13-08-2018 12:06 BLUES:MiX # 33 blues songs from the BLUES circle 1982-1972

Hound Dog Taylor

13-08-2018 12:06 BLUES:MiX # 33 blues songs from the BLUES circle 1982-1972 # Hound Dog Taylor, Robin Trower, Jack Bruce, Bill Lordan, Tom Waits, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Jimmy Johnson, David Wilcox, Otis Rush, Johnny Shines, Junior Wells, Maggie Bell,  The Allman Brothers Band, Albert King

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1982-1972

Alligator Records, Chicago's leading contemporary blues label, might never have been launched at all if not for the crashing, slashing slide guitar antics of Hound Dog Taylor. Bruce Iglauer, then an employee of Delmark Records, couldn't convince his boss, Bob Koester, of Taylor's potential, so Iglauer took matters into his own hands. In 1971, Alligator was born for the express purpose of releasing Hound Dog's debut album. We all know what transpired after that.
Hound Dog Taylor
Crossroads (Traditional) 2:22
Blue Guitar (Hound Dog Taylor) 3:38
from Genuine Houserocking Music 1982
With Alligator label prexy Bruce Iglauer recording some 20 or 30 tracks over two nights everytime the band went into the studio, there were bound to be some really great tracks lurking in the vaults and these are it. Noteworthy for the great performance of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads," (previously only available as a Japanese 45) but also for the "rock & roll" inclusion of "What'd I Say" and Brewer Phillips' take on "Kansas City." No bottom of the barrel scrapings here.

One of rock's prime guitarists, due to his uncanny ability to channel Jimi Hendrix's blues-psych, Fender Strat-fueled playing style. Throughout his long and winding solo career, guitarist Robin Trower has had to endure countless comparisons to Jimi Hendrix due to his uncanny ability to channel Hendrix's bluesy/psychedelic, Fender Strat-fueled playing style.
Robin Trower
Jack Bruce, Bill Lordan
Into Money (Robin Trower) 2:56
End Game (Bill Berry / Peter Buck / Mike Mills / Keith Reid / Michael Stipe / Robin Trower) 5:11
from B.L.T. 1981
It wasn't until the 1980 Victims of the Fury album, seven years into his solo career, that Robin Trower would employ former Procul Harum bandmate Keith Reid to provide lyrics (with Reid probably the only lyricist in history to get band status). Though this is officially a Robin Trower release entitled B.L.T., the marquee giving Jack Bruce and Bill Lordan equal heading above the double-sized name of Robin Trower, the project is shouldered by all talents involved and inhibited by a dreadful cover photo of a white bread sandwich: bacon, lettuce and tomato with -- if you look closely -- raw bacon. All concerned would have been better off titling this a Jack Bruce/Robin Trower project with drummer Bill Lordan...

Robin Trower

A neo-beatnik songwriter who grew weirder and wilder in the '80s, earning a cult following that only grew larger as the years passed.  In the work of American songwriter Tom Waits, swampy blues, Beat poetry, West Coast jazz, Tin Pan Alley, country, 1930s-era cabaret, and post-Civil War parlor songs meet neon-lit carnival music, and the wheezing, clattering, experimental rhythms (often played by makeshift musical instruments from car radios to metal pipes and tin cans -- hence his love of Edgard Varese and Harry Partch) form a keenly individual musical universe.
Tom Waits
Heartattack and Vine (Tom Waits) 4:50
Downtown (Tony Hatch / Tom Waits) 4:44
'Til the Money Runs Out 8Tom Waits) 4:25
from Heartattack and Vine 1980
Heartattack and Vine is Tom Waits' seventh and final album for Asylum. As such, it's transitional. As demonstrated by its immediate predecessors, 1978's excellent Blue Valentine and 1977's Foreign Affairs, he was already messing with off-kilter rhythms even in the most conventionally structured blues and jazz songs, with nastier-sounding guitars -- he plays a particularly gnarly style of rhythm on this entire album. Five of these nine tracks are rooted in gutbucket blues with rock edges and primal R&B beats. By this time, his singing voice had deteriorated to a gasping-for-breath whiskey-and-cigarettes growl that could make words indecipherable from one another, but his jazzman-inspired phrasing more than compensated... In sum, Heartattack and Vine reveals just how much Waits had grown during his tenure with Asylum. Though not perfect in sequencing -- the alternating juxtaposition of rowdy blues and heartworn ballads gets old -- almost every song stands on its own as a dusty gem.

