’s about transformation. On their latest project, British vocalist Hugh Coltman and French harmonica legend Jean-Jacques Milteau offer an album that feels at once reverent and defiantly original, a collection that rewires the emotional circuitry of the blues without betraying its essence.
The record brings together a fascinating selection of songs, from Van Morrison and Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green to Blind Willie Johnson, alongside a haunting original, “Round and Round We Go,” co-written by Coltman, Milteau, and pianist Johan Dalgaard. On paper, it reads like a nod to the transatlantic tradition. But in sound and spirit, this is something else entirely: European blues, crafted through a prism of history, imagination, and emotional restraint that turns familiarity into revelation.
A Transatlantic Dialogue
Hugh Coltman is not new to reinvention. Long before this project, the former blues-rock frontman had already charted an unpredictable path through music, from his early days in the British scene to a quietly luminous career in Paris. There, he released Stories from the Safe House (2008), an introspective and poetic record, followed by Shadows: Songs of Nat King Cole (2015), a work that revealed his deep affection for the elegance and vulnerability of jazz phrasing.
Coltman’s voice carries the patina of experience, a kind of lived-in warmth that can shift, in an instant, from tenderness to grit. On this new EP, he sings with an almost documentary precision, like someone cataloging both pain and grace. “He doesn’t just interpret,” says one Paris producer who has worked with him, “he translates emotion into landscape.”
That landscape is broadened and deepened by Milteau, whose harmonica has, for decades, embodied the sound of European roots music. Milteau is one of those rare figures who made the harmonica respectable again, not through technical flash, but through patience, tone, and storytelling. His career is a timeline of transatlantic conversation: from the 2015 homage to Lead Belly with American bluesman Eric Bibb (Lead Belly’s Gold), to Migration Blues (2016), recorded in Canada with Michael Jerome Browne, to CrossBorder Blues (2018), a trio album with Vincent Segal on cello and Harrison Kennedy on vocals, produced by Sebastian Danchin.
Each of these projects pushed the idea of the blues outward, toward dialogue, and that spirit continues here.
The Art of the Unspectacular
In a musical world too often obsessed with grand gestures and overproduced emotion, Coltman and Milteau practice a kind of radical restraint. Their arrangements are deceptively simple, no pyrotechnics, no unnecessary polish, but within that simplicity lies exquisite precision. Dalgaard’s piano provides subtle architecture, shaping the space around Milteau’s harmonica, which moves not as a soloist but as a storyteller in its own right.
“It’s Hard Rain,” Coltman’s reimagining of Bob Dylan’s apocalyptic classic, may be the emotional core of the record. His delivery is unhurried, almost weary, yet charged with an unshakable intensity. It’s not a cry of protest; it’s a whisper from inside the storm. Milteau’s harmonica weaves through the song like a wounded echo, a reminder that the blues, even when sung in Paris or London, remains a music of survival.
There’s an intelligence in this restraint. Where American blues can lean toward raw confession, this European variant tends to observe before it explodes, to intellectualize its sorrow, to dress the pain in harmony and understatement. That isn’t dilution, it’s translation. Coltman and Milteau are not trying to be American; they are making the blues speak another cultural language.
The Urgency of Meaning in a Shallow Age
Why, in 2025, should anyone return to the classics, to songs built on suffering, exile, and the slow burn of human resilience? Perhaps because the world, once again, feels adrift. In an era of algorithmic music and endless distraction, artists like Coltman and Milteau remind us of something fundamental: that authentic expression still matters, that sincerity can still cut through the noise.
“Every generation has to rediscover the blues,” Milteau once said. “It’s not about sadness, it’s about clarity.” That philosophy runs through the veins of this album. The blues, as they interpret it, isn’t nostalgia; it’s a kind of cultural literacy, a way of remembering that even beauty can come from brokenness.
Coltman’s performances, grounded yet luminous, show how European artists can channel the spirit of American blues without losing themselves in imitation. He has a journalist’s ear for truth and a poet’s instinct for phrasing. Milteau, ever the craftsman, matches him with lines that breathe and sigh, never overstepping, always listening. Together, they create a dialogue of equals, one voice human, one voice made of metal and breath.
A New Geography of the Blues
The beauty of this record lies not in novelty but in perspective. By refracting the blues through European experience, through cities where history, melancholy, and art constantly intersect, Coltman and Milteau expand its geography. They prove that the blues can thrive wherever emotion still speaks louder than noise.
The result is a collection of songs that feel both familiar and strange, distant yet intimate, music that looks across the ocean but finds its own reflection in the water. It’s a reminder that the blues, after all, was never just American. It was, and remains, a universal language of endurance.
And in the hands of Hugh Coltman and Jean-Jacques Milteau, it sounds reborn: tender, intelligent, profoundly human.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, October 7th 2025
Follow PARIS-MOVE on X
::::::::::::::::::::::::
Site web de Jean-Jacques Milteau
Musicians :
Hugh Coltman – vocals
Jean-Jacques Milteau – harmonica
Johan Dalgaard – Keyboard
Raphaël Chassin – Drums
Laurent Vernerey – double bass
Scott McKeon – guitar
Track Listing:
Nobody’s Fault But Mine
Man Of The World
It’s A Hard Rain
Gloria
Round & Round We Go