Party scene anywhere hair grows long: "Yeah, I dig the blues, that Eddie Clampton really gets it on, he's the heaviest, dynamite mother there is." Well, how about that? That's the blues? That's 1969 white "hip" talkin' to ya. White "hip" has never quite come out of the white (into the dark). Years, ago he dug the "blues" of Mildred Bailey and even Sophie Tucker, that's ok, to each his own. But, that leaves to chance the lives of far too many black musicians who still play for pennies in places like Chicago's South and West sides, who don't even get credit for giving America a music that infiltrates even the Pepsi Generation's whitest of white institutions, the television commercial.
(Dig the melody behind the old "you get a lot to like with a Marlboro" ad!) Chess Records is a blues company. In its vaults are recordings by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, etc., etc. Not a child of the post-war baby-boom among them. All of them spent time living in Chicago's nineteen forties and fifties Blues incubator, the birthplace of city blues. It is too easily forgotten that much of the music that has been miscarried upon us since them (most notably in the 60's would not even have been given the opportunity of conception without the organ of Chicago, and that modern blues possibly wouldn't have grown without the pioneering of Muddy Waters.
His many bands listed personnel including Willie Dixon, Otis Spann, Fred Below, Jimmy Gotten, Little Walter, S. P. Leary, Francis Clay, Sam Lawhorne, George Smith and the great James A. Lane who comes to us as Jimmy Roger The liner notes tell us that Jimmy was in Chicago by 1945, soon started working with Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim and Baby Leroy Foster and joined Muddy in 1949. He played guitar with Muddy's band for eight years and retired to Chicago's West side in 1959. This album (long-awaited, little of Jimmy's work is available except for scattered cuts on Chess's Blues Volumes series and early Waters sides) contains 14 tunes recorded between 1950 and 1956. .
They range from good to incredible. All, however, are better than the pre-puberty mutterings of Johnny Winter, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and friends, (that goes without question) Included are Jimmy's most well-known tune "That's Alright" and the gem : "Walking By Myself" (recently given an interesting treatment by Paul Butterfield, one of the few REAL white bluesmen). There's lots of Little Walter's wonderfuK harmonica on this album as well as some fine work by the lesser known Big Walter Horton. The always welcome Muddy Waters'. guitar is heard on five cuts, aS personnel is listed in detail, on the album jacket. Chicago Blues, when it comes from Chicago is, if nothing else, real.
It has not been shaped by a world of Fillmpre's East and West, Suburban swimming pool bliss or Plastic Onos. I strongly advise that you don't run out and buy this collector's item unless you vomit at the sound of a Kooper Session, chuckle when you hear that this or that new young discovery has truly, "lived the blues" or feel more than a little sad when you realize that Muddy Waters can't possibly live as long as you and I. We're all awfully young you know.
Source & Full Article: 70-02-18 Mass Media Boston