Texas band that kept the flame alive for roadhouse blues, led by singer/harpist Kim Wilson and, early on, guitarist Jimmie Vaughan.  With their fusion of blues, rock & roll, and R&B, the Fabulous Thunderbirds helped popularize roadhouse Texas blues with a mass audience in the '80s and, in the process, they helped kick-start a blues revival during the mid-'80s
The Fabulous Thunderbirds
Wait on Time (Kim Wilson) 3:03
Pocket Rocket (Kim Wilson) 3:27
Rock With Me (Kim Wilson) 2:38
from The Fabulous Thunderbirds 1979
Their debut album, with the original lineup of Wilson, Vaughn, Buck, and Ferguson stompin' through a roadhouse set of covers and genre-worthy originals. One of the few white blues albums that works.

Chicago guitarist Jimmy Johnson didn't release his first full domestic album until he was 50 years old. He's determinedly made up for lost time ever since, establishing himself as one of the Windy City's premier blues artists with a twisting, unpredictable guitar style and a soaring, soul-dripping vocal delivery that stand out from the pack.
Jimmy Johnson
'Long About Midnight (Jimmy Johnson) 7:10
Tobacco Road (John D. Loudermilk) 6:03
Sweet Little Angel (B.B. King) 5:23
from Tobacco Road 1978
Recorded "live" at GOLDEN SLIPPER 345 S. Pulaski on October 19th, 1977
Bass – Ike Anderson
Drums – Dino Neal
Guitar – David Matthews, Jimmy Johnson
Vocals – Jimmy Johnson

Canadian guitarist and singer/songwriter David Wilcox started his long and accomplished professional career by landing a spot in the Ian and Sylvia Tyson band the Great Speckled Bird. A few years later, Wilcox stepped into the spotlight in front of his own band, the Teddybears. In 1977, he recorded his first album -- the first of many. During the next two decades, he earned a number of awards and his albums went gold and platinum.
David Wilcox
Bump up Ahead 2:31
Cheap Beer Joint (David Wilcox) 3:10
That Hypnotizin' Boogie (David Wilcox) 4:00
from Out of the Woods 1977
Don't expect more than wicked guitar and a loopy sense of humor, although you get plenty of both... He works in some sly, slow blues, but excels on the fast numbers...

An architect of Chicago blues' West Side sound, whose style combined broodingly intense vocals and sweet, stinging guitar solos.  Breaking into the R&B Top Ten his very first time out in 1956 with the startlingly intense slow blues "I Can't Quit You Baby," southpaw guitarist Otis Rush subsequently established himself as one of the premier bluesmen on the Chicago circuit. Rush is often credited with being one of the architects of the West side guitar style, along with Magic Sam and Buddy Guy
Otis Rush
Tore Up 3:20
Right Place, Wrong Time 5:26
I Wonder Why 4:14
from Right Place, Wrong Time 1976
This recording session was not released until five years after it was done. One can imagine the tapes practically smoldering in their cases, the music is so hot. Sorry, there is nothing "wrong" about this blues album at all. Otis Rush was a great blues expander, a man whose guitar playing was in every molecule pure blues. On his solos on this album he strips the idea of the blues down to very simple gestures (i.e., a bent string, but bent in such a subtle way that the seasoned blues listener will be surprised). As a performer he opens up the blues form with his chord progressions and use of horn sections, the latter instrumentation again added in a wonderfully spare manner, bringing to mind a master painter working certain parts of a canvas in order to bring in more light. Blues fans who get tired of the same old song structures, riff, and rhythms should be delighted with most of Rush's output, and this one is among his best. Sometimes all he does to make a song sound unlike any blues one has ever heard is just a small thing -- a chord moving up when one expects it go down, for example...

Delta bluesman, and one-time Robert Johnson cohort, whose career extended into the 1960s folk revival.  Best known as a traveling companion of Robert Johnson, Johnny Shines' own contributions to the blues have often been unfairly shortchanged, simply because Johnson's own legend casts such a long shadow. In his early days, Shines was one of the top slide guitarists in Delta blues, with his own distinctive, energized style; one that may have echoed Johnson's spirit and influence, but was never a mere imitation.
Johnny Shines
Too Wet to Plow (Johnny Shines) 4:26
Red Sun (Kent Cooper / Louisiana Red / Johnny Shines) 4:46
Pay Day Woman (Johnny Shines) 5:10
from Too Wet To Plow 1975
Johnny Shines was far from predictable. Though he recorded his share of inspired electric dates, he had no problem turning around and delivering a stripped-down, all-acoustic Delta blues session like Too Wet to Plow. Recorded in Edmonton, Canada in 1975...  Too Wet to Plow finds Shines in excellent form. His solid accompaniment includes harmonica player Sugar Blue and bassist Ron Rault, as well as guitarist/singer Louisiana Red (a superb bluesman who isn't nearly as well known as he should be), and Shines clearly has a strong rapport with them... Highly recommended.

Regarded as the last of the great Chicago harmonica players, he was an impressive stylist and a leading practitioner of postwar blues harmonica.  He was one bad dude, strutting across the stage like a harp-toting gangster, mesmerizing the crowd with his tough-guy antics and rib-sticking Chicago blues attack. Amazingly, Junior Wells kept at precisely this sort of thing for over 40 years; he was an active performer from the dawn of the '50s until his death in the late '90s.
Junior Wells
What My Momma Told Me (Junior Wells) 4:07
Key to the Highway (Big Bill Broonzy / Charles Segar) 4:4
The Train I Ride (Junior Wells) 5:06
from On Tap 1975
Underrated mid-'70s collection boasting a contemporary, funky edge driven by guitarists Phil Guy and Sammy Lawhorn, keyboardist Big Moose Walker, and saxman A.C. Reed...

Scottish soul-rock singer Maggie Bell first gained prominence singing with Stone the Crows, which released its first album in 1970 and broke up in June 1973.
Maggie Bell
Caddo Queen 3:38
After Midnight (J.J. Cale) 2:38
from Queen of the Night 1974
Producer Jerry Wexler puts the earthy vocals of Maggie Bell in a beautiful setting here... Her uptempo version of J.J. Cale's "After Midnight" is more captivating than Eric Clapton's; she oozes that Etta James sexuality while Reggie Young throws some tasty guitar into the semi-calypso groove...

Blending rock, blues, country, and jazz, the godfathers of Southern rock in all its wild, woolly glory.  The story of the Allman Brothers Band is one of triumph, tragedy, redemption, dissolution, and more redemption. Since their beginning in the late '60s, they went from being America's single most influential band to a shell of their former self trading on past glories, to reach the 21st century resurrected as one of the most respected rock acts of their era.
The Allman Brothers Band
Wasted Words (Gregg Allman) 4:20
Come and Go Blues (Gregg Allman) 4:55
Southbound (Dickey Betts / Richard Betts) 5:10
from Brothers and Sisters 1973
Released a year after Eat a Peach, Brothers and Sisters shows off a leaner brand of musicianship, which, coupled with a pair of serious crowd-pleasers, "Ramblin' Man" and "Jessica," helped drive it to the top of the charts for a month and a half and to platinum record sales. This was the first album to feature the group's new lineup, with Chuck Leavell on keyboards and Lamar Williams on bass, as well as Dickey Betts' emergence as a singer alongside Gregg Allman...

One of the most important post-war blues guitarists, renowned for his massive tone and unique way of squeezing bends out of a guitar string.  Albert King is truly a "King of the Blues," although he doesn't hold that title (B.B. does). Along with B.B. and Freddie King, Albert King is one of the major influences on blues and rock guitar players. Without him, modern guitar music would not sound as it does -- his style has influenced both black and white blues players from Otis Rush and Robert Cray to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's important to note that while almost all modern blues guitarists seldom play for long without falling into a B.B. King guitar cliché, Albert King never does -- he's had his own style and unique tone from the beginning.
Albert King
I'll Play the Blues for You, Pts. 1 - 2 (Jerry Beach) 7:17
Breaking up Somebody's Home (Raymond Jackson / Al Jackson, Jr. / Timothy Matthews) 7:15
Don't Burn Down the Bridge ('Cause You Might Wanna Come Back Across) (J. Jones / Jones / Wells) 5:4
from I'll Play The Blues For You 1972
...Though 1972's I'll Play the Blues for You followed a slightly different formula, the combination of King, members of the legendary Bar-Kays, the Isaac Hayes Movement, and the sparkling Memphis Horns was hardly a risky endeavor. The result was a trim, funk-infused blues sound that provided ample space for King's oft-imitated guitar playing. King has always been more impressive as a soloist than a singer, and some of his vocal performances on I'll Play the Blues for You lack the intensity one might hope for. As usual, he more than compensates with a series of exquisite six-string workouts...